The Fsu After The Collapse Of Real Socialism By Cristina Carpinelli

IDENTITIES IN TRANSITION: THE FORMER SOVIET UNION AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF REAL SOCIALISM

by Cristina Carpinelli

CESPI - FEBRUARY 2004

Identities in Transition: the Fsu Countries After the Collapse of Real Socialism Cristina Carpinelli1 The social global scenario of the last decade distinguishes itself because of growing inequality. Instead of seeing poverty diminish, we are witnessing a growing social gap. Even when overall living standards rise, poverty can also increase if societies become more unequal. Global macroeconomic forces, and in particular the rise in interests rates, debt crises, and the pressure for deregulation, privatization and liberalization generally since 1980, have all contributed to a pervasive rise in economic inequalities within Countries of the world. Over the past decades extensive macroeconomic conditions have been attached to the provision of development aid and loans as well as for the cancellation of debt with disastrous consequences for social development. Policies imposed by IMF and World Bank on developing Countries (or on Countries in financial difficulties) of liberalization and privatization (with the adoption of structural adjustment programmes) have increased inequalities, not diminished them, impacting most severely on communities and families with least access to decent work and the means to a sustainable livelihood. For the majority of the people living in poverty, of which a disproportionate number are women and children, agriculture and fishery provide the only viable livelihood for themselves and their families. Economic reforms imposed on developing Countries (or on Countries in financial difficulties) have promoted export-oriented production, particularly of primary products for which world prices have dramatically declined, and an increased control over agriculture and fishery by corporate interests. The result has been increased impoverishment for large sections of developing Country societies for whom there are no alternative options. For many low income Countries aid is the most important source of finance for development. For these Countries it is also the only real source of investment for the basic social infrastructure that is vital for assuring the welfare and well being of its people and for effectively addressing poverty. Aid will only be effective when it is sustainable and predictable, She is a member of Scientific Commitee of International Problems Study Center - Sesto San Giovanni (Milan - Italy). Cristina Carpinelli has taken care of translations of soviet texts, particularly on the soviet society and sociology. She wrote many articles and essays on the transition of the Fsu from a planned economic system to a free market one. She wrote also some books: “Soviet society in the years of the perestrojka” (1991), “Women and family in Soviet Russia” (1998), “Women and poverty in Russia under El’cin administration” (2004), “Russia in pieces” (2008). 1

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contributing to the development strategies defined by a Nation itself. It needs to be free from ties imposed by donors, which not only distort its value but also prejudice a Nation’s commitment to development policies imposed from outside. For many developing Countries their debt servicing obligations undermines development. For this reason, it would be necessary the complete cancellation of debts where not to do so would undermine the Country’s economic recovery. The withdrawal of the state and the privatization of service provision of health care, water, education - increasingly deny access to those unable to pay for what constitutes a basic human rights. Major humanitarian agencies (Ong) argues that IMF policies seek to keep inflation at very low levels and do it blocking public spending on sanitation, education, ecc., paying only attention to strategies of macroeconomic stability and not to strategies of human development. Globalization and liberalization of trade, the corporatization of agriculture, fishery and other forms of production should not be the guiding frameworks for agriculture and fishery. Instead, sustainable local livelihoods, food sovereignty, environment regeneration and social concerns should be the guiding principles. A reform of our international system of governance is long overdue. It needs to be re-built so as to adhere to principles of justice and democracy. The World Bank, IMF and WTO must be brought fully within the UN system, with their roles being redefined. Their governing structures must also be reformed to reflect changes in the global economy. Women constitute the majority of the world’s poor and often carry the social and economic burden of looking after the most vulnerable members of the community, such as children, the elderly and the sick. Economic reforms that dismantle social obligations of the state and privatize public goods, impact disproportionately on women and deepen gender inequality as women are pressed into filling the gap. At the same time women constitute crucial active agents in any strategy to eradicate poverty. Denying full and free access of women to the economic sectors and labour market is not only a denial of their basic human rigths but is also detrimental to a country’s economic development. Poverty cannot be tackled successfully without ensuring equality of access to the means of livelihood between women and men, and equity of opportunity. While gender equality and equity are fundamental objectives in themselves, they are also an essential pre-condition for eradicating poverty. It’s imperative that the relationship between gender equity, poverty eradication and the promotion of social justice are comprehensively incorporated in future strategies.

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The structural adjustment programmes (Sap) imposed by IMF to transition Countries provided for: - the passage from a planned economy to a free market one; - liberalization of prices; - reduction of public expenditure, including cuts on sanitation, education and social services considered unproductive from economic point of view; - cuts on military expenditures; - cancellation of benefits directed to the poorest people; - privatization of public and state enterprises; - restriction of access to credit; - liberalization of trade; - promotion of export-oriented production; - removal of the barriers to private investments; - deregulation of labour market. The Saps have had a terrible effect on domestic politics of transition Countries, above all in which of them they didn’t adopt politics of social security. The process of transition from a planned economy to a market one in the Countries of the center-eastern Europe and in those of the former Soviet Union represents an interesting experience of analysis and comparison for people that are interested in the labour market and the systems of welfare. More than twenty Countries have almost simultaneously introduced radical transformations in the economy and reformed the mechanisms of social protection. Such transformations have proved to be more painful and variegated than initially anticipated. Negative phenomenons have accompanied and still accompany the transition: extremely elevated and persistent rates of unemployment, emerging acute inequalities in the income distribution, sensitive increase of the poverty. From the experience of the economies in transition, some important lessons can also be drawn for the Countries of the western Europe, included Italy. The transition, in fact, can be seen like an “extreme” form of the processes of reform of the systems of social protection and the labour market into action in the european Countries. The politics of transformation adopted in the transition Countries have been different. In the Countries of the center-eastern Europe has been paid attention to the politics of protection to the unemployed (the “victims” of the transition), as incentive for a rapid restructuring of the economy based on the move of labour force from the old state sectors to the new private sector. The adjustment of the economy has taken place, therefore, through the unemployment. In the Fsu Countries, the adjustment has taken place through a decrease in salaries and an high hidden unemployment.

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The conclusion of some liberal economists is that in the Countries of the center-eastern Europe, the governments have made the mistake to design too generous politics of support to the unemployed and of social transfers, above all, without temporal limits. The negative consequences have been that there is still today an elevated and persistent unemployment, that a too remarkable proportion of people have gone out from the labour force, above all through the anticipated retirements, and that all this has actually represented an obstacle to the economic recovery. Nevertheless, it could be objected that in the Countries where the level of protection and support to the unemployed has been negligible (Fsu Countries), the economic performance and the process of restructuring have been disastrous. In the Fsu Countries, the governments have not introduced a system of protection for those people that had to leave the enterprises and the sectors in decline. The absence of a “safety net” has represented a real break on the economic growth, as the workers have preferred to maintain the job also with very low salaries, rather than to enter the “pool” of the unemployed. Shortly, in the Countries of the center-eastern Europe as a whole wages declined by less and unemployment increased by more than in the Fsu Countries, with Bulgaria at the crossroads, because of the unfortunate combination of the largest fall in wages and the biggest increase in unemployment. Another theme of big interest for those that are interested in the centereastern european Countries is the hypothesis of integration of these Countries with Europe, that is their future entry in the European Union. With regard to this, it will be important to well calculate which politics it seems expedient to adopt in the “field” of the labour market and the welfare state. In fact, to import politics into the Countries of the centereastern Europe that have produced break-downs in the EU Countries, it would result even more harmful, because of the presence of very low levels of income and a phase of extremely different development from that of the EU Countries. The organisms of the EU should study, together with the governments of the center-eastern european Countries, strategies in the “field” of the labour market and the systems of social protection taking account of the realities and the demands of those Countries, avoiding a mechanic export of rules and politics that have also proved of doubtful effectiveness in the EU Countries. Terms of Reference The transformation that the Fsu Countries have put in action, has been indeed dramatic. The hinges on which were based the systems before the transition have been completely dismantled. They can be summarized in a few points:

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. 90% of the labour force was employed by state; . labour income plus social transfers together accounted for over threequarters of total income; . personal income tax was very low. Taxation had almost no distributive impact; . child benefits accounted for 3% of gross income, three times the level of market economies; . cash social transfers were distributed almost equally per head, rather than being focused on the poor as in market economies; . the social benefits were all regarded as entitlements which were provided free or at minimum cost; . the tax yield was based on “profits” of state enterprises, typical of a socialist societies. On the contrary, in the market economies, it’s based on personal income and expenditures (private consumptions); . wages were somewhat more equally distributed than in market economies, with differentials between manual and non-manual employees being markedly lower. Overall, because taxation and social transfers were broadly neutral, inequality was dominated by wage inequality; . although average incomes and living standards pre-transition were low, the scale of social transfers, consumer subsidies and the egalitarian wage distribution meant that the incidence of poverty was also relatively low by international standards, at between 5% and 10%, and it is likely that very few people were in extreme poverty. Nowadays, in the Fsu Countries, the attempts to create a “law-based market economy” by reforms are failed, because the process has not allowed the development of a gradual evolution through the legitimation of political, legal and market institutions which provides the essential framework for sustained growth and political stability. As a result of a strategy of deregulation which failed to take account of the absence of the key institutions of a “law-based market economy”, the process has fostered and reinforced the demonetization, illegality and criminalization of the economy in the transition Countries. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the pace of reform led to the collapse of the old institutional framework before new institutions could emerge. In the absence of appropriate institutions, deregulation and privatization meant that those who controlled the key financial and commercial intermediaries of the old system simply and quite literally took the law into their own hands. The result has been the control of economic activity by organizations which operate outside the law. Restrictive fiscal and monetary policies led to the widespread demonetization of the economy and the concentration of financial resources in the hands of a limited number of powerful financial and commercial organizations with strong political connections.

