Article contents
The Bolsheviks and the Family
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2008
Extract
The Bolsheviks considered the family to be a minor matter. The ABC of Communism, a popular exposition of Bolshevik Marxism published shortly after the October Revolution, detailed the economic and political institutions of Soviet Russia with only a passing reference to the public services that would emancipate women in the future society.1 Its authors, Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhenskii, understood the revolutionary process chiefly as the by-product of economic development and expected socialism to come through the manipulation of economic mechanisms by central government, and in this they echoed the views of their party. The Bolshevik scenario did not preclude the ‘participation of the masses’ to use the vocabulary of the times. Individuals, women as well as men, were to enjoy unprecedented access to the political process, and as masters of the nation's resources would decide matters of state, each acting as part of the whole, or more exactly as part of a number of collectivities, first and foremost as members of the proletariat, but also as members of other groups including nationality, youth and women. While families in the past had played a crucial role in the creation and transmission of private property, with the overthrow of the exploitative capitalist system they would cease to function as providers of economic and psychological welfare. Instead the individual's social place and action would be determined by class and, to a lesser extent, by ethnicity, age and gender. Families belonged to the superstructure and were symptom rather than cause; they adapted to the needs of society, changing in response to the transformation of economic relations. Families, in other words, could look after themselves, and appropriate forms of private life would evolve without much outside intervention.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995
References
1 Bukharin, N. and Preobrazhenskii, E., Azbuka kommunizma (Peterburg, 1920), 138–40.Google Scholar
2 Engel, B., Mothers and Daughters. Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).Google Scholar
3 Bobroff, A., ‘The Bolsheviks and Working Women 1905–1920’, Soviet Studies, 1974, 540–67Google Scholar; Stites, R., The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 243–58.Google Scholar
4 Anokhina, L. A. and Shmeleva, M. N., Byt gorodskogo naseleniya srednei polosy RSFSR v proshlom i nastoyashchem (Moscow, 1977), 34.Google Scholar
5 Toporkov, A. K., Kak stat' kul'turnym (Moscow, 1929), 26.Google Scholar
6 Dauge, P. I., Rainis. Pevets bor'by, solntsa i lyubvi (Moscow, 1920), 105Google Scholar; Butkevich, , ‘Tsvety vmesto bitykh gorshkov’, Komsomol'skaya pravda, 6 June 1925.Google Scholar
7 Kollontai, A., ‘Polovaya moral' i sotsial'naya bor'ba’, Novaya zhizn’, no. 9 (1911), 155–82Google Scholar; ‘Soyuz zashchity materinstva i reform seksual'noi morali’, Novaya zhizn’, no. 11 (1912), 239–54.
8 For views on prostitution and marriage see G. I. and Ya. I. Lifshits, Sotsial'nye korni prostitutsii (Yaroslavl’, 1920), idem, and Sem'ya i brak v proshlom i nastoyashchem (Moscow, 1925).
9 Smidovich, S., ‘“O lyubvi” (Posvyashchaetsya nashei zhenskoi molodezhi)’, in O lyubvi (Leningrad, 1925), 3–10Google Scholar; N. Semashko, ‘Polovye otnosheniya i sem'ya’, in Zhirov, M. and Smirnov, N., Problemy pola v sovremennoi russkoi khudozhestvennoi literature (Moscow, 1927), 4Google Scholar; Romanov, P., ‘Bez cheremukhi’, Molodaya gvardiya, no. 6 (1926), 13–21.Google Scholar
10 Gumilevskii, L., Sobachii pereulok (Moscow, 1927), 16.Google Scholar
11 Kollontai, A., Sestry (Moscow, 1927).Google Scholar
12 Zalkind, A., ‘Polovoi vopros s kommunisticheskoi tochki zreniya’, Na putyakh k novoi shkole, (1924), no. 6, 54Google Scholar; Polovoi fetishizm. K peresmotru polovogo voprosa (Moscow, 1925).
