The Role of the Voluntary Sector in Supporting Living Standards in Central Asia

Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Soviet state was to have developed, during a relatively short period of history, a guaranteed level of subsistence and social services. One of the costs of this security was, by asserting the pre-eminent role of the state to provide for its citizens’ basic welfare, and through the monolithic political structure which made this possible, to discourage organised non-state initiatives to improve welfare. At the household level, as one would expect, people adapted their practices in order to make optimum use of entitlements, as well as to augment what the state provided. Coudouel et al. point out (Chapter 11) that the Soviet system probably stimulated (rather than suppressed) individual household action in the form of private transfers. Inter-household transfers and food production on household plots are examples of private initiatives to improve welfare which are even more important now than they were before independence (see Howell, 1994). However, this chapter will not examine private transactions among households, but will look at what could be called voluntary action: public action to improve welfare, by non-state actors. In essence this refers to community groups and to NGOs.