Un Welfare State senza benessere. Insegnanti, impiegati, operai e contadini nel sistema di previdenza sociale dell’Unione Sovietica (1917-1939)

A Welfare State without Welfare. Teachers, Employees, Workers and Peasants in the Social Security System of the Soviet Union, 1917-1939). http://archiviodigitale.unimc.it/handle/10123/607 This volume reconstructs the legislative, institutional and social history of the Soviet welfare state in the interwar period. The methodology of the study is based on macro and micro-historical analysis. This allows the author to examine the reforms of the social security system from different perspectives. She analyses the functioning of the insurance funds in the Soviet Union, the ways how the insurance funds were financed, and the development of the social services in the city of Moscow. The latter subject is treated in a number of case studies, including the carmaker Amo-Zil-Zis, Moscow School No. 25, and the system of war pensions. Based on extensive research in various archives of the former Soviet Union, this book also deals with the impact of the social security system on the every-day life of the Soviet people. The study reveals the astonishing evolution of a security system, which, contrary to Soviet propaganda, did not guarantee egalitarian treatment for all workers, but privileged those who were especially important for the industrialisation of the country (skilled workers) at the expense of the vulnerable and unskilled (disabled and unemployed). Although such transformation of the security system was typical of other European countries hit by the 1929 crisis, the Soviet system did not degenerate into race-based social policy as it happened in Germany