MODEL ANSWERS

How far did Stalin’s social policies benefit women?

Marxist creed has always emphasized the need to alleviate the oppression of women. In a lot of ways,

Stalin’s social policies, enacted for women or on other issues that affected women, were a mixed bag,

insofar as there was a great gap between theory and practice. While opportunities were certainly carved

out for women, far more than there had been before, the challenges of a patriarchal society combined

with Stalin’s personal conservatism and policies like the “Great Retreat” meant that women were overall

not as well-off as Soviet propaganda seemed to suggest. On balance, they were perhaps more worse off

than before.

Lenin, at the time of revolution, was adamant that the ideal communist woman would be considered

equal to the communist man, in terms of serving the state and society. Thus, he embarked on a campaign

to improve their status in health and education, and to end the oppression that characterized the family

unit. To this end, Lenin sanctioned programs for women to make them an equal part of the workforce.

In theory, all jobs, within and outside the party, were open to women. As a result, it should come as no

surprise that under Stalin, 50% of the workforce was constituted by women, which marks a great

improvement from pre-Bolshevik society. Women were more and more involved in different walks of

life, including politics. However, the nature of work wasn’t all that promising as they remained

concentrated in certain fields, such as medicine, education, and domestic services, which were lower

paying, less prestigious, and certainly not as politically influential. As millions of people migrated from

villages to the rapidly growing cities, women found new opportunities for work, study, and leisure, even

as those left behind in the villages had to bear an increasing share of the labor burden with even fewer

resources. Finally, the ideological commitment to women’s equality and emancipation was not shared

by all men, and on a daily level, women continued to encounter harassment, prejudice, and exploitation.

Thus, facts like 60% of undergraduates being women, were offset by the failure to translate these into

real economic opportunities.

Women experienced all the most destructive elements of Stalinism as well. During the famine that

followed collectivization, women suffered from the shortages of food, which posed a direct threat to

their traditional role as family providers. The hardships of rapid industrialization and urbanization,

including shortages of housing, lack of services, and other difficulties, were borne disproportionately

by women even as they also coped with increased demands and requirements in their employment.

While more men than women were killed during the most violent phases of Stalinism, such as the

repression that accompanied collectivization, or the hundreds of thousands of summary executions

during the “Great Terror” which peaked in 1936-1938, women were victims as well, as thousands were

killed or imprisoned, while others dealt with the great burdens of losing fathers, husbands, or sons.

The social gains by women from the time of Lenin also saw a reversal, as sexual liberation was replaced

by a return to the traditional family unit under Stalin. The Family Code of 1936 marked a fundamental

departure from the Family Code of 1918 given by Lenin. Abortion was made illegal. It was more

difficult to obtain a divorce. Mothers with six or more children received cash payments, as there was a

concentrated attempt to ensure that the size of the Labor Force could be increased. Furthermore, Stalin

believed that marriage lay at the heart of the social system envisioned by communism, and frowned

down upon children being born out of wedlock.

In conclusion, it can be stated that while women definitely had more access to economic opportunities

under Stalin, with this allowing them greater social influence, there was definitely a retreat from the

extremely women-friendly policies that had been adopted at the time of Lenin. Moreover, the

economic benefits to women were fairly limited and selective, and there was a wide gap between

theory and practice, especially in the context of seeing women as victims of the Stalinist terror state.

In short, women benefited marginally under Stalin, and may have suffered far more than they ended

up gaining.