Russian revolution and the modern welfare state

The welfare state is a deliberately designed political and legal social institution that allows more equal distribution of material wealth, thereby contributing to the preservation of social in the society. Despite the fact that the very idea of a welfare state started to be implemented Europe already in the second half of the 19th century, it was the 1917 revolution in Russia that dramatically intensified this process, ultimately leading to the emergence of a welfare in the form in which it existed in 1960s and 70s, a period considered to be its “golden ”. If before that the idea of social guarantees for workers was one of the main slogans of the Social Democracy, which viewed the welfare state as an intermediate stage in the of a socialist society, after the revolution other political forces came to realize the for large-scale social reforms. It was necessary to take into account, in particular, the use of the example of the Soviet Union in communist propaganda. Despite the problems the functioning of the Soviet welfare state, the very fact of its existence in the context the global confrontation between two ideological and political systems made political elites keep in mind the question of the volume and quality of social services, raising the level of material well-being of the citizens. Therefore, it can hardly be considered incidental the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union practically coincided the full-scale crisis of the Western welfare state.