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Soviet Union [USSR] Chapter 6. Education, Health, and Welfare
THE SOVIET CONSTITUTION GUARANTEES to Soviet citizens free,
universal, and multilingual education; free, qualified medical care
provided by state health institutions; provision for old age,
sickness, and disability; and maternity allowances and subsidies to
families with many children. In quantitative terms, Soviet regimes
have made impressive strides in these areas since 1917. The quality
of the education and care, however, often fell below standards
achieved in the West.
Before the Bolshevik Revolution, education was available to
only an elite minority, consisting largely of the aristocratic
upper class; tsarist Russia's literacy rate was barely 25 percent.
By the mid-1980s, more than 110 million students--about 40 percent
of the population--were enrolled in the Soviet Union's governmentcontrolled coeducational schools, universities, and institutes. The
nation's literacy rate reached nearly 100 percent--proclaimed by
Soviet officials as the highest in the world. Western authorities
stressed, however, that the quality of Soviet education often
lagged behind that of the West, in large measure because of the
high degree of centralization and standardization of Soviet
schools, the emphasis on political indoctrination, and the reliance
on learning by rote and memorization.
On the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, medical care was
available to only a minority of the population, made up largely of
aristocrats and upper-level civil servants. The annual death toll
from epidemics and famine was in the millions. By the mid-1980s,
the Soviet Union had the world's highest ratio of physicians and
hospital beds per inhabitant, and basic medical care was available
to the large majority of the Soviet population, although the
quality of health care, in general, was considered low by Western
standards.
Apart from limited assistance provided by private and
church-run charitable organizations, no nationwide welfare programs
provided for the needs of the old, disabled, and poor before the
Soviet era began. In the 1980s, social security and welfare
programs were providing modest support to over 56 million veterans
and old-age pensioners, millions of invalids and disabled children
and adults, expectant mothers, and multichildren families.
During the regimes of Joseph V. Stalin and Nikita S.
Khrushchev, Soviet authorities established the underlying
principles and basic organization of education, health care, and
welfare programs. The common denominator linking these programs was
the country's concern with establishing a technically skilled,
well-indoctrinated, and healthy labor force. A hallmark of Soviet
education was its primary political function, originally enunciated
by Vladimir I. Lenin, as a tool for remaking society. Political
indoctrination--the inculcation of
Marxist-Leninist (see Glossary)
ideals--thus remained a constant throughout the uneven,
decades-long process of educational expansion and reform, and it
set the Soviet system of schooling apart from contemporary Western
models.
With the coming to power of General Secretary Mikhail S.
Gorbachev in 1985 and the introduction of his policy of
glasnost' (see Glossary), the achievements made in
education, health, and welfare since 1917 were being increasingly
overshadowed by open criticism and even growing alarm over serious
failures in these spheres. By the mid-1980s, the Soviet leadership
and public alike finally acknowledged what Western observers had
been noting for some time, namely, that the decades-long emphasis
on quantitative expansion had come at the expense of quality.
Schools were failing to develop the technically skilled work force
needed to achieve the goals of
perestroika (see Glossary)
and to create a modern and technologically developed economic
system on a par with the advanced economies of the Western world.
The situation in Soviet health care was even more serious. In
the 1970s and 1980s, significant increases in infant mortality and
considerable declines in life expectancy accompanied an alarming
deterioration in the quality of health care. Pension and welfare
programs were also failing to provide adequate protection, as
evidenced by the large segment of the population living at the
poverty threshold. In the mid-1980s, Soviet leaders openly
acknowledged these problems and introduced a number of reforms in
an effort to rectify them.
Data as of May 1989
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