Abstract
Families produce people. This presents a problem for autocratic regimes. On the one hand, familial production benefits the autocrat by augmenting the future productivity of the labor force. On the other hand, familial production threatens the autocrat by drawing current resources and loyalty away from the collective. This paper presents a theory of autocratic family policy in which the deciding factor is how much present control over resources an autocrat is willing to forego for future control. I apply this theory to the Soviet Union, arguing that the somersault of Soviet family policies (1917–1944) was a response to this tradeoff under different conditions.
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Notes
I will use the male pronouns throughout this paper to refer to my theoretical autocrat, not only because the autocratic rulers in the Soviet Union were men, but also because this seems to be the historical norm (much to women’s credit).
“The failure to write sufficient quantities of sufficiently effusive prose could be seen as political protest on Kollontai’s part, and Stalin undoubtedly saw it as such as was suspicious” (Holt 1977, p. 298).
Goldman (1993) lists some of the casualties: “Alexander Goikhbarg, the idealistic author of the 1918 Family Code, and Aron Sol’ts, an active participant in the VTsIK debates...were both committed to mental institutions. Many other participants in the debate over the Family Code, like Alexander Beloborodov, Aleksei Kiselev, and Pyotr Krasikov were murdered in prison between 1936 and 1939” (p. 340). Leading legal theorists of the 1920s, including Yevgeny Pashukanis and Nikolai Krylenko, were arrested and eventually shot.
Geiger (1968) points out the shortcomings of the parenting theory in particular: “...it disregards the fact that the time of the inception of the new family policy corresponds quite closely with the point of maximum political disaffection among the population. Forced collectivization had just been completed, the living standard in the cities had dropped to a point much below that of 1928, and the purges and terror were about to reach a high peak. At such a time Stalin could hardly expect that Soviet parents were making special efforts to rear loyal young communists” (p. 101).
On this point, Juviler (1985) makes the case that “the underlying causes of such [familial] breakdown found in the modern urban life and economy of the USSR are similar to those causes apparently contributing to divorce and declining birthrates in the West” (p. 385).
Similarly, Stephan (1996) argues that it was not primarily farsightedness but rent-seeking that contributed to the eventual dismantling of the Soviet apparatus.
I will be using “the family” and “families” interchangeably in this paper, cognizant of the fact that the family (similar to “the firm” and “firms”) can take a variety of forms in society.
I thank an anonymous reviewer for this point.
For example, E.O. Kabo argued that the working-class family is “the most profitable and most efficient organization of workers’ consumption and the upbringing of a new generation” (Goldman 1993). She pointed out that the direction of exploitation is not as clear as Marxist thought made it out to be—it was just as likely for the wife to be exploiting her wage-earning husband, since she redistributed the fruits of his labor for familial consumption.
Evidence of this can be seen in the records of KGB interrogations. The Wilson Center has a Digital Archive of some primary source documents: https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/45/intelligence-operations-in-the-cold-war.
For example, research has shown that a younger labor force yields greater entrepreneurship and dynamism in the market overall Karahan et al. (2019).
See Allen and Brinig (2012) on how different child support rules can encourage or discourage familial stability.
It is notable that the removal of children from their parents is a theme present in other social experiments, such as the Israeli kibbutzim. Hall (2014) describes how and why this policy naturally unraveled in that setting as well.
See, for example, “How Soviet Kitchens Became Hotbeds of Dissent and Culture” (https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/05/27/314961287/how-soviet-kitchens-became-hotbeds-of-dissent-and-culture).
This pattern occurred in other autocratic regimes during the same period, such as with the fascist pronatalist campaign in Italy from 1925 to 1938. Here, Mussolini tried unsuccessfully to raise the birth rate while still expanding his power.
In addition to very low rates of annulment, records show that the Russian Orthodox Synod rejected around 70% of all divorce requests (Freeze 1990, p. 738). The primary sympathy toward divorce requests was revealed in cases where spouses had confessional differences, evidence that the clergy realized their small enforcement power outside the Russian Orthodox community.
As Alexandra Kollontai referenced in one of her many speeches:“According to statistics given by comrade Kurskii at the VTsIk session, out of seventy-eight cases only three are alimony orders concerning the welfare of children. This is evidence that the women themselves do not believe that the fathers of their children can be found. (Laughter.)” An online archive of her writings and speeches can be found here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/index.htm.
Aligning with the view of family as an alleviator of transaction costs between its members, the habit of family members to share a home can also be seen as a way to lower the cost of monitoring, thus ensuring that other family members are duly performing their role in familial production (Allen 1992).
Here I echo the point made by Gregory (2009) that “it is difficult to ‘prove’ any model of repression; rather we can only show it to be consistent with the most important historical facts” (p. 15).
For instance, Russia is still trying to increase its labor force via family policy: “In 2006, then President Vladimir Putin unveiled a program that promised up to $10,000 in credits and subsidies for mothers who had a second or third child” (Eberstadt 2011).
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Piano, C.E. Autocratic family policy. Const Polit Econ 33, 233–253 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-021-09356-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-021-09356-4