This syndrome has not completely disappeared until this day. Rein Ruutsoo, professor of politology at the Tallinn University said at a history conference held in January this year that even some professional historians yearn for a society functioning after a single idea. Communist ideology is now replaced with national ideology or something similar. The pluralistic society in the Nordic countries looks for quite some people in the Baltic’s like “everything’s allowed”, “moral decadence” or “a dissipation of society”.
The Nordic counties came to help. But so far only a few people in Baltic’s have had the opportunity to study in Scandinavia and the first birds won’t bring spring yet. At the 10th anniversary of the Baltic Education Associations in Riga (May 11, 2003) the Chairperson of the Latvian Education Association Anita Jakobsone said that Nordic-Baltic co-operation could be much further-reaching but there are several factors which make this expansion difficult. For example the fact that many people in Baltic countries cannot speak foreign languages. Exchanging smiles cannot bring us much further. Anita Jakobsone’s second concern was the still small number of citizen associations in the Baltic’s, the ideas of Grundtvig still being unacceptable for people in the Baltic countries. “Sounds like a paradox but summing-up the 10 year Nordic Baltic co-operation experience in non-formal adult education, we can say that adult education cannot change the course of history” Jakobsone said. (www.politika.lv/index.php?id=106229&lang=lv).