When Things Fall Apart : Qualitative Studies of Poverty in the Former Soviet Union

462 Pages·2003·2.52 MB·English

by  Nora Dudwick

When Things Fall Apart
Qualitative Studies of Poverty
in the Former Soviet Union
Cover: Privatization of the nearby collective farm prompted this Kyrgyz family
to return to a semi-nomadic life of herding sheep.Photo by Kathleen Kuehnast
When Things Fall Apart
Qualitative Studies of Poverty
in the Former Soviet Union
Edited by
Nora Dudwick, Elizabeth Gomart, and
Alexandre Marc, with Kathleen Kuehnast
Foreword by
Ravi Kanbur
Washington, D.C.
© 2003 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank
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Washington, DC 20433
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All rights reserved.
First Printing December 2002
1234 05 04 03 02
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ISBN 0-8213-5067-6
Cover photo:Kathleen Kuehnast
Design: Naylor Design, Inc., Washington, DC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
When things fall apart: qualitative studies of poverty in the former Soviet Union / edited by
Nora Dudwick, Elizabeth Gomart, Alexandre Marc.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8213-5067-6
1. Poverty—Former Soviet republics. 2. Former Soviet republics—Economic conditions.
I. Dudwick, Nora., 1949- II. Gomart, Elizabeth, 1967- III. Marc, Alexandre, 1956-
HC340.P6 W46 2002
339.4’6’0947—dc21
2002024162
Contents
Foreword vii
Acknowledgments ix
About the Authors xi
Map of the Former Soviet Union xiv
Introduction: A Qualitative Approach to Understanding 1
“New” Poverty in the Former Soviet Union
PART I. BACKGROUND 7
Chapter 1: A Window on Social Reality: Qualitative Methods 9
in Poverty Research
Chapter 2: From Soviet Expectations to Post-Soviet Realities: 21
Poverty During the Transition
PART II. THE KYRGYZ REPUBLIC, TAJIKISTAN, AND 29
UZBEKISTAN
Chapter 3: Poverty Shock: The Impact of Rapid Economic 33
Change on the Women of the Kyrgyz Republic
Kathleen Kuehnast
Chapter 4: Between Civil War and Land Reform: 57
Among the Poorest of the Poor in Tajikistan
Elizabeth Gomart
Chapter 5: Standing on a Knife’s Edge: 95
Doing Business in Uzbekistan
Elizabeth Gomart
vi | When Things Fall Apart
PART III. ARMENIA AND GEORGIA 113
Chapter 6: When the Lights Went Out: Poverty in Armenia 117
Nora Dudwick
Chapter 7: No Way Back: Social Exclusion among the 155
Poorest in Armenia
Appendix A: Losing Ground: The Education and 193
Health Sectors in Armenia
Appendix B: Trying to Reach the Poor: The Paros 205
Social Assistance Program
Elizabeth Gomart
Chapter 8: No Guests at Our Table: Social Fragmentation 213
in Georgia
Nora Dudwick
PART IV. UKRAINE AND MOLDOVA 259
Chapter 9: “Children Have Become a Luxury:” Everyday 263
Dilemmas of Poverty in Ukraine
Catherine Wanner and Nora Dudwick
Chapter 10: After the Return: The Struggle of the Crimean 301
Tatars to Reintegrate
Elizabeth Gomart
Chapter 11: Eating from One Pot: Survival Strategies in 333
Moldova’s Collapsing Rural Economy
Hermine G. De Soto and Nora Dudwick
PART V. LATVIA 379
Chapter 12: Prosperity and Despair: Riga and the Other Latvia 383
The Institute of Philosophy and Sociology (Riga),
with Nora Dudwick
Conclusion: Toward a Better Understanding of the 427
Multiple Dimensions of Poverty in Transition Societies
Research Teams 431
Index 435
Foreword
There are three interrelated reasons why this book is to be welcomed: atti-
tudinal, methodological, and political.
By attitudinal I mean that the book departs from the normal perspective
of analysts in the international agencies and elsewhere, from seeing poverty
in terms of dry statistics to seeing it in terms of human experience. Much of
the analysis of poverty has been deeply technocratic in its orientation. There
is nothing wrong with this, except when it becomes the exclusive focus. It is
important to take a dispassionate view of the causes and consequences of
poverty, and to gauge the broad trends through reliable statistics. But the
motivation for attacking poverty has deeper wellsprings. It comes from the
human connection to the experiences of others—from the instinctive feel-
ing that, but for the grace of God, those experiences could be ours. Listen-
ing directly to the voices of the poor, unmediated by national statistical
offices, is an important part of establishing this connection.
By methodological I mean that qualitative methods in poverty analysis
complement the more standard quantitative techniques that international
agencies have used to great effect. There is a misconception among quanti-
tative analysts that qualitative analysis is “soft” and without rigor. Nothing
could be further from the truth. As the papers in a forthcoming conference
volume I am editing have established, quantitative analysis often has only
