Family Law in Soviet Russia, 1917-1945

Author(s): Becky L. Glass and Margaret K. Stolee

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Nov., 1987), pp. 893-902
Published by: National Council on Family Relations
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Family Law in Soviet Russia, 1917-1945

BECKY L. GLASS
MARGARET K. STOLEE*
State University of New York at Geneseo
This article addresses whether the postrevolutionary Soviet government intended to destroy
the family and discusses the intent and consequences of the various family law codes that
were decreed between 1917 and 1945. It is shown that there were in fact three diffferent
perspectives on what the role of the family should be within the socialist state and that
Soviet policymakers did not achieve consensus on the issue of the family's role. Further, it
is argued that despite the revolutionary tenor of this time period, legislation was not
capable of successfully altering citizens' attitudes and behavior in the direction envisioned
by early lawmakers of the new Soviet state. Implications for analysis of contemporary law
are included in the discussion.

After the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, the

Soviet government instituted a variety of new law
codes, many of which were aimed at altering the
structure and function of the family. From 1917
to 1945, four major decrees regarding marriage,
divorce, parent-child relationships, and other
familial matters were issued by the Peoples' Commissariat of Law. The early decrees (issued in
1919 and 1926) provided new legal definitions of
family structure, marital and parental relationships, sexual behavior, and women's position that
departed significantly from what had existed in
prerevolutionary Russian society (and, for that
matter, from most of the societies of the period).
The later decrees (issued in 1936 and 1945),
however, returned to a more traditional definition
of the family and the rights and obligations of its
members.
Some analysts have interpreted the changes that
occurred in Soviet family law during this period as
a "Russian Experiment" to abolish the family
(Blitsten, 1963; Schulz, 1976; Timasheff, 1960).
They conclude that the attempt failed, then use
this conclusion to imply the universality of the
family, the strength of the family to withstand at-

Departmentof Sociology,StateUniversityof New York

at Geneseo,Geneseo,NY 14454.
*Departmentof History,StateUniversityof New York
at Geneseo,Geneseo,NY 14454.

tack, and the relative supremacy of individual

rights over governmental demands.
It is our contention that, in general, this period
of family change in Soviet Russia has been approached too simplistically and that there is a
need to recognize the complexity of the social
milieu and of the political thinking involved. In
this article we explore the questions of whether
there was in fact a coherent Soviet policy to
eliminate the family as the basic social unit and
whether the reversals in the later law codes
stemmed from changes in policy, ideology, pragmatism, or some other factor. The answers to
these questions have implications for understanding the complex relationships between law and
directed social change in other contexts and other
times.
POSTREVOLUTIONARY VIEWPOINTS ON
THE FAMILY IN THE SOCIALIST STATE
Over the course of the first decade after the
revolution, three separate perspectives for dealing
with the family during the transition period from
socialism to communism were proposed by members of the new Soviet government (Stolee, 1982).'
The first perspective advocated the active destruction of the family and its replacement with collectivized upbringing of children through state-run
homes and boarding institutions. The adherents
of this idea maintained that the abolition of the
family was justified by Marxist ideology. The second perspective was held by those who were con-

Journal of Marriage and the Family 49 (November 1987): 893-902

893

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JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

cerned with the practical problem that the family

could not realistically be dismantled at that time,
and by those who believed that the family would
continue to function even under socialism.
Despite differences over the long-term nature of
the family, the immediate goals of the adherents
of the second perspective were the same: to do
special, intensive work with parents to help them
raise healthy and happy children. They planned to
use educational institutions to keep children
aware of collectivism, and also public consultation centers, displays, brochures, and special
courses to help mothers with their children. The
third perspective proposed using the children
themselves as agents of the revolution in their own
homes. The children would be enlightened in
Soviet institutions and then return home to
enlighten their parents. In this way, the children's
natural tendencies toward change and progress
would be enhanced and they could live at home
without the risk of being co-opted by the former
way of life.
The distinct philosophies behind these three
perspectives and their impact on childrearing
practices as one aspect of family life are discussed
below.
First Perspective: The State as a
Replacement for the Family
The ideological position that the family as an
institution should be destroyed and replaced had
many adherents among Soviet educators. For example, A. S. Durnogo, a professor of education
and a pedological researcher, used history to show
that progress demanded the transfer of childrearing responsibilities from the mother to professional specialists (Durnogo, 1927). University
Rector Albert Pinkevich's experiences as a teacher
demonstrated to him the all-pervasive influence
the family had over the child; he felt that the family's traditional values would only hamper the development of a truly socialist human being
(Pinkevich, 1929).
Many members of the Communist party also
held this view. The head of the Commissariat of
Enlightenment, Anatolii Lunacharskii, pointed
out that families create the wrong kinds of individuals, that is, not the persons who would
make contributions to the social collective, but
people who would be egoists (Lunacharskii,
1976). While serving as director of the Petrograd
schools, Zlata Lilina made an equally damning attack on the family and concluded:
We oughtto removethe childrenfromthe pernicious influence of the family. We ought to
register them; frankly we should nationalize
them. Fromthe first days of theirlives they will

