Economic texts as a reflection of the social reality of the transition period in Latvia and Russia

The goal of the study is to compare the reflection of Latvia’s and Russia’s transition to the market economy in economic texts. The object of the research is Latvian and Russian textbooks on economics (N = 61) of ‘three generations’ (1990s, 2000s and 2010s) in the Daugavpils University library. The first such textbooks were published in 1993, and the last ones - in 2015. Although the starting point of the analysis is the translation of Samuelson’s textbook (1964), which is beyond the time scope of the research, this book is necessary for a deeper analysis of the textbooks on economics. The research was conducted with the descriptive analysis and case study method applied in the framework of the linguistic discourse analysis based on Weber’s methodology of cultural determinism. The results of the research showed that in the 1990s, the economic discourse of the USA was actively borrowed in Latvia and Russia; however, the business culture of the USA differs significantly from the business culture of our countries. The linguistic discourse analysis allowed to reveal the conceptual challenges of the contemporary economic science in Latvia and Russia: despite as if the existence of some general economic theory, in reality even basic economic processes are often explained in different conceptual systems depending on the beliefs of the economic texts’ authors. Considering the social-economic transformations in the past thirty years and earlier periods, the authors emphasize the special importance of critical thinking in the creation, translation and perception of economic texts. This is especially important since there are no reasons to believe that in the 1990s, the cultural component of the economic discourse of Latvia and Russia changed significantly to the market-oriented. Today readers of economic texts have difficulties in their critical assessment, especially of those texts whose authors use emotional terminology.