Irreconcilable Differences: Divorce and Conceptions of Private Life in the Khrushchev Era

Author(s): Deborah A. Field

Source: The Russian Review, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Oct., 1998), pp. 599-613
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review
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 Irreconcilable Differences:
Divorce and Conceptions
of Private Life in
the Khrushchev Era

DEBORAH A. FIELD

A short story published in Sem Ia ishko/a in 1962 described a marriage that had fallen
apart because the wife was in love with another man. The seven-year-old daughter of the
family was desperately unhappy and made various futile efforts to get her parents back
together. The husband was willing to reconcile for the child's sake, but the wife refused,
explaining that people "must not violate ... [their] nature in the name of some principles.
Humankind is made for happiness, like a bird for flight." Such an attitude, the narrative
made evident, was not an acceptable one. The husband got the last word, expressing what
obviously was supposed to be the moral of the story: "The heart must be not only happy in
love, but also good and ... egotistical happiness is not full happiness."' This story exem-
plifies some of the key features of official discourse on marriage and divorce during the
Khrushchev era. Moralists and party propagandists emphasized that divorce was selfish,
and they urged married people to control their passions for the sake of their children, and
by extension, the country's future.
Despite demands for marital stability, in the early 1950s journalists, judges, lawyers,
and reform-minded legal scholars began to propose legislative changes that would make
divorce easier to obtain. Judges became increasingly lenient over the course of the subse-
quent decade, and more couples applied for divorces. As a result, between 1955 and 1965
the divorce rate rose by 270 percent.2 Clearly, judges and unhappily married couples

A draft of this article was presented at the conference on "Private Life in Russia from Medieval Times to the
Present," held at the University of Michigan in October 1996. I thank the participants for their suggestions and the
organizers for providing a useful forum for discussion. I am grateful to everyone who provided comments on this
essay in its many incarnations: Laurie Bernstein, Jane Burbank, Laura Lee Downs, Francine Hirsch, Tova Perlmutter,
Karen Petrone, Dana Rabin, Michele Rivkin-Fish, Mark Schneyer, Kenneth Slepyan, and the Russian Review
readers. Research was made possible by a Fulbright-Hays dissertation fellowship.
'A. Rodin, "Troe: Rasskaz neperzhitel'nogo cheloveka," Sem'ia ishkola, 1962, no. 6: 23.
2Peter H. Juviler, "Cell Mutation in Soviet Society," in Soviet Society and Culture.- Essays in HonoP of Vera S
Dunham, ed. Terry L. Thompson and Richard Sheldon (Boulder, 1988), 42.

The Russian Review 57 (October 1998): 599-613

Copyright 1998 The Russian Review

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 600 Deborcah A. Field

resisted moralistic dictates in making decisions about divorce, and this conflict between
official prescriptions and actual practices grew out of fundamentally different notions
about private life. While theorists and propagandists insisted that Soviet citizens could
willingly and easily subordinate private interests to public needs, master their emotions,
and coordinate duty and desire, divorce court judges and unhappy spouses acted upon
different assumptions about personal life. For the most part, they took for granted that
will, reason, and conscience could not always govern emotion, that relations between
men and women were complicated and their feelings for one another mutable, and that
love could not be regulated by law. In a few divorce cases, spouses did invoke official
rhetoric; however, the way in which they did so modified its meaning and subverted its
goals.
Until very recently, the conduct and definition of private life have remained largely
unexamined in the historiography of the Soviet Union, perhaps because scholars have
regarded these topics as inaccessible, or less important than explicitly political questions.3
However, examining contestations over private life provides new insight into the dynam-
ics of the Khrushchev period. Khrushchev believed that the achievement of his political
and economic policies required the diligent labor and social activism of Soviet citizens,
and he tried to inspire such mass initiative and enthusiasm. In order to work hard and to
commit themselves whole-heartedly to the fulfillment of government priorities, Soviet
people could not be distracted by family discord, unruly passions, and narrow personal
interests. Thus an orderly, tranquil private life was a fundamental requirement for the
ideal citizen, who in turn was responsible for the realization of Khrushchev's goals. Wide-
spread rejection of official prescriptions about personal conduct thus had dire implica-
tions for his success.

COMMUNIST MORALITY AND OFFICIAL DEFINITIONS OF PRIVATE LIFE

Khrushchev had to establish new sources of legitimacy and methods of government in the
wake of his repudiation of Stalinism, made public at the Twentieth Party Congress in
1956. The solutions he adopted included abolishing wide-scale state terror, curtailing
bureaucratic privilege, and encouraging mass participation in economic development and
the maintenance of social order. This populist approach, George Breslauer has argued,
was not solely a strategic maneuver in Khrushchev's struggle for power, but came out of
his sincere conviction that economic progress required reducing officials' immunity from
criticism and unleashing popular initiative.4 Khrushchev's ideal, he adds, depended upon
"the creation of an active, self-regulating society of like-minded individuals."5 Scholars