13 ‘O polovoi raspushchennosti’, in Yaroslavskii, E., ed., Polovoi vopros (Moscow, 1925), 12.Google Scholar
14 Kogan, B. B. and Lebedinskii, M. S., Byt rabochei molodezhi (Moscow, 1929), 109.Google Scholar
15 Krupskaya, N., ‘Byt i nepereryvka’, Kommunistka no. 2 (1929), 13–14.Google Scholar
16 August Bebel's bestseller, Woman and Socialism, appeared in numerous Russian editions: London, 1885; Geneva, 1904; St Petersburg, 1900, 1905, 1906 and 1909; Odessa, 1905 and 1917; Moscow, 1906; Soviet editions were published in 1918, 1919, 1921 and 1926. Editions of Engels’ Origins of the Family were even more numerous.
17 Dyushen, V., ‘Problemy sotsial'nogo vospitaniya, Kommunistka, no. 12–13 (1921), 25–7.Google Scholar
18 Bebel, A., Woman under Socialism (New York: Labor News Company, 1917), 347.Google Scholar
19 Strumilin, S. G., ‘Byudzhet vremeni russkogo rabochego’, in Voprosy truda (Moscow, 1957), 275.Google Scholar
20 Armand, I. F., ‘Osvobozhdenie domashnego rabstva’, in Kommunisticheskaya partiya i organizatsiya rabotnits (Moscow, 1919), 31–4Google Scholar; Kollontai, A., Kak i dlya chego byl sozvan pervyi vserossiiskii s″ ezd rabotnits (Moscow, 1923), 11–22.Google Scholar
21 Lilina, Z., ‘Rol’ obshestvennogo pitaniya v zhizni rabotnitsy’, Kommunistka, nos 3–4 (1920), 26.Google Scholar
22 Pervyi Vserossiiskii s'ezd rabotnits 16–21 noyabrya 1918g i ego rezolyutsii (Khar'kov, 1920), 16–17. On the history of the domestic economy see also Kaplun, S., Zhenskii trud i okhrana ego (Moscow, 1921), 88–9Google Scholar and Kollontai, A., Trud zhenshchiny v evolyutsii khozyaistva (Moscow, 1923).Google Scholar
23 I. Armand, op. cit., 31–4; S. G. Strumilin, ‘Byudzhet vremeni russkogo rabochevo v 1922g’, op. cit., 287; Bukharin, N. and Preobrazhenskii, E., The ABC of Communism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966), 179Google Scholar; Lenin, V. I., Collected Works, Moscow, Vol. 29, pp. 428–30; Vol. 30, pp. 40–48; Vol. 32, pp. 161–2.Google Scholar
25 Kaplun, S., op. cit., 89.Google Scholar
25 TsGA f. 5457, op. 9, 1. 174, 1. 80; Konyus, E. M., Puti razvitiya sovetskoi okhrany materinstva i mladenchestva 1917–1940 (Moscow, 1954), 214.Google Scholar
26 ‘Mezhdunarodnyi den' rabotnits v 1921g’, Kommunistka, nos 8–9 (1921), 1–4.
27 Kollontai, A., ‘Proizvodstvo i byt, Kommunistka, nos 10–11 (1921), 7.Google Scholar
28 Kodeks zakonov ob aktakh grazhdanskogo sostoyaniya, brachnom, semeinom i opekunskom prave (Moscow, Leningrad, 1926), 18. For an English translation see Schlesinger, R., The Family in the USSR (London, 1949), 33–41.Google Scholar Under tsarist law wives were legally obliged to ‘follow’ husbands and share their place of residence.
29 Zelenitskii, A., ‘Nuzhna li registratsiya braka’, Ezhenedel'nik sovetskoi yustitsii, nos 24–5, 1922, 9–10Google Scholar; Prigradov-Kudrin, A., ‘Brachnoe pravo i nasledovanie’, Ezhenedel'nik sovetskoi yustitsii, no. 12, 1922, 4.Google Scholar
30 Sostoyanie pitaniyagorodskogo naseleniya SSSR 1919–24 (Moscow, 1926), 100–1; 130–1.
31 For the text of the Decree see Levi, M. F., Organizatsiya abortnoi pomoshchi. Protivozachatochnye sredstva (Moscow, 1933), 2–3.Google Scholar
32 Sostoyanie, 130; 164–5; 184–5; 224–5.
33 Trotsky, L., ‘From the Old Family to the New’, Women and the Family (New York: Pathfinder, 1973), 26.Google Scholar First published in Pravda, 13 July 1923.
