Mothers in the motherland: Stalinist pronatalism in its Pan-European context

Journal of Social History

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 35-54

  Hoffmann, David L ^a  

^a Department of History ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0034258190     PISSN: 00224529     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.2000.0108     Document Type: Review

References (127)

1. A. Kollontai, Trud zhenshchiny v evoliutsii khoziaistva, 2nd ed. (Moscow/Leningrad, 1928; first published, 1923), pp. 146, 161-162.
2. Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society (Berkeley, 1978).
3. Richard Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930 (Princeton, 1978).
4. Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (New York, 1993).
5. Pronatalism and reproduction management were practiced by governments around the world; space considerations limit our comparisons here to western Europe. On similar state efforts to manage reproduction in Romania, Japan, and Latin America, see Maria Bucur, "Disciplining the Future: Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania," Diss., Univ. of Illinois, 1996; Sheldon Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton, 1997);
6. Pronatalism and reproduction management were practiced by governments around the world; space considerations limit our comparisons here to western Europe. On similar state efforts to manage reproduction in Romania, Japan, and Latin America, see Maria Bucur, "Disciplining the Future: Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania," Diss., Univ. of Illinois, 1996; Sheldon Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton, 1997); Nancy Leys Stepan, "The Hour of Eugenics": Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, 1991).
7. Pronatalism and reproduction management were practiced by governments around the world; space considerations limit our comparisons here to western Europe. On similar state efforts to manage reproduction in Romania, Japan, and Latin America, see Maria Bucur, "Disciplining the Future: Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania," Diss., Univ. of Illinois, 1996; Sheldon Garon, Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life (Princeton, 1997); Nancy Leys Stepan, "The Hour of Eugenics": Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, 1991).
8. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1983), p. 170.
9. David Ransel, Mothers of Misery: Child Abandonment in Russia (Princeton, 1988), pp. 17, 31.
10. Maria Sophia Quine, Population Politics in Twentieth-Century Europe: Fascist Dictatorships and Liberal Democracies (New York, 1996), pp. 52-65.
11. P. Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 188.
12. Pat Thane, "Visions of Gender in the Making of the British Welfare State: The Case of Women in the British Labour Party and Social Policy, 1906-1945," in Maternity and Gender Policies: Women and the Rise of the European Welfare State, 1880s-1950s, ed. by Gisela Bock and Pat Thane (New York, 1991), p. 105.
13. Quine, pp. 17-18.
14. Ansley Coale, Barbara Anderson, Erna Harm, Human Fertility in Russia since the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1979), p. 16.
15. Frank Lorimer, The Population of the Soviet Union (Geneva, 1946), pp. 40-41.
16. Susan Gross Solomon, "The Demographic Argument in Soviet Debates over the Legalization of Abortion in the 1920s," Cahiers du Monde russe et sovietique 33 (1992), p. 68.
17. Quine, pp. 17-18. The number of births per thousand people in England and Wales fell from 25.5 in 1920 to 14.4 in 1933. See Thane, "Visions," pp. 99-100.
18. A. Grotjahn, "Differential Birth Rates in Germany," in Proceedings of the World Population Conference, ed. Margaret Sanger (London, 1927), p. 154.
19. S. G. Strumilin, "K probleme rozhdaemosti v rabochei srede," Problemy ekonomiki truda (Moscow, 1957), pp. 194-198.
20. Strumilin, pp. 201-4.
21. V. Z. Drobizhev, U istokov sovetskoi demografii (Moscow, 1987), p. 22.
22. David Horn, Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction, and Italian Modernity (Princeton, 1994), p. 59.
23. Quine, pp. 32-33.
24. Quine, p. 34.
25. Mary Nash, "Pronatalism and Motherhood in Franco's Spain," in Bock and Thane, eds., p. 163.
26. Quine, p. 88.
27. Pravda May 28, 1936, June 8, 1936.
28. Pravda January 1, 1936, p. 8.
29. Lisa Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 1933-1945 (New York, 1997), p. 19.