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These phenomenons - that have eroded the legitimacy of state and political and market institutions - have been fostered and reinforced not only by the macroeconomic policies which have been pursued by national governments, but also with the support of international financial institutions (Imf, Wb). They have undermined the process toward a democratic development and are now the major source of poverty and social unrest, and the major barrier to economic recovery. The development of a law-based monetized market economy is perhaps the most fundamental and urgent task that the Fsu Countries have to face, and one which requires much more serious attention. It has a direct influence on poverty because the impact of the demonetization of the economy is felt most directly by those who do not receive their wages and social benefits and who face the breakdown of healthcare, education and the whole social fabric. In these Countries, between a quarter and a third of the population live in persistent poverty, below a realistic subsistence level for a sustained period of time. The total number of poor has risen from about 14 million in East Europe and the Soviet Union before the transition, to about 168 million after the reform, an increase from 4% to about 45% of the population. The poverty derives from low and unofficial wages and high levels of open and hidden unemployment (together with shadoweconomy, irregular employment and second job) resulting from economic transition. All this is reflected in a dramatic increase in inequality. Households with dependent children or disabled members are the most vulnerable, because of the low level of incomes and the erosion of their real value, and of the lack of child and disability benefits. In Russia and Belarus, the average wage is no longer sufficient to support two individuals at the minimum subsistence level; in combination with the erosion of child benefits, this means that actually a two average-wages family with two dependent children will be living in poverty. In Moldavia, only about 20% of wage earners (breadwinners) are earning enough to support one dependent. With smaller intensity, this situation is also verifiable in Ukraine. Dependency puts great strains on the traditional households, leading parents to abandon their children (an estimated one million children have been abandoned during the transition, of which 200,000 of them in Russian Federation). Child poverty is an emotive issue but it is not a distinct issue - it arises because parents cannot earn enough to support their children and child benefits are not sufficient to cover their marginal cost (of children). Similarly, the average pension has fallen below the subsistence minimum. Poverty is a serious problem and it’s still rising in all the Fsu Countries. The primary source of social and industrial conflict and of political opposition to reform is the low level of wages (also the endemic wage

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non-payment or wage arrears) but also the transformation of universalistic social security sistems into private sistems of social insurance. Access to health services, education and social services has been severely curtailed. Suicide, alcohol abuse-related deaths and wide diffusion of the drug have all risen sharply. The spread of “social diseases” (tuberculosis, syphilis, diphtheria, and so on) is being compounded by the fact that there is often a lack of awareness, education, infrastructure, and programmes addressing the problems. A common demographic indicator of transition Countries of the Fsu is the high male adult mortality (The high mortality rate for working-age males has produced in Russia a new problem: material support to children surviving their fathers. However, the applicable type of pensions - survivor’s pension - represents 51% of the minimum subsistence of a child, which no way can fully compensate for the reduced family income) and the sharp fall in life expectancy for men and women. Mortality, nuptiality and fertility trends are more or less equal to those normally observed during wartime. Mass destitution in these Countries (mainly in the rural areas) is only being averted by receipt of social benefits, return to subsistence agriculture (the use of the own plot of land to survive) and reliance on family support networks which are under increasing strain. During the transition many of the eastern and central european Countries and those of the Fsu, have found themselves having to absorb ethnic migrants. This obviously raises many concerns where poverty is at issue. Many of migrants, escaping from armed conflict, have settled illegally in the larger cities where they are confined to informal work, where they tend to be paid low wages. There is also the problem of ethnic minorities that are tipically multiply disadvantaged. They have larger families and lower levels of education. They tend to live in the more remote rural depressed regions and suffer from the removal of the former mechanisms of regional distribution of resources. The phenomenons of the migrant and national minorities are cause of open social conflicts with the local population that, bearing a condition of deprivation, lives as a “threat” the presence of extraneous on the “own” territory. One of the assignments to face in the immediate is to evaluate the phenomenon as a whole, trying to remove the causes of the underdevelopment of some areas of the Fsu Countries and guaranteeing contemporarily the integration through solidarity and cooperation, not surrendering to xenophobic temptation to criminalize the emigrants and the minorities, making them entirely appear as source of delinquency. Changes in the labour market over the reform years should be considered with the account of a rilevant transformation of social and legal terms of employment which has found reflection in mass violations of labour guarantees to employees. Violation of labour legislation is mostly centered around the following areas of legal regulation: labour

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payment (voluntary setting of the wages and salaries rates, fines as an administrative penalty amounting to 50% of the monthly wages), working schedule (unlimited working hours without due compensation for working overtime and on week-ends), dismissal procedures (without dismissal wage, lack of protection against voluntary dismissal), social guarantees (denial of a regular holiday and of payment of compensation of temporary disability). These violations are more typical of private enterprises than state ones and are more frequent in the “field” of casual or temporary employment. On the top of all these violations, there is a new labour code recently introduced in Russia (1 February 2002) that “legalizes” child labour, forces pregnant women to work night shifts, increases “on application of the worker” the lenght of the working day from 8 to 12 hours (employers can to impose a 56-hour week without overtime pay) and removes from the trade unions a lot of power to act (while in the past workers could not be legally fired if the trade union opposed it, the new code allowes bosses to fire at own will, to create black list of active trade unionists, the use of replacement workers as the employers like, the imposition of contracts short circuiting the collective bargaining process, to conclude labour contracts by enterprises with the syndical organizations that they prefer, and so on). The new provisions of labour code have been considered by russian government (abroad by Imf and World bank), as compared with the former (adopted in 1972 when Russia was part of the Ussr and seen again in some points under El’cin administration in 1995) notoriously employeeprotective labour code, like a “complex of measures that strike a better balance between the interests of all types of employers and employees”. The lives of many workers and poor people have been devastated by the greed of big business, by imposed policies of privatization without any social protection, the creation of alternative jobs before destroying public sectors of employment and by the introduction of new measures undermining basic rights held by workers and population as a whole for decades. All transition Countries of the Fsu have developed a dualistic labour market in which good jobs in the new private sector go to the more highly educated, skilled, younger and more flexible workers from the former state sector, which increasingly functions, in conjunction with the longterm unemployed, as a reserve of less-employable labour. There is a strong possibility that market-led growth will increase poverty as backward industry and agriculture are displaced and lay-off large numbers of unemployable workers. The unemployable workers aren’t a small section of the population. Even in the most prosperous of the Center-eastern european economies, they constitute a third of the labour force or more, many of whom have little hope of finding a place in the new competitive economy. The

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experience of Poland, the only economy to have seen sustained growth, is not so encouraging, with the poverty rate actually rising as inequality increased. In this Country, the rate of unemployment is very high, faced with the adoption of a relatively generous politics of welfare and with relatively strong trade unions struggling to protect the social state. The hungarian scenario is not very different. Here the restructuring of the economy has been pursued with politics of social stabilization, that is of opening to the new labour market and at the same time of support to the social state. Nevertheless, poverty exists to a great extent, because of the increase of the inequalities in the income distribution at a regional and occupational level. Many workers affected by the reform have little hope to find a job in the new competitive market. In short, transition has create a “lost generation” which has little prospect of benefiting from economic growth. The limited net job creation in the new private sector which marked the early stages of reform has gone into reserve since 1994, while employment in the former state sector has continued to fall. Since 1989, in the former centrally planned economies an estimated 26 million jobs have been lost and registered unemployed has soared, from almost zero to more than 10 milion. High registered unemployment was particularly found in Poland and Bulgaria. In other Countries (Ukraine), registered unemployment is lower, because of tight eligibility conditions for benefit - those ineligible for benefits are less likely to register as unemployed - and the very low level of benefit. The size and eligibility conditions for unemployment benefit make it impossible for the unemployed to survive for long without alternative sources of income. But low wages and delays in the payment of wages, mean that many of the employed are in a very similar position. In many respects the unemployed have the time to seek alternative sources of income. In most of Countries of the center-eastern Europe and in those of the Fsu, the share of the long-term unemployed (those who have been out of work longer than one year) has continued to raise. Both individuals and social systems have been ill equipped to deal with this situation. In the Fsu Countries, such a situation is so compromised that many commentators, even within the ranks of liberal economists, have seen an argument for continuing to support jobs in unprofitable industry and agriculture, that it’s better to keep people at work than to throw them on to the streets with no prospect of supporting themselves. Enterprises function as the social safety net at approximately the same cost as a real safety net but with less social dislocation. However, the support of jobs should not be indiscriminate and is better addressed through protectionist interventions, for example in fiscal and trade policies, which are clearly limited in extent and duration than through job and wage subsidies which are less transparent and more subject to political manipulation.

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The fall in both profits and wages in the Fsu Countries has undermined the fiscal basis of the state budget and of the social and welfare state. Governments have suffered a large decline in revenues, with little increase in their ability to raise taxes. The erosion of pensions, child and disability benefits, low-income family and single-mothers allowances, health, education, housing and the inadequacy of unemployment insurance mean that social and welfare state no longer functions as a universalistic system which guarantees, first of all, that the principal high risk groups of population will be protected from poverty. To understand the importance of the role of social benefits, it’s necessary to keep in mind that in the soviet-type societies, state policy sought to erode the family as an economic unit, to replace family obligations by obligations to the state. In terms of social policy this meant that men and women were equally obliged to participate in social labour, leading to female participation rates close to those of men, and that social benefits provided income entitlements for all non-earning members of the household: children, the sick, mothers of young children and the elderly. This meant, in its turn, that the individual wage was precisely that, a wage sufficient to meet the needs of the individual, and not a family wage which supposed to meet the needs of the whole family. This system of social policy had fundamental implications within family that have remained intact also after the post-sovietism: many male wageearners still do not give their wives a penny of their pay packets, in a moment in which family is assisting to the collapse of the government system of social support and welfare. The decade 1991-2001 has ruined the social fabric of the Fsu Countries, destroying the old without building at the same time the new. The treatment of wild liberalism without rules and counterweights that has been made them didn't fit for realities with an unusual history and limits. Countries that are at the meantime immense coffers of raw materials, of wealths waiting to be exploited, but economic subjects not yet in degree to operate in that open context that the westerners pretended, all and at once. With the result that the most aggressive and more unscrupulous people, the foreign multinational companies and the criminal transnational rackets have prevailed. Confronting dilemmas and looking for effective solutions There are no simple solutions to the mentioned above problems, only dilemmas which have to be evaluated in the real world in which they arise. The central dilemma in the transition Countries is that the preservation of those institutions and activities through which the lowpaid strata of population is currently able to survive is often in direct

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conflict with the development of a modern high-wage and highproductivity economy. Correspondingly, measures which foster the growth of the new economy erode the sustainability of the livelihoods of the poor. For example, the free access to agricultural land is an extremely flexible way of providing poverty relief and a way in which all families can ensure a stable and secure supply of food. A share of food surplus is usually transferred without charge to friends and relatives within networks of reciprocity, or may be more directly bartered for services. This is a legacy from the remote peasant past which was powerfully reinforced in the soviet period when the private sale of goods and services was illegal, so private produce and personal services were routinely bartered. Many workers have been forced for surviving to enter the cycle of the natural economy. They spend their leisure time to work in the private plots. At the same time, because the inputs are costless and producers have minimal money incomes, commercial agriculture is unable to compete in the market with private produce so that the persistence of this form of production undermines the commercialization of agriculture. This is the reason for which now the free availability of land is priority accorded to land privatization by multilateral agencies interested to commercialize on a large scale agriculture. The privatization of land to foster the commercialization of agriculture can destroy the subsistence agriculture through which the majority survive, while the persistence of subsistence agriculture depresses prices and so is a serious barrier to the development of a commercial agriculture. Investment in modern production facilities will sweep away the old low-wage labour-intensive producers which provide employment for millions, while the persistence of low-wage producers depresses prices and inhibits new investment. The professionalization of trade and services with the development of small and medium businesses sweeps away the street and shuttle traders whose casual employment provides vital income for their families. But the persistence of low-paid, unregistered and untaxed casual employment is a barrier to the professionalization of trade and services. In short, low wages keep people in work but inhibit new investment by undercutting more efficient but higher wage producers and by limiting the domestic market for their products. High wages encourage productivity-increasing investment and expand the market but at the cost, at least in the short run, of higher unemployment. These conflicts cannot be resolved in favour of one or the other side of the dilemma, but only within a dynamic context of gradual change. This means that the problem can only be adressed by a broad and coherent range of macro and micro economic and social policies and interventions which will evolve over time as circumstances change.

