Table Of ContentSOVIET SOCIAL SCIENTISTS
TALKING
Also by lHary Buckley
WOMEN AND IDEOLOGY IN THE SOVIET UNION
WOMEN, EQUALITY AND EUROPE (editor with Malcolm Anderson)
Soviet Social Scientists
Talking
An Official Debate about Women
Edited by
lVlary Buckley
Lecturer in Politics
University ifE dinburgh
M
MACMILLAN
PRESS
© Mary Buckley 1986
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1986
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
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First published 1986
Published by
THE ~lACl\fILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Soviet social scientists talking: an
official debate about women.
I. Women-Soviet Union-Social
conditions
1. Buckley, Mary
305.4'2'0947 HQI662
ISBN 978-0-333-42807-8 ISBN 978-1-349-18350-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-18350-0
Contents
Introduction
Vll
PART 1 INTERVIEWS WITH SOVIET SOCIOLOGISTS
Introduction 3
Svetlana
'Attaining equality is a process which develops slowly
from stage to stage. ' 7
2 Anna
'The problem ofp articipation in the labour force is already
solved and this is a prerequisitefor equality.' 13
3 Tanya
'Modem woman is on the margin cif the old and new. Contem-
porary problems stemfrom this.' 19
4 Zhenya
'Propaganda is necessary to help change attitudes and
psychology. This is hard to do.' 26
5 Sergei
'We must maintain the differences between the sexes and
keep feminine charm. 1 want to see women stay women in the future.' 31
PART II INTERVIEWS WITH SOVIET ECONOMISTS
Introduction 39
6 Oleg
'1 would like to see stronger, less traditional women. Energy
should be the beauty of women. The idea of beauty needs to change.' 41
7 Nastasya
'The greatest difficulty in attaining equality is maternity. ' 48
8 Katya
'Hardest cif all is the education cif the husband. Men
are very conservative. ' 54
v
PART III INTERVIEWS WITH SOVIET
DEMOGRAPHERS
Introduction 65
9 Leonid
'We need to increase the prestige rif woman, wife and mother.' 67
10 Alexander
'Thefourth child is a private choice.' 73
PART IV INTERVIEWS WITH SOVIET LAWYERS
Introduction 81
11 Olga
'Laws continuallY change as the state develops and as new
opportunities arise.' 83
12 Nikolai
'Providing better services is our most pressing problem. ' 90
PART V INTERVIEW WITH A SOVIET PHILOSOPHER
Introduction 99
13 Ivan
'The consciousness rif women needs to be raised. ' 101
Postcript 106
Further reading 107
VI
Introduction
One of the many myths about the USSR is that it is a society
without debate. This view is part of the broader popular image
that the Soviet Union is a closed society which is rigidly organised
by a repressive Communist Party operating in a totalitarian state.
Such a stereotype clouds more than it clarifies.
The USSR does indeed possess an authoritarian political tradi
tion. The sources of this can be traced back to the nature of
Russian absolutism, to nineteenth-century political thought, to
Lenin's conception of the Bolshevik Party and to the early course
of Soviet political history after the revolution. Just one century
ago Russia was still ruled by an autocratic monarch who denied
the majority of the population the right to participate in politics
and refused to establish the political institutions which would
enable them to do so. Consistent with the nature of such auto
cracy, one strand of nineteenth-century Russian political thought
held that only stringent control from above could prevent the
spontaneity of the people from degenerating into anarchy and
disorder. This deep fear of chaos, and respect for order and
discipline, persists in the USSR today. In such a context, the
liberal notion of freedom of the individual is seen as potentially
destabilising and destructive.
Discipline was also seen as essential by Lenin to the organisa
tion of an underground Communist Party. He considered that a
tight vanguard party was necessary in order to evade the Tsarist
secret police, to further the interests of the working class on their
own behalf and to promote revolution. This ethos of discipline
persisted after the Bolshevik seizure of power. The principle of
'democratic centralism', according to which the party was orga
nised, was initially conceived to allow for debate among members
before a party line on any particular issue was adopted, and also to
guarantee control of members from the top by denying dissension
after decisions had been made. But although Lenin supported
political debate in principle, he saw the practical necessity of
smothering it if it appeared to threaten the survival of socialist
revolution. The decree on party unity which outlawed fac
tionalism within the Communist Party in 1921 epitomised the
feeling that circumstances after the revolution just did not permit
VB
Vlll Soviet Social Scientists Talking
the luxury of disagreement among party members.