'A new scholarly interest in private life is now developing, as was evident at the 1996 Michigan conference.
See also SvetlanaBoym, Common Places. Mythologies ofEveiydayLife in Russia (Cambridge, MA, 1994); Deborah
Ann Field, "Communist Morality and Meanings of Private Life in Post-Stalinist Russia, 1953-1964" (Ph.D. diss,
University of Michigan, 1996); and Vladimir Shlapentokh, The Public andPrivateLife of The So viet People (New
York, 1989).
4George W. Breslauer, "Khrushchev Reconsidered," in The Soviet Union Since Stalin, ed. Stephen F. Cohen,
Alexander Rabinowitch, and Robert Sharlet (Bloomington, 1980), 51-52.
5Ibid., 52.

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 Divorce and Conceptions of Private Life 601

have described how Khrushchev's populist vision in part motivated his attempts to reorga-
nize state and party structures, reform Soviet law, transfer power to trade unions and
voluntary groups, and devise such ideological innovations as the concept of the all-people's
state. But a society based on activism, rather than coercion, also requires the proper
personnel. In addition to political and economic reform, the achievement of Khrushchev's
aspirations entailed the reshaping of individual Soviet people, who had to become ca-
pable of assuming the new responsibilities entrusted to them.
The reconstruction of the Soviet citizenry envisioned in the 1950s was much less
radical than some of the transformative projects formulated in the 1920s.7 Its blueprint
was Communist morality, a code of ethics governing both public and private life that
combined in a milder form the activism valorized in the 1920s with the domestic virtues
endorsed in the Stalin years.8 Formulations of Communist morality included familiar
Soviet values: devotion to communism, collectivism, diligent work for the good of soci-
ety, patriotism, honesty, modesty, as well as a conscientious attitude toward family re-
sponsibilities, especially child rearing.9 Theorists emphasized the social and political
importance of "correct" personal conduct, and in numerous books, articles, lectures, and
radio programs, various experts detailed the ethical, Communist way to fall in love, marry,
rear children, and establish a home. They stressed that every personal decision, from
sexual and reproductive choices to taste in interior decorating, had ramifications for soci-
ety as a whole.10
Such ideas and instructions had been a feature of Stalin-era discourse; what changed
during the Khrushchev period was not the content of Communist morality but the greater
importance ascribed to it. Given his government's limited use of coercion, persuading

6Harold J. Berman, Justice in the USSR. An Interpretation ofSovietLaw, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 81;
Graeme Gill, "Khrushchev and Systemic Development," and Ronald J. Hill, "State and Ideology," both in Khrushch
and Khrushchevism, ed. Martin McCauley (London, 1987), 38 and 48-50, respectively; Martin McCauley, The
KhrushchevEra, 1953-1964(London, 1995), 91.
7For descriptions and analyses of such projects see Abbott Gleason, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites, eds.,
Bolshevik Culture (Bloomington, 1985); Selected Writings ofAlexandra ollontai, ed. and trans. Alix Holt (New
York, 1977); and William G. Rosenberg, ed., Bolshevik Visions (Ann Arbor, 1984).
8In a groundbreaking work, Vera Dunham argued that after World War II, Stalin's regime tacitly offered the
Soviet middle class some degree of security and comfort in return for its expert labor and political compliance. As
a result, public values shifted. Revolutionary estheticism was no longer idealized; instead, domesticity, happy
families, and material comfort were publicly praised (Vera Dunham, In Stalin's Time. Middleclass Values in Soviet
Fiction [Durham, 1990], 17-18). More recently, scholars have argued that this change in public values occurred
earlier, during the 1930s. See, for example, Jerry Hough's introduction to Dunham's In Stalin's Time, xxviii. See
also Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, The State and Revolution. Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936
(Cambridge, England, 1993), chap. 8.
9For Western scholars' treatment of Communist morality see Richard T. De George, Soviet Ethics andMorality
(Ann Arbor, 1969); and Peter H. Juviler, "Communist Morality and Soviet Youth," Problems of Communism 10
(May-June 1961): 16-24. For contemporary works see, for example, Akademiia nauk SSSR, Nravstvennyeprints
stroitelia kommunizma (Moscow, 1965); M. L. Chalin, Moral'stroitelia kommunizma (Moscow, 1963); S. M.
Kosolapov and 0. N. Krutova, Voprosy vospitaniia trudiashchikhsia v dukhe kommunistichekoi nravstvennosti
(Moscow, 1961); and A. F. Shishkin, Osnovy kommunisticheskoi morali (Moscow, 1955).
'0For example, a designer explained that a well-decorated apartment interior must not only "meet everyday and
esthetic demands-it also to a great extent must take into account the demands of the future, it must heighten the
culture of the Soviet person [it must] take part in the upbringing of the constructors of Communist society." See I.
A. Lupov, "Novym zdaniiam-novyi inter'er," in Iskusstvo ibyt, ed. N. I. Matveeva (Moscow, 1963), 14.

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 602 Deborah A. Field

people to live according to Communist morality was essential for the realization of
Khrushchev's ideal society. Citizens who willingly complied with Communist morality's
demand for hard work would provide the labor force needed for economic development.
Those who internalized prescriptions about personal conduct would help to ensure social
stability by establishing secure families and leading orderly personal lives, and making
sure that their coworkers and neighbors did the same.
Official concern with instilling Communist morality intensified throughout the 1950s
and early 1960s, especially after Khrushchev's announcement in the late fifties that the
Soviet Union had now embarked on the road to communism. "It is necessary to develop
Communist morality in Soviet people," Khrushchev declared at the Twenty-first Commu-
nist Party congress in 1959.11 Two years later, the Twenty-second Party Congress distilled
the tenets of Communist morality into twelve principles, dubbed the Moral Code of the
Builder of Communism, and included it in the party program. In addition to its role in
stimulating labor and maintaining order, theorists envisioned another, more grandiose
purpose for morality in the now imminent Communist epoch: its principles would eventu-
ally replace law and force in governing all interactions between individuals. One text
asserted that "moral norms in socialist society gain greater and greater meaning," and
predicted that "in developed Communist society they will be the only form of regulation
of the relations between people." 12 The Twenty-second Party Congress Program described
the same process: during the "transition to communism, the role of moral principles in
social life grows, the sphere of activity of moral factors widens, and correspondingly the
importance of the administrative regulation of the relations between people decreases."13
The government's emphasis on Communist morality sparked additional educational
and propagandistic efforts. For example, publishing houses produced an increasing num-
ber of manuals on family and everyday life, and in 1959 education officials designed a
required class for institutions of higher learning entitled "The Foundations of Marxist
Ethics."14
Moreover, there were new methods of enforcing prescriptions about personal con-
duct. The taming of the secret police meant that, for the most part, state terror no longer
disrupted intimate and family relationships as it had under Stalin; instead, opportunities
for less drastic forms of intervention had appeared. Moralists made clear that in cases
where people refused to follow officially sanctioned standards, the community was sup-
posed to scold or punish the erring individuals.15 While party and Komsomol groups were

"Quoted in Voprosy Marksistsko-Leninskoi etiki (Moscow, 1960), 5.

'2Kosolapov and Krutova, Voprosy vospitaniia, 82.
'3XXIls"ezdKPSS (Moscow, 1962), 3:317.
"In 1954 the catalogue listing all books published in the USSR included a new subject heading, "Family and
everyday life." An increasing number of such books were published throughout the middle and late fifties, reach-
ing a peak in 1961 after the issuance of the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism. In 1954 only 15 books
about family and everyday life appeared, in 1958 this figure was 33, and in 1961, 73 such titles were put out. See
EzhegodnikknigiSSSR 1954(Moscow, 1955), 1:249, 2:256; EzhegodnikknigiSSSR 1958(Moscow, 1960), 1:182-
83; and EzhegodnikknigiSSSR 1961 (Moscow, 1963), 1:243-45. A proposed curriculum was published in Vosprosy
Marksistskoi-Leninskoi etiki.
"5See, for example, P. E. Filonovich, Okommunisticheskoimorali-populiarnyiocherk(Moscow, 1963), 225-
33; and M. A. Sigov, Liubov ' brak isem 'ia v sovetskom obshchestve.- Vpomoshch 'lektory (Moscow, 1959), 4.

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 Divorce and Conceptions of Private Lfe 603

thus empowered under Stalin, the Khrushchev government's expansion of social welfare
programs, together with the revival of volunteer groups such as house committees and
comrade's courts, meant that this privilege was extended to more people. Teachers, social
workers, local bureaucrats, and neighbors, as well as party, Komsomol, and trade union
officials, were now all authorized to monitor and intervene in individuals' private lives.16
Two basic assumptions about the nature of private life were embedded in texts on
Communist morality and in didactic materials about family and domestic life. First,
theorists and moralists assumed psychological simplicity and harmony, taking for granted
that personal relationships were straightforward and that once people understood how to
conduct their private lives correctly, they would be willing and able to do so. Reason and
will, in this formulation, invariably governed emotion, thus eliminating the possibility of
internal conflict and ambivalence. For example, a manual for propagandists on how to
discuss love and marriage with young people included the following recommendation.
The commonly asked question, "How [can I] harmonize impulses of the heart with the
voice of reason and feeling of duty?" should be answered, "For the Soviet person, for
whom consciousness and social purposefulness have penetrated all of life, there cannot be
an irreconcilable conflict between feelings and reason: impulses of the heart must be
controlled by the demands of sense and duty."'17
The absence of self-interest was a second feature of Communist morality's delinea-
tion of the private. Many theorists insisted that public and private interests were identical.
While others admitted that contradictions could arise during the contemporary transition
period from socialism to communism, they stressed that in such circumstances, personal
needs should always be subordinated because "the interests of society are higher than the
interests of the family, the interests of the family are higher than the interests of the
individual."1 Eventually, moralists explained, the repression of individual interests and
desires would become second nature. "In Communist society, there will be such harmony
of personal and social interests, such high consciousness, that when 'conflicts' arise be-
tween the personal and the social, people, without special difficulty, by habit will subordi-
nate their desires to social interests."19
Only people who had mastered their feelings and desires could make the kind of
sacrifices for the public good that Soviet moralists required. In an imagined world gov-
erned by Communist morality, individual interests were identical with or subordinate to
public goals, and personal relations were uncomplicated. Citizens' emotional harmony,
and the resolution of all their personal conflicts, were the prerequisites for economic
development, social order, and progress toward communism.
Texts on marriage and divorce were written in accordance with Communist morality.

'6For a discussion of welfare policies see Bernice Madison, Social Welfare in the Soviet Union (Stanford, 1968).
On house committees see Alfred John DiMaio, Jr., Soviet Urban Housing (New York, 1974); and N. G. Dimitriev,
Vpomoshch'domovym komitetam (Moscow, 1963). On comrade's courts see Theodore H. Friedgut, Political
Participation in the USSR (Princeton, 1979) 249-58; and K. S. Iudel'son, Polozhenie o tovarishcheskikh sudak
prakticheskiikomentarii (Moscow, 1962).
'7Sigov, Liubov' brakisem'ia, 21.
'8Chalin, Moral'stroitelia kommunizma, 54.
'9Printsipy tvoeizhizni (Moscow, 1963), 49.

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 604 Deborah A. Field

Writers therefore emphasized social obligation, community intervention, and emotional

restraint, stressing that spouses should sacrifice any potentially disruptive personal de-
sires for the greater social benefit of preserving their marriages. A harmonious two-parent
family, they explained, provided the best atmosphere for raising the next generation of
Soviet citizens.20 One moralist explained that since divorce had a bad effect on children,
"for the sake of future citizens of our country, for the sake of their correct upbringing, for
the sake of fulfilling their duty, husband and wife are obligated to do everything to save
the family."21
Because intact marriages were so important to the stability and future of the nation,
social interference in marital relations and sexual behavior was justified, even necessary
in some instances. As one expert explained, "The public (obshchestvennost) can do
much, using all forms and methods, to influence spouses so that the matter does not go as
far as the dissolution of the marriage."22 Party and Komsomol organizations, and volun-
teer groups such as apartment house committees and comrades' courts, were all supposed
to take an active role in settling disputes and teaching people to become better spouses. A
manual for propagandists describes how, after a Komsomol agitator's lecture, a woman
approached him to discuss her problems. She claimed she needed a divorce, but after a
long conversation, it became evident that her marital difficulties grew out of her family's
extremely cramped living conditions. The lecturer described the new apartments that
were to be built as part of the seven-year plan, assured her that her problems were tempo-
rary, and eventually convinced her not to file for a divorce.23
Married people who found themselves attracted to acquaintances were supposed to
subdue their illicit desires by force of will. In the words of one physician/sex educator,
"the interests of society as a whole, and also the interests of people involved in the con-
flict (the children first of all and the other spouse), demand that in these circumstances
love is subordinated to social obligations."24 Behind such statements lay the belief that
people could and should be able to control their passions and emotions. As one moralist
intoned, "We must not regard love as a force of nature, which can not be subordinated to
any discipline and forces reason to be silent."25
In addition to subduing adulterous attraction in order to preserve their marriages,
conscientious spouses also had to rein in the annoyance and aggravation caused by close
living quarters, cohabitation with in-laws, and material hardship.26 Will power and a good

20Official discourse on marriage and divorce emphasized the plight of children, thus mostly ignoring the situa-
tion of childless couples.
2'Filonovich, 0 kommunsticheskoi morai, 187.
22E. D. Sheshenin, Rol' obshchestvrennosti i sudebnykh organov v ukrep/endi semeinykh otnoshenli (Moscow,
1963), 26.
230. Kuprin, Byt-ne chastnoe delo (Moscow, 1959), 32-33.
24T. S. Atarov, Voprosypo/ovogo vospitanlia (Moscow, 1959), 98.
25Filonovich, 0 kommunisticheskoimorali, 180.
26Despite the Khrushchev government's large-scale housing construction program, crowded living conditions
persisted. In 1959 the average per-capita living space throughout the USSR was 4.97 square meters; in Moscow,
where much of the new construction took place, this figure was 5.7. The minimum standard considered sanitary
was 9 square meters per person. See Timothy Sosnovy, "The Soviet Housing Situation Today," Soviet Studies 11
(July 1959): 18.

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 Divorce and Conceptions of Private Life 605

attitude were supposed to enable people to transcend these problems. For example, a
pamphlet for young people provided a description of one couple who lived in a two-room
apartment, earned good salaries, and had a TV, a radio, a washing machine, and no chil-
dren, but nonetheless fought frequently. Another pair, by contrast, lived with their child
and another family of three in a sixteen-square-meter room divided by a curtain. They all
managed to get along together and preserve their marriages because "everything is shared,
they all help one another."27
Propagandists and experts writing about marriage and divorce, adopting Communist
morality's basic premises, denied the validity of private interests and demanded that indi-
viduals regulate emotions and suppress inconvenient desires, both sexual and material.
However, court records reveal that judges and unhappily married couples usually ignored
Communist morality in making decisions about divorce. Instead, they acted upon a con-
ception of private life that encompassed individual interests and a sense of the power and
complexity of emotion.

JUDGES AND THE INEVITABILITY OF EMOTIONAL COMPLEXITY

From 1944 to 1965, obtaining a divorce was an arduous process. Plaintiffs first had to pay
a fee in order to present a divorce petition to the local raion people's court, and then place
an advertisement in a local newspaper announcing intent to divorce. Next, both parties
had to appear at a raion level people's court hearing, where the judge tried to reconcile
them. If this was unsuccessful, the plaintiff could appeal to the city or oblast court, where
the case was decided and the fee, ranging from fifty to two hundred (new) rubles, was
assigned to one or another party or divided between them.28
There were no specific legal grounds for divorce; a Supreme Court Plenum decree
"On Court Practice in Cases of the Dissolution of Marriage," which was in force from
September 1949 to 1965, instructed judges to grant a divorce only when the plaintiff had
"well grounded motives," and when the preservation of the marriage would "contradict
the principles of Communist morality" and prevent the spouses from successfully raising
their children.29 In making decisions about divorce, it was the responsibility of judges to
implement the law in such a way as to fulfill its educational and propagandistic potential.
The 1949 decree cautioned that judicial rulings on divorce cases "must contribute to the
correct understanding of the meaning of family and marriage in the Soviet state and teach
the population respect for family and marriage, based on the highest principles of Com-
munist morality."30
This meant that judges were supposed to reconcile couples whenever possible and to
deny divorces in cases in which the plaintiff's motivation was not appropriately serious.

27N. F. Makarova, Disputy molodozhenov o Aiubviibrake (Moscow, 1962), 10-11.

28Peter Juviler, "Marriage and Divorce," Survey 48 (1963): 107. In 1961 the government revalued the internal
value of the ruble by ten, so that one thousand old rubles became one hundred new rubles. See Alec Nove, An
Economic History of the USSR (London, 1982), 350.
29G. M. Sverdlov, Sovetskoezakonodatel'stvo o brake isem'e (Moscow, 1961), 38.
30G. M. Sverdlov, Sovetskoe semeinoepravo (Moscow, 1958), 141-42.

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 606 Deborah A. Field

In one idealized account, for example, a jurist tells the story of a husband, long married,
who fell in love with a younger woman and filed for a divorce. In court the wife peni-
tently admitted that she was so busy at work, so eager for success, that she had been
neglecting her husband and family, but she explained that she nonetheless still loved him.
The judge then scolded the husband, who realized his mistake and sought a reconcilia-
tion.3"
Such reunions rarely occurred, however, in any stage of the divorce procedure. Al-
though people's court judges were supposed to reconcile couples during the first stage of
divorce proceedings, they seldom succeeded. A Moscow people's court judge told an
American researcher in 1959 that "in my eight years as a judge, I have had only two cases
of reconciliation. Of these, only one worked. The other couple came back again in four
months."32 Another American observer, describing the first divorce hearing, reported that
"everyone regarded it as sheer formality."33
In the atmosphere of relative openness following Stalin's death, jurists once more
began to debate various aspects of the Soviet legal system.34 One aspect of this contro-
versy was the lively campaign carried out in the press and among legal experts to reform
family law and simplify divorce procedures.35 In 1965 the government issued a new edict
that simplified the divorce procedure, although a new comprehensive family code did not
appear until 1968.36 Even well before the new laws had taken effect, however, higher
court judges became less and less likely to insist that couples stay together despite their
problems, and they granted divorces with increasing frequency.37 As Table 1 illustrates,
city court judges in Moscow turned down approximately 5 percent of divorce applications
in 1953; by 1964 fewer than 1 percent of these cases were refused. At the same time,
more and more people applied for divorces, perhaps as they became aware of the new
judicial leniency.38
Moscow city court judges not only were increasingly liberal in granting divorces,
they also wrote their decisions in a remarkably neutral style. While some of them did

3'I. Neruchev, Bol'shoi vopros: Zapiski iurista (Leningrad, 1954), 13-19.

32Juviler, "Marriage and Divorce," 107.
33George Feifer, Justice in Moscow (New York, 1964), 165.
34Berman, Justice in the USSR, 79-80: Laurie Bernstein, "The Evolution of Soviet Adoption Law'" Journal of
Family History 22 (April 1997): 216.
35See Peter Juviler, "Family Reforms on the Road to Communism," in SovietPolicy-Making, ed. Peter H. Juv
and Henry W. Morton (New York, 1967).
36Under the 1965 edict, plaintiffs no longer had to publish an advertisement of intent to divorce, and divorce
hearings were held in one court only. The 1968 law allowed for divorce by registering in ZAGS, without a court
hearing, in cases in which there were mutual consent and no minor children. See Juviler, "Women and Sex in
Soviet Law," in Women in Russia, ed. Dorothy Atkinson, Alexander Dallin, and Gail Warshofsky Lapidus (Stanford,
1977), 261.
37Juviler estimates that the courts were allowed to refuse fewer cases than previously, "perhaps only two
three percent now in such large cities as Moscow" ("Marriage and Divorce," 110).
38These figures are derived from Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy (TsMAM), f. 819, op. 1, d. 48, 11.
1-4, d. 55,11. 1-4, d. 66,11. 1-4, d. 79,1. 5, d. 93,1. 5, d. 107,1. 5, d. 123,1. 5, d. 140,11. 1-3, and d. 175,11. 1-2. I
have not included figures for cases that were stopped for various reasons. Column one, which lists the total
divorce applications, includes cases left over from the previous year. Less comprehensive figures from the Mos-
cow oblast court provide a similar picture of courts granting divorces to a very high percentage of applicants. See
Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Moskovskoi oblasti (TsGAMO), f. 7335, op. 4, d. 52,1. 232.

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 Divorce and Conceptions of Private Life 607

TABLE 1
Disposition of Divorce Suits, Moscow City Court

Year Total divorce Divorce suits Percent of divorce

applications decided applications denied

1953 9,338 8,462 5.3

1954 9,201 4.2
1955 10,451 3.7
1956 10,526 2.9
1957 11,682 10,951 3.0
1958 13,550 12,885 3.5
1959 15,234 13,932 2.1
1960 23,313 20,759 1.1
1961 26,545 22,761 1.4
1962 27,079 24,091 1.4
1963 25,447 21,155 1.2
1964 28,129 22,699 .9
1965 29,425 23,532 .9

try to determine who was at fault in marital breakups, especially where it had a bearing on
custody of the children or the assignment of the fee, in many of the cases that I examined,
judges ignored the whole issue of blame.39 For example, in 1960 a husband sued for
divorce on the grounds that his wife did not understand and appreciate his dedication to
his career, became jealous, and started quarrels. She agreed to the divorce, but during the
trial wanted to make clear that the real reason behind it was that her husband, as he
himself had admitted to her, was involved with another woman. In the decision the judge
neither addressed the issue of motivation nor lectured the parties on mutual respect and
fidelity; instead, the judge merely observed that marital relations had ended, mutual love
and respect had disappeared, and there was no possibility for reviving the family, and so
granted the divorce.40
The 1949 Supreme court decree specified that a divorce should be granted only when
continuation of the marriage posed a threat to Communist morality. Moscow city court
judges, however, seldom even referred to Communist morality in their verdicts. Instead,
they usually cited at least several of the following reasons in their decisions granting
divorces: bad relations between the spouses, the existence of children from another rela-
tionship, the fact that spouses had been living separately, the couple's failure to make any
discernible attempts to reconcile, or simply that the couple had no desire to live together.
A typical decision granting divorce read, "The family has in fact disintegrated. Hostile,
sharp relations have arisen between the spouses, under which there is no basis for suppos-
ing that the their family could be revived."'41 Such reasoning indicates an acceptance of

39According to Juviler, in uncontested cases, or cases in which the judge regarded both parties as equally at
fault, the fee was often divided evenly between the husband and wife. In other cases, the guiltier party was
assigned a larger share of the fee ("Marriage and Divorce," 109). I examined one hundred divorce cases that were
tried in the Moscow city court between 1953 and 1962, the last year for which records are available at TsMAM.
40TsMAM, f. 819, op. 3, d. 1824,1. 2,11. 17-18.
41Ibid., d. 570,1. 30.

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 608 Deborah A. Field

the changeable nature of relationships and love.

My evidence is drawn from documents of the Moscow city court. However, such
matter-of-fact verdicts were the subject of criticisms in other areas, which suggests that
they were fairly common outside the city of Moscow as well. A 1960 report on the
Moscow oblast court, for example, complained that many judges had failed in their duty
to promote marital stability. Both people's courts and the oblast courts, the report stated,
failed to consider carefully the reasons for the breakup of the family, and "practically did
not react to incorrect behavior in everyday life and in the collective."42
Moscow city court judges for the most part based their decisions not on the dictates
of Communist morality, but on the circumstance of the couple; not on whether the couple
should stay together, but on whether it was likely that they would. The very officials who
were responsible for reuniting couples and teaching the public the importance of family
and marriage seemed to be guided by another set of concerns. Behind the widespread
judicial pragmatism lay a specific set of beliefs about the intimate sphere. In a 1956
interview the pro-reform Chief Justice of the Ukrainian Supreme Court asked rhetorically,
"If husband and wife do not love each other and have started new families, will either
persuasion or court proceedings make them live together?"43 Like many of the judges
responsible for deciding divorce cases, he took for granted that love and marital relations
were not always amenable to legal control. Judges operated on the premise that relations
between men and women were complicated and their feelings for one another mutable;
spouses could and did grow tired of one another, fall in love with other people, become
cruel or irresponsible, develop alcoholism. How judges imagined the realm of intimate
relations differed radically from the reasonable, disciplined, tidy world envisioned in
Communist morality.

DIVORCING SPOUSES AND THE ASSERTION OF SELF-INTEREST

Communist morality demanded the subjugation of individual needs and desires to public
requirements. Because intact marriages were deemed socially beneficial, couples were,
in theory, permitted to divorce only if they could demonstrate that the continuation of
their marriages would have a negative impact on society as whole; for example, by dam-
aging their children. However, most plaintiffs and defendants in the divorce cases I exam-
ined eschewed the rhetoric of social responsibility, focusing instead on the specific rela-
tionship between spouses.
Many divorcing couples seem to have shared the assumptions that deteriorating rela-
tions between spouses constituted adequate cause for divorce and that judges should ac-
commodate the inevitable contingencies of domestic life. In their applications for divorce
to the Moscow city court many plaintiffs simply stated that husband and wife had become
estranged, could not live together, or had found new partners. In 1957, for example, a
woman applied for divorce because "we have already been actually separated for the last

42TsGAMO, f. 7335, op. 4, d. 52,1.238.

43V. Kiselev, "Sushchestvuet li liubov'?" Literaturnaiagazeta, 13 September 1956, quoted in Juviler, "Family
Reforms," 36.

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 Divorce and Conceptions of Private Life 609

two years because of complete disparity of characters and ways of life."44 After four years
of marriage, another plaintiff sought a divorce in 1959, explaining that "the feelings which
bound us earlier have left. ... We live in one room like people who are strangers to one
another."45
Defendants, by contrast, sometimes contested their spouses' applications for divorce
on the grounds that true love remained. In 1956 a woman protested the decision granting
her husband a divorce because, she argued, she still loved him, his current relationship
with a woman twenty-six years his junior would not last, and he would eventually return
to his family. She pointed to the correspondence between herself and husband and criti-
cized the court's refusal to consider it, although it "testifies to our deep sincere feelings,
our great respect for one another."46 It is not clear how sincere declarations of loyal
devotion or disregard actually were. What is more important for my argument, however,
is that plaintiffs and defendants thought that their professions of love or indifference should
be the basis for judge's decisions.
Other arguments for and against divorce were based not on love, but on cruelty and
neglect. In describing the misdeeds of their spouses, plaintiffs assumed that the judge
would agree that certain behavior, such as excessive drinking and violence, was simply
intolerable. When applying for a divorce in 1956 from her "despotic" husband, for in-
stance, the plaintiff alleged that "the defendant does not respect me as a person and as a
woman: he insults me undeservedly not only with words, deeds but also actions (he in-
flicted blows)."47 Men also cited infidelity and drunkenness.48 Often they added the
accusation that their spouses failed to provide the emotional nurturing and good house-
keeping assumed to be a wife's duty. A disillusioned husband filed for divorce in 1959,
after six years of marriage, because his wife was unfaithful, drank, and furthermore, "doe
not have any concern for me: she has stopped doing laundry, cleaning."49
None of the plaintiffs in these cases referred to the 1949 Supreme Court decree on
divorce, or to Communist morality. They believed that abuse, neglect, and the loss of love
were valid reasons for divorce, that judges should take into account the relations between
spouses, and that emotions and personal behavior were the critical questions in divorce
suits. By ignoring Communist morality's concern over whether the dissolution of their
marriages was good or bad for society as a whole, such individuals denied the invariable
primacy of public goals and implied that, in some circumstances, individual interests and
needs were paramount.

44TsMAM, f. 819, op. 3, d. 668,1. 10.

45Ibid., d. 1487, 1. 11.
46Ibid., d. 374,1. 41. In a rare occurrence, the wife won her appeal and the decision granting the divorce was
reversed. See also ibid., d. 1032,11. 23-24, for love letters presented in divorce cases to prove ongoing devotion.
47Ibid., d. 477,1. 3. See also ibid., d. 1100, 1. 17.
48For accusations of wives' drunkenness see, for example, ibid., d. 877, 1. 1, and d. 2112,1. 3. For accounts of
wives' infidelity see ibid., d. 210,1. 3, and d. 1866,1. 2.
49Ibid., d. 1728,1. 2. See also ibid., d. 2643,1. 14.

