Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the politics of social problems and discusses the political changes that have allowed many social phenomena to be defined as problems and the political consequences of opening up the issues to public scrutiny. It shows how the problems arose out of the "atomic culture" that has developed in the USSR since the end of World War II. The book explores the family is a notoriously difficult institution to change through policies, as is the school. It describes the legal and ideological climate that has surrounded prostitution during the Soviet period and also examines the portrait of prostitutes that emerged from Soviet research. The goal of perestroika, and the rationale behind the democratization of the society, is to bring the Soviet Union into the world community of industrial nations and make it a modern, technologically sophisticated nation.