The view of the Soviet family as the basic social unit in society evolved from revolutionary to conservative; the government of the Soviet Union first attempted to weaken the family and then to strengthen it from the 1930s onwards.
According to the 1968 law "Principles of Legislation on Marriage and the Family of the USSR and the Union Republics", parents are "to raise their children in the spirit of the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism, to attend to their physical development and their instruction in and preparation for socially useful activity".
Bolshevik women in the Soviet household
Prior to the 1917 revolution, women did not have equal rights to men and, since most of the population were peasants, they lived under the patriarchal village structure; they had to take care of the home as well as playing an important role in looking after farms. Millions of peasant men did seasonal work in the cities, often leaving women without their husbands for months at a time.
One of the main aims of the Lenin period was to abolish the bourgeois family, and free both men and women from the drudgery of housework. Communal canteens, laundry services and nurseries were set up, and women could now legally get an education and work. The Bolshevik government did not trust the nuclear family, believing it taught individualist, bourgeois values to children; they initially believed that government institutions could raise the millions of children orphaned by the Russian Civil War, and that these children could be inculcated with socialist values. The Civil War had left a void in the industrial sectors of the workforce, and that void was filled with hundreds of thousands of women. When Stalin came to power and instituted the first five-year plan, women's labour became an essential economic resource that allowed a massive expansion of the workforce at a low cost, as women often were not paid as much, in part due to inexperience. They also offered opportunities for women inside of the party when the Department for Work Among Women was created in 1919.
The Bolsheviks advocated for the abolition of differentiated gender roles. Despite this strong push for change by the Zhenotdel, the immensely patriarchal society that had existed for hundreds of years prior, would supersede these efforts.
The feminist movement was seen by the majority peasant and workforce population as bourgeois, and therefore represented something opposite of the Bolshevik idea. The emphasis on the immediate household as priority was pertinent, especially to the 1930s era of Soviet Russia. Since the Paleolithic era of Russia, there has been a fascination with the immortalization, of the mother figure. "The Motherland Calls", statute spoke up about the unrealistic expectations that the Soviet Union had on their female mothers. Motherhood, they posited, was not some divine consciousness, but instead something inherently learned as a result of being a woman. Some argued that the traditional role of the mother should be challenged, and that it was not like it had been in years past. In many instances the domestic work was piled onto the female head of the house, despite promotion of equality between genders. This left in unequal workload on the woman, who would also have a job outside of the home to help provide in a particularly difficult economy where food and adequate housing was often scarce. However, despite this argument, the role of the Bolshevik woman remained static. Stalin himself held both men and women to the same standard, with equal harshness doled out to both sexes. In the 1960s, it was expected of the Russian woman to fall in line with the patriarchal leadership of her husband.
Another heavily relied on role that women held in the Soviet household was that of the Grandmother. In many cases, she would do all the housework and raise the children. This was because the parents were usually too busy working to do either of these. This ended up hurting the installment of Soviet values into the minds of the youth, as the Grandmother would usually teach her grandchildren more traditional values.Stalinist Society, Chapter: Family Values, Mark Edele
Bolshevik vision of the family Marxist theory on family established the revolutionary ideal for the Soviet state and influenced state policy concerning family in varying degrees throughout the history of the country. The principals are: The nuclear family unit is an economic arrangement structured to maintain the ideological functions of Capitalism. The family unit perpetuates class inequality through the transfer of private property through inheritance. Following the abolition of private property, the bourgeois family will cease to exist and the union of individuals will become a "purely private affair". The Soviet state's first code on marriage and family was written in 1918 and enacted a series of transformative laws designed to bring the Soviet family closer in line with Marxist theory.
1918 Code on Marriage, the Family and Guardianship One year after the Bolsheviks took power, they ratified the 1918 Code on Marriage, the Family and Guardianship. The revolutionary jurists, led by Alexander Goikhbarg, adhered to the revolutionary principals of Marx, Engels, and Lenin when drafting the codes. Goikhbarg considered the nuclear family unit to be a necessary but transitive social arrangement that would quickly be phased out by the growing communal resources of the state and would eventually "wither away". The jurists intended for the code to provide a temporary legal framework to maintain protections for women and children until a system of total communal support could be established.
