The Soviet attitude to abortion, as to most other social issues, had a twofold origin. Its sources, not completely complementary to each other, were Marxist ideology and the conditions of Tsarist Russia on the eve of the twentieth century. Russia had remained largely sequestered from the great European movements such as the Reformation, Renaissance, and Enlightenment. At the close of the Tsarist era, it was a semi-feudal empire, which lagged considerably behind the other industrializing countries of Europe in all aspects of economic and cultural life. Tsarism represented a system 'of autocracy tempered frustratingly with grudging reform, of retrograde social policy, and of wasteful and demoralizing foreign adventures' (Juviler, 1976: 172). The Russian economy was predominantly agrarian, primarily dependent on agriculture at a pre-scientific and pre-mechanical level; industrial development was slow and irregular, beset by social and political upheavals. The social situation of the country was characterized by widespread poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, female subordination, slave-like conditions of workers and peasants, and many related social problems (Lorimer, 1946; Schlesinger, 1949). The Tsarist heritage made Russia one of those states ripest for social revolution, but least capable of achieving the Marxist dream of a civilization free of economic and social problems.
Religion played an important role in pre-revolutionary Russia and many public policies, including those on matrimonial and family matters, were in the hands of the Russian Orthodox Church. In line with church dogma, all abortions were regarded as murder under Tsarist penal law, and both the physician and the woman involved were liable to imprisonment for up to ten years and loss of all civil rights (Savage, 1988; Popov, 1993). Despite this, a number of authors reported that clandestine abortion was just as much a mass phenomenon in pre revolutionary Russia as elsewhere.4 Not surprisingly, the Congress of the Society of Russian Physicians, held in Moscow in 1913, adopted a resolution urging decriminalization of abortion as a means of reducing the large number of women coming to hospitals with complications from illegal abortions (Avdeev, 1989). Public debate on abortion continued until the outbreak of World War I, but no changes were made in legislation (David and McIntyre, 1981).
After the 1917 October Revolution, the new Soviet regime was in its actions strongly motivated by a vision of a harmonious future society of the type pictured by Marx and Engels. Flushed with the success of the revolution, members of Lenin's victorious party, the Bolsheviks, plunged into the task of changing the social environment. To abolish the old order became the principal strategy to overcome the backwardness of Tsarist Russia. The top priority was to eradicate inequality and the basis of traditional privilege and potentially counterrevolutionary social power: the church, the landowning class, capitalism, and the patriarchal family. The patriarchal family, in particular, was viewed as the embodiment of tradition; as the most pervasive and therefore the most powerful impediment to the forward course of the revolution. Replacement of the traditional family form by the communist collective, the so-called Novyi byt (New
Order), was one of the core cultural tasks of the Russian Revolution (Halle,
1933; Reich, 1974 [1930]). Indeed, as Petersen (1964) pointed out, there was hardly a better measure against conservatism than to liberate family relationships, for so long as the older generation was able to set the thought and behaviour patterns of the younger generation, social change was likely to be slow. In addition, the emancipation of women, a traditional Marxist revolutionary ideal, was expected to channel some of the vast reservoir of womanpower out of the home and into the socialized economy.
During the first years after the revolution every possible effort was made to free individuals from the claims of the family. To achieve this goal, the government relied principally on two groups of measures: first, it sought to provide communal facilities for the upbringing of children, as well as for eating, cooking and other household chores; second, it promulgated pertinent legislation. During the first nine years of Soviet rule, two family codes (dated October 17, 1918, and November 19, 1926) plus a number of other decrees developed a consistent family policy.5 All legal inequalities between the sexes were abolished. De facto
marriage and divorce, and equal status of children born both in and out of wedlock, were legally implemented. Religious marriage was no longer recognized by law, and the civil registration of marriages was reduced to a formality of no importance. Divorce became inexpensive and easily obtainable. As one Western historian summarized the situation, 'it was rather generally though vaguely agreed that the family was not worth much as an institution and would eventually disappear' (Geiger, 1968: 43).
5 For details about the early Bolshevik policies related to family, see Lorimer (1946, 1958), Schlesinger (1949), Mace and Mace (1963), Petersen (1964), Bronfenbrenner (1968), Geiger (1968), Millett (1971), Reich (1974), Knarr (1977), Juviler (1978), Holt (1980).
