Conclusions and Epilogue

Abstract

There was no voluntary sector in the USSR before 1985. Officials claimed that charity was a phenomenon which, like feminism or nationalism, could not exist in a socialist state. The state would provide. However, the truth of this claim was increasingly open to question. Before 1985, individuals recognized that the state was unable to meet need in specific cases; among disabled people, there seems to have been widespread understanding that this was part of a more general problem with state welfare provision. Under Gorbachev, glasnost made clear to the public at large the extent of this failure and exposed the fact that a growing complex of social problems had been simply ignored by the authorities.