Democracy, Gender, and Social Policy in Russia

A Wayward Society

Andrea Chandler

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137343208
• eBook ISBN: 9781137343215
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Law
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Through compelling and insightful analysis of the Russian case, this book explores the role that social welfare plays in regime transitions. It examines the role that gender and social welfare has played in Russia's post-communist political evolution from Yeltsin's assumption of the presidency to Putin's return for a third term as president in 2012

Part I

Discourses of the Early Transition: Liberalism, Feminism, and the Market in the 1990s

1

Welfare and Social Justice in the USSR’s Final Years

During the Cold War, the power of the Soviet Union rivalled that of the West. Its military power, rapid industrialization, and expansion of control into Europe all played into its attainment of superpower status. The Soviet Union was seen as a threat to the West partly because its Marxist-Leninist ideology claimed to offer an end to injustice and poverty. The Soviet Union established social programmes such as old-age pensions, maternity leave benefits, and socialized medicine. When Western sympathizers visited the Soviet Union, they often rhapsodized about the country’s relatively generous social safety net, which the regime advanced as highly preferable to that of capitalist countries.¹ The regime also claimed success in establishing equality for women.²

We now know that the image of the generous Soviet welfare state was a myth. In the first place, whatever social progress the regime provided to some citizens occurred in parallel with the tremendous suffering that others experienced. The Great Purges, the Ukrainian Holodomyr famine, and the gulag labour camps may have claimed the health and the lives of numerous Soviet citizens between the 1930s and the 1950s.³ Certain categories of people, such as those with upper-class pedigrees, were excluded from the state’s system of social benefits.⁴ Secondly, much of the Soviet Union’s alleged social progress did not take place until decades after the October Revolution, in some instances actually lagging behind Western countries. A universal old-age pension system, for example, was established only in 1956.⁵ Finally, the Soviet social welfare system showed many weaknesses: ranging from considerable regional disparities in funding and in services;⁶ hidden problems, such as latent unemployment or poor provisions for people with disabilities;⁷ and the ever-present shortages of necessary goods and services, such as adequate housing, medicines, and contraceptives. Indeed, Hungarian economist Janos Kornai argued that shortages were inevitable in a centrally planned economy, and were likely to generate social malaise over the long term. In his memoirs, Kornai recounts that his personal experiences in Janos Kadar’s Hungary – his prolonged efforts to renovate his apartment – inspired his classic critique of state socialism, The Economics of Shortage.⁸

Nonetheless, for many people, especially the industrial working class, the Soviet Union provided a generally adequate social safety net. These social provisions were a point of pride for the Soviet regime. By the 1980s, most citizens could expect a certain stability of life: education provided by the state, job security, modest (if not generous) comforts, and a pension. This stability was considered to be a sort of ‘social contract’: in exchange for hard work and obedience to the regime, citizens were assured of a decent quality of life.⁹ A variety of surveys have demonstrated that Russians were strong supporters of their welfare state, from Soviet times onwards.¹⁰ Even emigrants from the Soviet Union ranked social welfare as being one of the most valued features of their country of origin.¹¹ Writer Masha Gessen argued in 2000 that Russians continued to take pride in the Soviet social welfare system and saw it as an innovator, despite all of the system’s obvious shortcomings.¹²

The Soviet welfare state’s workings have been covered in the excellent work of a number of scholars.¹³ For the purposes of this study, we will highlight some aspects of the system as they pertained to gender and the family. Much of the Soviet Union’s welfare programmes were oriented towards employment, with the assumption that most benefits were to be earned.¹⁴ Many social services were delivered through the workplace, with industrial workers and other valued occupations receiving the best benefits.¹⁵ The Soviet Union promoted full employment, for the purposes of maximizing production. The expectation that women should work full time outside the home was intended not just for purposes of ensuring equality, but also to aid in the effort of achieving strength and prosperity. Social programmes such as availability of day care and maternity leaves in part served a pronatalist agenda – to provide for children – but also to maximize the number of people employed.¹⁶ The increasing recognition of the right of single mothers to benefits made a virtue of necessity: the losses of World War II had left many children without fathers.¹⁷

Soviet family law recognized the equality of men and women as marriage partners, but not the equality of both spouses as parents. Women were treated as the primary caregivers of young children and were encouraged to see motherhood as a civic duty.¹⁸ This entitled them to certain benefits (such as paid leaves to care for infants or sick children) but also imposed legal burdens upon them (such as ineligibility for certain kinds of occupations or working conditions).¹⁹ Although they were technically eligible for the draft, women were also generally not called up for conscription duty unless they had medical or other specialized expertise.²⁰ Women generally had the right to retire on pension at younger ages than men.²¹ So social policy was differentiated by gender in a number of respects.