the appearance of hardness.1 And as shown both there and in this book,
anthropologists and sociologists have high methodological standards, too.
Moreover, this is not an either-or issue. Poverty analysis needs both quanti-
tative and qualitative methodologies if it is to be complete and compre-
hensive, and each can help the other. This book demonstrates convincingly
the insights that qualitative analysis can bring to standard quantitative
analysis.
By political I mean relevance to policy, and this encapsulates the method-
ological and the attitudinal. I have often found that policymakers’ suspi-
cions of technical analysts stem from a feeling that they, the policymakers,
inhabit the real world whereas the analysts do their work in some other
world, one without real people. Some of the policy prescriptions that we
viii | When Things Fall Apart
analysts offer are dismissed, because a policymaker can see the difficulty of
implementing them in a real world of real people with real feelings and real
responses to the policy. The tension between the real world of policymakers
and the more abstract world of analysts is a healthy one, provided each
group learns from the other. This requires analysts as a community to be
more aware of real people, and this book is an important contribution to
that process.
The former Soviet Union is fertile territory in which to explore the inter-
action between qualitative and quantitative analysis. The high expectations
of the transition from central planning—ironically, a system that was driv-
en by a seemingly rational and quantitative logic—have clearly not been
met. The debate over why what happened, happened will no doubt contin-
ue. But what did happen affected real people, and this book documents
their stories. In doing so, it illuminates some of the causes of poverty and
some of the reasons why the transition has had such devastating effects in
terms of poverty. One may hope that, in combination with more standard
quantitative analysis, the qualitative analysis presented in this book can
help policymakers design better the next phase of the transition.
Ravi Kanbur
T. H. Lee Professor of World Affairs and Economics
Cornell University
1 Qual-Quant: Qualitative and Quantitative Poverty Appraisal: Complementarities, Tensions and the
Way Forward, Proceedings of a Conference Held at Cornell University, March 15-16, 2001, edited
by Ravi Kanbur. New Delhi: Permanent Black Publishers. Forthcoming.
Available online at www.people.cornell.edu/pages/sk145/papers/QQZ.pdf.
Acknowledgments
This volume has been many years in the making. The earliest study report-
ed here was carried out in 1993; the most recent was completed in 1998. It
was in 1999, however, that the editors first discussed gathering these stud-
ies into a single volume. There are many people whose contributions over
this long gestation we wish to thankfully acknowledge.
First, we thank the members of the research teams that made each of the
studies possible. Many of them were already trained in the social sciences or
were graduate students; the remainder came from a range of disciplines and
occupations: medicine, social work, teaching, journalism, law, or non-
governmental organizations. Some had worked with poor people before;
others were deeply shocked by what they learned about their own country.
Without their intelligence, willingness to work long hours in uncomfortable
conditions, and serious commitment to the task, these studies would not
have been as compelling as they are.
Several colleagues have provided feedback at different stages of the
process. Deniz Kandiyoti (School of Oriental and African Studies, Universi-
ty of London) and Michael Woolcock (World Bank) peer-reviewed the col-
lected chapters and provided detailed and incisive comments on each. Kath-
leen Kuehnast (Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies,
George Washington University) provided extensive input on the volume as
a whole, contributed to the introductory chapters, and, very important,
inspired the title of the collection as well as those of several individual chap-
ters. Meg Wilder provided early editorial support during the painful process
of converting long reports to shorter chapters. Kim Kelley provided patient
and hands-on guidance through the final publication process. And the
authors are particularly indebted to Michael Treadway’s sensitive and metic-
ulous editorial input for the final stage of revisions. We are grateful for fund-
ing received to help this undertaking from the team that produced the ear-
lier World Bank publication, Making Transition Work for Everyone: Poverty and
Inequality in Europe and Central Asia. We would also like to thank Kevin
Cleaver, former Sector Manager, Environmentally and Socially Sustainable
Development, Europe and Central Asia Region (ECSSD), for his strong