Revisiting Wendy Z. Goldman’s Analysis of Family Policy and Women’s Emancipation in Early Soviet Russia

Today, rights we thought were secure are being taken away, and millions of people live with growing precarity, war, rights violation, and climate crisis. This makes it urgent to examine moments in history when people attempted to radically transform society. Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936, though published twenty-three years ago, continues to speak powerfully to the present. It tells a history essential for imagining new ways forward for women and the working class, learning from the struggles of those who came before us. For younger generations, it is a reminder that gains can be reversed, and that small victories alone are not enough; sustained struggle is necessary. Goldman’s work also offers an alternative to liberal feminism, which has never fundamentally challenged neither nation-state nor capitalism, by examining how the first years of the Russian Revolution sought to transform everyday life by overcoming the patriarchal family – and how those efforts were later shut down by the Stalinist bureaucracy. 

In this way, Wendy Z. Goldman, leading historian of Russia, offers a powerful and nuanced examination of the connections between revolutionary ideology, gender policy, and state-building. Using meticulous archival research and a strong grounding in Marxist theory and feminist critique, Goldman explores how the early Soviet state attempted to radically transform family structures and emancipate women as part of its broader revolutionary goals. What makes Goldman’s work particularly compelling is her challenge to the idea of linear historical progress. Rather than portraying history as a steady march toward greater rights and equality, Goldman emphasizes its contingent nature: rights won through struggle can be reversed, and ideologies promising liberation can later become tools of control. By tracing how the Bolsheviks first envisioned the “withering away” of the family and later reinstated family structures under Stalin, Goldman reveals the tension between utopian ideals and political reality. Women, the State and Revolution reveals profound contradictions in Soviet policy on women and the family – contradictions that still resonate in today’s global struggles over gender, labour, and reproductive rights.

Redefining the Family: The Early Soviet Vision

After the Bolsheviks took power in October 1917, they sought to create a society very different from the old Russian Empire. For several revolutionaries, this necessarily meant transform existing family structures. Many traced their ideas back to Friedrich Engels, who in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State argued that the family originated to control property and maintain male dominance¹.

Goldman shows that Bolshevik policy initially aimed not merely to reform but to abolish the traditional family, which they saw as a social and economic burden. Grounded in Marxist theory, they believed the family was a historical product of capitalism that would eventually “wither away” under socialism². Early Bolshevik policy to forward this rested on four key principles: freedom in personal relationships based on equality and respect; legal equality in marriage and divorce; women’s economic independence; and the socialisation of reproductive labour.

The socialisation of reproductive labour meant that under socialism, many household tasks like cooking, cleaning, and childcare – traditionally work done by women– would be taken over by the state or community. By doing so, women would be freed from this burden and could participate fully in public and economic life. The early Soviet policies echoed this by creating social services like public dining halls, laundries, and daycare centres, designed to lighten women’s domestic burdens³.

Legally, the Soviet government redefined family relations by making marriage a civil contract rather than a religious sacrament. Divorce was made extremely easy, reflecting a belief in individual freedom. Children born outside marriage received equal rights. The government also introduced maternity leave and social programs to support women’s dual roles as workers and mothers⁴.

Goldman emphasizes how radical and unprecedented these changes were. In 1920, the Soviet Union became the first country to legalize abortion, making it safe, free, and accessible. This legal reform embodied the idea that women should control their own bodies and reproduction. These reforms aimed to create a society of true gender equality by transforming family life⁵.

Unlike later feminist movements like the 1970s “Wages for Housework” campaign – which demanded pay for domestic labour – the Soviet model sought to dissolve gendered labour structures entirely by fully integrating women into public and economic life. It was not just about legal equality; it was a revolutionary call to transform gender relations and the very nature of the family⁶.

Unintended Consequences and Ideological Reversals

Despite their radical promise, the early Soviet reforms produced many unintended and often harmful consequences. The ease of divorce – especially following the 1926 “postcard divorce” revision to the Family Code – led to widespread abandonment of women and children by men. Many men divorced multiple times, leaving women without financial or social support⁷.

Moreover, the state struggled to provide enough social services. Public daycare, communal kitchens, and laundries were often underfunded, understaffed, or unavailable outside large cities. This meant women still had to shoulder most domestic work, and the traditional family roles persisted despite official policy⁸.

High unemployment among women made survival difficult for many, pushing some into poverty and even prostitution. Soviet leaders had assumed abortion rates would decline as living conditions improved, but the opposite happened. Without access to reliable contraception and amid economic instability, abortion became the main method for controlling fertility. Rising abortion rates alarmed the government, which feared a falling birth rate and the loss of population. This was less about genuine concern for women’s wellbeing and more a form of patriarchal panic – a familiar pattern in which states treat women’s bodies as instruments for demographic goals. In this logic, women’s reproductive choices are subordinated to the needs of the state, whether for military manpower, economic growth, or ideological aims. As Goldman shows, the Soviet leadership’s anxiety over birth rates was not unique to their era, but part of a long tradition of governments policing reproduction in the name of “national strength”⁹.

