Despite the universalist ambitions of the Soviet system at its beginnings, the social protection system it put in place quickly became discriminatory and insufficiently generous. In his work, D. Caroli considers social protection as a prism for studying the dysfunctions of the Soviet state.
In 1932, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, illustrious figures of British socialism, traveled to the Soviet Union. They returned so impressed by the economic development and social policy that they spoke, in the work written on their return, of a “ new civilization “. From his discussions with the Webbs, William Beveridge partly drew the material for his report on social security made public in 1942, which inspired the establishment of the welfare state in Europe in the post-war period. Setting aside the vision that the Webbs had as well as the institutional approach that historians subsequently adopted, Dorena Caroli looks at the “ social protection “, sotsial’noe obespechenie in Russian, with the help of extremely rich documentation: archives, printed matter and even letters. It focuses on insurance and social assistance, which were subject to notable changes throughout the interwar period, both in terms of institutions and protected categories. It shows that social protection was shaped both by strong political choices, ideological to put it briefly, and by the need to deal with social problems whose scale can be explained by the long period of war which affected the country of 1914 to 1921. The result was a system of social protection in which the State intervened little and which mainly benefited qualified and unionized workers. Dorena Caroli therefore describes the nature of the relationship, quite different from the image disseminated by the Webbs, which was established between the Soviet state and population during the first years of the regime.
A rapid renunciation of comprehensive social protection
It is at the beginning of XXe century that the first social protection measures and factory health insurance funds for workers were introduced in Russia. In order to respond to the demands expressed during the war to obtain greater security, the Bolsheviks announced a few days after the Revolution the creation of complete social security coverage (incapacity for work, medical assistance, maternity, unemployment, death of the head of the family), supported by industry contributions. Economic conditions making such a promise unworkable, they were quickly led to take decisions of a more limited scale. This decline is in no way specific to social protection. In the case of nationality policy, the proclaimed equality of the peoples of Russia was thus quickly subordinated to “ interests of the proletariat » according to the phraseology of the time. The question of social protection was settled by three successive decrees which, issued between December 1917 and November 1921, defined the beneficiaries and clarified the management of the types of insurance: if new social categories (invalids, women and children), excluded under the old regime, now benefited from it, the workers were privileged compared to artisans and peasants ; insurance funds supervised labor protection and local sections of social assistance, relief for the disabled and the unemployed. During these years, benefits were paid in kind. Administered by the People’s Commissariat for Labor, social protection finally had its own management body from 1922: the Central Directorate of Social Insurance.
The payment of social benefits required that the providing institution have sufficient resources to make these payments. However, the initial project of complete protection for all workers ran into the problem of financing very early on. At the beginning of the 1920s, the New Economic Policy partially restored the market economy in order to save the regime from the disaster into which the civil war had plunged it. To finance the social protection system, the Bolsheviks then retained the principle of social contributions for companies and by industrial branch, with no funding from the State being provided to compensate for a possible imbalance. In other words, the social insurance budget was totally dependent on the country’s economic growth. In 1923, the share that companies had to pay to the insurance funds was specified (it varied from 16 to 22 % of salaries) and four insurance funds established, each dedicated to a form of assistance. The funds created the same year throughout the country in principle covered more than two and a half million policyholders. In reality, only a very small minority of them benefited from social insurance: companies being unable to pay their entire contribution, the funds, faced with a deficit or the risk of a deficit, could not, or even refused to pay. the services. In addition, the funds often diverted their budget from their vocation. To remedy these problems, the social insurance funds for sickness and unemployment were merged in 1924, then two central insurance funds created in 1926. Further changes were made in the 1930s with the reorganization of the social insurance funds. insurance and planning of health expenses and the fight against work accidents.
From solidarity to discrimination
During the 1920s, the number of insured people increased. In 1928, on the eve of the country’s rapid industrialization, there were nearly ten million. The measures of the 1920s not only specified the new categories of beneficiaries (educators, peasants and agricultural workers), but also defined the criteria and allocation procedures. Reserved for a limited number of individuals, the benefits proved insufficient to ensure the survival of the insured. Consequently, out of vital necessity, the urban proletariat had to maintain a link with the agricultural world. The legislation sparked protests. Complaints and appeals led, according to the author, the authorities to change their positions. Thus, unemployment benefit was increased in January 1928 in order to calm widespread discontent. ; this benefit was nevertheless abolished a little more than two years later, in October 1930, before unemployment itself disappeared as a statistical category. Removing the phenomena associated with capitalism from studies and official discourses was in fact a way of indicating that Soviet society had experienced profound upheavals. At the turn of the 1930s, social policy became tougher. Already fragile people who were deprived of help then slid towards marginalization. During this period, from an instrument of solidarity, social insurance became a tool of “ ruthless discrimination » according to Dorena Caroli. A major step in this transformation was the series of measures taken in 1932 to combat absenteeism, correct the classification of disability groups and review the status of medical expert commissions. Like food rationing studied by Elena Osokina, social protection therefore made it possible to reward certain segments of the population and punish others.
Unions, instruments of worker control
With the disappearance of the Labor Commissariat, the unions acquired control of social protection in 1933. During the second part of the 1930s, at the time of triumphant Stakhanovism, they were one of the main institutions for controlling workers. . According to official figures, nearly 85 % of them were members in 1936. The bureaucratic apparatus was immense, numbering tens of thousands of employees. Forced to operate with a reduced budget, the unions did not hesitate to put the disabled to work and increased the number of checks. The conduct of medical assessments, when deemed doubtful by policyholders, gave rise to protests. A follow-up could be given to some of them and certain cases were reconsidered. The author does not always succeed in specifying the outcome of the procedures: the entire correspondence between different services is only exceptionally found in the archives. The coercive function of the unions was strengthened during the Great Terror, from July 1937 when the criteria for awarding the disability pension were once again tightened in a context where labor legislation itself became draconian. As heroism no longer seemed to be enough to mobilize people, the sanctions were intended to increase productivity. So, in Moscow, the Social Protection Council created at the automobile plant “ ZIS » limited compensation and closely monitored workers to avoid possible abuses.
Through her study of social protection, Dorena Caroli shows the daily life of the Soviets, presents the phenomena of categorization and describes the dysfunctions which affected the State. In doing so, it highlights both the ambivalence of the regime towards its citizens and the reactions of employees to the decisions of the authorities. Dorena Caroli’s book is therefore an important contribution to the knowledge of the Soviet Union between the two wars thanks to an investigation which multiplies the points of view and varies the scales of analysis: microhistorical counterpoints, for example the bottom, are thus brought to the analysis from above, macrohistorical. However, variation in scales and alternation of analytical perspectives take the form of a succession of parallel developments and the gain in knowledge that could have been gained from the confrontation of points of view is somewhat diluted in their juxtaposition. More generally, the guidelines of the work do not emerge clearly: an introduction and conclusion of chapters would have helped not only the reader to find their way around, but also to make clearer a demonstration which nevertheless turns out to be convincing. .