ABSTRACT
This chapter posits a fundamental and fraught division of regulatory labour between developmental state and social state as conditioning and swaddling the latter's dynamics and development. It examines the general legislative basis for Soviet social security or welfare, consisting of protection and provision, as it developed and in its mature form. The chapter looks more broadly at the social state's construction and regulation of the social field in general, taking up civil society, education, gender, criminality and religion. On the basis of its sovereign ownership authority the Soviet developmental state effectively assigned any such proceeds to begin with, as well as recovering some portion of it through tax. Where the Soviet social state benevolently bestowed under colour of law, the Soviet developmental state ruthlessly extracted under colour of law. After the state pension law was brought in during 1956 the Soviet social state commenced its parallel trente glorieuses, leading to the 'Brezhnev social contract'.