These social difficulties, combined with political pressures, triggered a major policy shift under Stalin. The government reversed many early reforms: abortion was banned in 1936, divorce laws became stricter, and the family was reinstated as a central institution of the state’s vision of socialism. Women were still encouraged to work but were also expected to prioritise motherhood and family life. While Soviet leaders framed these changes as “pragmatic” responses to low birth rates and the need for social stability, this framing obscured deeper causes. The devastation of the civil war, the economic crisis, and the retreat from collective provision under the New Economic Policy had already undermined the material basis for women’s emancipation. In the countryside, famine, poverty, and forced collectivisation further reduced women’s capacity to participate in revolutionary life, making it easier for the state to roll back gains. The Stalinist leadership, marked by entrenched sexism and a preference for conservative social order, saw the stable, patriarchal family as a tool for consolidating its authority and disciplining the population. In this sense, the turn was not a neutral adjustment to demographic realities but a political choice that subordinated women’s liberation to the state’s conservative vision. Goldman calls this Stalinist turn a “grotesque hybrid” of revolutionary and reactionary policies¹⁰, exposing the tragic gap between the revolution’s ideals and the authoritarian state it became¹¹.

Comparative and Theoretical Perspectives

Goldman’s study situates Soviet family policy within larger Marxist and feminist debates. Engels theorized that the family was linked to economic systems and would change with socialism. The Soviet Union was one of the first major experiment to test this idea, and Goldman shows both its promise and limits.

While many revolutions made at least rhetorical commitments to women’s equality, the early Soviet case was distinctive in how directly it placed women’s rights and family reform on the legislative agenda. During the French Revolution, women were largely excluded from political participation, and gains such as divorce rights were quickly reversed. In the Chinese Revolution, women’s emancipation was an important stated goal – famously summed up in the slogan “women hold up half the sky” – but in practice gender reforms were often subordinated to broader economic and military priorities, especially during the early years of state-building. Later moments, such as the Cultural Revolution, did bring renewed attention to women’s participation and gender roles, though still within the framework of party-led campaigns. By contrast, in the immediate aftermath of 1917, the Bolsheviks passed some of the most progressive family laws in the world at the time, aiming to radically reshape daily life through legal equality, expanded divorce rights, and state-supported childcare and social services¹². 

However, Goldman also shows that revolutionary laws were not enough to dismantle the deeply rooted patriarchal norms inherited from the Russian Empire. These attitudes shaped everyday life and often clashed with the Bolsheviks’ vision of gender equality, making change slower and more contested than leaders anticipated. Economic crises – including the destruction from civil war and the retreat from collective social provision under the NEP – further undermined reforms, not because such setbacks were inevitable, but because the state chose to prioritise other political and economic goals over sustaining the material supports needed for women’s emancipation.

The setbacks experienced by women in the early Soviet state highlight a broader lesson: legal reforms alone cannot secure liberation. As Goldman shows, real social change requires both material support – such as childcare, housing, and communal services – and cultural shifts that challenge entrenched patriarchal norms. This was a point also emphasized by Bolshevik leader and feminist Alexandra Kollontai, who argued at the time that transforming systems of social reproduction, particularly the family, was essential to making women’s formal rights meaningful. Without these changes, legal equality risked remaining symbolic rather than practical.

Contemporary Relevance and Conclusion

Goldman’s study underscores that revolutionary transformation of gender and family relations is neither linear nor guaranteed. The early Soviet experiment revealed the possibility of dismantling entrenched patriarchal structures through state-supported social reproduction, yet also the fragility of these gains when confronted with political and economic pressures. For Marxist feminists today, this history is a cautionary tale and a source of hope: it demonstrates both the emancipatory potential of a socialist state committed to redistributing reproductive labour and the persistent contradictions that arise when state interests conflict with feminist goals. Contemporary movements demanding recognition of unpaid domestic labour, universal social services, and reproductive rights continue to grapple with the same dialectic Goldman exposes. As the global resurgence of reactionary politics threatens women’s hard-won rights, Women, the State, and Revolution challenges us to reimagine socialist feminist strategies that can resist rollback, transform social reproduction, and advance genuine emancipation in the 21st century.

References

1. Friedrich Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (Penguin Classics, 2010), 45 – 60. ↩︎
2. Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936 (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 20. ↩︎
3. Ibid., 48 ↩︎
4. Ibid., 70 – 75 ↩︎
5. Ibid., 85 ↩︎
6. Ibid., 88 ↩︎
7. Ibid., 130 ↩︎
8. Ibid., 135 – 140 ↩︎
9. Ibid., 140 – 145 ↩︎
10. Ibid., 200 ↩︎
11. Ibid., 340 – 345 ↩︎
12. Ibid., 50 – 55 ↩︎