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In particular, in the short run, this means supporting livelihoods subsistence agriculture, petty trading, inefficient factories - which in the long run are unsustainable. A right approach to the dilemma tries in fact to balance the demands of marked-led growth with the needs of the population as a whole. This balance involves political choices and for this reason has to be achieved politically, within the democratic process and through the help of participatory structures operating in the transition Countries. An effective reform from above has to be supplemented by pressure from below: the issues of democratization and empowerment are not a luxury but are fundamental to economic reform in the interests of people. The implementation of strategies on a long period must obviously take account of the scenario of world economy. There is little point in trying to encourage the commercialization of agriculture while flooding the transition Countries with subsidized food imports from the EU. There is little point in modernizing the textile industries when domestic markets are open to EU suppliers while the EU keeps out textile imports through quotas. There is little point in trying to develop a law-based economy while colluding in international financial and commercial transactions with organizations which operate outside the law. New macro and microeconomic approaches have to take into account the fact that the economy of the Fsu Countries is largely demonetized and operating outside the law, but they must not undermine the attempt to develop a law-based competitive market economy and an efficient and jurisdictionally acceptable legal system, allowing an open and at the same time fair social and economic life. The evaluation of alternative strategies and policies at all levels has to take account of the institutional framework in which they are to be applied. - Much has been made by many commentators of the barriers to labour mobility presented by the traditional enterprise provision of welfare and housing in the transition Countries, and this has been used as one of the key arguments in favour of the privatization of welfare facilities or their transfer to municipal authorities and in favour of personal insurancebased benefits. However, the main result has been the collapse of the whole structure of housing maintenance and administration and the system of social and welfare support across the majority of the Fsu Countries. In fact, labour throughout these transition Countries has proved to be far more flexible and far more mobile. The opportunities for and obstacles to mobility lying more in the existence of social networks and family ties than in access to housing or welfare benefits. Moreover, encouraging labour mobility only serves to increase the dualistic character of the economy by reinforcing its regional dimension as the young, more

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educated, active and energetic people leave the countryside for the towns. In other words, they leave the depressed regions for the booming capital, denying the deprived regions of precisely the human resources on which their regeneration depends. - The rural population in the transition Countries has suffered the most from the deterioration in the social infrastructure, in health care and from the sharply increased cost and reduced provision of public transport. Rural poverty is directly related to the reform strategy and reinforced by the trade and agricultural policies of the EU. The withdrawal of subsidies and the opening of agriculture to international competition has led to a flood of heavily subsidized agricultural imports from the EU which has markedly reduced prices of agricultural produce and, correspondingly, agricultural wages. While this has made a very significant contribution to reducing the cost of living for the urban population, it has been at the expense of the livelihood of the rural population. Moreover, the collapse of agricultural incomes has encouraged the flow of young and more educated people to the towns in search of better salaries but has left loweducated, manual, unskilled and low paid labour force in the countryside. - The collapse of the old system and the disintegration of the Soviet Union have removed the old system of income equalization between town and country and among regions, allowing substantial inequalities to open up on the basis of different resource endowments. The regional inequalities have been considerably intensified by structural changes in the economy, with the decline of agriculture and old heavy industries and the reorientation of industry toward export markets. The attainment of the balanced and sustainable, economic and social progress, must foresee the struggle against territorial disparities, through the individualization of measures directed to reduce the discrepancy among the levels of development of the various regions. - Another example of not well-directed politics derives from what is euphemistically termed “cost recovery”, in relation to the expenditures that the citizens bear of housing and municipal services or for domestic energy supply (i.e. rents, expenditures on heating, housing maintenance, ecc.). Local government spending on housing, municipal services and energy has fallen and accordingly the investments, despite the transfer of this competence from federal obligations to municipal authorities and the transfer of a large proportion of the housing stock from enterprises to local government. It is essential to establish the commercial viability of municipal housing administration and the energy sector, above all in heavily demonetized economies, like the Fsu Countries ones, where twothirds or more of the population do not have the money to pay such

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charges on a regular basis and can only do so at the expense of their own essential subsistence needs (before the reforme, expenditures on housing, fuel, energy, communal services, and so on, were totally subsidized by state). The attempt of governments to introduce the “cost of recovery” has turned out to be a “poll tax”. As a result of the privatization of the housing stock, many poor households have become owners of residential property which they rented or sold, because they were not able to face maintenance and service costs. There has been a substantial increase in homelessness, above all among the older generation. - Some NGOs pointed out that economic pressures in Russia did not give women a choice: a monostructural industry and the three-shift pattern with quotas for women left unemployment and night work as the only alternatives. 70% of shift workers were women, a position which they vigorously defend for family reasons. At the same time, the labour code, seen again in 1995, categorically forbade the female night work (for women with children under six years) that, in conditions of expansion of labour market and of economic recovery, should be considered a right principle. But not when more than 45% of the russian people live below the poverty line. What politics the government adopted to solve a situation that automatically excluded big part of the women from the labour market? Instead of finding an accord with the enterprises to protect the female work, the government has chosen the less complicated way: with the approval of the new labour code “Putin”, it has again introduced the female night work, also permitted to the pregnant women. - Some reformers have proposed, on suggestion of the World Bank, that the financing of the social security system ought to be based on a insurance system. Insurance-based systems are administratively more expensive and are much less equitable, but from the reformers point of view the political advantage of linking contributions to benefits is that the majority of the electorate at any one time will be net contributors, and so more inclined to vote for reductions in contributions than increases in benefits. Moreover, if the insurance system is private it makes the public’s forced savings potentially available for investment, although there is no guarantee that any such investment will be in the domestic economies. However, such a reform is fraught with difficulties because in the transition period people have to pay twice: once to support those presently disadvantaged, who have no contribution record, and once again to set aside their own contributions. The shift to a funded insurancebased system is therefore necessarily associated in the short-run with increases in personal contributions and with substantial cuts in the present level of benefits. The compromise solution, that has not been taken in

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consideration by the reformers, is to propose a pay-as-you-go system which provides minimal benefits supplemented with compulsory and/or voluntary insurance-based top-ups. - Someone has advised to reduce the bureaucratic and fiscal obstacles to the establishment and viability of small and medium enterprise, but such an obviuosly sensible reforme will erode the competitive advantage of petty trading and self-employment, threatening to destroy a key component of the livelihoods of millions of households. It’s necessary to sustain the insertion of the less competitive workers and the unemployed, through special courses of professional training financed by state, in the small and medium enterprises, so that the last ones can replace in the middle period the current livelihoods of the weakest persons on the labour market. The first priority of a pro-low-paid, insecurely employed, unemployed and poor people approach is not “to make things worse”. It’s essential that all strategic interventions toward a balance between the demands of marked-led growth and the needs of the population as a whole are assessed for their possible impact on the short-term sustainability of the current livelihoods of these categories of population (who form the vast majority in the Fsu Countries) not only in theory, but also in practice. Employment and labour market One of the problems prioritily to face is the development of social labour market policies and practices designed to relieve the actual economic status of the unemployed and the low-paid working people (particularly of agricultural workers, manual workers in declining industries, lowergrade clerical workers and unskilled manual workers) in the Fsu Countries. Despite private-sector growth (reaching an estimated 50-70% of measured economic activity), persistent structural problems cloud economic recovery. Under these conditions, the informal economy is taking root, and prospects for secure earnings remain dim in these Countries. Significant unemployment is a relatively new phenomenon after decades of central planning and policies of full employment. There has also been a sharp drop in real wages and a substantial increase in wage disparity. Even when GDP is recovering, employment levels and real wages tend to lag behind. This creates pressure for households to maintain two income, at a time when there are fewer jobs and less job security. The market-led growth will not automatically alleviate transition depression in these Countries. Also in Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia, where there has been an economic recovery, there are no signs of a reduction in poverty.

