Generation in Jeopardy

Children at Risk in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Unicef, Alexander Zouev

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315292670
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This disturbing volume probes beneath the rhetoric about system change in the transition societies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to examine the impact of political, social, and economic dislocation, ethnic conflict and civil war on the most population: children.

PART ONE
Social conditions

Children's welfare and families' access to basic social services

CHAPTER 1
The social and economic cost of transition

A woman and her two grandchildren living in a makeshift refugee camp in the town of Resnick, near Zagreb (Croatia). Families in the region have suffered not only from armed conflict but also from the deterioration of social safety nets and social services brought about by the transition.

No other example in recent history demonstrates a regional economic decline as rapid and as dramatic as that which occurred after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union underwent economic, social, and political upheaval as they moved from authoritarian or totalitarian political systems toward democracy, and from "top-heavy" centrally planned economies with predominantly state-owned resources and industries to largely privatized free-market systems. The radical reforms set in motion during the transition period may well promote thriving private-sector economies, but until that happens, huge numbers of people, including many formerly of middle-income groups, are falling into poverty. So many people have seen their health and living conditions deteriorate that the region is wrestling with a demographic crisis profoundly changing the dynamics of family and society.

Just when these people need greater public assistance, governments are less likely to adopt the paternalistic role that characterized Soviet-style States. Where once the State provided health care, education, housing, jobs, pensions, and other basic assistance to its citizens, such support vanished almost overnight in some countries and more gradually in others. And no segment of the population has suffered the effects of these losses more acutely and with potentially more lasting damage than the children.

RECENT HISTORY

Beginning in the mid-1980s, the word "perestroika" (restructuring) was frequently heard in the region. Via perestroika, as conceived by Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, socialist society was to be reformed politically, economically, and socially. Measures were taken in the Soviet Union and elsewhere to improve economic growth and efficiency. These measures were complemented with steps toward democratization, such as the holding of multiparty elections and political reforms.

In the Soviet Union, however, several economic measures resulted in exacerbating shortages of basic necessities. Subsequent frustration over these and other reform failures, combined with unleashed, pent-up dissent, severely disrupted Soviet society in the late 1980s. At the same time, independence movements in places such as Georgia, Ukraine, and the Baltic States gathered momentum. Perestroika, introduced to strengthen the Soviet Union, instead marked the end of its existence and influence.

Change was fast and dramatic. By the end of 1989, the Berlin Wall had fallen. So had the rule of Romania's longtime dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Several countries—notably the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland—had already initiated reform.

In 1991, the region began to experience even more radical change. Three Baltic States—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—broke away completely and re-established independent nationhood. By the end of 1981, all 15 Soviet republics declared independence and in 1991-1992 eleven of them formed the loosely structured Commonwealth of Independent States, to be joined by Georgia in 1993.

In December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned not only as leader of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) but also as Soviet president, and the Soviet Union was formally dissolved.

OVERHAULING SOCIALISM

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the region faced a mammoth challenge: to build democracies out of the shambles of totalitarianism and to transform rigid, overcentralized economies into viable free markets. As an immediate goal, new economic systems and social-welfare programs needed to be created to fill the huge void left by the contraction of state power. Efforts to meet these challenges produced uneven results throughout the region. Enormous disparities developed not only among socioeconomic groups but also among the various geographical areas and countries that make up the region.

In all actions concerning the child, "the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration."

—Article 3(1), Convention on the Rights of the Child

In the decades after World War II, many countries that today are in transition—those of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union—experienced remarkable economic growth. As a result, they were able to allocate important resources to key basic services such as primary health care, nutrition, basic education, safe water, and adequate sanitation. Largely as a result of the programs established, average life expectancy in the region rose steadily from 1950 to 1965. Immunization rates soared as well, rivaling those of the leading industrialized countries within a few decades. Infant and maternal mortality rates declined along with malnutrition. Education reached a high percentage of school-age children, and illiteracy was almost completely eradicated. The high literacy levels had a multiplier effect. For example, more literate populations increased demand for improved health and nutrition.

At the same time, the region's successful primary health-care initiatives had begun to attract the attention of the international community, especially planners and social workers in developing countries. Indeed, the 1978 International Conference on Primary Health Care, sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), was convened in Kazakhstan's former capital, Alma Ata, in tribute to the region's achievements.

Yet, by the mid-1970s, the first signs of a complex social crisis were already looming. Post-war improvements in human welfare and social conditions slowed down and in some cases reversed. A vivid manifestation of this trend was the gradual shortening of life expectancy in many countries of the region, even before the precipitous drop that occurred during the transition years.

By the late 1980s, just before the onset of the transition for many of the countries, the health parameters of the region's populations ranged between those found in middle-income developing countries and those in industrialized nations. Life expectancy for men had dropped slightly but was still in the 60s age range; for women, it was in the 70s range. The most common illnesses among adults included chronic degenerative diseases, and among children, persistent infectious and congenital diseases.

A number of important differences could be seen in the various countries at the time. Infant mortality rates were as low as 10 or 12 per 1,000 live births in some Central and Eastern European countries and Baltic nations, and as high as 45 or more per 1,000 live births in parts of the Central Asian republics. Enormous variations in access to food and basic social services had emerged between populations in rapidly growing urban centers and those in stagnating rural areas.

Moreover, areas of the region had yet to shake free from a pattern that devoted the lion's share of resources to prestigious and costly projects at the expense of low-cost policies and technologies. Among other consequences, this pattern had led to spiraling costs of basic social services in some areas.

ECONOMIC REFORMS: RISE OF MARKET FORCES

Economies in transition: Rate of growth of real GDP, 1992-1998 (annual percentage change^a)

The goals of various reform measures undertaken in the region from the late 1980s onward were more or less the same: to create an environment conducive to free-market forces; to introduce privatization of state-owned enterprises and resources; and to eliminate imbalances in production and consumption. Austerity measures were combined with price and trade liberalization, the dismantling of price controls, and the elimination of subsidies for producers and of practically all those for consumers. Some government savings on consumer subsidies went toward subsidizing individual and family incomes in order to offset price increases. Market forces were freed to determine how resources would be distributed.

The lifting of price controls and the devaluation of national currencies were expected to generate an intense but short-lived bout of corrective inflation. In the long term, inflation was to be brought under control through the adoption of measures such as the stabilization of wages and exchange rates. In addition, several problems inherited from the socialist era were to be eliminated. These included price distortions that had come about through regulation and "monetary overhang"—cash or assets held by businesses and households in excess of the amount of goods produced and consumed.

The region's first systemic economic reforms were introduced in late 1989, when Poland's comprehensive "shock-therapy" program was launched. This fast-track approach aimed to achieve simultaneous economic stabilization, trade and price liberalization, and privatization of state-owned enterprises.

Cumulative changes in GDP by main subregions, 1989-1996 (index 1989 = 100)
Note: Data refer to the unweighted mean of GDP changes in the countries; 1996 data are forecasts.
Source: UNICEF, Regio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• LIST OF CHARTS, GRAPHS, AND TABLES
• FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• PART ONE Social conditions: Children's welfare and families' access to basic social services
• PART TWO Child protection: Children in especially difficult circumstances
• PART THREE Different faces of the transition: Area highlights
• AFTERWORD
• GLOSSARY
• REFERENCES
• BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES
• INDEX