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Self-help organizations and charities were the most numerous, but least-studied of pressure groups to emerge during perestroika . This book examines the social exclusion experienced before 1985 by non-working citizens, studies the pre-1985 disabled people's movement and its numerous unofficial, but non-dissident organizations, discusses why the Gorbachev leadership adopted the non-Soviet concept of 'charity', analyses the failure of local authorities after 1985 to stave off pluralism and defeat the voluntary organizations, and assesses how successfully the latter built the foundations of a civil society.
List of contents
Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Demokratizatsiya and the Voluntary Sector 1985: the State in Crisis 1985: Society in Crisis Perestroika and the Immediate Causes of the Voluntary Sector's Emergence Charities Self-help Organizations The Communist Response Building Political and Civil Society Conclusions and Epilogue Appendix Bibliography Notes and References Index
About the author
ANNE WHITE is Lecturer in Russian, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath. She is the author of
De-Stalinization and the House of Culture: Declining State Control over Leisure in the USSR, Poland and Hungary, 1953-1989, and number of articles on the Russian.
Report
This monograph provides a detailed and fascinating survey of the emergence of the 'voluntary sector' in the USSR during the early 1980s and throughout the reign of M.S. Gorbachev as General Secretary. Russian Review