be underthe influenceof kindergartens

andcommunistschools. There they will learn the communist alphabet. There they will become true
communists.Our practicaltask now is to force
the mother to give us her child, us, the communistgovernment.[Sokoloff, 1921]
The Bolshevik feminist Aleksandra Kollontai also
argued that a socially reared child was better
prepared for the new way of life than one raised
by the family:
A personbroughtup in the upbringinginstitutions of the republicof labor will be markedly
more adaptedfor life in the workingcommune
than a personwhose childhoodwas spentin the
closed-off sphereof the egotisticalhabitsof the
family. [Kollontai,1922]
Despite the consensus by such prominent communists and educators that the family should be
abolished, there was not yet a replacement for the
family in the first decade following the revolution.
The system of children's homes was still so poorly
staffed, so erratically supplied, and so shakily
organized that the child was actually better off at
home. This led to the conclusion that
Russiais a countryof socialupbringing;in practice she remainsa countryof family upbringing
and will remain that way for many years. ...

In

the circumstancesof our Russian culture this

meansthatthe largemassesof ouryounggeneration will remainwithoutany systematicupbringing. [Al'medingen-Tumin,
1923]
The advocates of abolishing the family conceded
that, in order to get the best possible upbringing
for children in the present state of the nation, they
had to work with, instead of against, the family.
The idea of eliminating the family remained an
important part of revolutionary ideology during
the first decade after the revolution, but it turned
out to have little influence in practice.
Second Perspective: The State and the
Family Sharing Responsibility
Those who supported the view that the family
as well as social institutions would be involved in
the rearing of the children had a variety of reasons
for holding this view. Some, like the teacher
Natalia Al'medingen-Tumin, realized that this
was the only option at that time and determined
to make the best of it (Al'medingen-Tumin,
1923). Kollontai, who sometimes took the middle
ground of advocating both socialized upbringing
and continued parental contact with children, and
Ester Konius of the Society for the Protection of
Motherhood and Infancy (part of the People's
Commissariat of Health) promised that the love,
joy, and affection of family upbringing would re-

FAMILY LAW IN SOVIET RUSSIA

main under communism but that the new state
would take over the burdens and responsibilities,
such as financial support and provision of basic
incentives (Conus, 1933; Kollontai, 1971). In this
way the emotional needs as well as the material
needs of both parents and children would be met.
Other supporters of this approach held that
parents normally and naturally played an important part in a child's development and that their
involvement should be actively encouraged. The
educational innovator Konstantin Venttsel; even
though he expected the child eventually to surpass
his/her parents, still specifically made plans to include parents in the upbringing activities of his experimental school (Venttsel; 1923).
Whatever their reasons for the belief that the
family would be involved in the upbringing of the
younger generation, the policymakers all agreed
that the parents themselves needed instruction on
how to fulfill their functions correctly. They advocated an extensive and intensive education of
the parents on how to bring up their children. The
Commissariats of Health and Enlightenment as
well as the Women's Section of the Communist
party sponsored many programs, exhibitions, and
courses to teach mothers the right and wrong ways
to handle their children.
While these policymakers believed that the
family would continue to play a part in childrearing, the role they envisioned for the family was
minimal. This was evident from the content of the
books published to help parents bring up their
children. The emphasis in these publications was
on caring for the child; the books gave information on how to feed and clothe a child and how to
protect his/her health (Konius, 1926; Krichevskaia, 1922; Lebedeva and Speranskii, 1926).
Other than explaining that the child should not be
punished or ridiculed, they provided very little on
matters relating to the development of personality. The intention was that the schools and other
institutions would concern themselves with the
child's social and intellectual development and
that the family would simply provide for the
child's emotional well-being.
Although these Soviet policymakers anticipated
that family upbringing of children would be the
norm for the immediate future, they were not
totally comfortable with this prospect. They had
been partially convinced by the ideologists of the
family's inherent backwardness, and they therefore envisaged ways to begin loosening the
family's hold on the child.
For instance, Nikolai Iordanskii, a member of
the Commissariat of Enlightenment, predicted
that the authority of the family over children
would naturally erode as the children spent more

