Chapter 2: Women, family, youth and culture

1. ON WOMEN QUESTION AND THE FAMILY

i) The October Revolution and Women’s Emancipation

The Russian revolution was a milestone in the emancipation of women: the first occasion on which the complete economic, political and sexual equality of women was put on the historical agenda.

New political, civic, economic and family codes aimed to wipe away centuries-old inequalities at one stroke. The new government granted women full right to vote, passed divorce and civil laws that made marriage a voluntary relationship, eliminated the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children, enacted employment rights for women equal to those for men, gave women equal pay and introduced universal paid maternity leave. Adultery, incest and homosexuality were dropped from the criminal code.

The decree of December 19, 1917 made divorce very simple; a decree on the Legalisation of Abortions was issued in November 1920. Soviet Russia became the first country in the world with full freedom of divorce, and where abortion was legal. [1]

Trotsky writes:

“The revolution made a heroic attempt to destroy the so-called “family hearth” – that archaic, stuffy and stagnant institution in which the woman of the toiling classes performs galley labour from childhood to death. The place of the family as a shut-in petty enterprise was to be occupied, according to the plans, by a finished system of social care and accommodation: maternity houses, crèches, kindergartens, schools, social dining rooms, social laundries ...” [2]

However, the mighty sweep of idealism, the courage and hopes of the Bolsheviks crashed against the terrible backwardness of Russia, against the actual material and cultural poverty of the country, which was much aggravated by the seven years of war and. Russia emerged from the civil war in a state of economic collapse.

In these conditions, it became impossible to take the old family by storm; the dreams of women for emancipation, as embodied in the decrees of the government and the activities of the Women’s Department of the Party, ran into sand. The real resources of the state did not correspond to the plans and intentions of the Party.

In the early 1920’s the state was forced to cut back expenditure on the extensive communal institutions of the War Communism period -- communal kitchens, dining halls, children’s homes and crèches were run down. As unemployment rose, women were the worst hit. The principle of equal pay for equal work was not observed even in state enterprises. Women were pushed back into domestic slavery.

Due to cultural backwardness and poverty, divorce came to appear to women not as harbinger of freedom, but of destitution. Men were far more willing to divorce their wives than wives their husbands. The question of divorcees’ entitlement to alimony, not even mentioned in the 1918 Family Code, became crucial for women. After a long public discussion in 1925, a new Family Code was promulgated in 1926 as a necessary evil, a form of protection for women, although it was a retreat from the Family Code of 1918. [3]

This retreat, forced by circumstances, was undoubtedly temporary.

(ii) The Counter-Revolution: Changes in Women’s Position During the Stalin Period

But, with the bureaucracy, led by Stalin, consolidating its hold over the Bolshevik Party in the late 1920s, this retreat became permanent; the question of women’s liberation was pushed off the agenda.

The massive industrialisation and collectivisation of agriculture, launched in 1928-29, brought millions of women into the workforce. Massive employment of women in itself is no liberation for women, it creates conditions for their liberation. However, the Stalinist regime never undertook the task of transforming this potential into reality.

Despite a massive increase in the resources of the government, the condition of the social dining halls and social laundries continued to be bad; the better-off workers virtually stopped using them – meaning the return of workers’ wives to their pots and pans. The number of crèches and kindergartens continued to be much lower than the demand, and quality was dismal. [4]

The Stalinist regime strengthened conservative attitudes. The regime now trumpeted the sanctity of the family: the authorities found the family useful, not only because it provided what the state did not – domestic work and child care – but also because it reinforced the bureaucracy’s need for conservative supports throughout society. Marriage and family laws established by the October Revolution were redone, actually mutilated. In the years immediately after the revolution, the government was not only unconcerned about supporting the authority of the “elders”, in particular the mother and father, but on the contrary made attempts to shake parental authority to its very foundation – the aim being to protect children from the stagnant traditions. Now, all such attempts were dropped; actually in this not unimportant sphere, a sharp turn was made. [5]

Motherhood became a central theme of propaganda. In 1934, homosexuality was made a criminal offence, punishable with upto eight years of imprisonment. An energetic nationwide campaign was launched against sexual promiscuity, quick and easy marriage, and adultery. In 1936, legal abortion was abolished, except where life or health were endangered or a serious disease might be inherited. [6] A campaign was opened against too frequent and easy divorces. Trotsky remarks: “the resurrection of the family goes hand in hand with the increase of the educative role of the ruble.” [7] The laws of 1935-36 introduced a tax for divorce: fees of 50, 150 and 300 rubles for the first, second and subsequent divorces.

A further step in the counter-revolution was the abolition of co-education in 1943! The reaction as regards the family reached its climax with the law of July 8, 1944, which introduced changes in the divorce law to make it virtually impossible to obtain. The law also re-established the legal differences between a child born in wedlock and one born out of wedlock. The latter could not claim the surname, the support or the inheritance of his or her father. [8]

2. ON YOUTH

Trotsky writes: “The revolution gave a mighty historical impulse to the new Soviet generation. It cut them free at one blow from conservative forms of life ... the youth are very active in the sphere of economics. In the Soviet Union, there are 7,000,000 workers under twenty-three ... There are now 1,200,000 Communist Youth in the collective forms. Hundreds of thousands of members of the Communist Youth have been mobilized during recent years for construction work...” He continues, that because the ruling regime “is still compelled to dress in the garments of revolution”, the youth find the “atmosphere of hypocrisy” intolerable; the “crying discord between the socialist posters and the reality of life undermines faith in the official canons.” The ruling bureaucracy is conscious of this, it understands that there is immense discontent in the youth; that whenever there is an attack on its position, “from left or right, the attackers would recruit their chief forces among the oppressed and discontented youth...”; and so “in trying to consolidate its position in advance, it erects the chief trenches and concrete fortifications against the younger generation.”

