Russia's Torn Safety Nets: Health and Social Welfare During the Transition / Edition 1

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Overview

Russia's attempt to replace the failed Soviet system and its command economy with a capitalist, democratic society has produced a health and social welfare crisis, at considerable human cost. Russia s Torn Safety Nets presents a series of essays by distinguished Russian and American scholars which describe and analyze the consequences of the collapsed socialist system, focusing on issues of health and demography, HIV/AIDS, drug addiction and abuse, the disabled, aging and pensions, education, women and sexism, and social issues in the military. The essays conclude with a section on the private and public efforts to ease the impact of the ongoing transition on the Russia people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312229160
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	06/03/2000
Edition description:	2000
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

Mark G. Field is an Associate at the Davis Center for Russian Studies and Adjunct Professor at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.

Judyth L. Twigg is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Table of Contents

Introduction--Mark G. Field and Judyth L. Twigg
• Health Issues
• The Health and Demographic Crisis in Post-Soviet Russia: A Two-Phase Development--Mark G. Field
• Unfulfilled Hopes: The Struggle to Reform Russian Health Care and Its Financing--Judyth L. Twigg
• Negotiating the Post-Soviet Medical Marketplace: Growing Gaps in the Safety Net--Julie V. Brown and Nina L. Rusinova
• The Politics of Health Care in Russia: The Feminization of Medicine and Other Obstacles to Professionalism--Kate Schecter
• Drug Abuse in Post-Communist Russia--John M. Kramer
• The Problem of AIDS--David E. Powell
• The Disabled in Russia in the 1990s--Ethel Dunn
• Social Issues
• The "New" Sexism: Images of Russian Women During the Transition--Valerie Sperling
• New World of Work: Employment, Unemployment, and Adaptation--Walter D. Connor
• Internal Migration: A Civil Society Challenge--Justin Burke
• Russia's Aging Population--Victoria A. Velkoff and Kevin Kinsella
• Promises to Keep: Pension Provision in the Russian Federation--Cynthia Buckley & Dennis Donahue
• The Social Crisis of the Russian Military--Deborah Yarsike Ball
• Replacing the Safety Net?
• U.S. Foreign Assistance to the Russian Federation for Medicine and Health--Edward J. Burger, Jr.

Editorial Reviews

“Together, they make a powerful case that although many aspects of the Soviet state, such as its labor camps, censorship, and inefficient systems of production, should be consigned to the history books, it did provide a basic safety net that protected most people from abject poverty. The transition to a capitalist economy has removed this safety net, leaving the Russian population at the mercy of the worst aspects of capitalism.” —New England Journal of Medicine

“...an impressive group of scholars and policy practicioners...provides overviews appropriate for courses as well as new data that should be of interest to scholars.” —Russian Review

From the Publisher

The AIDS essay is particularly thorough in its report of that disease, but the other essays are informative as well. The remaining chapters are on health matters yet are also important contributions as they concern the "'new' sexism" toward women (Sperling), the employment/unemployment situation (Connor), internal migration (Burke), pensions (Buckley and Donahue), and the social crisis of the military (Ball). The book concludes with an account of US assistance to date on rebuilding the safety net (Burger). Policy makers, physicians, public health workers, students, and others with an interest in Russia will find themselves well informed by this book.

Journal of the American Medical Association