The Family in the USSR

Rudolf Schlesinger

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136280788
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Soziologie

First Published in 1998. This is Volume III of eight in the Sociology of the Soviet Union series. Written in 1949, this is a collection of translated essays and documents about the family in the USSR and the changing attitudes prevailing in Soviet Russia towards specific aspects of social and political life.

PART I

Fundamental Attitudes and First Revolutionary Legislation

Document No. 1

Lenin’s Letters to Inesse Armand¹

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The two letters from V. I. Lenin to Inesse Armand were written in January 1915, in reply to a plan for a pamphlet for working women devised by Inesse Armand and communicated to Lenin.

These letters are a most precious document on the Communist attitude to such important questions in the life and morals of the workers as the family and marriage.

Lenin calls for a serious, Marxist approach to these problems. With all the passion of the ‘revolutionary he castigates triviality and philistinism in the problems of life and morals. He warns particularly against any enthusiasm for various “fashionable” ideas and demands which, outwardly revolutionary and “left”, are in fact reactionary and bourgeois—such as, for example, certain demands for “free love” and the like.

Lenin gives a profound class analysis of such demands. He points out that “bourgeois ladies” usually take “free love” to mean “freedom from seriousness in love”, from “childbirth”, “freedom of adultery”. He holds that demands for “free love” are bourgeois and should be “completely eliminated” from the pamphlet for the working women.

In his letters Lenin contrasts “base and vile marriage without love”, not with “freedom of love” or with “shortlived passion and liaison”, but with “Proletarian Civil Marriage with love”.

The letters are of great importance for the strengthening and development of the socialist family, for the communist education of the toilers and for the struggle against remnants of capitalism in the life and thought of the people.

They have a particular interest for the great host of the Soviet intelligentsia, for teachers and writers, for workers in art and literature, for all those who, in the words of Comrade Stalin, should be “engineers of the human soul”.

The Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist (Bolshevist) Party.

(January 17, 1915)²

Dear friend: I would strongly advise you to write out the plan for the pamphlet in greater detail. Much would otherwise remain unclear.

But there is one point I must make here and now:

§3—“(Women’s) demand for free love” should, in my opinion, be completely eliminated.

It really looks like not a proletarian, but a bourgeois demand. What do you really mean by it? What can one mean by it?

(1) Freedom from material (financial) considerations in matters of love?

(2) The same from material worries?

(3) From religious prejudices?

(4) From the father’s veto, etc.?

(5) From the prejudices of “society”?

(6) From the narrow-minded conditions of the (peasant or middle-class or bourgeois-intellectual) milieu?

(7) From the ties of law, justice and civil authority?

(8) From seriousness in love?

(9) From childbirth?

(10) Freedom of adultery?—and so on.

I have enumerated many—but certainly not all—possibilities. You were thinking, I am sure, not of Nos. 8–10, but either of Nos. 1–7 or of something in the nature of Nos. 1–7.

But for Nos. 1–7 some other designation must be chosen, since freedom of love does not precisely express this idea.

And the public, the readers of this pamphlet, will inevitably understand by “free love” something in the nature of Nos. 8–10, even against your own intentions.

Just because, in contemporary class society, the most talkative, noisy and “eminent” people take “free love” to mean Nos. 8–10, for this very reason it is not a proletarian, but a bourgeois demand.

For the proletariat Nos. 1–2 are the most important, and then Nos. 1–7, but this is not in fact “free love”.

What matters is not what you subjectively “want to understand” by it; what matters is the objective logic of class relations in matters of love.

Friendly shake hands! ³

W.J.

(January 24, 1915)

Dear friend: Forgive the delay in answering: I was hoping to yesterday, but they kept me busy and I found no time to sit down to a letter.

Concerning your plan for the pamphlet, I contended that the “demand for free love” was not clear and that—irrespective of your intentions and desires (I underlined that, saying: what matters are the objective class relations and not your own subjective wishes)—in the conditions of contemporary society it will look like a bourgeois, and not a proletarian, demand.

You do not agree.

Very well. Let us examine the matter once again.

In order to clarify what was unclear, I enumerated some ten possible (and in the circumstances of the class struggle inevitable) different interpretations; adding that in my opinion interpretations 1–7 would be typical and characteristic of proletarians, and 8–10 of the bourgeoisie.