Finally, there was a substantial gap between the Soviet Union’s claims of implied universality and the actual delivery of its programmes. The very opacity of the Soviet budgetary system, and the reliance on central subsidies to regions, made it difficult even to measure whether Soviet redistribution efforts were effective or not.²² A number of benefits, such as those for veterans and people with disabilities, were meagre and difficult to access.²³ Much of the social welfare system was delivered locally, which made for substantial variations in access or quality of service, and in areas such as health care, there was a trend of declining access to quality care evident by the 1980s.²⁴ There were also few avenues of appeal in the event of inadequate service or refusal of benefits.²⁵

Soviet citizens were also told that they could expect continuous improvements to their way of life. In public, Communist leaders lauded their successes in the 1970s and 1980s, and it was difficult to acknowledge social problems openly. However, a variety of critics pointed to the deficiencies of the Soviet social welfare system. Social welfare problems were among the issues raised by Soviet dissidents in the 1970s and 1980s. These dissidents risked persecution by openly discussing political and social problems in the Soviet Union and demanding greater democratization. One of the most prominent dissidents, Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov, was best known for his calls for nuclear disarmament and for his defence of political prisoners. Sakharov included social welfare issues in his 1971 Memorandum, which outlined his grievances against the Soviet regime. Sakharov called for improvements in health care and education, to enable more autonomy for doctors, health care workers and teachers; better pay for these professionals; modernization of clinics and hospitals; improved environmental protection; and policy efforts to combat alcoholism.²⁶ Wrote Sakharov in 1972:

The hierarchical class structure of our society, with its system of privileges, is reflected in a particularly pernicious way in medical care and education: in the rundown state of public hospitals, in the poverty of the village schools, with their overcrowded classes, the poverty and low standing of the teacher, and the official hypocrisy in teaching, which inculcates in the rising generation a spirit of indifference toward moral, artistic and scientific values.²⁷

Sakharov’s remarks therefore criticized the quality of social welfare facilities as well as the professionalism of those who staffed them, positing that society as a whole was affected as a result. Mikhail Gorbachev famously released Sakharov from internal exile in 1986, and the human rights activist went on to become a deputy in the lower chamber of the Soviet Union’s new parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, following elections held in 1989.

Another source of commentary on social welfare was the dissident women’s movement of the late 1970s, which produced a publication called the Almanakh. Several of the movement’s leaders eventually went into exile. One author, Tatyana Mamanova, criticized crowded conditions and insensitive staff in maternity hospitals and abortion clinics. She also claimed that it was difficult to access a day care space because of long queues.²⁸ Another author in the anthology claimed that corruption and neglect were found in the day care system; that not infrequently, women took jobs in day cares so that they could ensure that their own children were adequately cared for.²⁹ Dissident sources also criticized the meagre levels of state benefits available, for example, to single mothers³⁰ and people with disabilities.

From exile, Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn (author of the Gulag Archipelago) weighed in, decrying ‘the terrifying state of our maternity clinics, day-care centres and kindergartens’.³¹ Solzhenitsyn also criticized the ‘dire poverty’ of the elderly and disabled, poor housing, and environmental conditions. The author, however, did not consider the state to be the problem; rather the indifferent Soviet state was a symptom of an overall decline in morality and in personal responsibility. Strengthening spirituality and the family would be the answer, in his view.³²

Soviet fiction, especially women’s fiction documented some of the everyday problems of the Soviet social welfare system, such as the shortcomings of the regime’s facilities to assist childbirth and abortion.³³ In Natalia Baranskaia’s short story Nedelia kak nedelia, the main character is a female scientist, a mother of two, who scrambles through her daily life in a state of constant exhaustion. She has a full-time professional career, and access to day care, but this access requires a long daily commute. She is commended by her colleagues for contributing to society by having two children, but her workplace is not willing to provide flexibility in light of her family obligations.³⁴

Another theme in Soviet women’s fiction was the conditions in women’s health facilities. In Marina Palei’s ‘The Losers’ Division’, women awaiting abortions in a hospital faced dehumanizing conditions; a baby dies because nurses do not feed him.³⁵ Tatiana Nabatnika’s story ‘The Phone Call’ also describes the judgemental attitude that medical staff in a hospital show towards women seeking abortions.³⁶ In Maria Arbatova’s story ‘Equation with Two Knowns’, a woman decides against abortion after hearing the screams of other women patients in a substandard medical facility.³⁷ Iulia Voznesenskaia’s novel The Women’s Decameron depicts a group of women quarantined in a maternity hospital on account of exposure to a virus, who are allowed to see their babies only for feedings.³⁸ In this fiction we see a longing for better quality social facilities, as well as more options for choice in reproductive rights. Certain male writers showed a different perspective, less oriented towards the rights of women. As Yitzhak Brudny argued, from the 1960s Russian nationalist writers were able to carve out a niche in Soviet belle-lettres from which they critiqued the supposed moral shortcomings of Soviet society and the regime’s failure to respond to social problems.³⁹ Some writers faulted the state for inadequate social provisions for the family. In their view, social problems resulted when women were obliged to work outside the home, leaving them not enough time to bring up their children or to attend to their husbands.⁴⁰

In addition to the concerns voiced by dissidents and writers, red flags were raised by h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Democracy, Gender and Citizenship in Post-communist Russia
• Part I   Discourses of the Early Transition: Liberalism, Feminism, and the Market in the 1990s
• Part II   Opposition Politics, Nationalism, and the Search for Authenticity, 1995–2004
• Part III   Statism and Democratic Reversal under Putin: Policies for a Wayward Society, 2000–2008 Introduction to Part III
• Part IV   Steps towards a Post-Putin Social Contract Introduction to Part IV: The Wayward Society Reaches Maturity
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index