Gender

1900-Present Document 3: Soviet Union

McKay et al., A History of World Societies, Vol. II, 4th ed.

The radical transformation of Soviet society had a profound impact on women's lives. Marxists had
traditionally believed that both capitalism and the middle-class husband exploited women. The Russian
Revolution of 1917 immediately proclaimed complete equality of rights for women. In the 1920s divorce and
abortion were made easily available, and women were urged to work outside the home and liberate themselves
sexually. The most prominent Bolshevik feminist, Alexandra Kollontai, went so far as to declare that the sex
act had no more significance than "drinking a glass of water." This observation drew a sharp rebuke from the
rather prudish Lenin, who said that "no sane man would lie down to drink from a puddle in the gutter or even
drink from a dirty glass. After Stalin came to power, sexual and familial liberation was played down, and the
most lasting changes for women involved work and education.
These changes were truly revolutionary. Young women were constantly told that they had to be fully
equal to men, that they could and should do anything men could do. Peasant women in Russia had long
experienced the equality of backbreaking physical labor in the countryside, and they continued to enjoy
that equality on collective farms. With the advent of the five-year plans, millions of women also began
to toil in factories and in heavy construction, building dams, roads, and steel mills in summer heat and
winter frost. Yet most of the opportunities open to men through education were also open to women.
Determined women pursued their studies and entered the ranks of the better-paid specialists in industry and
science. Medicine practically became a woman's profession. By 1950, 75 percent of all doctors in the
Soviet Union were women.
Thus Stalinist society gave women great opportunities but demanded great sacrifices as well. The vast
majority of women simply had to work outside the home. Wages were so low that it was almost impossible
for a family or couple to live only on the husband's earnings. Moreover, the full-time working woman had
a heavy burden of household tasks in her off hours, for most Soviet men in the 1930s still considered the
home and the children the woman's responsibility. Men continued to monopolize the best jobs. Finally,
rapid change and economic hardship led to many broken families, creating further physical, emotional, and
mental strains for women. In any event, the often neglected human resource of women was ruthlessly
mobilized in Stalinist society. This, too, was an aspect of the Soviet totalitarian state.

Decree of the Peoples Commissariat of Health and Social Welfare and the Peoples Commissariat
of Justice in Soviet Russia, April 1921
As long as the remnants of the past and the difficult economic conditions of the present compel some
women to undergo an abortion, the Peoples Commissariat of Health and Social Welfare and the Peoples
Commissariat of Justice regard the use of penal measures as inappropriate and therefore, to preserve
womens health and protect the race against ignorant or self-seeking profiteers, it is resolved:
Free abortion, interrupting pregnancy by artificial means, shall be performed in state hospitals,
where women are assured maximum safety in the operation.
Women in the Soviet Labor Force (Moscow, 1936).

Alexandra Kollontai - Communism & the FamilyWomens role in production: its effect upon the family
Will the family continue to exist under communism? Will the family remain in the same form?
These questions are troubling many women of the working class and worrying their men-folk as
well. Life is changing before our very eyes; old habits and customs are dying out, and the whole
life of the proletarian family is developing in a way that is new and unfamiliar and, in the eyes of
some, bizarre. No wonder that working women are beginning to think these questions over.
Another fact that invites attention is that divorce has been made easier in Soviet Russia. The
decree of the Council of Peoples Commissars issued on 18 December 1917 means that divorce
is, no longer a luxury that only the rich can afford; henceforth, a working woman will not have to
petition for months or even for years to secure the right to live separately from a husband who
beats her and makes her life a misery with his drunkenness and uncouth behavior. Divorce by
mutual agreement now takes no more than a week or two to obtain. Women who are unhappy in
their married life welcome this easy divorce. But others, particularly those who are used to
looking upon their husband as breadwinners, are frightened. They have not yet understood that
a woman must accustom herself to seek and find support in the collective and in society, and not
from the individual man.