Stockholm School of Economics in Riga Students' Magazine

It seems that Roberts Kilis, who has been working in SSE since the very beginnig, never gave an interview to the Insider. But we think that he definetely has a lot of interesting things to tell all of us. Enjoy!

Please, tell us about your education.

I finished secondary school in Valka, near the Latvian-Estonian border, so it was there where I picked some words in Estonian. Then I went to the University of Latvia, where I studied philosophy. After that I switched to anthropology and entered the University of Cambridge, where I received my master degree and later started my PhD. I finished it in 1999, and now I am planning to study again, maybe a different subject. Maybe it will be archeology. It should be something dealing more with humanities rather than with natural sciences. I believe that one high education is definitely not sufficient for life, so since I can’t do more in terms of social anthropology education, then I move horizontally to different subjects. 

Why did you decide to give lectures at an economic university?

I chose an academic career, which means that dealing with students is inevitable. Certainly, interaction with students, be that in form of a supervisor, a seminar leader, or a lecturer, gives you various insights. Their observations and their experience are very enriching. Probably the lecturers would sometimes need to pay students for ability to get the insights. Some students do projects which are highly interesting and ingenious and smart. So this experience of exchanges, lots of knowledge coming from students, is certainly one big reason why I am teaching at this school. Now why did I come to the school and why am I still here? Probably because it is not only economic, but also a business school, do not forget that. It is extremely difficult to imagine how you can account for economic behavior without taking society into consideration. Anthropology is the course that gives understanding of social contacts of economic life. And without that students cannot have a full education. And I am also one of those anthropologists who like economists.

You seem to be active in a lot of fields, but what is your main job right now? 

My main job is still here. It’s the main, most interesting and most important job. The other things I do are just a citizen’s duties. I am an academician and I will stay that. And if I need to choose, I will choose this place rather than anything else. 

Tell us about your most interesting/important pieces of research in Latvia and abroad. 

Well, I have spent a year in Siberia, in 1996-1997, in the middle of nowhere – in a Western Siberian region called Omskaya Oblast’. I went to a district where quite a few villages and settlements were established by people from Europe like Estonians, Germans, Belarusians, and Latvians as well. They went there a hundred years ago during the colonization of Siberia. And I studied their social organization and the way they remember the past compared to the other people from Latvia who were deported to Siberia and remained there. But during the field works stage other topics also came up. This was probably one of the most interesting projects.

One of the most useful pieces of research was the one that we did several years ago on differences between Russian and Latvian managers. Are Russians and Latvians really different? And are there really substantial ethnical differences in the way how people do business? So we studied it and the result was the opposite – no, differences is an exaggerated thing! If you don’t talk about the ethnicity, there are very few differences; once you touch it, the differences immediately appear, at least at the level of self perception and perception of the others. But if we don’t pay attention, than we are quite similar. From that time I don’t believe in any anecdotes about the differences.  

Sometimes we also had slightly scandalous things like research about cultural consumption. We measured how often people of Latvia consume culture: go to cinemas, theatres, operas, read books, etc. It was scandalous because we discovered that at least 30% of people do not consume any culture. And only 2/3 of people read books, not more. And for the self perception of Latvians it was like a blow because they thought that we were more cultural. So people seem to drink more often than go to theatres. 

Personal life & Values:

What are your main values? 

It is rationalism and honesty in a sense of not hiding anything but telling directly. 

Your recipe for a happy life.

If you know what to do with your life, it’s already significant part of happiness. The most unhappy people are those who don’t know what their life’s purpose is. They have a life, they have time, but they don’t know what to do. If you know how to fill your life with sense, meaning, purpose, than you can be happy. Happiness should be durational; it cannot be immediate or sudden. You should have a prospective, I think, you cannot just go for sensual adventures because it does not give you stability. So this is the reason why knowing the purpose and filling your life with some sense is the way to be happy. 

Some words about you hobbies.

Apart from reading, it’s table games. I have a two-year-old daughter; it is extremely interesting to see how a person learns. Very few things can be compared with the excitement of interacting with such a tiny creature. 

What are your biggest achievements?

Probably the fact which I am very much proud of, is that I was the person who organized the first conference about Sir Isaiah Berlin in Latvia. He was Jewish and he was born in Riga and moved later to Britain, where he became one of the most famous intellectuals of the 20th century. There was no interest in Isaiah in Latvia, although he was willing to come back to homeland. But despite those tensions we still organized the conference in a year, in 1998. And after that Sir Isaiah became a normal part of everyday academic life here, so I consider this being the most significant achievement of mine.  

Future & SSE: 

How do you see SSE Riga in the future?

It is likely to develop into a graduate school because, to my mind, the Bachelor’s program is very well-positioned and runs very smoothly.  

What can you say to SSE Riga students? 

I have been noticing that people take their results in certain subjects too close to heart. They burst in tears, or they have emotional breakdowns. I think that it is not worth that. In 2-3 years time it would be laughable. Of course, it is not good not to compete, but to do it excessively is psychologically devastating and absolutely unnecessary. 

Vladimirs Zlotnikovs

Jekaterina Kolbina