To refute this, it would be necessary to show that these interpretations either (1) are wrong ones (in which case they would have to be replaced by others or the wrong ones pointed out) or (2) are incomplete (in which case those that are missing should be added) or (3) do not fall into proletarian and bourgeois ones in the manner indicated.

You do neither the first nor the second nor yet the third.

Points 1–7 you do not touch upon at all. That is to say, you accept, generally speaking, their correctness. (What you write about the prostitution of proletarian women and about their dependence, their “inability to say no” fits Nos. 1–7 completely. There is no disagreement between us here on any count.)

There remain Nos. 8–10.

These you “do not quite understand” and you “retort”: “I fail to understand how it impossible (in so many words!) to identify (!!??) free love with” point 10….

It looks as though I did the “identifying”, and you are ready to scold me and argue against me.

How is this? Why so?

Bourgeois women take free love to mean points 8–10—that is my thesis.

Do you reject it? Then tell me what bourgeois ladies do understand by free love.

You do not say that. Do not both life and literature prove that bourgeois ladies give it exactly that meaning? They prove it fully! Your silence admits it.

And since this is so, it is their class standing that matters, and to “refute” them would be hardly possible and almost naïve.

What should be done is to break clearly away from them and oppose to them the proletarian point of view. One must consider the objective fact that they will otherwise seize on suitable passages in your pamphlet, interpret them in their own way, convert your pamphlet into grist for their own mills, distort your thoughts before the workers, “muddle” the workers (by instilling into them fears as to whether you are not offering them alien ideas). And they have a hold on a host of newspapers, etc.

And you, having completely forgotten the objective and class point, of view, go over to an “attack” on me, as though I were “identifying” free love with points 8–10. Strange, really strange….

“Even a fleeting passion and liaison “is” more poetical and purer “than the” kisses without love “of (shallow and philistine) spouses. Thus you write. And thus you intend to write in your pamphlet. Very good.

Is this juxtaposition logical? The kisses without love of philistine spouses are vile. I agree. One should oppose to that … what? ... it would seem: kisses with love? While you contrast it with “fleeting” (why fleeting?) “passion” (why not love?)—logically speaking, it looks as though (fleeting) kisses without love are here held against marital kisses without love…. Strange. For a popular pamphlet would it not be better to contrast the base and vile marriage without love of the bourgeoisie-intelligentsia-peasantry (my point 6 or 5, I think)—with a proletarian civil marriage with love (adding, if you must have it, that a fleeting passion-liaison can be vile but can also be pure). With you it turned out to be a contrast not of class types, but something in the nature of a “case”, which, of course, is possible. But is it cases that matter? If your theme is to be a case, the individual instance of vile kisses in marriage as against pure kisses in a fleeting liaison—such a theme should be developed in a novel (because here the whole point is in the individual circumstances, in an analysis of the characters and psychology of given types). But in a pamphlet?

You have understood very well what I was trying to convey regarding the unsuitable quotation from Ellen Key; ⁴ when you say that it is incongruous to appear in the rôle of a “professor is love”. Exactly. Well, how about the rôle of a professor is fleeting, etc.?

Really, I have not the slightest wish to polemize. I would willingly throw this letter of mine away and postpone matters until we meet. But I am anxious that the pamphlet should be a good one, that no one should be able to extract from it sentences unpleasant for you (sometimes a single sentence is sufficient to ruin the whole …), that no one should be able to distort your ideas. I feel certain that you have been writing here “against your will”, and I am sending you this letter merely because you will perhaps examine the plan more carefully on the strength of letters than after a conversation, and the plan is very important.

Haven’t you a French socialist friend? Translate to her (as though from the English) my Nos. 1–10 and your own remarks about the “fleeting”, etc., and then watch her, listen to her attentively: this would be a little experiment on what outsiders will say, what their impressions of the pamphlet and their expectations from it will be.

I press your hand and wish you fewer headaches and a speedy recovery.

V.I.

