SOVIET 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 of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. 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