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A large proportion of the working population in the Fsu Countries are still in open, hidden (those working in state and former state enterprises which have little long-term prospect of survival) or discouraged (the fairly large number of people who have withdrawn from the labour force because they have abandoned any hope of getting a job) unemployment, in casual employment or still employed in low-paid jobs in decaying state enterprises (about two-thirds of the poor, which have suffered considerable reductions in income as the prices of retaining their jobs). The phenomena of unpaid lay-offs (“administrative leave”), short-time and part-time working have become pervasive. These expedients are often adopted by employers as an alternative to redundancy, and as a way of inducing people to leave voluntarily. Many more people are kept at work because their wages are so low that employers have no incentive to rationalize production or to invest to economize on labour. Many more are working in jobs which would not be profitable on normal accounting principles and which will be displaced once effective bankruptcy procedures are in place. Depending on definitions, a greater or lesser proportion of this huge labour reserve can be considered to be the “hidden unemployed”, a category which merges with that of the low-paid. For this reason alone it does not make sense to make a radical distinction between low wages and unemployment as causes of poverty. Only the younger, better educated and more flexible can expect to be absorbed into better-paid employment as economic growth continues. In modernizing markets, especially those with emerging knowledge-based and service sectors, there are expanding economic opportunities, but they are scarce and reserved for workers possessing the appropriate education and skills. The scarce skills required by the market economy, when there is an over-abundance of skilled and no-skilled manual labour, are predominantly intellectual skills. Of course, the growing inequality isn’t a stimulus to the rapid structural change, which could liquidate transition crisis under certain conditions. The falling incomes and growing inequality restrict the market and so discourage investment in the development of new goods and services, while poverty undermines the development process by depriving a substantial proportion of the population of the resources which they need to take place in the new economy. The fact that recovery has been most rapid in the Countries in which wages have fallen the least and which the growth of inequality has been the most limited is not a decisive argument for the familiar argument that high wages encourage growth, since these Countries enjoyed other advantages. But it’s difficult to resist the argument that excessive wage flexibility in the Fsu Countries has not simply led to widespread poverty and the degradation and demoralization of a large section of the labour force, but has also inhibited new investment and the razionalization of production, has exacerbated

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macroeconomic contraction and deprived the producers of new goods and services of a potential market. The Countries which have seen the greatest growth of inequality have experienced the deepest crisis and have shown the fewest signs of recovery. Moreover, widening disparities call into question how equitably the fruits of economic growth will be shared. If the income distribution were to remain unchanged or to improve, then economic recovery would be expected to lead to a quite rapid reduction in the poverty headcount as large numbers of people are lifted over the poverty threshold. On the other hand, if recovery favours those who are already relatively comfortable, then inequality may increase and poverty be unaffected by recovery - the Fsu Countries scenario. In this scenario, low wages and unemployment are in part a feature of the structural dislocation of the transition economies, but the problem of poverty is at root an oldfashioned macroeconomic problem of a generalized and persistent deficiency of demand, with output and employment falling in virtually all sectors of the economy. An urgent priority is the exploration of alternative macroeconomic policies which can stimulate growth without an upsurge of inflation. It’s necessary to adopt active measures to secure the preservation and creation of jobs in the short-run. If the market-led growth will be able to solve the crisis, it can do it only in the very long term. And as an economic thinker famously remarked, “in the long term we are all dead”. Moreover, different policies - as compared with the current ones - need immediately to adopt. First, to expand the service sector which had been “suppressed” or forced during the period of the planned economy. It’s possible to realize this expansion if a relatively high proportion of the population can afford to buy such services, and this is, in its turn, possible if incomes are sustained and the growth of inequality arrested by unfashionable redistributive industrial and welfare policies. It seems also necessary to leave many old structures and institutions in place and so to smooth the transition. Hungary, for example, was marked by relatively high income levels, a relative stability of state structures through the transition, a reasonably well-adapted economic structure. Moreover, the guarantee of a reliable economic and political stability has fostered the economic relationships of this Country with the EU Countries. It adopted a less radical strategy, but more successful. On the contrary, as a result of the implementation of full radical programmes, other transition Countries have experienced the longest and deepest depression in recorded history. Different labour market policies are appropriate for different categories of people. In general, in the transition Countries of the Fsu most expenditure is on passive labour market policies: the payment of unemployment benefit which is often very poorly targeted because of administrative weaknesses and shortages and uneven distribution of

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resources. Spending on active labour market policies tends to be concentrated on public works, wage subsidies (usually paid to employers) for the protection or creation of jobs, with a relatively small amount being spent on training. Public works programmes and wage subsidies are widely derided as expensive, poorly targeted and unproductive “make work” schemes, but public works have a good record of providing jobs and work experience for the low-skilled while contributing to the reconstruction of the decaying state enterprises, even if they do not provide an effective transition into employment. Where the targeting of unemployment benefit is poor and resources are very limited, such workfare schemes provide an important safety net. Wage subsidies are usually applied indiscriminately and subject to political pressure, but there is a strong case for wage subsidies for trainees and apprentices, where training programmes have collapsed. Support for self-employment and labour-intensive small business startups (petty traders, suppliers of domestic services, and so on) can play the same role of developing skills and preserving jobs even they are not very effective in job creation. The vast majority of those in self-employment or setting up small business are motivated by the need to secure the survival of their households, not to develop into larger businesses which can provide work for others. For instance, private-sector agriculture has once again become an important part of the economy. However, such work often offers few prospects; many of these self-employed persons are struggling to earn even a subsistence living, frequently by helping out on small farms or family plots. The support for small business will improve the incentives and capacities of the low-income strata of population to engage in such kinds of petty economic activity, rather than or in addition to those which have the most promising prospects. This might be through the provision of the most basic material support, assistance with the development of little cooperatives in several sectors. The main problem with all such schemes is to ensure that they do not simply provide or protect the jobs of the beneficiaries at the expense of others, a problem which is best avoided by involving trade unions and labour organizations in their design, implementation and monitoring. Of course, such schemes will always be inferior to “real jobs”, but are superior to prolonged unemployment. With proper organization, they tend to be a much more economical and socially and psychologically beneficial way of helping the unemployed poor than simply paying them unemployment benefit. This is particularly the case when low wages for the employed dictate that unemployment benefit should be proportionately lower, trapping the unemployed in poverty. But, where the unemployment benefits approach the level of minimum wages, that is the case of the Fsu Countries, such schemes are appropriately targeted also on those with lower wages. Under certain conditions, it’s better to

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have an integrated system of social assistance for the able-bodied population, whether in or out of work, which in the immediate future can only realistically be some kind of workfare system, rather than to increase the unemployment benefits, with the risk that the already high quota of the unemployment could again grow and forcing the unemployed into dependence on state benefits and condemning him to the poverty trap. Generally, macro-economic expansion and the strengthening of the legal framework will create more and better-paid jobs. This will provide a framework for assistance with training and retraining programmes appropriate to the new jobs. But these programmes will be provided in any case by employers if they face labour shortage and they will be provided for those who do not need them because they are already wellpositioned in the labour-market. To help a low-income people such programmes should be targeted on the hard to place, such as the longterm unemployed or older workers or those, such a women and national minorities, who face discrimination. They should be targeted to improve competitive position in the labour market of these categories of population. Of course, all these are labour market policies functioning in the short run. They are insufficient in the long-run, but now in the transition economies, which have not yet fully developed the institutional infrastructure of a market economy, they represent good alternative strategies and policies. The access to public services Full citizenship demands not only an income but also access to health care, social services, child and elderly care, education, transport, and so on. Widespread and relatively equitable access to basic education, health care and social services is an inheritance from the soviet past, that has been eroded during the difficult period of transition. The fall of the Fsu Countries has repercussions on the deterioration in social indicators. Because of its shrinking role and its declining revenues, the state has relinquished much of its tight control over social issues, and a new infrastructure - a partnership of personal, civil and public resources - has yet to develop sufficiently. The general pressure on education sistems and education resources has undermined the quality of education and shifted more financial burdens on to parents, even if by law, these Countries continue to guarantee free school education. The family’s child education costs that formerly were covered from the public consumption funds do also contribute to the poverty since it is exactly in low-income and single-parent families that such costs are now an unbearable burden. Besides, the difficult access to

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the education makes no competitive the children of these families, when they will enter the labour market. For these families, elimination of public consumption funds has also resulted in the growing medical costs. Their relatively low remuneration precludes from getting access to quality medical aid. In the Fsu Countries, many people suffer and die unnecessarily because they cannot afford health care or essential medicines. 16% of chronically poor families in Moldavia point to health problems of their members as the main reason for the reduction of their income. For households with young children, adequate, accessible and affordable child care is crucial to the effort to balance employment and family responsibilities. The child care has changed during the transition. The population of infants and young children is greately reduced; public child care facilities are less available; child care fees have increased, and mothers are forced to remain at home take caring of the children. Maternity entitlements have remained relatively untouched. The good intentions behind maternity and parental leave measures often go unfulfilled in the new labour market. It is tipically women who must adapt and take on more responsibilities in order to accomodate the new circumstances. Thus, there is evidence that employers may be unwilling and parents unable to take full advantage of the leaves. In Ukraine, 23% of legally available maternity leaves went unused during the transition, compared to 5% before the reform. In Russia, more than two-tirds of women with higher education returned to work early from parental leave. Enrolment rates in nurseries and kindergartens, the backbone of the former child care system, have fallen. In Belarus and Moldavia, nurseries have pratically ceased to exist. The primacy of the family is being reasserted during the transition, a good time to reset the balance among the roles of women, men and the community in the raising of children. A wider range of accessible childcare options is needed; family-friendly workplaces, particularly in the private sector, must be developed, and men must be encouraged and supported in taking a larger role in parenting. Ultimately, women and men should be able to make the best choices for themselves as individuals and families regarding the balance of work and children in their lives. Also the material status of ritired is aggravated by the destruction of free health care system which causes dramatic social deprivations. Despite the rights to purchase medicine at a discount granted to the retired, this social programme has not been backed up by the appropriate funding, therefore, for most pensioners eligible for benefits this right proved to be purely formal. Currently, the average pension allowance is a 2/3rds of a retiree’s cost of living. Senior citizens whose pensions do not allow for medical costs or social welfare find these services unaffordable and their poverty level growing because of the deprivation. Many pensioners

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continue to work (even for extremely low wages) in order to supplement the meagre pensions. So that their pensions are in effect a selective wage subsidy, which risks dragging down the level of wages as a whole. The solution adopted in Bulgaria is to deprive working pensioners of 30% of their wage, although it’s not known what the impact of this policy has been. Public and social assistance During the transition the Fsu Countries have been spending relatively less on family allowances. Social assistance is not well-targeted, and above all in Russia and Ukraine social assistance is actually regressive. Support programmes have often shifted from universal coverage to targeted coverage and, in some cases, have been eliminated altogether. It’s necessary to ensure by increasing the level of benefits that the prime atrisk categories of population (children, the elderly, the cronically sick and disabled, single-parent families and single retirees) are guaranteed at least a minimal subsistence income, and supplement this with unemployment benefits and social assistance to protect the unemployed and the low-paid. Meanwhile, it’s necessary to work for a more extensive rationalization of the systems of social assistance and support for the unemployed (better targeted) which will pay benefits only to those in proven need. In the Fsu Countries, the revolt against the “new economic deal” is not only against the perceived inadequacy of the sistems of social assistance unable effectively to relieve poverty, but also against the injustice and corruption in allocation of their provisions. The system of government and private transfers must be improved through targeted support to poor families (low-paid families, monoparental families, ecc.) and enforcement of the already existing laws. For istance, the very first component designed to cushion the material loss suffered by the mother left with kids after separation is to review the family legislation ensuring that the father pays child’s alimony in time and in the amount needed to meet the child’s interests. This would, in its turn, depend on the outcome for such issues as uncontrolled shadow-economy incomes, unofficial employment, wage arrears and the level of unemployment. Any increase in the alimony would also be dependent on the overall pay levels and on the unemployment benefits. In case of single-mother families, poverty factors include both low individual income of the mother (often under the threshold of poverty) and the insufficient amount of private and public transfers designed to partly offset the absence of the second income source in the family (children’s alimony following the divorce, pensions for the benefit of children after the death of their father, single-mother allowances). As for children’s benefits, their assessment basing on the minimum statutory wages invariably devalues the already meager amounts since the statutory

