State social policy: periodization of healthcare reforms in the post-Soviet period

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the new government initiated reforms, including those in the healthcare system, aimed at the transition to market relations. Today, after several decades, it is time to summarize the results of the state social policy. The method of periodization is widely used in historical science as one of the summary methods. The presented research novelty is determined by the insufficient number of articles dealing with the issues of the periodization of the post-Soviet healthcare reforms: most articles address this issue indirectly and/or investigate particular reforms. The main stages of reforms presented in this study are the result of the systematic approach. To determine these stages, the article considers the main healthcare system problems, mechanisms to address them, the frequency of references, and the dates of the beginning of the reform implementation. The main sources of the research were official documents and the speeches of the Russian President. The research used the comparative and chronological methods, the content analysis, and the structural approach. As a result, two stages of reforms were identified: 1) the transitional stage from the collapse of the USSR to 2005 (new principles of healthcare functioning were formulated, but changes during this stage were poorly controlled and, therefore, ineffective); 2) the stage of systemic transformations from 2005 to the present day (consistent implementation of previously formulated principles). The latter can be further divided into three sub-periods: 1) from 2005 to 2013 - technical re-equipment of medical facilities; 2) from 2013 to 2020 - optimization of financial, material, and human resources; 3) from 2020 - primary care modernization (suspended by the coronavirus pandemic).