Society in motion: Russia's emerging voluntary sector

Abstract

During autumn I993 and spring 1994, the iruthor worked as a consultant and trainer for a group of independent social organizations in the city of Voronezh, central Russia. In this article he discusses the main features of voluntary sector development in that city and the characteristics of associations currently active there. Thefindings indicate a voluntary sector that is both extensive and diverse, in which self-organizing mutual aid is the predominant organizational form. The findings are discussed against a historical background that traces the development of independent social activism in the former Soviet Union buck to the pre-Gorbachev period. It is this background that may help to explain the rapid growth and surprising complexity of the sector today.HIS article considers an issue that has so far received little attention in academic discourse, either from speciaiists in T Soviet and post-Communist studies or from researchers of voluntary sector organization. For a brief period in the late 1980s, political scientists in particular wrote a good deal about the multitude of unofficial social movements that appeared in Russia in the wake of Glasnost, but this was principally because these movements were regarded as political parties in the making and as harbingers of a transition to a multiparty system. Less interest was shown in the wider impact on Soviet society of the new activism, one result of which was that literally hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens were able, for virtually the first time, to articulate their needs and grievances without fear of recrimination and to participate in the work of grassroots organizations over which they exercised genuine control.In this article, I summarize the development of independent social organizations during the Gorbachev revolution and place this change in its historical context. Moving to the present day, I consider Note: The title of the article is taken from Mikhail Gorbachev's (1988) Perestroika.

A brigade model for the management of service volunteers: lessons from the former Soviet Union

“…The collapse of the Soviet regime resulted in the termination of a wide variety of free or low-cost health care and welfare services 7,8 and left many needy groups without a valid safety net. 9 In spite of the pressing need, however, there is a pronounced lack of voluntary activity in the post-Soviet society, especially in welfare work.…”

The first seven years of nonprofit management and leadership

“…Also, I hope we see an expansion of published research devoted to nonprofit management in an international perspective. Felice D. Perlmutter (1995) and Duncan Leitch (1997) have opened the doors, but the world is a lot bigger than even mother Russia.…”

“…Felice D. Perlmutter (1995) and Duncan Leitch (1997) have opened the doors, but the world is a lot bigger than even mother Russia.…”

Overcoming the barriers: a case study of service volunteers in post‐Soviet Russia

“…The collapse of the Soviet regime terminated the provision of a variety of free or low priced health care and welfare services and left needy groups without any meaningful safety net (Leitch, 1997;Twigg, 2000). Yet a pronounced lack of participation in voluntary activity, especially in welfare work, typifies the post-Soviet society (Zelikova, 1996).…”

“…Yet a pronounced lack of participation in voluntary activity, especially in welfare work, typifies the post-Soviet society (Zelikova, 1996). This is attributed to cultural and sociodemographic barriers to voluntary action, which include a distrust of voluntarism, lack of a tradition that values and promotes volunteer work (Leitch, 1997), paternalistic attitudes towards clients (Pshenitsyna, 2000) and the absence of models for formal volunteer programmes (Zelikova, 1996). The two major sociodemographic barriers are the low income of the population and its secularism.…”