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wage minimum has not be indexed for some time already. Moreover, the income-based assessment of children’s alimony following the divorce does not radically help since the amount remains the same while the eligible income threshold stays rather high (two times the subsistence minimum). It would be more appropriate to introduce a separate, supplementary alimony that some Countries offer to support single-parent families. An operative system of social welfare must ensure the wider dissemination of information on welfare rights and an easier access to those individuals whose indigence is rooted largely in the demographic patterns (for instance, age). Currently, pensioners’ access to individual social welfare is restricted by the applicable indigence criteria whereby in most regions of the Fsu Countries the welfare assistance is available only to those whose incomes are less than half the subsistence minimum. The reference to the poverty line that equals half the subsistence level is being accounted for by the high level of unofficial incomes which, if ignored, could substantially enlarge the number of the poor. At the same time, for poor, single pensioners of the older retirement ages, their pension benefits are the only source of income. Should regional social security authorities insist on an upward revaluation of pension incomes, it should be differentiated depending on the family type. Another component of the social policies aimed at reducing poverty among more disadvantaged people should include a set of measures designed to ensure these people with an adequate medical and social services. These people seem currently to be particularly often discriminated in their eligibility for free medical care. Two social policies scenarios are possible here. One would set the priority for fee-based medical care and social services. Under this scenario, the subsistence minimum of people should allow for the actual requirements in medical care and social services, so that the income be two or three times the present one and people could, even with very tight budgets, afford paying for the services in line with their typical actual consumption standards. The other scenario would offer a system of institutional and financial measures to provide for free (or mandatory insurance-based) medical care for people in need of help. This second scenario seems less expensive and more efficient, and it could be implemented in the draft law on minimum statutory social guarantees. The struggle against the poverty Social assistance is certainly needed in every Country as the last resort, whether that be provided in cash or in kind, but this cannot be the basis of an anti-poverty strategy. An effective anti-poverty strategy has in the first instance to distinguish those categories of the population who have the potential to help themselves and those who do not. Two major directions

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may be distinguished within the system of social policy measures aimed at preventing poverty: a) measures of mission-oriented and well-directed social support of poor categories of the population. Such a policy may achieve a desiderable effect only if it’s pursued along with the measures aiming at rising the nominal statutory wages worn away by inflation. With the growth of official wages and salaries, insurance payments to government social funds (the pension fund, employment fund, social benefits fund, ecc.) will also go up, which will make it possible to increase pensions, benefits, and so on. An increase in pensions will create objective prerequisites for bringing down poverty among single pensioners. And since the women are the majority of single pensioners, such an increase will reduce above all the feminization of poverty, that is also a specific manifestation of deprivation in the transition Countries; b) macroeconomic changes targeted at bringing down the overall poverty level of the employed. The growth of the official wages and salaries of low-paid categories of workers may be achieved through revival of the national production and redistribution of wages through lowering the differentiation in labour payments. The rapid increase in the differentiation of wage incomes is the principal source of increasing inequality, primarily because the concentration of social transfers hasn’t changed significantly, and the increased differentiation is very strongly concentrated at the top and bottom of the income scale, with the middleincome majority more or less keeping their share. The differentiation of labour payments is growing at the highest space within certain industries and enterprises. There has been a considerable change in pay differentials within the state and former state sector. On the one hand, differentials have widened substantially in favour of managerial and professional employees in relation to manual workers. On the other hand, pay in the formerly privileged military and engineering sectors has fallen substantially while pay in the formerly benighted light industry has risen relatively. The income dispersion in the new private sector is much higher than that in the former state sector, so that professional and managerial salaries are considerably higher, and the lowpaid are lower paid. Moreover, the new private sector is dominated by business in the service sector and construction which employ large numbers of unskilled casual workers. It’s only when privatization and new business formation are associated with high levels of new productive investment that we can expect it to begin to provide high-quality jobs which can pay better wages. So far this has been confined primarily to foreign investment and joint ventures. The problem is that these new modern enterprises pay good wages but to relatively few workers and not surprisingly select a narrow range of employees: young, well educated with a strong commitment to work.

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Taking advantage of extremely liberal institutional regulation of labour relations the top managers strata is carrying out its strategy toward uneven redistribution of income to its benefit. This process should be stopped and it seems expedient to start it with the implementation of programmes increasing the institutional supervision over the payment and distribution of incomes through the adoption of 1) measures aimed at eliminating the gap between the minimal wages and the subsistence minimun amount (in the russian labour code recently adopted, is declared that the minimum monthly wage must equal the official minimum subsistence level). An increase in the minimum wage will also considerably ease the task of developing an efficient social safety net which is impeded at the moment by the fact that the lowest wages are far below the subsistence minimum; 2) measures targeted to control the income of top-managers; 3) measures of extrusion of non-money forms of labour payment (even if the new russian labour code states that 20% of the salary can be paid in kind, encouraging rather than limiting the widespread practice of paying salary in kind instead of in monetary form). Other measures - aimed at settling the shadow employment and informal income which are a real break on the economic growth - are those that bring down the tax burden related to wages and salaries and the public consumption funds (programmes aimed at decreasing the income tax rate for low-paid workers and legalizing the informal income of the middle class strata of the population). Actually, many employees are low-paid and are anyway subject to pay the tax on income. The real wages are squeezed to the minimum, and apart from that, subject to unbearably high deductions for the public consumption funds. The population responds to the situation by tax evasion through possibility to receive informal salaries that has become a major priority in searching employment (all the employees working in the “diffuse economy” - sector of small and medium enterprises - receive unaccounted wages and salaries). The “effect” of tax evasion it also concerns the new middle class strata. The greatest tax-evaders are topmanagers and big bureaucrats, which prefer the shadow incomes. The general reform of the fiscal system provides benefits, but makes them liable to personal income tax. Although many doubts have been expressed about efficiency of relatively new systems of personal income taxation, this approach has the advantage that “prima facie” everybody receives the benefit as a right. Moreover, the extent of the leakage will give the tax authorities a stronger incentive to make efforts to improve the coverage and assessment of personal income taxation, which will progressively improve the targeting of benefits as the tax system becomes more efficient. The targeting of social benefits is much better improved by making them liable to taxation through the developing system of personal income taxation than by means-testing. Means-tested benefits are so

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poorly targeted and are bound to establish a poverty trap, the aim should be to ensure that as few people as possible should fall into extreme poverty. Although both are deficient, in the latter case it’s the poor who are the victims of the deficiencies of the system. However, it’s necessary to adopt contemporarily politics protecting the low-income strata of the population. The tax pressure on the low-income strata of the population could be raised through the following measures: a) fiscal deductions for the low-income big families and cancellation of the tax income which does not exceed the annual subsistence minimum; b) expansion of tax benefits for children through the use of not only the personified tax payment system, but also the family-based principle for tax calculation. It seems also reasonable to transfer the allocation of children’s allowances to the wage mechanism, which will allow to economize on administration of the allowances payment and will prevent delays and non-payments of this social transfer. Without a regressive scale for mandatory payments to public consumption funds it does not seem possible to legalize the informal income of the middle class strata of the population. With the current system of deductions and payments, social benefits which are received from the respective fund are actually not differentiated. Under the situation the poor pay little (or nothing) due to the low income. The rich do not pay at all for their income is concentrated in the informal sector. The middle class strata can be split up into two groups: those who legalize the greater part of the income and thus bear the maximum burden of tax payment, and those who are searching for adaptation strategies oriented to conceal the incomes. The use of a regressive scale will allow to decrease the tax burden of the major taxpayers which, in its turn, will contribute to the expansion of their (major taxpayers) social base. The gender-based analysis of poverty levels of the population and households has produced evidence of feminization of poverty in the Fsu Countries. Female poverty shows extreme patterns in the form of stagnant and exceptional poverty: the poorest among the poor. The opposition of the feminization of poverty through a set of targeted measures needs to have the following actions done: a) measures conducive to better competitiveness of women on the labour market through 1) industrial policies should be spearheaded not only toward the mineral resources sector that is largely relying on male labour, but also on the manufacturing industries that tend to concentrate female jobs (light and food industries, ecc.); 2) the nomenclature of public works should be revised to re-focus it from mostly male (road construction and building) to more female labour: nursing and elderly care, child care, ecc. The continued economic recovery is believed to result in the growth of mostly male vacancies (in natural resources and engineering industries).

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At the same time, in education, which is a traditionally female employment segment, vacancies decrease as a result of the demographic slump. The public works programmes (road construction and heavy municipal chores) are least of all designed to support women and even the programmes of training are scarce and are almost fully intended for managers, professionals, specialists, that are above all men. b) realization of women’s professional potential. A set of social measures here needs to provide for: 1) ensured access to childcare institutions, when special services are offered at home or outside home; 2) a more sophisticated household services industry that helps to create jobs for women on the one hand, and allows working mothers to continue in the job and take care of the household on the other; 3) introduction of specific measures targeting socially disadvantages categories of mothers (singlemothers, mothers of big families or incapacitated children) and designed to have employment agencies offering retraining or encouraging employers. The industrialization of household services alone cannot help equalize the time budgets for men and women, this being a single basic condition for the full equality of opportunities on the labour market. However, improved social infrastructure, together with other important issues of female employment, could help bridge the gap between men and women in terms of their realized social potential; c) the growth of official wages and salaries of low paid categories of employees, of which the women are the majority, and reduction in gender inequality in labour payment. A gender pay gap is evident everywhere in the world, and women are also earning less on average than men in the Fsu Countries. Nevertheless, the gender difference in wages, because of her size, is higher in the Fsu Countries than in the western Countries. This is the effect of the significant growth in overall wage inequality and the massive changes in the labour market during the transition. Wage discrimination of men and women is manifested at several levels. 1) wages and salaries of women in all sectors, even with prevailing female labour, are lower; 2) the differentiation of women’s wages and salaries within a certain sector and at an inter-sectoral level is considerably lower than that of men; 3) in male dominated sectors, women receive lower wages and salaries, while in female dominated sectors men are better paid; 4) if a woman works in a traditionally male dominated sector, her chances to earn more are higher than those of a woman of the same profession employed in the female dominated sector. Women’s equal pay and equal employment opportunity are also important for the well-being of children. Research in various Countries has demonstrated that a rise in the share of women’s earned income is beneficial for child welfare. In this regard, it is worth noting that the “net” pay gap (part that cannot be attributed to differences in job or human-