34 See for example ‘NOT v domashnem khozyaistve’, Rabotnitsa, no. 13, 1926, 21 and no. 18, 21.
35 Trotsky, L., op. cit., 26.Google Scholar
36 Semashko, N. A., O svetlom i temnom v rabochem bytu (Moscow, 1928), 29.Google Scholar
37 GIM ceramic department 75773/1970ff.
38 Gens, A., ‘Svedeniya o kolichestve uchrezhdenii po ohkrane materinstva i mladenchestva’, Zhurnal po izucheniyu rannego detskogo vozrasta, no. 5, 1924, 88Google Scholar; Dulitskii, S. O., ‘Konsul'tatsii dlya grudnykh detei za 1918–1928 godu’, in Nogina, O. and Dulitskii, S. O. (eds), Okhrana materinstva i mladenchestva. Sbornik statei (Moscow, 1929), 15Google Scholar; Gens, A., ‘O rodovspomozhenii’, Okhrana materinstva i mladenchestva, no. 10, 1931, 7.Google Scholar
39 ‘Pervyi vsesibirskii s'ezd vrachei v g. Tomske i ego akushersko-ginekologicheskaya sektsiya’, Zhurnal akusherstva i zhenskikh boleznei, book 4, 1926, 506.
40 Sbornik dekretov postanovlenii rasporyazhenii i prikazov po narodnomu khozyaistvu, no. 109/346, April 13, 1926.
41 Shestoi s″ezd vserossiiskogo soyuza professional'nykh soyuzov, Moscow, 1924, 223.
42 Lebedeva, V., ‘Samoistreblenie chelovechestva’, Kommunistka, 1923, no. 9, 5.Google Scholar
43 Kurskii, D., ‘Ob'yasnitel'naya zapiska k proektu Kodeksa zakonov o brake sem'e i opeke 1925 goda’, Ezhenedel'nik sovetskoi yustitsii, 1925, no. 38–9, 1230–31.Google Scholar
44 Krokodil, no. 47, 1926; Stenograficheskii otchet VTsIK X sozyva; ‘Disput v politekhnichestkom muzee’, Rabochaya gazeta, 1925, no. 262.
45 Golubeva, V., ‘K diskussii po voprosam brachnogo i semeinogo prava’, Kommunistka, 1926, no. 1, 52Google Scholar; Kollontai, A., ‘“Obshchii kotel” ili “individual'nye alimenty”’, Komsomol'skaya pravda, 2 February 1926Google Scholar; Kollontai, A., ‘Brak, zhenshchiny, alimenty’, Ekran, 1926, no. 5, 1–2.Google Scholar
46 Sabsovich, L. M., SSSR cherez 15 let, Moscow 1929Google Scholar; Larin, Yu., Stroitel'stvo sotsializma i kollektivizatsiya byta (Moscow, 1930).Google Scholar
47 Ginzburg, B. S., Rodovspomozhenie i aborty v zapadnoi Sibiri (Tomsk, 1931), 23.Google Scholar
48 Khalatov, A., O problemakh obshchestvennogo pitaniya. Osnovnye polozheniya (Moscow, 1930), 5.Google Scholar
49 Trotsky, L., The Revolution Betrayed (New York: Doubleday, 1937), 144.Google Scholar
50 Reich, W., The Sexual Revolution (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1974).Google Scholar
51 Firestone, S., The Dialectic of Sex (London: Cape, 1971), 240–2Google Scholar; Rowbotham, S., Women, Resistance and Revolution (London: Allen Lane, 1972), 134–169.Google Scholar
52 Geiger, H. G., The Family in Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 321CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stites, R., Women's Liberation in Russia. Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism 1860–1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Clements, B., Bolshevik Feminist (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979).Google Scholar
- 4
- Cited by