Authors

Alissa Klots¹;  ¹ University of Pittsburgh, United States

Discussion

In the late 1950s Nikita Khrushchev renewed a push for replacing government agencies with volunteer organizations – a process that was supposed to contribute to the “withering away of the state” under communism. Growing visibility of public (obschestvennye) organizations such as housing committees, people’s guards, women’s soviets, and comrade courts became the hallmark of the epoch. This presentation explores the impact of the 1956 pension reform on the development of volunteerism after Stalin. It seeks to demonstrate that older volunteers played an outsized role in public organizations. I argue that for those older citizens who had dedicated their lives to building socialism, retirement was both a challenge, as it removed them from the workforce, and an opportunity, as it allowed them to pursue their vision of socialism through volunteerism.