Women

In the Soviet Union

Ann Yip

and theFamily

• Economic independence– women should have a job outside of the

pressures of a family

• End economic and sexual exploitation– Lenin regarded traditional bourgeois

marriage as slavery to women– “for centuries peasants had claimed the

right to beat their wives. Russian peasant proverbs were full of advice on the wisdom of such beatings: ‘The more you beat the old women, the tastier the soup will be’.” Stated by O. Figes

• socialization of domestic services– Freeing women from domestic role

required large-scale provision of facilities (e.g. canteens, laundries, kindergartens and creches)

• Improve relationship between man and women – people freer to choose partners

Aims

• 1917, Laws passed by People’s commissar for social welfare– Paid maternity leave for 2 months

before and after the birth– Nursing mothers allowed to work

shorter hours and take time off to breastfeed

– Women excused from heavy work or night work

– Set up a commission for the protection of mothers and infants, which made plans for maternity clinics, milk points and nurseries

• Laws to make divorce easier– by the mid 20s the highest divoce

rate in Europe, 25x higher than in Britain

– 1919, USSR had highest marriage rate

• 1920 abortion was allowed under medical supervision.

Successes

Downsides• With divorce, women abandoned

– there were reports of young men registering over 15 short-lived marriages

– End of 20s, one survey found 70% of cases divorces initiated by men and only 7% by mutual consent

– 1927, 2/3 marriages in Moscow ended in divorce. Across the country, the figure was one-half

– due to housing shortages, couples still lived together. Domestic violence and rape was common

– ‘in principle we destroyed the family hearth…The woman remains tied with chains to the destroyed family hearth. The man, happily whistling, can leave it, abandoning the women and children.’ – B. Williams

• government not able or willing to fund enough crèches or public canteens to free women from childcare and housework– in 1922, the idea of state provision for

crèches, kitchens and laundries added to more than the entire national budget

– Russian children weren’t in socialist kindergartens but in gangs that survived by begging, scrounging, stealing and prostitution

– Hundreds and thousands were orphans by war and civil war• Malcolm Muggeridge, journalist, reported

seeing orphans ‘going around in packs, barely articulate and recognizably human, with pinched faces, tangled hair and empty eyes…like a pack of wild monkeys, and scattering and disappearing’

• Contemporaries estimated in the 20s there were 7-9 million orphans, most were under 13

• ‘It was a macho world for all the talk of equality…. Men built socialism. The iconography of the new state showed women with children or represented as peasants. The high-status proletarian was male, a metal worker or a blacksmith’ – B. Williams

End