The Emerging Concepts of Social Rights in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia

The article examines the contemporary understanding of social rights in three former USSR countries. Social rights are deconstructed as a socio-legal phenomenon bearing an essential legacy from the totalitarian perceptions of law and society in general. This legacy was characteristic of the Soviet state and mutated in the first post-Soviet decade to incorporate some of the rhetoric of “Western” human rights. Considering the lacuna in the English-language bibliography on social law in post-Soviet countries, this piece is designed as an introduction into the concept of social law in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine