This village economics both influenced and was influenced by other realities. Social differentiation in the rural areas narrowed;as extremes of income closed, categories such as kulak, middle peasant, and poor peasant became blurred. Moreover, the Soviet state had only a minimal administrative presence in the countryside. After grain requisitioning ended in 1921, the villages had recouped much of their pre-revolutionary insularity and control over internal affairs. Although rural soviets formally held power, the peasant commune actually exercised the principal authority over day-to-day economics and law. And it was not until 1925 that the Communist Party made a serious attempt to increase membership in its rural organizations. In short, the Russian village—historically separated from and suspicious of the towns—closed ranks. In 1921–9, it identified with its own past and its own interests, not with Bolshevik visions of a revolutionary transformation.
‘The New Soviet Man’
Despite upheavals, the Bolsheviks did not narrow their social vision, which went far beyond the transfer of political authority, reassessment of foreign relations, and redistribution of goods and services discussed thus far. While that political and economic reorientation was a mandatory first step, the Bolsheviks understood ‘revolution’ more broadly: it must also encompass a fundamental transformation of not only social institutions, but also values, myths, norms, mores, aesthetics, popular images, and traditions. Ultimately, the result would be not only a citizen of a new type (known in Bolshevik parlance as ‘the new Soviet man’) but nothing less than the recasting of the human condition for the better.
In 1921–9, therefore, a central element in the process the Bolsheviks called ‘building socialism’ was the inculcation of a new world-view. Bolshevism held that if Russia were to progress from its present condition through socialism to communism, society would have to understand its collective experience in a new way, that is, in terms of the rational application of scientific principles to human development. As Marxists, the Bolsheviks believed this would promote a more objective understanding of social existence that would, in turn, achieve greater mass co-operation and co-ordination among citizens. As Russian revolutionaries, they also intended that it would enable science and technology to help overcome economic and material backwardness.
Such an undertaking presented a multi-faceted challenge. At the very least it required extensive utilization of state power, and central authorities initiated ambitious projects—ranging from the eradication of illiteracy to the electrification of the whole country. By the end of NEP, the regime would ultimately use its administrative power to attempt to reconceptualize law, eliminate religious superstitions, recast education, and in general construct a proletarian culture in both the aesthetic and sociological sense. But wielding power was not enough: the Bolsheviks recognized that they could not simply impose new modes of thinking on society. Laws and decrees alone, even when backed by repression, could not automatically alter popular consciousness. They therefore also launched an unprecedented effort to educate and indoctrinate the masses.
Some campaigns to create the ‘new Soviet man’ addressed specific audiences. Party organizations such as the Zhenotdel (Women’s Department) and the Komsomol (Young Communist League) concentrated on distinct groups, but suffered from the fact that—as in politics and economics—the party did not speak with a single voice. Even before the announcement in early 1930 that the Zhenotdel would be disbanded, for example, tepid support from the party leadership and open hostility from local officials undercut agitational and instructional work among women. For its part, the Komsomol instructed adolescents on topics as diverse as basic politics and sexual morality, but was frequently criticized for accomplishing little.
Other messages focused on correcting specific problems and were aimed at society as a whole. To deal with the problem of chronic alcohol abuse, for example, the Bolsheviks initially continued the prohibition policy adopted by the tsarist state in 1914. When this failed to stem the widespread production of illegal spirits, the government conceded defeat and in 1925 reintroduced the state production of vodka. In a different instance, until conservatives finally prevailed in mid-1929, reformers sought to improve criminal justice by making penalties more lenient and taking into account the circumstances surrounding crime. To cite a third case, the state took steps to improve public health and sanitation. Building on reforms initiated in the last decades of imperial Russia, the People’s Commissariat of Health raised the level of professionalism in health care markedly after 1921; preventive medicine and the curtailment of infectious diseases subsequently made impressive strides. But inadequate funding impeded additional plans to improve sanitation, and the reluctance of doctors to take rural posts left medicine in the countryside largely in its pre-revolutionary condition.
In their effort to create a new social ethos, the Bolsheviks also devoted special energy to redefining the family and the individual. Perceiving the patriarchal, religiously sanctioned family as tsarist society in microcosm, Soviet state legislation in 1918 gave official recognition only to civil marriages, made divorce readily available, declared the legal equality of women, and granted full rights to children born out of wedlock. Subsequent decrees stripped fathers of their extensive legal and proprietary authority over wives and children and dropped adultery from the list of criminal offences. Easing the divorce law had particularly rapid and widespread ramifications. Under tsarism, civil and church law made divorce impossible except for a few, and then only after lengthy proceedings. Allowing Soviet citizens to dissolve marriages easily produced a true social revolution. In addition to contributing to a general atmosphere of emancipation for all citizens, liberalizing divorce assaulted patriarchal authority, provided women with new social latitude, and co-opted a valued prerogative of the Russian Orthodox Church.
But these innovations also led to family instability and astronomical rates of family dissolution. The 1918 provisions also made it difficult to collect alimony and support for children; by the time of NEP a significant portion of married women equated easy divorce with desertion. In theory, the emerging socialist society was to assume greater responsibility for child-rearing and for social welfare; in reality, however, such plans were no more than declarations of intent, for the state simply lacked the resources to implement them. It was not the state but individual women—whose wages rose but still lagged behind pay for males and who endured higher rates of unemployment—who bore the brunt. Thus, while the new family law seemed to enhance the legal position of women, it also subverted the males’ traditional responsibilities towards wives and children.
The issue of divorce was closely tied to an emotional exchange taking place at the same time over public morality. One side attacked traditional standards of sexual conduct as arbitrary bourgeois restraints on the individual, and there was no shortage of young men in particular who rallied to the philosophy of free love. Those less sanguine about discarding existing conventions too quickly however, emphasized the already familiar issues of social stability, male accountability, and economic plight of the female. In the second half of the 1920s, these champions of collective responsibility prevailed over the proponents of individual choice—or, to view matters from another perspective, social conservatives defeated supporters of sexual liberation. In any event, both the party and Komsomol began to take a more direct interest in the personal lives of members, strenuously to oppose promiscuity, and to uphold heterosexual marriage as the social norm.