895
and more time under the influence of their teachers. The school and instructional staff would then
replace the family as the source of determining
what was right and wrong (Iordanskii, 1925).
Other policies would serve to make the child feel
more independent from the family: for example,
it was suggested that a small sum of money given
to a mother at the birth of each child would lessen
the children's sense of dependence on their family. It would be their own money and, although
only a very small amount, it would have a "large
moral significance" (Krichevskaia, 1928). Further, a system of government inspectors was to be
set up to determine if the family was fit to rear the
child; the inspectors would have the power to
remove the child from the family setting if the
family received a poor evaluation. The reasons for
a family's negative assessment could vary, but the
end result was the same:
But if the family breaks down, or falls into
pieces,or throwsthe childout into the streets;or
if both parentsare busywith socialwork for the
greaterpartof the day-then the familyis not in
the condition to bring up a child. Then the
children'shome should take him. [Avtukhov,
1923]
Because of the disorganization of the times as
well as ideological uncertainty, however, the work
of the educational institutions reached only a
small percentage of the population, and other
ideas of the second perspective were only partially
translated into practice.
Third Perspective: Children as the
Link between the State and Family
The third perspective on the relationship between the family and children under socialism
proposed having the children receive the major
part of their education and upbringing in a Soviet
institution such as a school and then bring what
they learned home to their families. The skills and
habits to be transferred from school to family included personal cleanliness, political education,
and modern agriculture. In these ways, the ignorant parents would learn from their child's participation in socialist institutions (Gordon, 1926;
Iordanskaia, 1926).
These aspirations were quite ambitious; the
policymakers first had to set up the institutions,
then train the children, and then encourage them
to bring their new habits home. On one level this
option seemed very practical because the state
could concentrate its efforts on the children, who
were the hope of the future, and yet have the new
habits and attitudes spread among the members of
the older generation. On another level, the crea-

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JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

tion of the institutions needed even to begin this

work was an immense task that was beyond their
resources.
Conclusions and Assessments of Early
Soviet Attitudes toward the Family
Despite an acute interest in the family under
communism, the Communist party and the Soviet
government organizations never devised a definitive practical policy for the role of the family in
Soviet society. As the Bolshevik leader Lev Trotskii commented in 1923, the revolutionaries' lack
of preparation for the realities of the postrevolutionary society had caught up with them:
We haveneverthrashedout thesequestionsconcretelyas, at differenttimes, we have thrashed
out the questionof wages,fines,the lengthof the
workingday, policypersecution,the constitution
of the state, the ownershipof the land, and so
on. We have as yet done nothingof the kind in
regardto the familyandthe privatelife of the individualworkergenerally.At the sametime, the
problemis not an inconsiderableone; if for no
other reason that it absorbstwo-thirdsof life,
sixteen of the twenty-fourhours in the day.
[Trotsky,1973]
In summary, then, the existence of these three
distinct perspectives regarding the future of the
family under socialism and the lack of a final endorsement for any of them indicate that the abolition of the family was not a central goal of the
early leaders of Soviet Russia. The idea that the
family would have no place in the socialist state
was merely one viewpoint among several.
While the options to follow regarding the family were well defined, what was lacking in the
policymakers' discussions was effective political
leadership. The adherents of the three perspectives were advisors and bureaucrats charged with
translating matters of policy into practice; none of
these people had significant political clout or close
connections to the central leadership. By the
mid-1920s, the prominent Bolsheviks who had expressed concern for, and interest in, family affairs
were either dead (e.g., Lenin, Iakov Sverdlov, and
Inessa Armand), discredited (e.g., Trotskii and
Kollontai), or peripheral (e.g., Nadezhda Krupskaia and Anatolii Lunacharskii). Given the traditional dependency of the Bolsheviks on a leader to
establish basic guidelines to be followed, the
absence of a powerful figure who was willing to
decide about family issues meant that these questions were left to be resolved by sincere but essentially powerless people.
As it turns out, the group that ended up with
the responsibility for translating these diverse
viewpoints into policy was the writers of the law

codes. Not surprisingly, the legal policies created

by these lawmakers did encounter problems of
practice. In the following sections we will analyze
the codes themselves and the problems they intended to solve, as well as the problems they
created.
LAW AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Much of the formation of Soviet family policy
from 1917 to 1945 took place in times of massive
social upheaval due to wars, revolutions, and
forced modernization drives; such a situation of
social breakdown would seem to be an appropriate time to use law and central government directives to redraw the basic outlines of society. Indeed, some participants in the new Soviet government believed that this was the challenge before
them. The head of the Peoples' Commissariat of
Justice, Nikolai Krylenko, explained the role of
law in a period of revolution:
Revolutionarylawplaysa particularlyactivepart
in the epochof greatsocialupheavals,especially
in the epoch of the proletarianrevolution.The
class that has risen, that has seized power, that
has itself thrivedon the basis of the new social
and economicrelations,remoldsthe old society
by means of its laws....

Law plays a creative

part in the hands of the workingclass and expressesthe new formsassumedby the socialrelationship of the new society in the making.
[Krylenko,1933]
Justified by this modified Marxist belief in the
power of law to bring about social change, the
authors of the new law codes in Soviet Russia attempted to use law aggressively to change and
mold human behavior. There was a general and
intentional rewriting of the prerevolutionary body
of law with the aim of creating new statutes based
on ideological principles distinct from the traditional behavior and attitudes of the citizens (cf.,
Hazard, 1960). As explained above, however, the
postrevolutionary lawmakers went to work simultaneously with, but for the most part separately
from, the social policymakers.
Early Family Law Codes
The Bolsheviks had a strong desire to distance
the new society from tsarist society and to remove
the influence of prerevolutionary traditions, laws,
and doctrine on postrevolutionary families and
citizens (Inkeles, 1968; Juviler, 1977; Rostow,
1967). As they began to devise the new Soviet legal
system, they created a mix of changes aimed at
both reform and revolution: some of the new
statutes were aimed at correcting past abuses,
while others attempted to create the legal foundations for a transformed society.

FAMILY LAW IN SOVIET RUSSIA

Accordingly, the Family Law Code of 1919
made sweeping changes from the old imperial
laws: it declared men and women legally equal;3 it
proclaimed civil marriage as the legally legitimate
one;4 it made abortion a fairly easy matter; and it
abolished all differentiation between legitimate
and illegitimate children (Halle, 1933; Juviler,
1979; Schlesinger, 1949). Marriage could be annulled at the wish of one or both parties, and
bigamy, incest, and adultery were no longer
crimes (Timasheff, 1960). The laws said little
about the form of interpersonal relationships in
the new society; their primary goal was to end
practices now regarded as outmoded by the new
government and to instate practices consistent
with Marxist philosophy.
Beyond ideological motivations, the intended
consequences of these laws for the family were not
always clear. For example, the 1919 Family Law
Code outlawed adoption. Some later analysts
have interpreted this as a desire to begin the
destruction of the family, but John Hazard, a
Western specialist on Soviet law, speculated that
there were at least three separate reasons for this
action: (a) Soviet lawmakers regarded adoption as
a form of bourgeois exploitation; (b) they were
envisioning mass socialized care of children; and
(c) they did not want to create new families before
they had established inheritance policies (Hazard,
1938). In any event, the 1919 Law Code altered
the definition of family bonds but did not clearly
define the family's identity and its role for the
future.
By abolishing some of the old constraints in the
areas of divorce, legitimacy, and financial responsibility for children, the Soviet lawmakers inadvertently added to the social crisis of the times.
One of the goals of the 1919 Law Code was to
promise that the state would guarantee the support and security of all citizens; this was taken to
mean that the state would take over all responsibilities for minors, wives, and dependents. A
very casual attitude toward marriage and parenthood thus developed among young urban men
especially, leading to large numbers of deserted
wives and unsupported children. The effects of
this were revealed in many different ways; for example, the number of abortions in Moscow increased from 1,531 abortions in 1911 to 6,850 in
1922 (Grigorov and Shkotov, 1927). The changes
in sexual relationships caused one schoolmistress
to report delicately that 30%7of her school girls
had become "women" over the past year
(Sokoloff, 1921) and led the psychologist Aaron
B. Zalkind to propose teaching responsible
revolutionary sublimation (Zalkind, 1925).