While the regime actively sought to weaken family ties, it was not much concerned with matters related to sexuality. In the first days after the October Revolution penalties for abortions were cancelled in practice, but not by law (Savage, 1988). The Tsarist prohibition of abortion remained in force until 1920, through the period when the major social and political upheavals — revolution, Civil War, foreign intervention, famine and epidemics — took place. The daily conditions of Soviet Russia became probably harder than under the Tsarist regime. The economy was ruined, inflation was astronomical, the rural sector collapsed into a state of deep backwardness (Hughes and Welfare, 1990). Parental inability to support children was one of the gravest social problems of those days.6 Presumably, illegal abortion became an even more common mode of limiting family size. For instance, incomplete data for 1919 on the situation in Moscow and Petrograd indicate a ratio of about three abortions to ten births (Knarr, 1977). Many of those operations are believed to have been performed by unskilled quacks under primitive conditions, and to have been associated with high rates of complications and maternal mortality. Observations at the time indicated that up to 50 per cent of women resorting to abortions became infected in the course of the operation (WHO, 1971).
Apparently, it was the feeling that legislated punishment was useless and only drove abortion practices underground that prompted the government to adopt relevant measures. In 1919, a council of medical and legal experts and members of women's organizations was established to review abortion legislation (Savage, 1988). On November 18, 1920, these efforts culminated in a substantial legal change: by a decree jointly issued by the Commissariats of Health and Justice, abortion was made available upon the request of a woman during the initial trimester of pregnancy. In the official commentary, particulars and aims of the new legislation were set out as follows:
(1) To permit such operations to be made freely and without any charge in Soviet hospitals, where conditions are assured of minimizing the harm of the operation;
(2) To absolutely forbid anyone but a doctor to carry out this operation; (3) Any nurse or midwife found guilty of making such an operation will be deprived of the right to practice, and tried by a People's Court;
(4) A doctor carrying out an abortion in his private practice with mercenary aims will be called to account by a People's Court (quoted in Schlesinger, 1949: 44).
6 One of the results of this intense period of social crisis was a large number of homeless children wandering around the country in search of the means to live; see Stolee (1988).
The nullification of the punitive Tsarist legislation on abortion was also incorporated into a new penal law.7
The liberalization of 1920 was from its beginning intended to be only a temporary measure. To quote the text of the abortion decree, the new abortion law was presented as an 'evil' necessitated by the fact that 'the moral survivals of the past and the difficult economic conditions of the present still compel many women to resort to [abortion]' (Schlesinger, 1949: 44). The act legalizing abortion argued not in terms of a woman's right to choose, but in terms of the inability of the society to provide for all children. While the country was so poor women were to be offered the opportunity of abortion, but in the future, or so the law seemed to imply, this opportunity could be withdrawn. The law made no mention of contraception. Some governmental attempts were made to discourage abortions by means of education and health propaganda (Lorimer, 1958; Hyde, 1970), yet it is doubtful that these campaigns were very concerted. A number of Western visitors at the time reported that the effort was not very wholehearted.8
Like later Soviet decrees related to childbearing, the abortion law of 1920 was not presented as a measure designed to implement a population policy or to advocate birth control. It was deemed a social welfare measure; a means of raising the status of women, protecting their health, and recognizing their equality. One of the most explicit comments on the new abortion legislation that can be coaxed from the propagandist writings of the time was made by Alexandra Kollontai (1873-1952), a leading figure in the women's movement in the early years of the Soviet regime and an official of the Soviet government. In her speech at the Sverdlov University in 1921 Kollontai asked:
What is the reasoning behind this new attitude [to abortion]? Russia, after all, suffers not from an overproduction of living labour but rather from a lack of it. Russia is thinly, not densely populated. Every unit of labour power is precious. Why then have we declared abortion to be no longer a criminal offence? ... Abortion exists and flourishes everywhere, and no laws or punitive measures have succeeded in rooting it out. A way round the law is always found. But 'secret help' only cripples women; they become a burden on the labour government, and the size of the labour force is reduced. Abortion, when carried out under proper
7 The first Soviet Penal Code (dated July 1, 1922) imposed a penalty for consensual abortion only when performed by an unlicensed practitioner, or under 'inappropriate' conditions (that is, outside a public hospital) by a licensed practitioner (Zielinska, 1993).
medical conditions, is less harmful and dangerous, and the woman can get back to work quicker. Soviet power realises that the need for abortion will only disappear on the one hand when Russia has a broad and developed network of institutions protecting motherhood and providing social education, and on the other hand when women understand that
childbirth is a social obligation-, Soviet power has therefore allowed
abortion to be performed openly and in clinical conditions (quoted in Holt, 1977: 148-149; italics in original).