30. Elisabeth Domansky, "Militarization and Reproduction in World War I Germany," in Society, Culture and the State in Germany, 1870-1930, ed. Geoff Eley (Ann Arbor, 1996), pp. 450-451.
31. Pine, pp. 19-20; Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (New York, 1987), pp. 185-187.
32. Pine, pp. 19-20; Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (New York, 1987), pp. 185-187.
33. For further discussion, see Atina Grossmann, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform 1920-1950 (New York, 1995), pp. 10, 82-3, 150-2.
34. William H. Schneider, Quality and Quantity: The Quest for Biological Regeneration in Twentieth-Century France (New York, 1990), p. 120.
35. Karen Offen, "Body Politics: Women, Work and the Politics of Motherhood in France, 1900-1950," in Bock and Thane, eds., p. 138.
36. Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley, 1992), p. 58; E. A. Sadokasova, Sotsial'no-gigienicheskie aspekty regulirovaniia razmerov sem'i (Moscow, 1969), pp. 17-20.
37. Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley, 1992), p. 58; E. A. Sadokasova, Sotsial'no-gigienicheskie aspekty regulirovaniia razmerov sem'i (Moscow, 1969), pp. 17-20.
38. See Goldman, p. 255.
39. Goldman, p. 256.
40. Solomon, pp. 66-67.
41. Peter H. Solomon Jr., Soviet Criminal Justice Under Stalin (New York, 1996), p. 212.
42. See Goldman, p. 288.
43. A. E. Kanevskii, Sud nad Annoi Gorbovoi, po obvineniiu v proizvodstve sebe vykidysha (aborta) (Odessa, 1925), pp. 7-8,
44. as cited in Eric Naiman, Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology (Princeton, 1997), p. 109.
45. There were 57,000 births and 154,584 abortions in Moscow in 1934. Izvestiia July 12, 1936, as cited in Lorimer, p. 127.
46. Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii #34 (July 21, 1936), pp. 510-511.
47. RTsKhIDNI f. 17, op. 3, d. 976, l. 4.
48. RTsKhIDNI f. 17, op. 3, d. 980, l. 1; d. 982, ll. 126-130.
49. Rabotnitsa i krest'ianka 1936 #11, p. 6; #12, p. 1. See also Izvestiia June 5, 1935.
50. Rabotnitsa i krest'ianka 1936 #11, p. 6; #12, p. 1. See also Izvestiia June 5, 1935.
51. Pravda September 5, 1936, p. 4.
52. N. A. Semashko, "Zamechatel'nyi zakon (o zapreshchenii aborta)," Front nauki i tekhniki 1936 #7, p. 38.
53. A. Sol'ts, "Abort i alimenty," Trud April 27, 1936, p. 3.
54. For further discussion, see Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York, 1993).
55. Weindling, pp. 252-3.
56. Quine, p. 71.
57. Richard A. Soloway, Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain (Chapel Hill, 1990), p. 147.
58. Susan Pedersen, Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914-1945 (New York, 1993), p. 4.
59. Thane, pp. 99-102; Jane Lewis, "Models of Equality for Women: The Case of State Support for Children in Twentieth-Century Britain," in Bock and Thane, eds., p. 85; Soloway, pp. 147-52.
60. Thane, pp. 99-102; Jane Lewis, "Models of Equality for Women: The Case of State Support for Children in Twentieth-Century Britain," in Bock and Thane, eds., p. 85; Soloway, pp. 147-52.
61. Thane, pp. 99-102; Jane Lewis, "Models of Equality for Women: The Case of State Support for Children in Twentieth-Century Britain," in Bock and Thane, eds., p. 85; Soloway, pp. 147-52.
62. Quine, p. 79; Offen, pp. 138, 150.
63. Horn, pp. 89-90.
64. Pine, p. 109.
65. See Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge, MA, 1995).
66. Grossmann, pp. 150-153.
67. Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii #34 (July 21, 1936), p. 511.
68. GARF f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 2753, l. 4. The Soviet government had to allot 35 million rubles in 1936 alone to pay such bonuses; GARF f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 2753, l. 31.
69. GARF f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 2754, l. 32.
70. Drobizhev, pp. 109, 122.
71. GARF f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 2754, l. 45.
72. See for example RTsKhIDNI f. 17, op. 120, d. 202, l. 11.
73. Offen, p. 138.
74. Pine, p. 22.
75. Offen, pp. 138, 150.
76. Pine, p. 96; Koonz, pp. 185-6.
77. See for example, Martenovka May 1, 1936, p. 5.
78. Rabotnitsa i krest'ianka 1936 #15, p. 5; #2, p. 20. See also Gigiena i zdorov'e 1938 #4, p. 6.
79. Rabotnitsa i krest'ianka 1936 #15, p. 5; #2, p. 20. See also Gigiena i zdorov'e 1938 #4, p. 6.