897
The molders of the 1919 codes did not expect
the social and internal confusion that followed the
decrees and was manifested in a multitude of
court cases (Kurskii, 1926; Schlesinger, 1949;
Sosnovskii, 1926). Their shock and surprise over
these results were expressed, along with their conviction that something needed to be done about
the unintended consequences of the 1919 code,
during discussions of a new Family Law Code in
1925 (Schlesinger, 1949). As the Bolshevik analyst
Emelian Iaroslavskii commented to the American
visitor Jessica Smith: "It is one thing to write
good laws and another thing to create the actual
conditions to bring these laws into life" (Smith,
1928).
As the transcribed discussion of the 1925 draft
revealed, the major emphasis of the laws in the
1926 code was to force the other members of a
family to assume general responsibility, and
especially financial support, for its members who
were unable to care for themselves, that is, minor
children, invalids, pregnant women, and the
elderly (Farnsworth, 1977; Schlesinger, 1949). For
example, the code made many provisions to force
errant fathers to provide financial support-the
alimenta-for the children they had left behind
(Schlesinger, 1949). This revealed a transition
away from the concept of state support of
children and toward the return of traditional
family responsibility.
In order to clarify marital and parental obligations, the code also defined what constituted a
marriage even if a legal registration of that act had
not taken place:
If they [a man and a woman] live together;if
they have a shared establishmentwhile living
together; if before a third person they have
shownthemselvesas husbandand wife and have
revealedthemselvesas spouses-mutual material
supportand joint upbringingof children,etc.,
can serveas proof of this. [Krylenko,1927]
Divorce would no longer be handled by the
courts but could be accomplished by one or both
marital partners registering the fact of divorce in
the ZAGS office. It was not necessary to give
reasons for the divorce and the cost to register was
nominal. If only one party registered the divorce,
the other partner was notified of the divorce by
mail on a printed form (the so-called postcard
divorce) (Coser, 1951; Geiger, 1968; Juviler, 1977;
Mace and Mace, 1963). While divorce could end a
marriage, it did not end responsibility for the offspring of the union (Mace and Mace, 1963; Schlesinger, 1949).
The general assumption behind the 1926 code
was that the family, not the society, was responsi-

898

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

ble for the maintenance and support of its weaker

members. This responsibility was defined only in
financial terms: who owed alimenta to whom.
There were no articles on social rights and obligations of the family, such as family control over the
education and upbringing of its children (Schlesinger, 1949).
Although supporters of the 1926 code called
it a progressive social document because of the
broad definitions of what constituted a family and
because of the easy divorce procedures, others
saw it as a backward step in the revolutionary
transformation of society. As Kollontai participated in the discussion of the 1926 code, she
despaired because she realized that the basic
principles of collectivism had not yet been instilled
even in the lawmakers of the new society (Farnsworth, 1980). That is, the legal writers showed
greater concern with making families responsible
for themselves rather than arranging ways for the
society to supercede the family. While the 1926
Law Code was more progressive than any other
legal system in the world, it still left a lot to be desired from the point of view of any of the three
perspectives toward the family, and it did not
repair all the negative consequences that resulted
from the 1919 Law Code (cf. Farnsworth, 1977).
Later Family Law Codes
The first decade after the Bolshevik seizure of
power was a time of searching for the best means
to make Soviet Russia a socialist country. The
discussions about the future of the family and the
role of law were a part of this process. In 1928,
with the advent of the first Five Year Plan, the
searching process ended as the government and
party determined that the path to socialism in
Russia would be one of economic modernization
rather than a directed transformation of social attitudes and behavior. During the years of the
plan, 1928-1933, the state focused all its energies
on the industrialization of the country. This included the transfer of people to newly industrializing areas where labor was needed, the collectivization of agriculture to bring the peasantry into line
with the new direction of the state, and, in
general, an extension of central control over all
aspects of the society that could help or hinder the
development of a modern economy (Inkeles,
1968; Lapidus, 1978; Rostow, 1967).
In this tumultuous setting of rapid economic
change, the divorce rate in the newly growing urban areas continued to rise; there were numerous
instances of marriages for convenience (Geiger,
1968); the birth rate decreased dramatically (in
1935, in Moscow, there were 57,000 live births
compared to 154,000 abortions; Coser, 1951); and

