Re-imagining Russia’s Social Care System in the Age of the Internet: the Gerontological NGO Dobroe Delo, the Madrid Plan, and the Rights of the Elderly

Abstract

Jane Gary Harris – Professor emerita, Department of Slavic Languages, Literatures and Cultures, and MSW in Gerontology, University of Pittsburgh, USA. Email: jgharris@pitt.edu

enced significant challenges and changes. This paper explores the rationale behind those challenges and the agency behind the changes. In doing so it raises several questions: it asks what role NGOs, and more specifically, Gerontological NGOs, played in advocating for and bringing about change, where and how they may or should be credited with helping to re-imagine a modern aging policy for the Russian Federation, and what implications this may have for aging policy priorities in the present and imminent future? It proposes that the incipient Gerontological NGO sector was instrumental in re-imagining a modern social care system for older persons – the basis for a modern comprehensive aging policy: by, among other things, utilizing the internet in the social sphere to advocate for the principles and recommendations of the United Nations model Madrid Plan; by advocating for the rights of the elderly; by calling for integrated social and medical care; and by linking gerontological research and aging policy. An inquiry into the nature of the influence of these NGOs on aging policy priorities required a micro-level examination of the particularly influential Gerontological NGO Dobroe Delo, suggesting its seminal role in unifying an inchoate Gerontological NGO sector, while simultaneously transforming the basic paradigm of aging policy to focus on the 'Rights of the Elderly.' In addition, this paper proposes that such research is critical to understanding how Russia’s aging policy has been re-imagined over the past decade and a half while asking what policy issues yet remain to confront future demographic demands.