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A Necessary Evil? I A Necessary Evil? Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Abortion Discourse, 1910-1930 Jorunn Skjulestad Master’s Thesis European and American Studies Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo Autumn 2012 I II © Jorunn Skjulestad 2012 A Necessary Evil? Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Abortion Discourse, 1910-1930 Jorunn Skjulestad http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo III Abstract The widespread reliance on abortion in the Soviet Union, occasionally even referred to as an “abortion culture”, has been documented in a number of studies. However, the notoriously high abortion rates are not the only reason why the Soviet case stands out in the global history of abortion. Having decriminalised abortion by decree in 1920, Soviet Russia became the first country in the world where the termination of pregnancy was discussed as a legalised phenomenon. Russian discussions on the abortion issue, however, did not begin with the Decree on the Legalisation of Abortion in 1920. Neither were the debates originally initiated by the Bolsheviks. The abortion question first started to attract serious attention among liberal intellectuals during the years before the First World War. Two different medical congresses, and one convention of criminologists, had voted in favour of decriminalisation in 1911, 1913 and 1914 respectively. Seeing as there were voices even in the pre-revolutionary years who called for decriminalisation of abortion, it can be questioned whether the Decree of 1920 really represented a turning point in the Russian abortion discourse. In this thesis, the patterns of continuity and change in Russian and Soviet abortion discourse between 1910 and 1930 will be examined. A closer comparison of pre-revolutionary and early Soviet sources indicates that despite Soviet efforts to prove otherwise, there was more continuity than change in the abortion discourse during these two decades. Thus, it can be argued that the Decree of 1920 was less of a watershed than it might seem at first glance. IV Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Pål Kolstø, for giving constant support, constructive criticism and intelligent advice throughout the writing process. I am indebted to Ellen Melgård Solstad and Valentina Porfir’evna Aksenova for their hospitality during my research in Moscow and St. Petersburg, respectively. Thale Marie Giltun was an excellent companion during my research trip to The Slavonic Library in Helsinki. A special thanks goes to my dear friend and “brother-in-law”, Peter Allan, whose careful proofreading improved the manuscript significantly. Any remaining inaccuracies or mistakes are, of course, my sole responsibility. I am also very grateful to my close family, friends, fellow students and flatmates in Jacob Aalls gate. Without your encouragement, inspiration and support, it would have been very hard for me to complete this thesis. V Abbreviations Gosizdat the State Publishing House of the R. S. F. S. R (Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo) gubzdrav(y) district health department(s) (gubernskii otdel zdravookhraneniya) Narkomzdrav the People’s Commissariat of Health (Narodnyi komissariat zdravookhraneniya) OMM / Okhmatmlad the Department for the Protection of Maternity and Infancy (Okhrana materinstva i mladenchestva) R. S. F. S. R. the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Rossiiskaya sovetskaya federativnaya sotsialisticheskaya respublika) Sovnarkom the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovet narodnykh komissarov), the government of the early Soviet republic Zhenotdel / zhenotdely the Women’s Department of the Communist Party (otdel po rabote sredi zhenshchin) and its local sub-departments A note on the transliteration of Russian names and other words In this thesis, Russian names and other words have been transliterated according to the British Standard system, with two exceptions. First, the Russian ë has been transliterated as e, because it is not common to distinguish between these two letters in modern standard Russian. Second, instead of transliterating the Russian й as ĭ, I have chosen – for practical as well as aesthetic reasons – to use i. In addition, words and names in the pre-revolutionary literature have been transcribed according to the spelling rules that were implemented after the 1917 revolution. VI VII Table of Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Method ......................................................................................................................... 4 2 The Western context of Russian abortion discourse .......................................................... 7 2.1.1 Western attitudes towards abortion in the 19th and early 20th century: De jure repression, de facto tolerance ............................................................................................. 9 2.1.2 Abortion methods in the pre-legalisation era ..................................................... 10 2.1.3 Increasing abortion rates after 1880: an “abortion revolution”? ........................ 11 3 The Russian and Soviet context, ca. 1890-1930 .............................................................. 14 3.1 Social changes ........................................................................................................... 14 3.1.1 The sexual question: changing norms and “decadence” .................................... 16 3.2 Abortion in Russia before 1917 ................................................................................. 18 3.2.1 Pre-revolutionary abortion legislation ................................................................ 19 3.3 Abortion in Soviet Russia, 1920-1930 ...................................................................... 20 3.3.1 “The woman question” in Soviet Russia and its origins .................................... 21 3.4 Early examples of Soviet theorising on the woman question .................................... 25 3.5 Revolutionary legislation: Putting theory into practice ............................................. 26 3.6 The Decree of 18th November, 1920 on the Legalisation of Abortion ...................... 28 3.7 Practical implications of the new abortion legislation............................................... 31 3.7.1 Abortion in the countryside: A particular problem ............................................ 32 3.7.2 Illegal abortions .................................................................................................. 33 3.7.3 The development of Soviet abortion legislation during the 1920s ..................... 34 3.7.4 Problems related to the abortion commissions: The bureaucracy and the limited capacity ............................................................................................................................ 36 3.7.5 Combating abortions: Propaganda, public health and welfare measures ........... 38 4 Law versus life: Abortion discourse in pre-revolutionary Russia, 1910-1914 ................ 41 4.1 The intelligentsia and the abortion question .............................................................. 41 4.2 “Practical” questions .................................................................................................. 44 4.2.1 The rising abortion rates ..................................................................................... 44 4.2.2 Contemporary explanations behind the rising abortion rate: from “light- heartedness” to “iron necessity” ....................................................................................... 45 4.2.3 Who had abortions? ............................................................................................ 50 4.3 Suggested solutions to the abortion problem ............................................................. 51 VIII 4.3.1 The status of the foetus: a core issue .................................................................. 52 4.3.2 Legal reforms or complete decriminalisation? ................................................... 56 4.4 Summary .................................................................................................................... 66 5 Soviet abortion discourse, 1920-1930 .............................................................................. 68 5.1 Early examples of Soviet abortion discourse ............................................................ 69 5.2 The academic discourse ............................................................................................. 71 5.2.1 The abortion epidemic and its causes ................................................................. 72 5.2.2 Attitudes towards the new abortion legislation .................................................. 75 5.3 Combating abortions: Public enlightenment ............................................................. 83 5.3.1 Abortion pamphlets ............................................................................................ 84 5.3.2 The women’s journals and the abortion issue .................................................... 89 5.4 Summary .................................................................................................................... 93 6 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 95 Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................
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