The Father. Leading Article from Pravda, June 9, 1936.

The Socialist October Revolution in the USSR laid the foundations of the complete and final liberation of woman. It gave women complete equality of rights in all sections of political, social and family life. " Husband and wife are as one flesh. The husband is the wife's master. The wife is not to leave the husband." Such were the fundamental tenets of Russian pre-revolutionary legislation. Article 179 of the Civil Code of the Russian Empire simply describes the powers of the husband, and father as "unlimited".

The bourgeois revolutions overthrew despotic monarchs. But not one of them dared to touch the despotism of paternal power in the family. Bourgeois democracy respectfully stopped short before this power, sanctified by the most ancient Civil Codes.

In the eyes of bourgeois law the father is first of all the custodian and embodiment of private property. He is the owner of the family property, the sole master of the estate, the house and the whole of the movable and immobile inventory. The wife and the children are included in this inventory.

It is true that the father, too, has his duties -- in capitalist society he must "keep" his wife and feed his children. But bourgeois law thoughtfully watches over the rights of the rich father and takes a very mild view of his duties.

By depriving the workers of any property and making them into its hired slaves, capitalism in fact destroys both the rights and the duties of the husband for the vast majority of the population. Capitalism altogether destroys the family of the workers. The patria potestas of an unemployed person is so much hollow sound. A father who cannot feed his children, give them an elementary education, provide for their future and bring them up, loses not only his " rights" but also all the pride and happiness of fatherhood. Many millions in the capitalist countries are in this state. What can be worse than the situation of a worker who after a vain search for work comes home to meet his hungry children and exhausted wife! He himself is hungry, tired, worn out. But hardest of all is the oppressive awareness of the impossibility of fulfilling, the duties of a father.

The Soviet country holds no such grim scenes. While abolishing the slavery laws on the unlimited power of the father in the family, the Socialist Revolution has at the same time given all workers a chance of fatherhood. The Soviet marriage in which husband and wife have equal rights is not built on private property. Nor is it simply a legal formality for satisfying sexual desires, as wrote Hugo, the bourgeois philosopher whom Marx ridiculed. The Soviet marriage opens up the truly spiritual side of marriage, its moral beauty which is beyond the reach of capitalist society. It reveals man striving for the development of the better sides of his personality. And without deep and serious love, without the bliss of motherhood and fatherhood, the personality of both individual and society is incomplete. Communism makes for whole and happy men.

To strengthen and develop the Soviet family is one of the main tasks of Soviet democracy. People who think that by relieving the father of his former slave-driving rights the Socialist Revolution has at the same time relieved him of his duties towards the family, of his responsibility for the family, are completely in the grip of bourgeois notions. The projected law on the prohibition of abortions, assistance to expectant mothers, development of the network of maternity homes, etc., issued by the government, declares an irresponsible attitude towards the family and family duties to be incompatible with Soviet democracy and Soviet morals. This point has not been questioned in the widespread discussions of the project which are at present going on all over the country.

The project, which is imbued with deep respect and consideration for family, motherhood and children, also raises fatherhood to a high, historic standing. In the Soviet land, " father " is a respected calling. It does not mean " master " in the old sense of the word. It designates a Soviet citizen, the builder of a new life, the raiser of a new generation.

The bourgeois who has survived in Soviet society and who regards marriage as a legal form of the prostitution which the Soviet land has liquidated, is unworthy of the name of a father, of a Soviet citizen. He wants neither children nor a wife-companion. In the casual manner of a " fellow-traveler", he looks for a prostitute, and if things do not go smoothly, he easily abandons her, drives her to abortion, to a crime. Don Juanism is an evil by-product of serfdom, and it has survived into the present day, even in Soviet life.

Comrade Gurov, a worker in the ball-bearing fact rightly declared: "A father who evades his paternal duties is a destroyer of the family."

Social education is being widely developed in this country. The State is coming to the aid of the family. But the State in no wise relieves the mother or the father of their care of children. Under Soviet conditions the father is the social educator. He has to prepare good Soviet citizens: that is his duty, that is also his pride-and the Soviet land has heard many proud declarations by fathers and mothers about the sons and daughters they gave to the Soviet fatherland, about gallant pilots and parachutists, engineers, doctors, teachers.

With what pride did Anton Strikh, collective farmer in an Ukrainian village, say: " My wife Fedora and I have eight children. One is a motor mechanic, another a teacher, the third is about to finish his course at a technical college, the fourth is a Red Army commander, the rest are at school. How, can we help being happy, being able to rejoice in such falcons!"

The family of the Kostelnikovs, too, are justified in their pride, a family which has raised sons firmly bound to each other by love and friendship, who from their own midst could produce the man to take the place of their hero-son who died.

A man who cowardly and basely abandons his children, shuns his responsibility, hides in corners and puts all the paternal duties on the mother's shoulders, shames the name of a Soviet citizen. Evading the payment of alimony is not a weakness, though it is treated with such leniency by some of our institutions. It is a crime, and not only the man who befouls the name of Soviet citizen, but all those who protect him are guilty of this crime.

But he who sees the fulfillment of his paternal duties in the punctual payment of alimony cannot walk with proudly lifted head and call himself a worthy Soviet citizen. The Soviet family is not a ledger in which money-payment testifies virtue. A Soviet child has a right to a real father, an educator and friend. A father who abandons his children is guilty both before them and before the socialist State which has entrusted the children to his care. An irresponsible attitude towards marriage and the family is a bad recommendation as a citizen.

Socialism provides every toiler with a happy, beautiful life. For the first time in history it creates for the workers a possibility of fatherhood and motherhood in the fullest sense of the word. It therefore makes serious demands on mother and father. A bourgeois attitude towards the family cannot be tolerated.

The published law-project and its widespread discussion are signs of a new socialist morality, imbued with force, confidence and vitality. It lies in the flowering and enrichment of human personality, in love for Man. In the light of this morality, the mother wears a new face, and so does the father. "Paternal pride≤-these words sound real only in the Soviet land, because a father who has raised new builders of socialism can feel a worthy citizen of his country.

Source: Rudolf Schlesinger, ed. Changing attitudes in Soviet Russia; the Family in the USSR (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1949).