Many attribute the firmness of political control from above to
the occurrence of revolution in a relatively backward and pre
dominantly peasant society. Conditions of severe economic hard
ship after the First World War contributed to a growing political
opposition which came not only from the White Army, aristo
cracy and liberals, but also from erstwhile supporters of the
revolution such as the Social Revolutionaries, peasants, workers,
sailors and finally some party members themselves. In short, a
fragile revolution attacked by different sections of society, could
only be propped up by force. While the conditions had been ripe
for the disintegration of Tsarism, they were less hospitable to a
new workers' state.
The Russian Revolution took place only 70 years ago. Soon
after, in the 1930s, rapid industrialisation and forced collectivisa
tion under Stalin were accompanied by force, purges, terror and
show trials to an extent not seen in the USSR before or since.
Coercion was part of the transformation of the USSR from a
backward rural society to a modern industrial one. In the world
arena the Soviet Union was catapulted into a superpower possess
ing, like the USA, an immense nuclear arsenal. Many social,
economic and political changes have taken place since the Stalin
years. Although firm elements of authoritarianism persist in the
1980s, they are located in a society that is increasingly complex
and moving ever further from the world of I van the Terrible or
Nicholas 1.
So although the roots of the USSR's authoritarianism are firmly
anchored in history, they do not preclude the growth of fresh
institutions, or prevent the training of experts and the encourage
ment of discourse to cope with the economic and social problems
of a modern advanced industrial society. With policy-makers who
plan ahead to the end of the twentieth century and beyond, the
Soviet state depends upon the opinions and data of social scien
tists. This was made clear by the re-invigoration of the social
sciences in the 1960s under Brezhnev and by a party resolution of
1967 entitled 'On Measures For Further Developing the Social
Sciences and Heightening Their Role in Communist Construc
tion'. The party formulates policy by taking the advice of experts
into account, whether they are working in the research institutes of
the Academy of Sciences, government ministries, the departments
of the Central Committee, the standing committees of the
Introduction ix
Supreme Soviet, or in the trade unions. The party needs and relies
upon experts. Moreover, the 'party' and the 'experts' are not
necessarily separate groups since experts are frequently party
members themselves.
As in all countries, these specialists hold differing views about
how best to achieve various goals. Furthermore, although the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) does indeed exert
strong political control 'from above', it does not curb all discus
sion. Indeed, the party sometimes prompts debates on issues,
which can become lively and intense. This is not to deny the
directed setting in which Soviet social scientists work. It is, after
all, the party which sets the problem-solving agenda, specifies at
five-yearly Party Congresses what its immediate policies and
priorities are, and thereby indicates what research projects are
agreeable to it. Nevertheless, when a debate is in full swing, the
party cannot fully control how data are variously interpreted,
what arguments are made, or the competing conclusions that are
drawn.
One vigorous debate that began in the mid-1960s and con
tinued throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s was about the
position of women in society. Soviet sociologists, economists,
demographers and lawyers were drawn into discussions about
changing female roles, and began to assess the impact on falling
birth rates and economic productivity ofa 'double burden' ofw ork
in paid employment followed by a second domestic shift of shop
ping, housework and childcare. Experts discussed how women
could best combine participation in the labour force with family
responsibilities. Detailed examination of this question led to a
growing Soviet literature on women, embracing topics such as
social services, family budgets, the rationalisation of female
labour, part-time jobs, the mechanisation of unskilled work,
family size, incentives to reproduction, divorce, free time, male/
female relations and femininity. The scope of research was broad
because the way in which women organised their lives seriously
affected the running of the economy, population size, labour
supply, the stability of the family and the nature of childrearing.
Just as women's activities carried wide implications for the
economy and society, so too the operation of the economy and the
norms of society had an impact on women. Queues for food
aggravated the double burden; insufficient kindergartens in rural
areas made it hard for women to enter the labour force; production
