Rioting Eastern Europe

Not one, but three anti-government riots took place in Eastern Europe last week. But with all eyes fixated on the conflict in Gaza and the inauguration of the new US president, the world’s attention was elsewhere - even though these violent demonstrations could very well be a worrying harbinger of things to come later this year.

Most media typically interpreted the events in Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania as simply responses to the global financial crisis and the unpopular policies that governments have been forced to adopt to escape economic meltdown. Case closed.

Yet, contrary to what editorial writers in the US and Western Europe might believe, large-scale demonstrations do not take place in the “wild” East very often, and certainly not those that degenerate into violence, attacks on government buildings and looting. This is a big deal, but how big? And if these are really economically motivated disturbances, why exactly now?

First in Latvia, then in Bulgaria and finally in Lithuania, riots began as peaceful demonstrations before getting out of hand. In Riga on 13 January, an estimated 10,000 people gathered in the country’s largest demonstration since independence in 1991 to demand that the government, blamed for being corrupt and incompetent, step down. As the protest began to peter out, around 100 demonstrators tried to storm the parliament, leading to clashes with riot police who fought back with tear gas and truncheons. Rioters smashed the windows of some local businesses, as well as the Finance Ministry, and looted a liquor store.

In Sofia, on 14 January, around 2,000 demonstrators, including university students, ecological activists and farmers, called on the government to resign over its failure to implement economic reforms and rid the country of endemic corruption. A group of young men started throwing snowballs, bottles and stones at police, and then vandalized cars and shops: the worst riot since 1997, when mass demonstrations finished off a notoriously incompetent socialist government.

Two days later, on 16 January, in copycat style, very similar events took place in Lithuania. Up to 7,000 protested against tax hikes and cuts in spending, with a violent subgroup attacking the parliament building, causing an estimated half million euros in damage.

Latvia is perhaps the most disturbing example of the three, because, until recently, the country was the fastest-growing in the EU, a place where the average wage doubled over the past three years. Governments did rise and fall rather often, but economic stability in this small Baltic nation seemed virtually guaranteed and the country well on its way to prosperous times and the living standards of nearby Scandinavia.

Now the economy is expected to contract 5 percent this year, and unemployment rose a full percentage point in December, to 7 percent. The government was forced to seek a €7.5 billion (US$ 9.7 billion) bailout from the International Monetary Fund and the EU.

“There was a sense of elation about the rapid GDP growth that was not just a number but real money in people's pockets. People got used to that,” said Iveta Kazoka, a policy analyst at the Centre for Public Policy Providus in Riga. “Then the future seemed even brighter. People were taking mortgages with very clear expectations that their wages would continue to increase just as fast.”

Kazoka told ISN Security Watch that Latvians were still willing to tolerate the foibles of the political elite - the arrogance of their leaders and clear cases of corruption - as long as most people continued to prosper. The approval ratings of politicians remained relatively high and, if there were demonstrations, it was more the intellectual elite taking part than ordinary Latvians.

The warning signs started to appear in the winter of 2007-2008, as inflation soared to 20 percent. Yet wage increases still compensated for rising prices.

The situation shifted last fall, as the economic situation spiraled downward. “From then on one could sense lots of people getting really angry - due to wage cuts, unemployment and so on,” said Kazoka, explaining the reasons so many people turned out for the 13 January demonstration.

“Where it not for these hardships, I'm quite sure that the majority of those people would still be willing to tolerate the government - even being very aware of its corruption or arrogance. Now, when the money is not as easy, more people are bothered about the fairness of its distribution and political patronage.”

While economic hardship may have been the determining factor for many of the demonstrators in Latvia and Lithuania (in Bulgaria less so, as students, a main protest group, were disgruntled over safety issues in the student quarter), the protests have provided a window of opportunity for troublemakers.

“Most of the people arrested n Latvia for throwing stones and fighting with the police are young toughs with previous citations for disorderly conduct,” says Pauls Raudseps, editorial page editor of the Latvian daily newspaper Diena. “It's doubtful that they got involved for any other reasons than a generalized sense of anomie and a concrete opportunity to have fun by causing some havoc.

“Right now in Eastern Europe popular dissatisfaction with government policies seems to have emboldened them, loosening the unspoken restrictions on attacks on authority,” added Raudseps.

In other words, the economic situation in itself might be unlikely to lead to the overthrow of governments in Central and Eastern Europe, but declining standards of living will tend to refocus attention on the deficiencies of the region’s political leadership. And, in the majority of countries now facing financial distress, deficiencies are not hard to come by.