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capital characteristics) appears to be significantly greater than the value of public child/family allowances in the Fsu Countries. The syndical role in the Fsu Countries The affirming trade unions in the Fsu Countries must give up doing improper functions like that of organizing the productive processes, concentrating instead on the defensive function. The solution is surely found in the use of a classical instrument that in West, especially in Italy, has assumed a fundamental meaning for the realization of a defensive function, but that in the Fsu Countries ever had a dominant role. It concerns the collective bargaining that still today, although existing, it’s weak, patchy and not widespread at all levels. It’s necessary to give new contents to collective contracts, subtracting them from the ream of meaningless papers and making them an effective and organic instrument of the renewing syndical action. The trade union must become a social subject having a big moral integrity; it must be a free and independent organism from statal bodies, political parties, ecc. The central syndical organisms must renounce to the impositions toward works committees, leaving the faculty to last ones in defining at a local level their priorities. In this way, the syndical works organisms become free in defining executive policies to conduct inside the industries and enterprises. At the same time, they assume the faculty to determine the structure and numerical consistence of the staff of the superior organisms (district and regional) and contribute into the appropriate seats to the choice of the decisions of general character. A strong, independent and authoritative trade union, able to take and defend the own position, becomes today a reality expected by all the workers. Especially now when many legislative principles adopted in the Fsu Countries are found in sharp contrast with the interests of working class (in Kazakhstan the new labour code enacts the prohibition of strike, and in Belarus the labour contracts of the new entrants are only on a temporary basis). An important footstep toward the law-based state is represented from a great diffusion of juridical training to the syndical cadres. To this respect would be opportune to organize courses of juridical training on several matters like employment, pensions, house, ecc. The contractual initiative of the trade union becomes more and more articulated and complex: next to the traditional problems of the defence of workplace, more high and more correlated labour payments to the inflationary processes, more careful (to people needs) solution of the social problems, more active participation to the business politics which are currently the more discussed issues at the negotial tables, there are other ones also important and now often submitted to the syndical debate. They are: house (endless source of social tensions), public diet, health and safety of workers,

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ecological defence and environmental recovery, more effective and articulated professional training. It can be found a common point of arguments between East and West Europe on some emergent problems like environmental pollution, link between economy and criminal world and exclusion of wide social areas from the circuits of guarantee. The syndical reform in the Fsu Countries must not only concern greatest autonomy and the internal restructuring of the trade union. It also must operate for “remodelling” the mentality of the worker accustomed in the past to a purely formal adhesion (although total) to the trade union. A characteristic feature of social partnership in these Countries today is a considerable differentiation of forms and methods of interaction: from active position of the trade unions on protection of employees’ rights and quite developed forms of social dialogue at enterprises to full absence of any consideration to the employees’ interests and rejection of trade unionism in any form. Of no less importance is the fact that social dialogue up to now has failed to become the main principle of regulation of social and labour relations. The role of the trade union is to also promote an understanding of democracy and of a system of “social partnership” aimed at achieving an optimum balance of interests among the different subjects within the social partnership system (employers, employees, state, trade unions, government and the society as a whole). This understanding has to hold in due consideration the different ways performed by partner Countries: specific character of the emerging social partnership in the Fsu Countries stems from the fact that it’s developing on the background of traditions and values totally different from those that were forming the basis for the development of social dialogue between capital and labour in the Countries of advanced market economies. The transition from the state-run economy to a market one changed the very nature and character of all relations within the postsoviet societies (including social and labour relations). The syndical reform must take place together with the process of general democracy carried out in these Countries. At the same time, the trade union must collaborate with all recently born democratic movements, with all the informal associations that have a progressive position, to lend every required support to them and to realize joint demonstrations. The trade unions establish more and more intense relations with the enterprises, institutions and local administrations, starting complex political exchanges with the parties, corporate bodies of development and socio-economic promotion. With the introduction of the free market in the transition Countries, the problem of its regulation has arised. The free market can only develop in a democratic way in the presence of complex and elaborate juridical norms regulating it. Nowadays we need not only enterprise-managers but also trade unionmanagers, that is to say experts knowing how to plan out and lead a

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collective bargaining, looking for lines of compatibility between the interests of the workers and the economic restrictions imposed by the market. In the Fsu Countries, trade unions retain considerable rights to represent their members and monitoring the activity of employers, but barely exercise these rights. For example, the problem of low wages has to be confronted through a combination of legislative means and strengthening the role of trade unions as representatives of their members. The trade unions can regain authority and respect only through facts and concrete initiatives, directed to the satisfaction of the true needs of the workers. What happened in the regions of Astrakhan’ and Yasnogorsk, in Komi (the Federal Atomic Center) and in the Uralis, it is to show the importance of the role of the renewing trade union and of the high consideration of which it can enjoys among workers when it really fights to protect their rights. During the last years, in these regions, strikes, occupations of factories, legal actions against the top management, highway blockades and mass meetings have been organized. Disputies have been won for the payment of wage arrears, the increase in salaries, the reinstatement of workers illegally dismissed, for a stop to the failure of the factories, etc. These facts show that a foreground role is up to the regional and district syndical structures. The dedication of the trade unions toward a most scientific analysis of the public opinion and a deepest study of the organization, retributive, sanitary, housing, environmental issues and toward a more human politics, all this will facilitate in a decisive way the so expected turning point in activity and above all in the outcomes of trade unions themselves. The gender dimension in the Fsu Countries The transition period in the Fsu Countries, starting in the late 1980s and continuing up through the present day, has been accompanied by significant changes in women’s political, economic, and social status. Whereas much research and media attention during the transition period has focused on privatization and the development of a pluralistic political system, both of these realms tend to be populated by a predominantly male cast of characters, and as a result, the effects of the transition period on women remain largely hidden from view. To accelerate genuine development, gender issues need to be better integrated into the political and public agenda. The key areas for the implementation of “affirmative actions” in favour of women are: a) economic status. For several years, the former socialist Countries have been undergoing a transition from a centrally planned economy to a more market-oriented economic system. From a woman’s perspective, the process of transition to the free market has been accompanied by several

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disruptive and negative trends. The first of these trends is an increase in unemployment. Under the socialist regimes, the specter of unemployment was essentially unknown; the constitutions declared a “right to work” and enforced this right with severe penalties for those who found themselves jobless. Now unemployment has become a household word, particularly for women, who make up the vast majority of registered unemployed. The current growth of unemployment is shocking for women in the Fsu Countries, who under former rules had maintained an extremely high labour force participation rate: around 90 percent. The new trend toward pushing women out of the labour force is particularly hard for single mothers with dependent children; their salary is the sole source of family income. Women over thirty-five with young children are increasingly hard-pressed to find work. Not only they have on the job and hiring discrimination increased, but also the social welfare infrastructure undergirding mothers’ employment has been severely cut. In a society where fathers rarely take a large role in child care, women especially are left stunned by the rapid decline in availability of child care and other benefits, such as children’s camps, all of which melted away with the collapse of the soviet social welfare system. By 1994, as more and more single parent families slipped below the poverty line, government officials began to refer to the feminization of poverty. There are two fundamental reasons for the disproportionately high numbers of women among the unemployed. First, one can point to a wellentrenched system of vertical and horizontal occupational segregation by sex. Women predominate in certain industrial branches, including some of those hardest hit by the changes in the economic system and the collapse of the former socialist Countries, such as light industry, especially textiles. The salaries are decreased in the military-industrial complex (with almost all male), while they are increased in the light industry (where female labour force generally is prevailing). Nevertheless, in the last case, when jobs are available, the priority of assumption is granted to men that have the tendency in the time to replace women. A second reason for women’s unemployment has deeper roots but has been exacerbated by the privatization process. Now responsible for the profitability of their enterprises, employers prefer not to hire women knowing that women hold full responsibility for taking care of the family, including frequently sick children and aging parents. Also, women are the beneficiaries of maternity leave and other associated benefits. These facts and policies encourage the commonly held assumption among employers that women constitute a less desirable and productive workforce since their family responsibilities encroach on their work time. Thus women face the double-edged sword of the “double burden”; they are fully expected to take care of the family yet discriminated against at work for this very reason.

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Economic discrimination against women is hardly new, but it seems to be on the rise in the transition Countries. For decades, women have tended to work in branches of industry with low pay and low prestige. Despite an overall higher level of education than men, working women are clustered in lower skill categories. Women rarely attain the level of managers or industrial directors and their average pay is lower than men’s one. A second important trend affecting women adversely is a tremendous drop in the provision of public child care. This is one result concomitant to the process of structural readjustment, which entails a separation of the social welfare sphere from the industrial enterprise. Factories are shutting down childcare centers at unprecedented rates: many child care centers were closed, while others were privatized, placing them out of financial reach for many families. The effect of this combination has been to push women back to the home. What’s more, to make matters worse, most poverty indicators including those not based solely on income but on the satisfaction of basic needs, are based on household surveys that consider the family as a unit and assume that all members of a household share equality the income and resources available, independent of their age and gender. This results in underestimating the number of women living in poverty, since many of them are not able to satisfy their basic needs even when living in households above the poverty line. It should be said that women, along with men, now have opportunities to open small businesses and to enter the private sector. However, without enjoying the advantages of industrial directors, who were able to privatize their enterprises when the new economic rules came into play, women have had a harder time than men getting bank loans and credit and have few role models in the business sphere. Furthermore, the private sector offers a limited range of jobs for women. These are frequently secretarial jobs for young women with foreign language or computer skills. b) political status. Real decision-making power of women was especially located within the several structures of the communist party. But most of the female deputies were “mass representatives”, including several prototypical “milkmaid heroines of socialist labour”; in other words, token women who overfulfilled the economic plan and were present for essentially decorative and propaganda purposes. At present, with the passage from a quota-based political system to a free election-based one, the women’s participation is drastically decreased. There is a widespread feeling among people that women’s place is in the home, not in politics. This is substantiated by both national public opinion polls and anecdotal evidence.