And hence the ruling regime decided to withdraw from the Communist Youth the last remnant of political rights. The Tenth Congress of the Communist Youth was convened in April 1936. The congress was being called after five years, in violation of its constitution. It was a carefully selected congress, called for the purpose of adopting a new constitution. According to this new constitution, the Communist Youth League was now even juridically deprived of the right to participate in the social life of the country. Its sole sphere henceforth was to be education and cultural training. The General Secretary of the Communist Youth declared in his speech: “We must... end the chatter about industrial and financial planning, about the lowering of production costs, economic accounting, crop sowing, and other important state problems as though we were going to decide them!”

The speakers at the congress, who, according to their own statements, were carrying out the express instructions of Stalin, explained the aim of the reform with astonishing frankness: “We have no need of any second party.” That is, in the opinion of the ruling circles the Communist Youth League was threatening to become a second party, a challenger to the ruling party. As though to explain this, another speaker declared: “In his time, no other than Trotsky himself attempted to made a demagogic play for the youth, to inspire it with the anti-Leninist, anti-Bolshevik idea of creating a second party, etc.” [9]

3. ON CULTURE

Trotsky writes:

“(The) highest goal (of communism) is to free finally and once for all the creative forces of mankind from all pressure, limitation and humiliating dependence...

“A transitional regime is a different thing... It necessarily lays down severe limitations upon all forms of activity, including spiritual creation. The program of the (Russian) revolution from the very beginning regarded these limitations as a temporary evil, and assumed the obligation, in proportion as the new regime was consolidated, to remove one after the other all restrictions upon freedom. ...In 1924, on the threshold of the new period, the author of this book (i.e. Trotsky) thus formulated the relation of the state to the various artistic groups and tendencies: “while holding over them all the categorical criterion, for the revolution or against the revolution, to give them complete freedom in the sphere of artistic self-determination.”

While the dictatorship had a seething mass-basis and a prospect of world revolution, it had no fear of experiments, searchings, the struggle of schools, for it understood that only in this way could a new cultural epoch be prepared... During those first years, rich in hope and daring, there were created not only the most complete models of socialist legislation, but also the best productions of revolutionary literature. To the same times belong, it is worth remarking, the creation of those excellent Soviet films which, in spite of a poverty of technical means, caught the imagination of the whole world with the freshness and vigor of their approach to reality.” [10] (Trotsky, ibid, pp 180-181)

The Suppression of Creativity During Stalin Period

Even before these buds could flower, they were crushed. Trotsky writes:

“In the process of struggle against the party Opposition, the literary schools were strangled one after the other. It was not only a question of literature, either. The process of extermination took place in all ideological spheres... The present ruling stratum considers itself called not only to control spiritual creation politically, but also to prescribe its road of development... The central organ of the party prints anonymous directive editorials, having the character of military orders, in architecture, literature, dramatic art, the ballet, to say nothing of philosophy, natural science and history.”

In natural sciences, the most precious sources of invention often arise on unforeseen roads, but the natural scientists now feared to tread new paths. In the sphere of social sciences, it was infinitely worse: economists, historians, even statisticians, all were concerned above all things not to fall, even obliquely, into contradiction with the official line. This hundred percent conformism has resulted in the heaviest of punishments: sterility. Which is why, Trotsky writes, “in spite of the fact that Marxism is a state doctrine in the Soviet Union, there has not appeared during the last twelve years one Marxian investigation – in economics, sociology, history or philosophy – which deserves attention and translation into foreign languages.”

He continues, “No less ruinous is the effect of the “totalitarian” regime upon artistic literature. The struggle of tendencies and schools has been replaced by interpretation of the will of the leaders. There has been created... a kind of concentration camp of artistic literature. Mediocre but “right-thinking” storytellers like Serafimovich or Gladkov are inaugurated as classics. Gifted writers who cannot do sufficient violence to themselves are pursued by a pack of instructors armed with shamelessness and dozens of quotations. The most eminent writers either commit suicide, or find their material in the remote past, or become silent...”

Trotsky concludes that in spite of individual exceptions, this epoch (after the consolidation in power of the new ruling stratum) “will go into the history of artistic creation pre-eminently as an epoch of mediocrities, laureates and toadies.” [11]

References

[1] Tony Cliff, Class Struggle and Women’s Liberation, Bookmarks, London, 1984, pp. 138-139

[2] Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1972, p. 144

[3] Tony Cliff, op. cit., pp. 144-148

[4] Leon Trotsky, op. cit., pp. 145-147

[5] Ibid., pp. 153-154

[6] Tony Cliff, op. cit., pp. 148-149

[7] Leon Trotsky, op. cit., p. 152

[8] Tony Cliff, op. cit., pp. 150-151

[9] Leon Trotsky, op. cit., pp. 159-168

[10] Ibid., pp. 180-181

[11] Ibid., pp. 181-185

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