the number of homeless children was a major

problem (Blitsten, 1963; Stolee, 1983). The low
birth rate was particularly distressing to the state
because its population, especially males, had been
repeatedly ravaged by revolution, civil war,
World War I, famine, collectivization, and purges
(Dallin, 1956; Leslie, 1978; Liegle, 1975).
These social problems, although in many instances caused by the economic campaigns, posed
a threat to the success of the economic goals of
the state. To counteract the social problems, a
new Code of Family Law was enacted in
1934-1936. The new emphasis was on stabilizing
the family by reducing delinquency, promiscuity,
easy marriages, bigamy, adultery, and the exploitation of women caused by the earlier
"postcard divorces" and marriages for convenience (Coser, 1951; Geiger, 1968; Juviler, 1977;
Schlesinger, 1949). In other words, the legal experimentation and revolutionary ideologies of the
1920s were almost completely abandoned in favor
of the concept of the traditional family as an instrument of social control (cf., Lapidus, 1978).
Family law codes were now a part of central and
pragmatic government interest in that the soviet
government was interested in modifying the family to encourage economic development, rather
than creating an idealistic transformation of
human relations.
Accordingly, to encourage stability in the family, the divorce procedure was made more difficult
and more costly. Both spouses were required to
appear at the ZAGS office and each divorce that a
person received was entered on his/her internal
passport. The price of registering a divorce was
raised to 50 rubles for the first divorce, 150 rubles
for the second divorce, and 300 rubles for the
third (Mace and Mace, 1963).
The 1934-36 codes also made parents responsible for their children's misbehavior and criminal
acts (Geiger, 1968). The fear that parents were the
enemy of the new way of life, so often expressed
in the 1920s, disappeared as the state and adult
family members were legally united in exercising
authority over minors. To encourage parents in
this role, the Communist party issued statements
extolling the virtue of parenthood as a patriotic
duty (Geiger, 1968; Lapidus, 1978). To punish
those who neglected their childrearing responsibilities, the 1934-36 codes created cash fines for
the parents of delinquent minors (Narodnoe
Obrazovanie v SSSR, 1974).
In response to the low birth rate, the 1934-36
codes also banned nontherapeutic abortions and
instituted state-paid monetary rewards for
mothers with more than seven children (Juviler,
these "mothers'
1977).5 Notwithstanding

FAMILY LAW IN SOVIET RUSSIA

allowances," the responsibility for dependent
family members continued to rest with the family,
and the 1934-36 codes increased the penalties for
divorced fathers who neglected their support payments (Juviler, 1977).
One result of the 1934-36 Codes of Family Law
and the Communist party's emphasis on stabilizing the family was that the number of divorces
decreased significantly after the 1936 code went
into effect. In July, after the June decree was
issued, the number of divorces in Moscow
dropped from 2,214 to 215 (Mace and Mace,
1963). In addition, by 1936 the rates of juvenile
delinquency were falling and most of the homeless
children were off the streets and back with their
families or in boarding institutions (King, 1937;
Makarenko, 1939; Zhukova, 1978).
The impact of World War II, with its further
reduction of the population and a divorce rate still
perceived as too high, led the state to continue its
emphasis on family solidarity in the 1944-45
Family Law Code (Coser, 1951; Schlesinger,
1949). The 1944-45 decree abolished unregistered
marriages as the legal equivalent to registered
marriages; it was decreed that only registered marriages afforded the rights and obligations of marriage to the spouse. The ZAGS offices were
decorated and upgraded (Geiger, 1968). In order
to place more emphasis on the importance of the
marriage event, relatives and friends were
welcomed as witnesses at the registration of the
marriage. In Leningrad and Kiev, mansions of the
prerevolutionary nobility were designated as
"wedding palaces" and were opened for couples
who desired more formality and ceremony in their
wedding (Mace and Mace, 1963). As another
means of upgrading the marriage ceremony,
church weddings were reinstated as acceptable in
conjunction with the civil registration (Mace and
Mace, 1963).
Divorces were removed from the ZAGS office
and returned to the courts. Under the 1944 law, a
two-court system was installed for couples desiring divorce. The lower court was charged with trying to reconcile the couple and was admonished
by the state not to grant any divorce. If the lower
court failed to reconcile the parties, the case was
referred to a higher court, which might or might
not grant the divorce after a lengthy wait for the
case to be heard. The cost of filing for divorce was
100 rubles, and the price of the divorce itself
ranged from 600 to 2,100 rubles, prohibitive sums
on most workers' salaries (Coser, 1951; Mace and
Mace, 1963).
To further maximize the stability of the
registered marriage, the 1944 law reinstated the
distinction between legitimate and illegitimate

