page_title: Family in the Soviet Union
section_title: Bolshevik woman in the Soviet household
hierarchical_section_title: Family in the Soviet Union / Bolshevik woman in the Soviet household
caption_attribution_description: English: A 1923 edition of the Soviet women's Bolshevik magazine Rabotnitsa
context_page_description: The view of the Soviet family as the basic social unit in society evolved from revolutionary to conservative; the government of the Soviet Union first attempted to weaken the family and then to strengthen it.
  According to the 1968 law "Principles of Legislation on Marriage and the Family of the USSR and the Union Republics", parents are "to raise their children in the spirit of the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism, to attend to their physical development and their instruction in and preparation for socially useful activity".
context_section_description: The role of the Bolshevik woman has been of much controversy, particularly at the beginning of the post-revolutionary Russian era. Prior to this revolution, the role of the Bolshevik woman was to tend to the household. Making sure the children were brought up in the traditional Soviet way of life was of utmost importance in the household of the average Bolshevik. The average woman would prepare a meal that consisted of bread, vegetables and broth; and for wealthier families cheese, and a source of protein. In Bolshevik folklore the mother had the influential role of raising the children in the household; specifically about the household, values and the culture that would be represented among family members. The success and the rise of the Bolshevik regime, and the downfall of Czar Nicholas II and essentially his entire family, would subsequently leave a unique opportunity for the women of Russia. The Revolutionary War, and the large number of soldiers necessary to have an adequate defense left a void in the industrial sectors of the workforce, and that void was filled with hundreds of thousands of women, who had to assume the role left absent, by soldier fathers. As a platform Bolshevism advocated for the evolution of traditional gender roles; instead offering opportunities for women inside of the party when the Department for Work Among Women was created in 1919. Despite this strong push for change by the Zhenotdel, the immensely patriarchal society that had existed for hundreds of years prior, would supersede these efforts.
  The feminist movement was seen by the majority peasant and workforce population as bourgeois, and therefore represented something opposite of the Bolshevik idea. The emphasis on the immediate household as priority was pertinent, especially to the 1930s era of Soviet Russia. Since the Paleolithic era of Russia, there has been a fascination with the immortalization, of the mother figure. "The Motherland Calls", statute spoke up about the unrealistic expectations that the Soviet Union had on their female mothers. Motherhood, they posited, was not some divine consciousness, but instead something inherently learned as a result of being a woman. Some argued that the traditional role of the mother should be challenged, and that it was not like it had been in years passed. In many instances the domestic work was piled onto the female head of the house, despite promotion of equality between genders. This left in unequal workload on the woman, who would also have a job outside of the home to help provide in a particularly difficult economy where food and adequate housing was often scarce. However, despite this argument, the role of the Bolshevik woman remained static. Stalin himself held both men and women to the same standard, with equal harshness doled out to both sexes. In the 1960s, it was expected of the Russian woman to fall in line with the patriarchal leadership of her husband.
caption: Soviet women's journal founded in 1914 that featured relatively liberal content
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