Abstract
The population of the Soviet Union, like that of other advanced industrial societies, has been growing older. The number of persons of pension age (55 and above for women, 60 and above for men) increases with each passing year, and today they constitute a significant proportion of the country’s total population. On the eve of World War II, only 8.9 per cent of the men and women living in the USSR were of pension age. By 1959, this figure had risen to 12.7 per cent by 1970 to 15 per cent and by 1979 to 15.5 per cent.1 As of 1 January 1984, some 37.2 million Soviet citizens were receiving old-age pensions, an astonishing seven-fold increase from the 1961 number of 5.4 million.2
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Notes
Stephen Sternheimer, ‘The Graying of the Soviet Union,’ Problems of Communism, vol. XXXI, no. 5 (September–October, 1982), pp. 81–82;
A. G. Novitskii in A. Z. Maikov and A. G. Novitskii, in Problemy nepolnogo rabochego vremeni i zaniatost’ naseleniia (Moscow, 1975) p. 49.
For an effort to assess the impact of Stalin’s terror, see Iosif G. Dyadkin, Unnatural Deaths in the USSR, 1928–1954 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1983).
For a discussion of urbanization and its consequences, see David E. Powell, ‘The Rural Exodus,’ Problems of Communism, vol. XXIII, no. 6 (November–December, 1974) pp. 1–13, and Novitskii, op. cit., p. 49.
Ibid. Western scholars have been engaged in a heated debate, trying to explain whether the increase is real or apparent. According to Feshbach and Davis, official Soviet data reflect a genuine rise in infant mortality. Jones and Grupp have suggested that much of the apparent rise is merely a statistical artifact, reflecting improved data collection and higher birthrates in Central Asia. See Christopher Davis and Murray Feshbach, Rising Infant Mortality in the USSR in the 1970s, US Bureau of the Census, Series P-95, no. 74 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1980);
Ellen Jones and Fred W. Grupp, ‘Infant Mortality Trends in the Soviet Union’, Population and Development Review, vol. 9, no. 2 (June 1983) pp. 213–46.
Murray Feshbach, ‘Issues in Soviet Health Problems,’ in US Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Soviet Economy in the 1980s: Problems and Prospects, Part 2 (Washington, DC, 1983) p. 205.
For a discussion of the influence of alcoholism and other factors contributing to the decline in life expectancy, see B. Ts. Urlanis, Problemy dinamiki naseleniia SSSR (Moscow, 1974) pp. 187, 188.
Murray Feshbach, ‘Population and Manpower Trends in the USSR’, Occasional Paper no. 34, Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies (Washington, DC., 1978), p. 92.
Murray Feshbach and Stephen Rapawy, ‘Soviet Population and Manpower Trends and Policies’, in US Congress, Joint Economic Committee, The Soviet Economy in New Perspective (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1976).
Abram Bergson, ‘The Soviet Economic Slowdown’, Challenge, January–February, 1978, p. 24.
Testimony before the Joint Economic Committee, US Congress, Subcommittee on International Trade, Finance, and Security Economics, Central Intelligence Agency Briefing on the Soviet Economy (1 December 1982), mimeograph, pp. 20–1.
Allen Kroncher, ‘How Can the Soviet Union Increase Its Work Force?’, Radio Liberty Research, RL 145/78 (28 June 1978).
Ekonomicheskaia gazeta, no. 4 (1977). See also V. P. Belov (ed.), Trudosposobnost’ pensionerov po starosti: Voprosy stimulirovaniia i organizatsii ikh truda (Moscow, 1975) p. 140. Hereafter cited as Belov.
See David E. Powell, ‘The Soviet Labour Force’, Current History, vol. 83, no. 485 (October 1984) p. 330.
Solomon M. Schwarz, Labor in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1951), p. 329.
Lazar Volin, A Century of Russian Agriculture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970) p. 428.
Novitskii, op. cit., p. 56. For slightly different figures, see M. S. Lantsev, Sotsial’noe obespechenie v SSSR: Ekonomicheskii aspekt (Moscow, 1976).
Sternheimer, op. cit., p. 83; William Moskoff, ‘Part-Time Employment in the Soviet Union’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXIV, no. 2 (April 1982), pp. 277–8; Sotsial’noe obespechenie, no. 5 (1984) p. 3.
Moskoff, op. cit., pp. 279–80. See also A. G. Novitskii and G. V. Mil’, Zaniatost’ pensionerov: Sotsial’no-demograficheskii aspekt (Moscow, 1981) p. 94.
Cited in ibid, p. 51. See also V. G. Kostakov, Prognoz zaniatosti naseleniia (Moscow, 1979) p. 86.
Novitskii, op. cit., p. 50. See also the article by A. Tkachen in D. I. Valentei et al. (ed.), Naselenie i trudovye resursy RSFSR (Moscow, 1982) p. 78.
See the remarks of Leonid Brezhnev at the 24th Party Congress in 1971, Pravda, 31 March 1971. See also the statement of D. Komarova, Minister of Social Security of the Russian Republic, Sotsial’noe obespechenie, no. 5 (1984) pp. 3–7.
See David E. Powell, ‘The Emerging Health Crisis in the Soviet Union’, Current History, vol. 84, no. 504 (October 1985) pp. 325–8 and 340.
A. E. Kozlov, Sotsial’noe obespechenie v SSSR (Moscow, 1981) pp. 79–80. The law, promulgated on 2 September 1981 by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, may be found in Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, op. cit., pp. 492–3.
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© 1987 Jan Adam
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Powell, D.E. (1987). Manpower Constraints and the Use of Pensioners in the Soviet Economy. In: Adam, J. (eds) Employment Policies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08756-3_9
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