899
births, forbade unmarried mothers from filing
paternity suits, and prohibited married men from
voluntarily claiming paternity for their illegitimate
children (Juviler, 1977; Moseley, 1959). However,
because of continued concern over the low birth
rate, mothers' allowances were extended to unmarried mothers as well as married mothers, were
made more generous, and were made available to
mothers with three or more children (previously
seven children were required to qualify) (Geiger,
1968; Juviler, 1977; St. George, 1973). Further encouragement of reproduction was provided by
"mother's medals," which were awarded by the
state to both married and unmarried mothers of
large numbers of children (Juviler, 1977; Mace
and Mace, 1963; St. George, 1973).
The 1944-45 code continued to stress the importance of good parent-child relationships.
Children were advised by the state to respect their
parents, and a new inheritance law was instituted
that permitted up to 10,000 rubles worth of
private property to be inherited, with the possibility of greater amounts in special instances (Gsovski, 1961; Scheslinger, 1949). The concept of inheritance had been challenged after the 1917
revolution; its reinstatement in 1944 was intended
to provide continuity to families over the years
and to provide the family members with a vested
interest in maintaining their relationships with one
another.
Thus, by 1945, the lawmakers had dropped
most ideas of both reform and revolution, and
had returned to a more traditional view of the
family.
CONCLUSION
Over a 30-year span, then, the state laws regarding marriage and family in the USSR underwent
considerable and paradoxical changes. One interpretation that has been made by Western scholars
regarding this unique period is that the "Russian
experimental attempt to abolish the family failed"
(Schulz, 1976; see also Blitsten, 1963; Timasheff,
1960). We have shown that this conclusion rests
on questionable premises. One premise is that the
new Soviet state intended to destroy the family.
The early Soviet authorities were divided over
whether destruction of the family should be a
revolutionary goal. Consensus was never reached
on the appropriate ideological definition of the
nature of the relationship between the family and
state. Thus there was no explicit policy guiding
Soviet lawmakers to bring about the demise of the
family through the statutes they created. Further,
the earliest laws were heavily influenced by a
desire to reform past abuses associated with
prerevolutionary society. The decrees that

900

JOURNAL OF MARRIAGE AND THE FAMILY

abolished the traditional marriage and divorce

procedures and that encouraged the individual to
belong to the larger society were simply part of the
process of stripping the nobility, church, and
patriarchal family heads of their power and
legitimacy. Ironically, these statutes combined
with the chaos of the postrevolutionary decade to
produce a major challenge to family stability, thus
giving credence to the view that the abolition of
the family was the new Soviet state's primary aim.
Widespread divorce, marriages for convenience, and parental irresponsibility, as well as the
government's desire for social control during the
industrialization drives and postwar reconstruction, eventually led to the reinstatement of more
traditional legal definitions of the marriage relationship, the divorce procedure, and parent-child
relations. Intervention from the central authorities, when it came in the mid-1930s, served, in
fact, to strengthen the family.
What, then, accounts for the very different
thrusts of the various family law codes during the
first 30 years of the Soviet state, and for the difficulties with implementing the earlier codes?
The legal scholar Maryann Freedman (1986)
argues that law is basically a confirmer of social
attitudes and beliefs; at most, law can be
"nudger" of attitudes and behavior-that is, law
can provide a slight push in the direction of social
reform, but law alone cannot lead the public to
significant attitudinal change. Law is more effective in creating behavioral change than attitudinal
change, but without concomitant changes in attitudes, the behavioral change is either minor or
problematic. If law pushes too far beyond the current set of values of citizens, it will not be successful-the law will either be abused or ignored.
The Soviet experience supports this analysis.
The attempted transformation of the family
through the use of formal law codes not only did
not succeed in creating a new social and familial
order but resulted in abuses of the new rights and
privileges awarded by the law. By definition, the
1919 and 1926 law codes denied support to traditional attitudes and behavior in order to distance
the new state from the old. The rapidity of the
legal changes, coupled with the impact of war and
revolution and the lack of a stable economic base
to provide the state support to the family that
some envisioned, led to unintended and often
undesirable consequences. To reiterate Iaroslavskii's observation, "It is one thing to write good
laws and another thing to create the actual conditions to bring these laws to life" (Smith, 1928).
But how can this be reconciled with the profound and lasting transformations wrought by
central direction in Soviet Russia from 1917 to