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c) socio-cultural status. Social attitudes toward women and women’s roles in the transition Countries are frequently essentialist in nature and often openly sexist. Discrimination against women on the basis of sex forms the background to women’s sociocultural status. The widespread opinion that women should be at home raising the children, rather than working outside the home for a salary is a typical role stereotype persisting despite the fact that under current economic conditions most families require two salaries in order to meet the minimum living standards. It should be noted that according to the current constitutions of the mentioned above Countries, there is no discrimination against women. Men and women have equal rights and freedoms and equal opportunities to realize them. The lack of legal culture makes this principle, though a very progressive formulation, essentially meaningless. Given the weakness of the legal systems and the lack of a mechanism to enforce antidiscrimination legislation, the declaration of equal rights and opportunities for both sexes remains in effect only on paper. Job advertisements, for instance, openly exhibit discrimination on the basis of both sex and age, inviting applications exclusively from men in some cases. It isn’t unheard of to encounter an advertisement that states, “Seeking attractive woman, with european features, under 35, and without hang-ups.The latter phrase is even abbreviated as w/c (without complexes) and signifies either sex work or that the woman in question should be willing to put up with advances by bosses, clients, etc.; an institutionalized form of sexual harassment. The proliferation of beauty contests and pornography in Countries where for decades laws forbade the propagandizement of the cult of violence and pornography are seen by some women as downright oppressive and by others as simply a phase, during which the forbidden fruit of pornography has become a commonplace presence in both the public and private realm. Pornographic materials are sold in underground street crossings and naked-woman wallet calendars are a staple in many taxicabs. The transformation of women’s bodies into “objects of consumption” extends to television and printed advertisements, where women appear in traditionally feminine poses and seem to exist in order to serve men and please the male eye. The diffusion of these images does have an effect on women and on women’s self-image, not to mention on the ideas and stereotypes that men and women develop about women’s capacities and proper social roles. Numerous stereotypes about women, including very sexist expressions, continue to have currency today. Women are trying to fight discrimination and realize themselves as fullfledged members of society, through organizing. Beginning in the early 1990s, a large number of women’s groups sprang up, forming a nascent women’s movement. Women started to speak honestly in public about their lives and, along with a variety of organizations, a several number of women’s groups emerged. They met other foreign women’s movements

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and became transfixed by the goal of acquiring funding for travel to the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in September. As it has been said, women’s economic, political, and sociocultural status in the mentioned above Countries has suffered in many ways during the transition period. At present, the trend is toward pushing women out of the workplace and depriving them of their right to choose whether or not to work outside the home. Women are increasingly excluded from certain professions and are becoming more economically dependent. They are showered with sexist images and confronted by unsympathetic male politicians. For the masses of women (and people in general), the economic conditions of life are immiserating and the political conditions frustrating-even scary. However, the impoverished but enthusiastic women’s movement has emerged in its variety of forms with a great deal of potential for improving women’s status overall. Both the more feminist groups (by challenging stereotypes and promoting feminism) and the more pragmatic groups (by bringing women together, expressly to better women’s situation) present the possibility of new definitions of what it means to be a woman, as well as a radical challenge to male power. An important priority to realize, it concerns the building of a “network” with several groups and female associations of the transition Countries, and create a system of communication and constant exchange of experiences about gender dimension, above all with the western european Countries. The social networks and civil empowerment People need not only incentives, money and material resources, but also social support. Social networks are vital resources. Traditional networks based on reciprocity survived from prerevolutionary peasant society through the socialist period, but are now coming under increasing pressure with the growth of inequality which undermines reciprocity. Not nearly enough is known about the role of such social networks or the conditions under which they thrive, but one feature inherited from the previous period is that they tend to be narrow, confined to relatives and close friends, and so do not provide a strong basis for the development of community and civic organizations. Close inter-family ties to some extent compensate for the lack of government social support to families with kids. They support families with “private transfers” rendered in cash, in kind or in service. But this phenomenon today tends to grow and transform in line with the social changes in the society. The social isolation of the family is complemented by her civil and political isolation, which prevents her from defending and pressing for own interests. Democracy and good

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government start at the bottom, so that initiatives to reform institutions from above need to be complemented by measures to encourage participation from below by supporting the development of effective participatory communities, movements, informal organizations and civic structures at the base so that they can press for the social and civil rights. All these organisms can play an important part in supporting family by providing advice, aid and representation for those persons whose rights have been violated. The technology as a strategy for democratizazion The role of technology in the revolutions that led to the collapse of Countries of the former soviet coalition has been widely acknowledged. Indeed, it has been asserted that the socialist collapse could be called the “first foreign policy victory of the information age”. Many believe that we are in the midst of another revolution, a so called “information revolution”, in which technology has a role to play in the ongoing process of democratization. The information revolution is changing the balance of power between the state and the other social actors. New technologies have allowed activists in grass-roots organizations of all types to mobilize virtual communities and shine a spotlight upon issues of social and public interest, circumventing state control and connecting directly with international media channels. Access to new information and communication technologies is an important component in the transformation of post-soviet societies to democracy by allowing citizens unprecedented opportunities for free speech and political and social advocacy. Specifically, technology is thought to enhance democratization in the following way: it can help identify and publicize abuses or issues of public social concern, aid in the mobilization of interested and affected citizens upon specific issues across great distances, improve and simplify coordination of actions by citizens and organizations. For better or for worse, the information age has arrived in the Countries in transition, and there is a perceived need to rush to exploit the opportunities it promises. A lot of people have internet access today. An internet surfer can now click on to a plethora of web sites and take contacts directly with several organizations and activists. Access to new technology can be a strategy for developing and strengthening the networks. These networks can contribute to third-sector development by allowing groups to freely communicate with one another, with government, syndical organizations and the media, and with international community. Technology has helped build connectivity between organizations and transformed communication and information exchange, thereby helping to sustain a relatively small and geographically dispersed movements or groups. Of course, technology on its own is not a panacea, and access to it

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doesn’t mean to alter completely a way in which organizations, groups and other social actors interact or engage with their community. Generally, technology works best for movements, groups and organizations with a clear mission, target audience and defined goals: movements, groups, organizations that do not meet this criteria are unlikely to reap the benefits that technology has to offer. Anyway, the ones utilizing technology at a limited level may benefit in terms of increased communication between existing organizations as well as access to more information. It is clear that technology as a strategy for democratization must be an effective tool specifically tailored to the diffusion and knowledge of needs of the individuals and the organizations that by technology can lace useful links of international solidarity and struggles on common goals. To this respect interesting is the joint experience - using internet and e-mail - of russian workers and mexican ones. They decided to link their struggles as an important groundbreaking move. It comes in the spirit of the global anti-capitalist protests that were held in Seattle, Washington, Prague and elsewhere: “We need a globalization of our own struggle - the struggle of workers and poor people, uniting beyond national boundaries, fighting to ensure that there will be a best world future». Another experiences are those of the international movement of support to the protest actions organized in Russia against the labour code “Putin” and the struggle of Ontario (Canada) workers, facing a new labour legislation similar in many respects to the new russian one. Environmental safeguard and nuclear safety A theme to face with a certain urgency concerns the promotion of economic alternatives which would contribute to the development of environmentally safe (eco-compatible) livelihoods. This is possible developing at the same time a culture of environmental justice that differs from traditional ecological philosophies in that it seeks to combine a concern for the natural world with a consciousness of the presence of a large ethnic and class discrimination. In numerous towns, hundreds of workers and their families who live in the industrial settlements have over the years fallen victim to rampant industrial pollution, to cancer, lung diseases and sulphur poisoning. Throughout the world, poor and minority communities (particularly low-income communities) bear a disproportionately large burden of toxic contamination, and suffer the health problems and stigmatization that result from it. Pollution and other environmental problems have soared, while adequate medical care is now a luxury reserved for the rich. Particular importance must be granted to the institutional strengthening, to the legislation and environmental education in the Fsu

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Countries, as well as to the start of the cooperation as regards the struggle against the pollution and the disastrous ecological conditions of the industry and the nuclear centers in a transfrontier picture. As concerns the nuclear safety, an important footstep by the Fsu Countries will be their ratification of the international Convention on nuclear safety and their adhesion to the amendments of the Convention adopted in London in 1993, forbidding the unloading of radioactive refusals, as well as their adhesion to the Convention adopted in Vienna on civil responsibility as regards the nuclear damages. Particularly, it’s necessary to adopt a regulation that foresees the amelioration of the safety of industrial fittings, including the amelioration in a very short time of the mostly risky fittings, in the perspective, at the same time, of their as soon as possible closing. Therefore, all the measures about the preparation of the operations of fittings dismantlement must be activated without neglecting the inherent aspects to the fuel cycle and the management of the refusals. The attainment of an elevated nuclear safety level and a good management of the pipe-lines are all essential elements to the prevention of the nuclear catastrophes. The damages following the Chernobyl nuclear explosion in April 1986 in Belarus are incalculable. The impact of Chernobyl still affects all aspects of life in the afflict regions, as well in the Country as a whole. The United Nations has recognized the Chernobyl explosion as a disaster both global and regional in natural trascending boundaries and unprecedented in its radio-ecological consequences. The widening of the European Union to East The future of the EU depends on its ulterior widening. The idea to open the doors of the Union to Countries of the central and oriental Europe, besides Cyprus and Malta, has constituted, after the year 1989 and the fall of the wall in Berlin, the answer to necessity reorganizing on democratic bases, aimed at cooperation and economic development, the relations among all Countries of the european Continent. In the picture of the definition of the new strategic assignments of the Nato and its widening to East, the Union owes to also define the picture of its relationships with some Fsu Countries, particularly with Russia and Ukraine. The European Union has taken the first binding decisions on the widening during the vertex of Copenaghen in 1993, fixing the fundamental criteria to realize the adhesion of the new members. These criteria substantially foresee the attainment of suitable standards in the field of the democratic institutions and the affirmation of the law-based state, the modernization of the economic structures and the market ones, the ability to assume the complex of norms that already regulate the relations of current members States of the Union. This is the reason for

