DEVELOPMENT

The fact that Estonia’s position on the map of world values
has generally remained the same does not mean that
the population’s values have not changed at all during
the last 20 years. There are a number of studies that
have examined the value change in Estonia in the period
following re-independence (see, for instance, Lauristin et
al. 1997; Tart 2011) which show that a significant shift
towards hedonistic as well as post-modern or Western
values took place during the transition period (1991–
2003; Kalmus & Vihalemm 2008; Vihalemm & Kalmus
2009). The latter is partially confirmed by the data of
the World Values Survey, according to which, since the
mid-1990s, the importance of so-called post-modern
and self-expressive values, such as a general trust of
people, a sense of well-being and tolerance has slowly
increased. At the same time, regardless of the growth of
these indicators, compared to the people in Scandinavia,
for instance, Estonia’s residents continue to be considerably
less trusting, less tolerant and less happy, and
tend to place greater emphasis on fighting rising prices
and maintaining order in the state than on the general
freedom of speech and political participation.
If we think of Estonia’s economic development
during the last decade (which regardless of the complicated
situation in the world economy, has been
characterised by the growth of both the GDP and
exports), should we have expected a greater emphasis
on self-expressive values in Estonia than current data
indicates? According to Inglehart’s (1997) socialisation
hypothesis, which is described above, values change
steadily as the society’s wealth increases, through generational
turnover, whereas the basis for the value shift
is the economic situation in the society during a person’s
formative years, i.e. during childhood and youth.
Therefore, a state’s socio-economic development is not
accompanied by a sudden change in values. People’s values
are relatively conservative, and they may not exactly
follow the changes in the economy and social organisation
of life. Based on this approach, we really have
no reason to expect greater changes in values during
the last decade, because economic development and the
growth of wealth did not start in Estonia until the mid-
2000s. Consequently, as socio-economic development
continues, we should expect to see a more significant
emergence of self-expressive values in “Generation Z”
which now consist of 10-years-olds, and those somewhat
older and younger. It won’t be possible to check
this hypothesis until the new data collection waves of
the World Values Survey are completed, which will
hopefully include Estonia, in a dozen or so years.
The latest data from the autumn of 2011 indicates
that every subsequent generation, with one important
exception, actually supports self-expressive values more
than the previous generation. The exception is the generation
of “free Estonia’s” children, who were born in
the early 1990s, and whose values are moving back to a
greater emphasis on survival, or to less political activism,
less trust and less tolerance than the two previous generations
(see, for instance, Figure 1.5.9). Future studies
must provide the answers to the questions of whether
this somewhat reactionary value shift will be permanent,
and what the reasons are for this (i.e. the complicated
economic and socio-political situations in Estonia in the
early 1990s, etc.).
The focus and volume of this chapter does not
allow for a more detailed analysis of value changes
separately by Estonians and non-Estonians, but earlier
research has found considerable differences in their
value preferences (see, for instance, Magun & Rudnev
2010; Tart 2011). Data from the last wave of the World
Values Survey (2011) shows that the values of the Estonian-
and Russian-speaking populations differ significantly
only in regard to one dimension – that of survival
versus self-expression. Compared to the Estonians, the
values related to survival predominate slightly more
among Russian-speaking people, which, as a whole, may
tilt Estonia slightly to the left on the cultural map of
the world 5 . However, the difference in value preferences
between the two language groups is not excessively
large, and becomes even smaller when the Estonian and
non-Estonian cohorts born in the 1980s and 1990s are
compared. Therefore, the World Values Survey results
confirm that the values of Estonians and non-Estonians
are becoming more similar through generational turnover
(Sõmer 2011).
1.5.8
Conclusions
In conclusion, it should be emphasised that Inglehart and
his colleagues’ approach to values and the cultural map
of the world (Inglehart & Welzel 2005, 2010) do not lay
claim to the absolute truth, and it is only one of many
theories of cultural values and cultural dimensions that
have been suggested by various researchers through the
years. On the one hand, the basis for the popularity of
Inglehart and his colleagues’ approach is its simplicity
and, at the same time, its great capacity for generalisation
– only two clear and easily interpreted value dimensions
make it possible to explain over two-thirds of the total
crossnational variance. The second advantage of the study
is that the surveys have been carried out over a period of
30 years, which makes it possible to speak about value
trends and their changes over time. In addition, as mentioned
above, the reliability of the World Values Survey
research is increased further by the fact that at least the
survival versus self-expression value dimension has been
shown to be strongly related to other well-known cultural
dimensions such as individualism–collectivism (Hofstede
1980) and autonomy-conservation(Schwartz 1994), which
all express people’s wishes and aspirations for greater
autonomy and self-determination. Therefore, regardless
5 In the case of the five qualities that form the basis for the survival vs. self-expression value dimension, the greatest difference between the
two language groups appears in their attitude toward homosexuality. If 42% of the Estonian-speaking respondents think that homosexuality is
never justified, among the Russian-speaking respondents the corresponding indicator is 59%. The differences between the two language groups
also continue to exist in the younger cohorts: for example, of the young people born between 1980 and 1989, 24% of the Estonian-speaking
respondents think that homosexuality is never justified, while 41% of the Russian-speaking respondents take this position.
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