1945, particularly the forced collectivization and

industrialization drives of the first Five Year Plan,
and with the intent of the later law codes to
stabilize the family and to clarify the relationships
and obligations of family members? While the
early family law codes were not particularly successful in bringing about the changes in family
behavior that the lawmakers intended, the experience of the Five Year Plans reveals that a
government can, when it is willing to make titanic
investments and bear appalling social costs, make
permanent alterations in society.
These paradoxes illustrate an unresolved issue
that persists in the theory of law and social change
today; that is, should laws be written in accordance with certain broad principles that are not
necessarily identified with a ruling political
authority, or should laws be more policy-oriented-designed to effect some outcome, even if
this is not immediately consistent with certain
ideological principles (cf. Berman, 1983; Unger,
1976). The Soviets moved from an early system of
law based on ideological conceptions of family
relationships and the family's place relative to the
state (although there were diverse interpretations
for converting ideology to reality), to instituting
laws in 1934-36 and 1944-45 that supported the
immediacy-based policy to modernize and industrialize. In the Soviet case, the law-derived-frompolicy approach, with emphasis on outcome
rather than on consistency with previous law or
ideology, yielded more focused social change.
Thus, the experience of Soviet Russia supports
those who argue that law is most effective in producing intended social change when it is guided by
larger governmental policy. One's evaluation of
the rightness or wrongness of this approach to
social change seems to depend on whether one
supports the policy guiding the law.
A final point to be made from this historical
study of family law is that many of the provisions
in the earliest Soviet family law codes are the same
issues that are currently being discussed by
Western legal professionals, family scholars, and
legislators. Sociologist Lenore Weitzman (1984),
for example, makes the case that the marriage
contract in the United States today is characterized by legal restrictions that reinforce traditional
and stereotypical sex roles for husbands and
wives. These marital contract provisions include
restrictions on the wife's surname and domicile;
husband's obligation for sole financial support of
the family; and a concept of property ownership
favorable to the husband. Yet the 1919 Soviet
Law Code directly addressed these very issues and
instituted a more equitable marriage relationship.
Further, the 1926 code included provisions related

FAMILY LAW IN SOVIET RUSSIA

to cohabitation, no-fault divorce, and payment of
child support. Thus, the progressiveness of these
Russian laws cannot be denied; it is remarkable to
think that such "timely" statutes were originally
instituted over 60 years ago. Knowing that these
legal issues are not new (i.e., not necessarily
related to "modern" ways of behaving) or unique
to our society and ideology provides us with a better perspective from which to judge the arguments
and speculations currently surrounding them.
FOOTNOTES
1. TheearlyBolshevikgovernmentdrewon as muchexpertiseas availablewhenit wasdevisingSovietsocial
policy and invited outside expertsto join the new
bureaucracies.Thus, manydifferenttypes of public
officials and leadersare referredto in this articleas
"policymakers"becausethey participatedin Soviet
policydiscussionsin governmentandpartyorganizations. A. S. Durnogo,for example,wasa memberof
the school health advisoryboard in the Commissariat of Enlightenmentin addition to being a
researchscholar. Albert Pinkevich served on the
State Scientific Council, the branch of the Commissariatof Enlightenmentcharged with devising
school curricula,while he was also a high-ranking
university official. Zlata Lilina was one of the
earliest Bolsheviksand was also a memberof the
State ScientificCouncil, so she too had a role in
policy formulation beyond her activities in the
Petrogradschoolsystem.Similarly,the otherpeople
describedas "policymakers"in this article participatedin policy makingin conjunctionwith other
positionsthey may have held.

901
obligatedto supportthe otheronly if he or she is in
need and unableto work (Schlesinger,1949).
4. In orderto marry,the couplewent to the registrar's
office (commonly called by its acronym ZAGS),
signedthe ledger, and stated it was their voluntary
intentionto marryand that no legal impedimentexisted to preventit. No effort was madeto solemnize
the proceedingsor to recognizethe weddingas a
special occasion (Farnsworth,1977; Geiger, 1968;
Maceand Mace, 1963).
5. It is ironicthat the revolutionaries
in the 1920swere
strivingto have state supportof children,but it was
in the 1930s,whenthe emphasishadshiftedto giving
responsibilityto the family, that transferpayments
for childrenappeared.

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