SOCIAL INSURANCE IN RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION, 1912-1933: A STUDY OF LEGAL FORM AND ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICE

This dissertation traces the development of a particular form of entitlement from the pre-revolutionary period until the early 1930's in order to identify and begin to analyze the defining characteristics of the Soviet legal form. It developes the argument that the early Bolshevik commitment to social rights as the principal form of entitlement had far-reaching political and ideological consequences. Unlike private rights, the social right to housing, to medicine, to social insurance, and to other such entitlements depends directly on the corresponding rights of others and on the ability of the state to administer the promised services. This form of distribution was a fundamental organizing principle of the social order which the Bolsheviks set out to create, and the task of determining who was entitled to what and of deciding how to best administer those entitlements became a central legal and political challenge of the revolution.; In order to identify more specifically the ways in which this commitment to social rights translated into ideological formulations and policy choices, the dissertation focuses on one particular social right--the right to social insurance--, and traces the evolution of the Soviet social insurance system from its origins in the pre-revolutionary insurance movement to its reorganization in 1933. An analysis of the various and complex elements which constituted such an insurance system has made it possible to specify how the structural characteristics of this type of entitlement system interacted with the historical conditions and the ideology of the period. In their search for an administrative form which could realize their distributive goals, the Bolsheviks articulated varied and often conflicting policies. This dissertation attempts to trace the interaction between the administrative-legal ideology through which the Bolsheviks formulated these goals and framed their policy debates, and the daily and often chaotic practice of administration where the right to social insurance translated into concrete benefits. It also attempts to relate this discussion of one domain of Soviet legal relations to the larger task of identifying the defining characteristics of Soviet law more generally.