The Soviet Social Contract and Why It Failed: Welfare Policy and Workers’ Politics from Brezhnev to Yeltsin
The Soviet Social Contract and Why It Failed: Welfare Policy and Workers’ Politics from Brezhnev to Yeltsin
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苏联社会契约及其失败原因：从勃列日涅夫到叶利钦的福利政策和工人政治
作者：
L. Cook
随着他们落后的经济继续崩溃，许多苏联人对改革的想法仍然漠不关心，如果不是完全敌视的话。这一现象与波兰的团结工会运动或捷克斯洛伐克的天鹅绒革命截然不同，它被解释为一种“社会契约”——后斯大林政权与工人阶级之间的一种默契，即国家提供经济和社会保障，以换取工人的政治服从。这本书提供了这样一个合同的可能性和影响的关键评估。琳达·库克（Linda Cook）从勃列日涅夫（Brezhnev）时代一直追踪到20世纪90年代，并考虑了它可能对戈尔巴乔夫（Gorbachev）自由化苏联经济的尝试产生的制约作用。在工作保障、零售价格稳定和社会服务补贴的案例研究中，库克指出，为了维持契约，领导人必须做出关键决策——投入更多资源或以巨大成本放弃其他政策。出现的模式证明了勃列日涅夫时期社会契约论的有效性。与此同时，库克的分析指出了几个重要因素，比如福利分配不均，这有助于解释为什么近年来不同行业的劳工骚乱和行动主义差异巨大。最终，这些案例研究揭示了，特别是在戈尔巴乔夫时期，旧契约和经济改革之间的深刻冲突。库克将她的分析延伸到叶利钦时期，展示了民主化的国家如何软弱地处理劳工的需求，试图通过不适当的公司结构来稳定劳资关系。最终，被动员起来的劳动力极大地削弱了戈尔巴乔夫政权的压力，并在叶利钦执政的最初几个月里一直是俄罗斯经济改革的障碍。
As their woefully backward economy continues to crumble, much of the Soviet population remains indifferent, if not downright hostile, to the idea of reform. This phenomenon, so different from the Solidarity movement in Poland or the velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia, has been explained in terms of a "social contract" - a tacit agreement between the post-Stalin regime and the working class whereby the state provided economic and social security in return for the workers' political compliance . This book provides a critical assessment of the likelihood and implications of such a contract. Linda Cook pursues the idea from Brezhnev's day to the 1990s and considers the constraining effect it may have had on Gorbachev's attempts to liberalise the Soviet economy. In case studies on job security, retail price stability, and social service subsidies, Cook identifies points at which leaders had to make critical decisions - to commit more resources or to abandon other policies at significant cost - in order to maintain the contract. The pattern that emerges attests to the validity of the social contract thesis for the Brezhnev period. At the same time, Cook's analysis points to several important factors, such as the uneven distribution of benefits, that help explain why labour unrest and activism have varied dramatically from sector to sector in recent years. Ultimately, these case studies reveal, particularly for the Gorbachev period, deep conflicts between the old contract and the requisites of economic reform. Cook extends her analysis into the Yeltsin period to show how the democratising state dealt weakly with labour's demands, seeking to stabilise labour relations with an inappropriate corporate structure. In the end, mobilised labour contributed greatly to the pressures that undermined Gorbachev's regime, and remained an obstacle to economic reform through the early months of Yeltsin's Russia.