PS. As regards Beaugy, I do not know…. It is possible that my friend promised too much … but what? I do not know. The matter has been postponed, i.e., the clash has been put off, not removed. We shall have to struggle and struggle. Shall we succeed in making them change their mind? What is your view?⁵

¹ The two letters to Inesse Armand, written by Lenin in January 1915, were published in Pod Znamenem Marxisma, 1938, No. 6, with an introduction and notes by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute written, of course, at the time of publication. The letters evidently reflect Lenin’s attitude to the needs of the propaganda of a working-class party in a capitalist country, whilst the introduction bridges the gap to the latest developments in Soviet family policies. fR. S.l

² The dates of these two letters are noted at the top of the originals in the hand of I. Armand.

³ This “Friendly shake hands” is Lenin’s own English, although the text of the letter is in Russian. [Tr.]

⁴ This refers to a quotation from the works of the Swedish writer Ellen Key who wrote on the problems of the feminist movement and of child education.

⁵ Lenin is referring to a conflict with the Pyatakov-Bukharin traitor-group who attempted to organize the publication of their own sectional newspaper behind Lenin’s back. The members of this group lived in the village of Beaugy, in Switzerland.

Document No. 2

Decree on the Introduction of Divorce of Dec. 19, 1917 ¹

1. A marriage is to be annulled when either both parties or one at least appeal for its annulment.

2. Such appeal is to be made to the local court, in accordance with the regulations of local administration.

Note.—Announcement of dissolution of marriage, where arranged by mutual consent, may be made direct to the marriage registration office, where the original entry of the marriage is preserved; this office is to enter the annulment of the marriage in its register and to issue a certificate to that effect.

3. On the day fixed for the hearing of the appeal the local judge will summon both parties or their representatives.

4. If the whereabouts of one of the parties liable to summons be unknown, the appeal for annulment of marriage is allowed, provided the applicant states the last known address of the absent party, or both the applicant’s own address and the last known address of the defendant.

5. If the whereabouts of one of the parties liable to summons be unknown, the date for the hearing of the case is to be fixed not less than two months after the day on which the court- summons has been published in the Gazette of the local administration, and notification is to be sent to the defendant’s last known address as provided by the applicant.

6. When the judge has convinced himself that the appeal for annulment of marriage has been made by both parties or by one of them, he shall of his own authority declare the marriage void and issue a certificate to that effect. He shall also convey a copy of his decision to the marriage registration office where the marriage was originally concluded and where the files containing the original entry of the marriage are preserved.

7. Where a marriage is annulled by mutual consent both parties must include in the declaration which they submit a statement of the surnames they and their children propose to use. Where a marriage is annulled on the appeal of one of the parties, and agreement between the parties on the subject cannot be obtained, the divorced parties shall reassume the surnames used by them before their marriage, while the surname of their children is to be decided upon by the judge, or—where the parties fail to agree—by the local court.

8. In cases of divorce by mutual consent the judge, when declaring the marriage dissolved, shall decide which of the parents is to keep the children born during the marriage where they are not of age, and which of the two parties shall provide for the maintenance and education of the children and to what extent, as well as whether and in what degree the husband shall provide for the maintenance and upkeep of his divorced wife.

9. If consent is lacking, the husband’s share in providing for the maintenance and upkeep of his divorced wife in the event of her being destitute or without private means and unable to work, as well as the allocation of the children, shall be decided upon in the general order of suits by the local court independent of the amount of the suit. Having of his own authority declared the marriage dissolved the judge shall, pending the final settlement of the suit, temporarily decide the fate of the children and also determine the temporary maintenance of the children and of the wife, if she require it.

10. Suits relating to the annulment and invalidation of marriages shall henceforth be heard in the local courts.

11. This law shall bind all citizens of the Russian Republic irrespective of their religious denomination.

12. All suits relating to the annulment of marriage now under consideration by the religious consistories of the Orthodox Church and other faiths, by the Governing Synod and by any departments of other Christian and non-Christian denominations and by responsible persons in the administration of the affairs of the various denominations, which have not yet been decided or in which the decisions have not yet been put into legal force, are by virtue of this law declared invalid and are to be transferred to the local district courts together with all files to be found in the marriage-divorce departments of the above-mentioned institutions and with the above-mentioned persons.

The parties concerned shall have the right to submit a new appeal for the annulment of marriage under the provisions of this law, without waiting for their previous suit to be terminated; moreover...