ABSTRACT
The study of poverty in Ukraine does not have a long history. Poverty has arisen mainly as a result of ideological changes. Until 1991 Ukraine was an integral part of the USSR. One of the major aims of socialism was to guarantee a minimum living standard to all members of the society. Social policy oriented towards the ideological principle of social uniformity hindered the growth and differentiation of material well-being and did not stimulate labour market activity or the economy. For decades the notion of ‘poverty’ in official Soviet propaganda and social science had always been linked to either the pre-revolutionary past or the present day in capitalist countries. The myth of the elimination of poverty under socialism has for a long time dominated Soviet social science and ideology. It was only in the 1960s that the notion of ‘minimum security level’ emerged in official Soviet documents. The notions of poverty and minimum security level can be treated as synonyms. According to very rough estimates by experts and official statistical data, by the time independence was proclaimed, 15 to 25 per cent of Ukraine's population could be categorised as poor. Poverty was widespread. Moreover, Ukraine lagged much behind the West and East European countries in such indicators of living standards as average life span (71 years in 1991) and children's mortality (twenty per thousand of newly born in 1991).