80. Rabotnitsa i krest'ianka 1936 #7, pp. 20-21. The Commissariat of Health created a Council on Painless Childbirth; John Bell, "Giving Birth to the New Soviet Man: Politics and Obstetrics in the USSR," Slavic Review vol. 40 #1 (Spring, 1980), p. 2.
81. Rabotnitsa i krest'ianka 1936 #7, pp. 20-21. The Commissariat of Health created a Council on Painless Childbirth; John Bell, "Giving Birth to the New Soviet Man: Politics and Obstetrics in the USSR," Slavic Review vol. 40 #1 (Spring, 1980), p. 2.
82. Quine, pp. 55-58.
83. Quine, p. 86.
84. Nash, pp. 160-6.
85. Koonz, p. 178.
86. Gisela Bock, "Antinatalism, Maternity and Paternity in National Socialist Racism," in Bock and Thane, eds., p. 243.
87. One commentator wrote that the sexuality of laboring youth should be organized so as to direct and "preserve needed energy for socially useful labor." K. N. Kovalev, Voprosy pola, polovogo vospitaniia, braka i sem'ia (Moscow, 1931), p. 2.
88. RTsKhIDNI f. 78, op. 1, d. 549, l. 45.
89. Kovalev, Voprosy pola, p. 2.
90. For further discussion, see Goldman, pp. 305-306, 317-325.
91. O rassledovanii i rassmotrenii del o nesovershennoletnikh (Moscow, 1937), pp. 25-32.
92. Goldman, p. 324.
93. I-i kodeks zakonov ob aktakh grazdanskogo sostoianiia, brachnom, semeinom i opekunskom prave (Moscow, 1918), as cited in Goldman, p. 49.
94. Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii raboche-krest'ianskogo pravitel'stva Soiuza Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik #34 (July 21, 1936), p. 515.
95. Rabotnitsa i krest'ianka 1936 #12, p. 2. For pre-decree propaganda glorifying marriage, see Pravda June 26, 1935, p. 1; Komsomol'skaia pravda Jan. 1, 1936, p. 4.
96. Rabotnitsa i krest'ianka 1936 #12, p. 2. For pre-decree propaganda glorifying marriage, see Pravda June 26, 1935, p. 1; Komsomol'skaia pravda Jan. 1, 1936, p. 4.
97. Komsomol'skii rabotnik 1940 #8, p. 3.
98. Timasheff, p. 197. See also Pravda June 26, 1935; Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost', 1939 #2.
99. Timasheff, p. 197. See also Pravda June 26, 1935; Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost', 1939 #2.
100. Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie: Kodifitsirovannyi sbornik zakonodatel'stva RSFSR na 1 ianvariia 1934 goda (Moscow, 1934), p. 49.
101. Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii #34 (July 21, 1936), pp. 515-516.
102. GARF f. 9492 s.ch., op. 1, d. 2, l. 183.
103. TsKhDMO f. 1, op. 23, d. 1074, l. 98-99, 108.
104. Sotsialisticheskaia zakonnost' 1939 #2.
105. V. Svetlov, "Socialist Society and the Family," in Rudolf Schlesinger, ed., Changing Attitudes in Soviet Russia: The Family in the USSR (London, 1949), p. 334.
106. Komsomol'skii rabotnik 1940 #8, pp. 21-22.
107. TsMAM f. 528, op. 1, d. 465, ll. 25-6; A. I. Aliakrinskii, Brak, sem'ia i opeka: prakticheskoe rukovodstvo dlia organov ZAGS (Moscow, 1930), p. 124.
108. TsMAM f. 528, op. 1, d. 465, ll. 25-6; A. I. Aliakrinskii, Brak, sem'ia i opeka: prakticheskoe rukovodstvo dlia organov ZAGS (Moscow, 1930), p. 124.
109. State intervention in childraising was already underway in the nineteenth century; see Sylvia Schafer, Children in Moral Danger and the Problem of Government in Third Republic France (Princeton, 1997).
110. Koonz, pp. 14, 180.
111. RTsKhIDNI f. 17, op. 3, d. 981, l. 69.
112. Lapidus, pp. 103-115; David L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929-1941 (Ithaca, 1994), pp. 117-124.
113. Lapidus, pp. 103-115; David L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929-1941 (Ithaca, 1994), pp. 117-124.
114. Nash, p. 174.
115. Bock, p. 245; Pine, p. 181; Koonz, p. 187.
116. GARF f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 2753, ll. 15, 22, 26; f. 3316, op. 40, d. 18, l. 117.
117. GARF f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 2753, l. 35.
118. GARF f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 2753, l. 85.
119. 104. RGAE f. 1562 s.ch., op. 329, d. 407, ll. 22-5.
120. Sovetskaia iustitsiia 1936 #34, p. 16.
121. TsMAM f. 819, op. 2, d. 27, ll. 12-15.
122. Lorimer, p. 134; Coale, p. 16. For further discussion, see Goldman, pp. 294-295.
123. RTsKhIDNI f. 17, op. 120, d. 138, l. 85.
124. Proceedings. See also Horn, pp. 49-50.
125. For further discussion, see Quine, p. 132.
126. See Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, 1983); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1992).
127. See Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, 1983); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1992).