How do Latvian emigrants’ emotional apprehensions of social and cultural change in post-Soviet Latvia, and the contrasting experience they gain abroad, affect their relationship with the Latvian state and their ongoing emigration status? By contrasting the personal narratives of 59 emigrants with the Latvian state’s public transformation discourse, we argue that the culture the sending state presents to its public—both in its official discourse and day-to-day interactions with civilians—and the emotions this triggers in people based on their everyday life experiences, deepens our understanding of the post-Soviet emigration regime. Specifically, how state discourse and interactions affect feelings of recognition and the related emotions of confidence (particularly, self-confidence), pride, and shame are important for understanding post-Soviet emigration. Exaggerated neoliberal notions of the “West” dominated both the post-Soviet civil discourse and the policies and practices implemented to guide the transition, fashioning an environment where people felt shamed, and their self-confidence was injured. However, emigration and growing confidence in receiving states helped many regain a sense of comfort, self-confidence, and empowerment.

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First, the article gives the analysis of the cooperation between artists and researchers in producing the theatre performance “Fake News”. Artists of the theatre troupe KVADRIFRONS invited young researchers of the Latvian Academy of Culture (LAC) to do a sociological study of the phenomenon of fake news, its conceptual borders and its characteristics historically and today. The research served as an informative and educational basis for the transformation of the fake news phenomenon into an artistic phenomenon that seeks to problematize the issue of fake news for a broader audience. Secondly, the article presents the findings of this study, revealing why people share fake news. We find this motivation is emotionally based and is associated with emotional attachment, anxiety, comicality, or trust. People fall for fake news and share the messages that they find to be (i) thematically relevant, interesting and exciting for them; (ii) the messages that concern some emergency or crisis situations; (iii) the messages that seem to be absurd and even comical; (iv) the news distributed by a reliable source of information.

Drawing on Norbert Elias’s writing and sociology of emotion literature, this study proposes viewing neoliberalization as a “civilizing process,” which is enabled by politics of shaming. By tracing two streams of protests triggered by neoliberal transformations—by farmers and schoolteachers—in the 1990s and how they were handled by the ruling elite publicly in the mass media, this article finds that, in post-Soviet and neoliberal Latvia, in moments of tension between the state and society, rule occurred through a politics of shaming that utilized three instruments: the neoliberal ideology of a good citizen, essentializing language, and dividing language. This article contributes to the post-Soviet studies’ scholarship, the growing body of scholarship that explores relationships between neoliberalization and emotions, as well as social movements literature.