Is the Russian federation a social state?

摘要

When the Soviet Union was being disintegrated, one of the great many arguments in favor of its destruction was the imperative necessity of replacing the "totalitarian state" with a "social" one. The totalitarian state was pictured as an absolute evil on the grounds that human rights and freedoms (without specifying them) were, allegedly, totally suppressed there. Glasnost was ferociously throttled, and people were compelled, sometimes beyond their own will, to solve problems that the state put before them; that is, they were small "cogs" in its gigantic and soulless machinery. Apologists of a "new" Russia intensively introduced into the mass consciousness the idea that the principal goal of the powers in a social state would be the allembracing betterment of the quality of life of all people, meeting the interests of the whole society, and reaching the universal good. It seems expedient to appraise, after a quarter of a century, how fully this really attractive goal has been implemented.