Full Description
One of the main ideas behind this book was to trace continuities from the Soviet time to post-Soviet Russia. There are many similarities between Russia and Ukraine, indicating such a continuation. Russia and Ukraine had a lot in common in terms of culture, language and history, partly also because of their common origin. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, the two independent countries chose different routes of development. This makes it possible to distinguish between the effects of politics/reforms on the one hand, and the impacts from the Soviet system on the other. After some more or less chaotic development paths in the 1990s, showing clear differences between the two countries, and before the contemporary conflict broke out in Eastern Ukraine (2013), they had once again more similarities in terms of political leadership and policies in general.
The chapters in this book focus on Ukraine and on two regions in Russia: Nizhny Novgorod and Archangelsk. Contributors look at attitudes towards poverty and poor people; strategies of the poor; and policies against poverty. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe.
Contents
1. Attitudes, Poverty and Agency in Russia and Ukraine 2. Perceptions of Poverty in Small-town Russia 3. Homelessness in Ukraine: Structural Causes and Moral Evaluation 4. Families' Ways of Coping with Poverty in Small-town Russia 5. Single Men, Single Stories: Alternative Paths in the Transition from the Late Soviet to the Neoliberal Market Economy in the Light of Life Stories 6. The Ukrainian Power Elite and Poverty Reductive Efforts: An Inquiry into a Selection of Elite Members' Legislative and Philanthropic Initiatives 7. Policies Against Poverty in Russia - A Female Responsibility 8. Searching for a New Approach to Face Poverty on the Local Level, a Case Study in a Small Russian Town
