Kapustina O.V.

Auditing in awarding and payment of personal pensions in RSFSR in the 1920s. Pp. С. 24–32.

UDC 94(47).084.5

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2025.87.2.003

 

Abstract. Currently, some authors are discussing the possibility of a return of personal/merit pensions. However, when this is discussed with reference to the experience of the past, disputes arise about legislative subjectivism, as well as about arbitrariness and uncontrolledness. disputes about legislative subjectivism, as well as arbitrariness and uncontrollability in granting such pensions. With this consideration, the paper analyzes the procedure for awarding Russian personal pensions of republican significance in the 1920s, in order to determine the mechanism of control over the observance of the law in this area in the 1920s.

The historical sources used include pension case files and personal cards of personal pensioners, materials of correspondence between the People’s Commissariat for Social Security (PCSS) of the RSFSR and subordinate social security departments, as well as normative acts describing the legislative basis of the personal pension system (decrees of the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR, circulars of the Russian Commissars of Labor and Social Security).

While acknowledging the fact of legislative subjectivity, the author found that the award of each Russian republican personal pension was the result of a three-level collective discussion at the local and central levels, as well as in the Commission for Appointment of Personal Pensions under the RF PCSS. Further payment of the pension was accompanied by regular audits and extraordinary inspections, including those initiated on the basis of letters of ‘well-wishers,’ either signed or anonymous, as a result of which the merits of the personal pensioner, as well as his family and property status were subject to new examination. The result of these control measures could be cancellation of pension, transfer to another, less prestigious type of pension, or change of its amount.

 

Keywords: extraordinary audit, merits before the state, property and family status examination, personal pension provision, scheduled audit, pension amount, application for awarding a pension.

 

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