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8. Gains and Losses, 1991–2010
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8 gAins And losses 1991–2010 In the 1990s, the peoples of the fifteen nations that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia , Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan , Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan—set about remaking their political and economic systems. The largest and most populous of these successor states was Russia, presided over for eight years by President Boris yeltsin. A courageous, boisterous, undisciplined man, yeltsin seemed to embody the chaos of the 1990s. In 1999 he handed power to his handpicked successor, a former intelligence agent named Vladimir Putin. Putin rebuilt the power of the center, repressed critics, and pursued an assertive foreign policy. In 2008, at the end of the two terms permitted to the president by the new Russian constitution, he became prime minister and was succeeded as president by an ally, Dmitri Medvedev. Some of the governments of the other republics were more democratic than Russia’s, some less. In Belarus and Central Asia, Soviet-era leaders and renamed communist parties remained in power into the early twentyfirst century. Ukraine and the states of the Baltic and Caucasus developed more democratic regimes. All these governments instituted similar economic reforms: they shut down inefficient factories, privatized some state-owned enterprises, encouraged the creation of privately owned farms and businesses, and cut funding for social services and benefits programs. These developments had similar consequences for women across the former Soviet Union (FSU). Many, particularly the elderly, felt that much had been lost with the passing of a system that was a source of security and pride for those who had worked so hard to build it. These feelings of loss were fed by severe economic problems. Unemployment rose, especially for Gains and Losses, 1991–2010 c 287 women, as did the cost of living; social services declined. Gender values and practices were not much affected, and so the double shift became still more laborious. The post-Soviet period did bring more freedom of information and expression, particularly in the European republics and the Caucasus. Relaxation of censorship made it possible to read a much greater variety of books and periodicals, more people could travel abroad, and many had access to the internet. Property rights were extended with the legalization of private business and farming. The easing of controls that occurred in some republics enabled women to set up thousands of voluntary organizations . Greater religious freedom permitted still more Christian women to join convents, Muslim ones to teach the faith in girls’ schools, and Siberian shamans to practice their healing arts openly. These new liberties resulted in still more social activism among women and the most unfettered consideration of gender arrangements since the revolutionary era. Women’s Work in the Post-Soviet World For the great majority of women, the post-Soviet period began with great hardship. When antiquated factories were closed and government ministries downsized, some managers responded as they had in the NEP years, that is, they laid women off and refused to hire new ones because they judged women more expensive employees than men. Government figures suggest that roughly the same percentages of women and men lost their jobs in Russia; in Ukraine, in the Caucasus, and among some native people in Siberia, more women than men became unemployed. Most people remained officially employed, but received no wages for months or were paid only with goods from the enterprise or produce from the collective farms. They stayed on the job because there were so few others available and because they hoped thereby to remain vested in government pension programs.1 Making the situation worse was the fact that the cost of living rose, wiping out savings and reducing the value of already meager incomes. This occurred because governments had pegged local currencies to international standards, because expensive imports flooded in and domestic manufacturing dropped, and because the resulting economic depression cut government revenues, causing funding for social services to fall and the price of those services to the public to rise. The poverty was worst in the places that had always been poorest—the countryside, small towns, Central Asia, 288 c A History of Women in Russia native settlements in Siberia—and among the most vulnerable—children, the disabled, the elderly, and single mothers. Single older women, who made up the great majority of those living on pensions, were particularly hard hit. Hundreds of them begged outside subway stations and churches in the mid-1990s. More fortunate people...