What this statement reveals is that even the Soviet feminist intelligentsia, or at least an important part of it, perceived fertility control to be anti-socialist. It was generally assumed that, with the development of socialism and the improvement of social conditions for women and children, the problem of unwanted pregnancies would gradually decrease and eventually disappear. This was a characteristic feature of the Soviet utopianism of the 1920s: there was a sense that all problems were soon going to work themselves out, so there was no need for an elaborate policy. It seems clear that no populationist considerations entered into the initial social policies of the Soviet regime.
It is unlikely that accurate abortion statistics relating to the years after 1920 will ever be available for the former USSR. The dissemination of all data on abortion was officially barred in 1929 (Popov, 1991), a ban that lasted for almost 60 years and one that betrays the inclination of the Soviet system to regard abortion as a shame to be concealed rather than a social problem to be solved. Although it is impossible to indicate the extent of abortion practice in the early Soviet period with any numerical precision, there is no reason to distrust anecdotal statistical documentation from certain administrative districts which suggests a large-scale rise in the resort to abortion, as well as a significant drop in the number of illegal procedures and consequent injuries, throughout the country after the new legislation came into effect.9 Potts et al. (1977: 65) estimate that during the 1920s, 18-20 pregnancies in every 100 ended by legal abortion in the USSR; but the true figure was certainly neither constant over time nor uniform across different areas. Lorimer (1946: 128) reported that 1924-25 statistics for the European part of the USSR showed an average ratio of 13 abortions per 100 live births, while in 1934 the number of abortions was as large as the number of births in many areas, and probably higher in the cities of Central Asia as well as in the Russian Federation and the Ukraine. Heer (1968b: 230) quoted Russian demographer Urlanis, according to whom 700,000 legal
abortions and 3 million births were reported in the Russian Republic in 1934, equivalent to approximately 23 abortions per 100 births.
The situation in Moscow with regard to births and abortions as reported by the Soviet medical statistics is shown in Table 2.1. This evidence seems to suggest a growing resort to abortion in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This may have been due not only to increasing accuracy in abortion recording, but also to increasing individual motivation to reduce fertility, and to an increase in the number of facilities in which abortions could be performed. Unfortunately, the nature of available data makes it impossible to assess more precisely the separate roles of these factors.
Table 2.1: Reported births and abortions in Moscow, 1911,1914,1921-27,1934-35 Year Total births Total abortions Births per 1,000 population Abortions per 1,000 population Abortions per 100 births 1911 6.0 1914 31.0 3.2 10.0 1921 30.6 5.7 19.0 1922 35,320 7,969 25.6 5.5 23.0 1923 48,852 9,062 30.1 5.5 19.0 1924 51,980 10,183 29.3 5.7 20.0 1925 57,537 18,071 31.0 9.7 31.0 1926 57,100 31,986 28.9 15.8 56.0 1927 75.0 1934 57,000 154,584 271.0 1935 70,000 155,000 221.0
Sources: Lorimer (1946), Field (1956), Savage (1988).
The 1920 Soviet law on abortion was through its consequences important for the abortion debate in other countries. First, it showed that change towards a more liberal approach to this issue was possible. Second, it revised perceptions of the safety of the operation: until that time it had been widely believed that surgical abortion was an unsafe procedure, but the Soviet experience suggested that abortion-related morbidity and mortality could fall significantly in response to the legalization of abortion.10
10 In 1932 a distinguished British medical journal commented that if the results reported by Soviet doctors concerning induced abortion were accurate, ‘they will from the strictly medical point of view deserve serious consideration by those planning new legislation appropriate to the outlook and habits of our time* (Lancet, 19 March, 1932: 627; quoted in Francome, 1984: 63).