4- Family Wider Reading

Question 1

Kollontai

Answer 1

Alexandra Kollontai preferred the idea of communal free love to traditional family groups.
There were a number of experiments in communal living, but these rarely made it past the mid-1920s.

Question 2

Lenin’s view of the family

Answer 2

Lenin was more traditional and did not favour free love.
He supported a number of proposals to counter some of the abuses which went on in traditional marriages:
Readily available abortions.
Access to contraception.
The legalisation of prostitution.
The legalisation of homosexuality.
These were extremely progressive positions.

Question 3

Did Lenin agree with Kollontai

Answer 3

Ginsborg argues that Lenin agreed with Kollantai that housework and childcare needed to be collectivised in order to liberate women. Indeed, in a 1919 pamphlet, Lenin wrote that Russian women were still ‘domestic slaves.’ However, he did not agree with Kollantai that human relationships needed to change as part of the revolution. He was particularly against her revised vision of sexual morality.

Question 4

Sheila Fitzpatrick (1999): what shoes women still not liberated

Answer 4

The upbringing of children is normally considered women’s business, and so it was in Soviet Russia in the 1930s. It was women, not men, who wrote again and again to the authorities asking for help for their children, “barefoot and hungry.”’
The most common type of appeal from urban citizens was a written request for help in tracing an absent husband and collecting family support payments. Aleksandra Artiukhina, chairwoman of a large trade union with many women members reported that “thousands of letters come to me at the union from worker women about seeking their husbands.”

Question 5

The Family Between 1936 and 1953

Answer 5

The Family Between 1936 and 1953

Question 6

Stalin’s aims for the family

Answer 6

Stalin aimed to cut divorce rates and increase births. He thought more stable family units would help the economy.
Abortion was made illegal unless the mother’s life was in danger.
Contraception was made illegal.
Male homosexuality could now be punished by up to five years’ hard labour.
Lesbian women now underwent hypnotherapy as a ‘cure’.