ABSTRACT
The post-socialist transformations in Eastern and Central Europe have given rise to widespread hopes of a better life. The expectations have comprised both the basic rights of freedom and association and material living conditions. The purpose was to describe the mental atmosphere in the Baltic countries and then proceed to construct new variables for comparative and structural analysis. The Baltic countries have a huge economically non-active population. Within this population one can detect greater differences in consciousness than between the class groups of the economically active population. The dividing line between managers and the working class is less distinct than in the case of the change of economic situation, and the correlations are clearly lower in Latvia than in the other Baltic countries. The most interesting of these is the higher level of positive correlation of entrepreneur identification with the level of reproduction in Lithuania than in the other Baltic countries.
