7. Family, Youth and Culture¶
Core Argument¶
Chapter 7: Family, Youth and Culture¶
The October Revolution's bold attempt to destroy the family hearth and replace it with a system of social care—maternity houses, crèches, kindergartens, social dining rooms and laundries—foundered not on principle but on the poverty and cultural backwardness of the state. From 1935, better-placed workers abandoned the poorly organised social services and returned to home cooking and washing, re-enslaving working-class wives. Collective farms provided only bread and fodder; meat, dairy and vegetables came from private plots, making social dining rooms impossible and imposing a double burden on women. Crèche places were grossly insufficient and of poor quality; the Central Executive Committee admitted bankruptcy by placing foundlings in private hands. Homelessness remained widespread; in Moscow and Leningrad 7,500 parents were prosecuted for neglect. Prostitution was openly acknowledged, with 1,000 women arrested in Moscow, driven by inadequate wages. Abortion, previously a right, was prohibited in June 1935 after a sham discussion. The family was rehabilitated alongside the rouble; divorces were made more expensive, parental authority restored. This retreat went beyond economic necessity, serving the bureaucracy's need for hierarchy and discipline through 40 million family units.
The official doctrine that a new, love-based family has been realised is hypocritical. Marriage for convenience has been resurrected among the bureaucracy, where qualifications, wages, and connections determine personal relations. Husbands rise in the hierarchy and abandon their wives. Legal equality benefits mainly the upper strata, who can afford domestic servants, while the majority of women remain burdened by domestic labour.
The youth, though active in economics and athletics, are kept under political guardianship by the Old Guard, denied criticism and independent thought, forced into obedience and careerism. Beneath enforced optimism lies a rift: a considerable stratum is indifferent or cynical, while others turn to political opposition or terrorist revenge. The April 1936 Communist Youth congress was called to politically expropriate the youth; the new constitution legally deprived the League of any right to participate in social life, limiting it to education and cultural training. The age limit for membership was raised while the last remnant of political rights was abolished. Speakers frankly stated the aim was to prevent a second party, citing Trotsky's warning that bureaucratisation would produce that danger.
On nationality and culture, the bureaucracy carries out progressive work for backward nationalities—teaching in eighty languages, creating alphabets, publishing newspapers—but this is elementary bourgeois culture, not socialism. Every step is falsely proclaimed as socialist culture. The awakening of individuality assumes a petty-bourgeois character; the bureaucracy encourages economic individualism while ruthlessly suppressing critical thought. National culture is merely a translation of the bureaucratic imperative; all intellectual activity is regulated by the police club. Great Russian culture suffers under the police regime, with 90% of Soviet publications in Russian, a figure contradicting the Great Russian population share. Bureaucratism takes the colour of autocratic Russification.
Spiritual creativeness demands freedom. The revolutionary programme regarded limitations as a temporary evil. Lenin remained cautious in artistic questions, refusing to convert his tastes into law. The author formulated the state's relation to art in 1924: hold the criterion for or against the revolution, but give complete freedom in artistic self-determination. While the dictatorship had a mass basis, it had no fear of experiments; the best revolutionary literature and films were created in those first years. In the struggle against the Opposition, literary schools were strangled. The present ruling stratum prescribes roads of development in all ideological spheres. Natural scientists avoid broad generalisations. In social sciences, writers must not contradict the official course; the result is sterility. No Marxist investigation of value has appeared in twelve years; works are scholastic compilations. Marxists who might say something valuable are in prison. Facts are distorted, documents fabricated.