The 1918 code also served to recognize the legal rights of the individual at the expense of the existing tsarist/patriarchal system of family and marriage. This was accomplished by allowing easily obtainable "no-grounds" divorces. It abolished "illegitimacy" of birth as a legal concept and entitled all children to parental support. It abolished the adoption of orphans (orphans would be cared for by the state to avoid exploitation). A married couple could take either surname. Individual property would be retained in the event of divorce. An unlimited term of alimony could be awarded to either spouse, but upon separation each party was expected to care for themselves. Women were to be recognized as equal under the law; Prior to 1914, women were not allowed to earn a wage, seek education, or exchange property without the consent of their husband.
Family Code of 1926 The 1918 code accomplished many of the goals that the jurists had sought to set into motion, but the social disruption left in the wake of World War I exposed the inadequacies of the code to alleviate social problems. The 1926 code would revive a more conservative definition of the family in a legal sense. "The 1918 code had been motivated by a desire to lead society forward to new social relationships in line with socialist thought on marriage and family, the 1926 code attempted to solve immediate problems, in particular to ensure the financial well-being". The hotly debated social concerns included: the unmanageable number of orphans, the unemployment of women, the lack of protection after divorce, common property and divorce, and the obligations of unmarried, cohabitating partners.
In 1921 alone, seven million orphans were displaced, roaming town and countryside. Government agencies simply did not have the resources to care for the children. An adopted child could be cared for by a family at virtually no cost to the state. The 1926 code would reinstate adoption as a solution for child homelessness.
In 1921 New Economic Policy (NEP), brought about a limited restoration of private enterprise and free markets. It also brought an end to labor conscription. The result was a spike in female unemployment as "War Communism" came to an end and NEP emerged. Hundreds of thousands of unemployed women did not have registered marriages and were left with no means of support or protections following a divorce under the 1918 code. The 1926 code would make unregistered marriages legal in order to safeguard women by extending alimony to unregistered, de facto wives, the purpose being that more women would be cared for in times of widespread unemployment.
Under the 1918 code, there was no division of property in the event of a divorce. Marriage was not to be an economic partnership and each party was entitled to individual property. This meant that women who ran the household and cared for the children would not be entitled to any material share of what the "provider" had brought to the marriage. In another conservative move, the 1926 code would require an equal division of property acquired during a marriage. All property acquired during the course of a marriage would become "common". With intentions similar to the legal recognition of de facto marriages, this new property law was a response to the lack of protections offered to women in the event of divorce.
Additionally the code would do away with the 1918 concept of "collective paternity" where multiple men could be assigned to pay alimony if the father of a child could not be determined. According to the 1926 code, paternity could be assigned by a judge. It also enlarged family obligations by expanding alimony obligations to include children, parents, siblings and grandparents. Alimony would also have set time limits. The 1926 code would signal a retreat from many policies that served to weaken the family in 1918. The jurists were not pursuing an ideological maneuver away from socialism, rather than taking more "temporary" measures to ensure the well-being of women and children since communal care had yet to materialize.
Family Code of 1936 Unlike earlier codes that arranged for temporary and transitive laws as a step toward the revolutionary vision of family; the Code of 1936 marked an ideological shift away from Marxist / revolutionary visions of the nuclear family. Coinciding with the rise of Stalinism, the law demanded the stabilizing and strengthening of the family. "The "withering-away" doctrine, once central to socialist understand of the family, law, and the state, was anathematized."
The 1936 code emerged along with an eruption of pro-family propaganda. For the first time, the code put restrictions on abortion and imposed fines and jail time for any that received or performed the service. The code also enacted a bevy of laws aimed to encourage pregnancy and child birth. Insurance stipends, pregnancy leave, job security, light duty, child care services and payments for large families. In another drastic move, the code made it more difficult to obtain a divorce. Under the code, both parties would need to be present for a divorce and pay a fine. There could be harsh penalties for those who failed to pay alimony and child-support payments.
"Our demands grow day to day. We need fighters, they build this life. We need people." The wider campaign to encourage the family unit elevated motherhood to a form of Stakhanovite labor. During this time, motherhood was celebrated as patriotic and the joys of children and family were extolled by the country's leaders.
Family Edict of 1944 The Family Edict of 1944 would be a continuation of the conservative trending of the 1936 code. Citing the heavy manpower losses and social disruption following World War II, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet enacted laws that would further encourage marriage and childbirth.
The 1944 Edict offered greater state-sponsored benefits to mothers, including: Extended maternity leave, increased family allowances even to unmarried mothers, promises of burgeoning child care services, targeted labor protections, and most notably, state recognition and the honorary title "Mother Heroine" for mothers who could produce large families.