The Lost Welfare State of Twentieth Century Russia

到勃列日涅夫时代，苏联在一定程度上以“全面”福利制度来定义自己，这种制度广泛、创新、普遍，其范围从养老金的分配到休闲活动的组织，其核心是对普遍权利的正式承认。然而，这些权利在概念上是模糊的，它们的实际交付也非常不完善。就其范围、雄心和质量而言，由于其社会权利的特殊性，世界上第一个社会主义-共产主义社会似乎产生了独特的福利制度。然而，就学者们研究20世纪俄罗斯和苏联福利的程度而言，他们倾向于强调的不是独特性，而是泛欧的共性，特别关注似乎在所有现代社会中构建福利制度的共同官僚实践，而不管其意识形态基础如何。学者们也倾向于强调他们所认为的苏联福利制度的无能和功能失调。本研究没有否定这些论点，但也没有假设它们。相反，它从假设开始，即20世纪俄罗斯的“福利国家”已经以两种不同的方式“失去”了。一是缺乏详细的实证研究；因此，这项研究解决了一个令人惊讶的被忽视的领域。其次，“福利国家”似乎消失了，因为它可能从未存在过。它要么是如此软弱，几乎没有资格作为一个福利国家，要么是如此广泛，以至于它变成了另一种东西：一个全面的社会工程。在第一次世界大战之前，在斯大林时期，以及在20世纪90年代，与其他工业社会的福利相比，俄罗斯（或苏联）的福利特别不足。然而，在20世纪50年代至80年代，也就是我们最常与赫鲁晓夫和勃列日涅夫联系在一起的年代，福利的影响范围非常广，涉及到所有公民生活的许多方面。尽管它的质量参差不齐，但它显然远远超出了当时自由民主国家的范围。这个假设将在整个二十世纪被研究。当然，由于资源和时间的限制，无法在本世纪的各个时期对这一主题的各个方面进行同样详尽的论述。为了避免这个问题，该项目分离了四个领域，并在适当的地方使用档案资源对它们进行了特别详细的探索。这些领域是1912年工人保险法的前因后果；1936年和1977年宪法中社会权利的制度化；1956年和1964年的养老金改革（尤其是对后斯大林社会风险含义的重新定义）；以及赫鲁晓夫和勃列日涅夫时期提供福利的实体场所的历史（如养老金办公室、城市微区和度假疗养院）。每一个方面都将在一篇期刊文章中提出，它们将共同构成我计划写的书中最精确的经验元素。这本书将借鉴这些案例研究，在出版的主要材料的更一般的研究，并在广泛的阅读在一系列次要来源，定位“20世纪俄罗斯失去的福利国家”在其适当的欧洲背景下。这将是俄罗斯的例子第一次被置于一项全面研究的核心，该研究持续关注整个20世纪的国际比较。通过这些比较，并通过明智地增加经验细节，本研究将对20世纪俄罗斯和苏联的福利史，更广泛地说，对20世纪欧洲的福利史做出重大贡献。

By the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union partly defined itself by a 'total' welfare system that was extensive, innovative and pervasive, whose span ranged from the distribution of pensions to the organization of leisure, and at whose heart was a formal recognition of universal rights. Yet these rights were conceptually ambiguous, and their practical delivery was highly imperfect. In terms of reach, ambition and quality, and because of the particularity of its social rights, the world's first socialist-communist society seems to have generated a unique welfare system.Yet to the extent that scholars have researched welfare in twentieth century Russia and the USSR, they have tended to emphasize not uniqueness but pan-European commonality, drawing particular attention to the shared bureaucratic practices that seem to structure welfare systems in all modern societies regardless of their ideological foundation. Scholars have also tended to emphasize what they see as the Soviet welfare system's incapacity and dysfunction. This research does not reject these arguments, but it does not assume them either. Instead, it starts from the hypothesis that twentieth-century Russia's 'welfare state' has been 'lost' in two different ways. First, it lacks detailed empirical study; this research thus addresses a surprisingly neglected area.Second, the 'welfare state' seems lost because it might never have existed. It was either so feeble that it barely qualified as a welfare state, or so extensive that it became something else in kind: a total social project. Before the First World War, during the Stalin period, and again in the 1990s, Russian (or Soviet) welfare was exceptionally inadequate compared with welfare in other industrial societies. Yet between the 1950s and 1980s, in the years we most associate with Khrushchev and Brezhnev, welfare assumed an exceptional reach, concerning itself with many aspects of the lives of all citizens. Notwithstanding its patchy qualities, it apparently went far beyond what existed in liberal democracies at that time.This hypothesis will be investigated across the span of the whole twentieth century. Of course, resources and time conspire against the writing of an equally detailed treatment of every aspect of this subject in every part of the century. To circumvent this problem, the project isolates four areas and explores them in particular detail, using archival sources where appropriate. These areas are the causes and consequences of the workers' insurance law of 1912; the institutionalization of social rights in the constitutions of 1936 and 1977; the pensions reforms of 1956 and 1964 (and especially their redefinition of the meaning of risk in post-Stalin society); and the history of the physical places in which welfare was delivered during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev years (such as pensions offices, urban microdistricts, and vacation sanatoria). Each of these aspects will be presented in a journal article, and together they will form the most precise empirical element in the book I plan to write.The book will draw on these case studies, on more general research in published primary materials, and in extensive reading in a range of secondary sources, to position 'the lost welfare state of twentieth century Russia' in its proper European context. This will be the first time that the Russian example has been placed at the heart of a full-length study that pays sustained attention to international comparisons across the whole of the twentieth century. Through these comparisons, and through the judicious accretion of empirical detail, this study will make a major contribution to the history of welfare in twentieth century Russia and the USSR and, more generally, in twentieth century Europe.