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which the widening can be defined like an evolutionary, global and inclusive process articulating in different tappes in relation to ripening tempi of each candidates Countries. The process of integration must be stimulated sustaining the effort that each partner Country must do to conform at the necessary levels to start a real negotiation. But it’s important to take account that every Country has traditions and different levels of development, avoiding in this way that run-up toward the objectives of the adhesion has negative effects, especially on the social sphere. The integration will be possible only if the reasons for the social cohesion and solidarity among the whole members States will be safeguard. The widening to East of Europe is an important opportunity, particularly as concerns the development of the programmes of transfrontier cooperation. The EU must start with Russia and Ukraine an open and profitable dialogue, such as to constitute a first footstep toward the future unity of the whole Continent. It must to establish a solid and lasting relationship with these Countries to promote the process of democratic and economic reforms, strengthen the respect of the human rights, consolidate peace, stability and security, so that to avoid new divisions in Europe and fully integrate these Countries in the community of the free and democratic Nations. Globalization and cooperation It’s important to make sure that laws and social-political and ecological activities of partner Countries have a human face, and facilitate the liquidation of all forms of oppression, exploitation, discrimination and violence from their models of development toward the establishment of new civilized relations. The possibilities for their realization demands intense attention. Here particular attention is due in order to define the problems of employment, labour, social security, development of social dialogue, realization of the idea of social justice, equality and equal opportunity for all citizens, in particular for those that are found in a deep crisis after the implementation of neo-liberalism and privatization in their former socialist Countries. A no less importance have these issues in the western european Countries, especially now with the progressive change of social, political and market relations due to process of globalization. It drives toward the integration of national economies and the uniform and comprehensive development of new life models, involving both eastern european Countries and western european Ones. From here the necessity to elaborate common strategies, monitoring the modern processes that occur in the economy, politics, ecology and public social life, in order to assure that there will be a stable and sustained growth, and an even distribution of the resources. In this context, it’s important the

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strengthening of the role of the NGOs, like instruments for a real participation of the civil society in the cooperation to the development. The generating actions of income, like the microcredit, the development of the small enterprise and in general the recognition of the popular economy as a motor of the local development, are also fundamental. The role of the NGOs must be strengthened in the initiatives of education to the development and of promotion of the equitable commerce based on solidariety. It’s necessary to simplify and to make more transparent the access of the decentralized and not government subjects to the instruments of international cooperation. The globalization, the evolution of the financial markets and the rapid technological progress have involved important transformations in the national and regional productive structures and in the labour organization. All this has not only had positive results, since the unemployment and the social exclusion have now become structural problems for the whole planet, the inequalities have grown more marked and the discrepancy between the North and the South of the world has not stopped becoming larger. About 1/4 of the inhabitants of the world still live today in extreme poverty, either material that human, conducting the own existence in absolutely precarious conditions from the point of view of the sanitary assistance, of the personal safety, of the schooling, of the social inclusion. Moreover, wars, armed conflicts, violations of the human rights, corruption and misgovernment require an approach of preventive type that calls for an active and full involvement of international community. In a more and more interdependent world, only the commitment and the effort of international community can allow to face in an effective way the problem of a sustainable, participatory and balanced socio-economic progress centered on the human needs. International security The explosion of new ethnic, religious or nationalistic conflicts, remaining or accentuating of economic unbalances at world level, the danger of environmental catastrophes and of serious humanitarian crises, all this imposes the necessity of common international politics aimed at maintaining peace and stability in the world. At first, it’s necessary to sustain and consolidate the right to security, keeping track of the new international reality and inspiring to the democratic principles with respect to a balanced geopolitical world representation based on mutual solidarity. The principles of peaceful coexistence have won broad international recognition and have been incorporated into scores of several international instruments, but each step along the road to more durable peace has taken and does take a lot of

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efforts. It calls for intense and joint struggle against the international terrorism that has become especially active now, but it also calls for the construction of relationships and links of international cooperation on common strategic goals that overcomes the logic of the opposed blocks even more monstrous today, because it would be founded not only on the ideological hate but also on the ethnic, religious and nationalistic one. The need for peace and security is of particular importance today when the international tension is markedly increasing after the events of 11 september and with the worsening of the situation in the Middle East. After the 11 September, the russian President has changed his political line toward the appeasement with America - his Country is entering the “western living- room” of the international geopolitics - despite russian Parliament, the Duma, has not supported his choice (only 15% of deputies supported presidential line) and continues to put obstacles in it. Within the euromediterranean politics, a fundamental strategic importance must have the active, political and economic support to the process of peace in Middle East taking account of the accords undersigned by Israelis and Palestinians. The war and violence are still an usual method of social, political and ideological confrontation and Countries have weapons that can destroy human civilization and all life on our planet. The efforts of Countries, the activities of governments and organized political forces should now all be directed toward preventing acts of international terrorism and a nuclear catastrophe with negotiations on all matters concerning the limitation and reduction of armaments, and for the application of various accords or stipulated conventions, like that of Ottawa about the complete elimination of the terrestrial anti-man mines. With the agreement signed by Russia and Nato in Rome, the United States and Russia have not - contrary to conventional wisdom - ended the cold war, which in a formal way concluded more than a decade ago with the demise of the Soviet Union. Actually, the summit marks the beginning of serious joint efforts to deal with legacies of the cold war - thousands more nuclear weapons that needed for reliable deterrence, and Nato as an exclusive military alliance with Russia as an outsider - that threatened to become obstacles to practical cooperation. The american and russian leaderships must now begin work on the meaningful agenda: defeating global terrorism, preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, involving Russia into international economy, to give up its citizens a stake in building a democratic and prosperous future, with the appointment by the same Country to carry out to the obligations as concerns the liberalization of the commercial politics. Finally settling crises outside Russia’s and Nato’s zone responsability. Above all, that concerned the India-Pakistan crisis and the situation in Central Asia. Of course, anchoring Russia, or other Countries of former soviet coalition, in

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international organizations makes sense only if the rules, norms and laws governing those organizations are then applied to Russia. This to date has not been the case, and the international community has therefore missed an opportunity to make the demand for the protection of rights inside Russia a priority. There is a cost to this inaction for international security, especially with regard to the ongoing war in Chechnya. The way in which the russian forces have conducted their anti-terror campaign in Chechnya is profoundly counterproductive; this is not a clean campaign but one freighted with serious abuses that have alienated the local population and made them more susceptible to the appeal of extremism. Big agricultural lands are now mined. This is the reason for which the economy in Chechnya is reduced at the level of pure survival and the society has lost its stability. Bibliography - G.S. Goldberg, E. Kremen (eds.), Feminization of Poverty: Only in America? (Contributions in Women’s Studies, No. 117), Paperback, Dec. 1990. - B. Van Praag, R.J. Flik, Poverty Lines and Equivalence Scale. A Theoretical and Empirical Evolution. Poverty Measurement for Economies in Transition in Eastern European Countries, International Scientific Conference, Warsaw, Oct. 1991. - World Bank-Socio-Economic Data Division, “Measuring the Incomes of Economies of the Former Soviet Union”, World Bank PRE Working Papers, n. 1057, 1992. - C. Corrin (ed.), Superwomen and the Double Burden: Women’s Experience of Change in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, Paperback, Sep. 1992. - H. Flakierski, Income Inequalities in the Former Soviet Union and its Republics, Sharpe, London, 1992. - Fozouni, Shirin, A. Gelb, M. Schrenk, “Economic Crashes and Recovery Prospects in Eastern Europe: Some Comparable Lessons”, mimeo, Jul. 1992. - Rai, Shirin, H. Pilkington, A. Phizacklea (eds.), Women in the Face of Change: the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China, Routledge, New York, NY, 1992.

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- N. Funk, M. Mueller, Gender Politics and Post-Communism, Routledge, New York, 1993. - G.S. Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations: The Caucasus and Post-Soviet Disorder, Zed, London, 1994. - D. Kaufmann, A. Kaliberda, “Integrating the Unofficial Economy into the Dynamics of Post-Socialist Economies: A Framework of Analysis and Evidence” (Presented at the Russian Littoral Seminar at Odessa, Ukraine), mimeo, Aug. 1995. - R.J. Marsh, “Women, Politics and Society in Post-Communist Russia and the Former Soviet Union”, Europa, n. 2, 1995. - B. Milanovič, “Poverty, Inequality and Social Policy in Transition Economies”, World Bank PRE Working Papers Series, n. 1530, Dec. 1995. - M. Ravallion, D. van de Walle, M. Gautam, “Testing a Social Safety Net”, Journal of Public Economics, 1995. - S. Commander, Q. Fan, M.E. Schaffer, Enterprise Restructuring and Economic Policy in Russia, The World Bank, Washington, DC., 1996. - H. Goscilo, B. Holmgren (eds.), Russia, Women, Culture, Indiana U. P., Bloomington,1996. - B.E. Kaminski, Economic Transition in Russia and the New States of Eurasia, Sharpe, London, 1996. - E. Klopov, Vtoričnaja zanyatost’ kak forma social’no-trudovoj mobil’nosti (The second job like form of social-working mobility), in Trudovye peremeščenija i adaptacija rabotnikov (Gli spostamenti di lavoro e l’adattamento dei lavoratori), IMEMO, Moskvà, 1996. - R.J. Marsh, Introduction: Women’s Studies and Women’s Issues in Russia, Ukraine and the Post-Soviet States, in R.J. Marsh (ed.), Women in Russia and Ukraine, Cambridge U. P., New York, 1996. - B. Milanovič, “Income, Inequality and Poverty During the Transition in Eastern Europe: A Survey of the Evidence”, MOCT, n. 1, 1996. - M. Buckley (ed.), Post-Soviet Women - From the Baltic to Central Asia, Cambridge U. P., Cambridge, 1997.

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- M. Lokshin, B.M. Popkin, The Emerging Underclass in the Russian Federation: Income Dynamics 1992-96, Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, 1997. - B. Milanovič, Explaining the Growth in Inequality during the Transition in Inequality and Poverty in Transition Economies, EBRD, London, 1997. - S. Clarke, Poverty in Transition: Final Report (Report Prepared for the Department for International Development), London, Dec. 1997. - S. Clarke, The rich Get Richer…Reply to Anders Aslund for Transition (Report Prepared for the Department for International Development), London, Dec. 1997. - Certain Issues of Labor Payments in Countries with Economy in Transition, Publication of the ILO Bureau, 1999. - Le donne e il processo di transizione, Rapporto dell’Unicef, 1999. - C. Corrin (ed.), Gender and Identity in Central and Eastern Europe, Paperback, Jul. 1999. - L. Prokof’eva, P. Festi, O. Muračeva, “Professional Career of Men and Women” in Voprosy ekonomiki, n. 3, 2000. - “Social Assistance in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia and Russia”, Safety Nets, The World Bank Group, 14 Mar. 2000. - L.M. Prokofieva et al., Feminization of Poverty in Russia (Report Prepared for the World Bank), Moscow, 2000. - Waiting for Europe, L’Espresso, Feb. 2002. - J.E. Stiglitz, La globalizzazione e i suoi oppositori, Einaudi, 2000. - Advance Social Watch Report, 2003.

Copyright: CESPI (International Problems Study Center of Sesto San Giovanni - Milan, Italy) - February 2004.

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