The Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Women's Question: The Case of the 1936 Decree 'In Defence of Mother and Child'

Journal of Contemporary History

Volumn 16, Issue 4, 1981, Pages 757-775

  Evans, Janet ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84977220728     PISSN: 00220094     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002200948101600407     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Simonovich, 'Bor'ba s prestupnost'yu sredi nesovershennoletnikh v Nogin skom raione', Sovetskaya Yustitsya, 27 (September 1935), 10.
2. Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed (New York 1973), 151.
3. See V. Bil'shai, Reshenie zhenskogo Voprosa v SSSR (Moscow 1956), 89-91 for full details of the decree.
4. G. A. Mendel'son, Otvetstvennost' za proizvodstvo nezakonnogo aborta po sovetskomu ygolnomu pravu (Moscow 1957), 3-4. The decree was soon applied to the other republics within the USSR.
5. Full details of the actual decree of 27 June 1936 appeared in Rabotnitsa, 20/21 (July 1976), 7-11.
6. G. Vainshtein, 'Zabota o zhenschine-materi i vospitanii detei', Sovetskoe Stroitel'stvo, 7 (July 1936), 46. Details of numerous meetings can be found in Prav da, Rabotnitsa and Komsomol'skaya Pravda.
7. L. Lyampert (4 June 1936) and Sidorkin (5 June 1936) in letters to Kom somol'skaya Pravda insisted that benefits should be paid from the birth of the fifth or even of the third child rather than from the seventh as laid down in the proposed (and the actual) decree.
8. E. A. Sadvokasova, Sotsial'no-gigienicheskie aspekty regultrovanie razmerov semi (Moscow 1969), 25, 27. These abortion figures are not necessarily accurate and if anything, underestimate the total number of illegal abortions.
9. All these examples in 'Zabota sovetskogo gosudarstva o materi i rebenke', Rabotnitsa, 26 (September 1935). It is interesting that women were not afraid to ad mit that they had had abortions which were against the law.
10. Pravda, 22 May 1935.
11. John Kingsbury and Sir Arthur Newsholme, Red Medicine (New York 1933), 180.
12. 'Zabota sovetskogo gosudarstva o materi i rebenke', Rabotnitsa, 26 (September 1935). It appears that the aid of babki (untrained midwives who had traditionally delivered babies and performed abortions) was still engaged by a number of women. Antonov-Ovseenko, the State Procurator of the RSFSR in a circular printed in Sovetskaya Yustitsiya, 20 (July 1935), 25, criticized the activities of various babki, including Dergatuzova, Proklyushina and Soldatova whose acts of inducing abortions, he claimed, the courts were reluctant to investigate.
13. E. A. Movikova, 'Ya goryacho privetstvuyu zakon o zapreshenii abortov', Rabotnitsa, 20/21 (July 1936).
14. A. Artyukhina, 'Velika zabota o zhenshchine-materi', A. I. Blizmyanskaya, 'Rozhdenie cheloveka estestvennyi velikii i radostnyi akt' in Rabotnitsa, 16 (June 1935), and 19 (July 1935).
15. Pearl Buck, Talk about Russia with Masha Scott (New York 1945), 117.
16. See letters from Mikhail Lobok (1 June 1936), and M.B. (28 May 1936), Komsomol'skaya Pravda.
17. Mitrofanov and Firsova letter in Komsomol'skaya Pravda, 4 June 1936.
18. Dr. M. Karlin, 'Erkrankungs- und Sterblichkeitsfrequenz vor und nach der Freigabe des Aborts in der SSR Union', Die Medizinische Welt, 52 (December 1929), 1858.
19. Professor Braude, 'O vrede aborta', Komsomol'skaya Pravda, 1 June 1936.
20. Professor D. I. Azbukin, 'Schitat'sya zhelaniem zhenschchiny', Komsomol'skaya Pravda, 2 June 1936. See also Antimonov, 'Velichaishii Doku ment', Komsomol'skaya Pravda, 1 June 1936, where he argues that hospital abortions are far safer than illegal ones and that there might be good social reasons why a woman might not desire more children.
21. Komsomol'skaya Pravda, 1 June 1936.
22. 'S vse sily na vypolnenie zabota', Krest'yanka, 20 (July 1936).
23. Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Society (London 1975), 49.
24. V. Zimina, 'Ya likuyu', Rabotnitsa, 16 (June 1936).
25. Ikhan, 'Syn prinosit mne radost', Komsomol'skaya Pravda, 5 June 1936.
26. A. T. Pasheva, 'Kazhdoi zhenshchine neobkhodime imet' rebenka' and Siritova-Kozanchenke, 'O podpol'nom aborte' in Rabotnitsa, 20/21 (July 1936) and 22 (August 1935).
27. M. Shtikh, 'V zashchitu materi i rebenka', Molodaya Gvardiya, 5 (May 1936), 188.
28. Wilhelm Reich, The Sexual Revolution (London 1951), 186. A Komsomolka is a female member of Komsomol — the Communist youth organization. A Rab fakovka was a female student in a Rabfak — educational establishments set up after the Revolution to prepare people without a good educational background for entry into Higher Education.
29. Yaroslavsky, 'Kommunisticheskaya moral', Komsomol'skaya Pravda, 30 May 1936.
30. Smetanin, 'Net zaboty o detyakh', Sovetskaya Yustitsiya, 32 (November 1935), 17.
31. N. Rybin, letter in Komsomol'skaya Pravda, 16 June 1936.
32. 'O pochetnoi grazhdanke i schastlivoi materi', Rabotnitsa, 29/30 (October 1935).
33. Volkova, 'Rebenok ne meshaet uchit'sya', Komsomol'skaya Pravda.
34. A. Mikhailov, 'O pravakh ottsa', Komsomol'skaya Pravda, 10 June 1936.
35. F. Engels, The Origin of the Family … (Peking 1978), 54-55, 62-68.
36. Bebel, 'Woman and Socialism', cited by Richard Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia (Princeton 1977), 234.
37. Also see Lily Braun, Die Frauenfrage (Leipzig 1901), 312-323.
38. Clara Zetkin, 'Proletarian Woman and Socialist Revolution', Socialist Register, 1976, 195.
39. Jacqueline Heinen, 'Kollontai and the History of Women's Oppression', New Left Review, 110, 61.
40. See Barbara Clements, Bolshevik Feminist (Bloomington 1979), 232-235. 'Bourgeois feminist' was a term of abuse used by Marxists not only for middle-class liberals but for any women (even Socialists) who appeared to attach too much im portance to women's oppression.
41. Rudolf Schlesinger, Changing Attitudes in Soviet Russia: The Family in the USSR (London 1949), 53.
42. Richard Evans, The Feminists (London 1977), 163.
43. Harry and Rebecca Timbres, We Didn't Ask Utopia (New York 1939), 20.
44. M. Potts, P. Diggory and J. Peel, Abortion (Cambridge 1977), 8.
45. Gail Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society (Berkeley 1978), 99.
46. Zhenshchiny i deti v SSSR statisticheskii sbornik (Moscow 1961), 126.
47. Susan M. Kingsbury and Mildred Fairchild, Factory, Family and Woman in the Soviet Union (New York 1935), 248-251.
48. O. P. Mungalova 'Ya gorzhus' svoim synom', Komsomol'skaya Pravda, 2 June 1936.