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 610 Deborah A. Field

APPROPRIATING COMMUNIST MORALITY

Occasionally, however, plaintiffs and defendants in divorce cases stepped outside of this
purely personal discourse. They invoked Communist morality either explicitly or less
directly by trying to compel party and societal groups to correct their spouses' behavior.
Such appeals for outside intervention and appropriations of official rhetoric did not occur
in the majority of cases, but they are significant because they illuminate the contradic-
tions that arose as Communist morality was put into practice.
Some divorcing spouses made specific references to Communist morality. In 1954,
for example, a woman denied her husband's assertion that she had been unfaithful, and
instead cited her mother-in-law's interference as the source of marital conflict. She con-
cluded that "such a wish of the mother of the plaintiff is a direct contradiction of the
foundations of Communist morality aimed at strengthening the Soviet family."50 In a
1958 case a woman who had been married for nineteen years accused her husband of
having an affair with a woman twenty years his junior and, in doing so, disregarding "the
high principles of Communist morality."51 And in an usually thorough statement, a defen-
dant responded to her husband's 1961 application for divorce with a fourteen-page typed
rebuttal. She cited the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism and its demand for good
family relations, attention to child rearing, and "harmonious coordination of family and
social upbringing." But, she continued, though her husband was a member of the party, he
"did not understand the directives and demands of our party, the government, and the
historic decisions of the Twenty-second Party Congress." He had failed to show concern
and affection for his wife and family by reforming, so that rather than "striding with all
the Soviet people toward communism, being an example in the struggle to strengthen the
principles of Communist morality," he had "used great quantities of alcoholic drinks and
... begun a battle against his family."52
It is impossible to ascertain whether these dissatisfied spouses referred to official
principles because they sincerely believed in them or because they thought such allusions
would add credibility to their cases. Regardless of their true motivations, it seems clear
that they regarded Communist morality not just as a guide to behavior or as the ethical
basis for the Communist future but also as a powerful language that could be invoked to
help them with more immediate personal concerns, such as reining in wayward spouses or
subduing officious in-laws. In other words, they used Communist morality for their own
ends.
This instrumental understanding of Communist morality is even more apparent in
cases where people sought help in resolving marital problems from societal organiza-
tions. Communist morality, as I have discussed earlier, was to be put into practice by the
community. Collectives, in the form of party, workplace, or apartment house groups,
were supposed to become involved in the upbringing of their members, to compel them to

50Ibid., d. 210, 1. 4.
51Ibid., d. 1062,1. 69.
52Ibid., d. 3143,11. 23-24.

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 Divorce and Conceptions of Private Life 611

lead their personal lives correctly, to be better husbands and wives. These cases, in which
societal organizations intervened in marital disputes, seem to provide examples of the
successful implementation of Communist morality; however, a closer examination re-
veals an important modification of its basic principles.
On two different occasions, Citizen S. complained to party organizations about men
he believed to be his wife's lovers. On receiving no reply to a 1953 letter, he wrote back
to reiterate his accusation about the "amoral behavior in everyday life, the planting of
alien bourgeois morals in the conditions of Soviet realities, the result of which is that the
family of another Soviet person was ruined by M."53 Other petitioners stressed not only
the immoral, un-Soviet nature of their spouses' behavior but also the socially responsible
nature of the very act of complaining. In 1954 one woman justified taking her complaint
about her husband to the local party organization by explaining that "although it could
bring me great suffering and sacrifices, my duty as a wife, friend, and Communist obli-
gated me to go for help to the party."54
While accusers characterized their attempts to elicit party intervention as a right or
duty, the accused described the same actions as disloyal and vengeful.55 Plaintiffs some-
times even cited spouses' complaints to outside organizations as grounds for divorce. In a
1961 case a man filed for divorce because his wife caused fights, had relations with other
men, did not take responsibility for raising the children, and, furthermore, he complained,
"in the past years I had to repeatedly give explanations to the command at my work place
about the complaints of the defendant. She [his wife] time and again demanded the most
severe punishment for me."56 In a case the following year, an actor cited in his divorce
application his wife's insane jealousy, and also the fact that she sent "lying letters" about
him to the Cultural Department of the party Central Committee, the ministers of culture
of the USSR and the RSFSR, the Cultural Workers' Union, the theater where he worked,
and the editorial offices of various newspapers.57 Another man claimed that his wife and
children "take all steps to keep me as a 'money bag.' And toward this end they wrote to
the party organization, the editorial office, and other organizations to try to defame me as
a person, a member of the party, and a scholar."58
These complaints about complaints indicate that eliciting outside intervention was
perceived as a form of revenge. This seems credible in some cases that involved consid-
erable wealth and acrimony; it is probable that filing official complaints was a way to
discredit a spouse and therefore claim a larger share of the property. Citizen S., who
wrote letters of complaint about his wife's alleged lovers, was involved in such a case.
His wife put forth counteraccusations about her husband's infidelity, then tried to claim
ownership of their dacha, which was under construction.59 In another protracted and bitter

53Ibid., d. 163,1. 6. For a similar complaint see ibid., d. 2825,11. 66-68.

54Ibid., d. 190,1. 45.
"5Ibid., d.1062,1. 84.
56Ibid., d. 3143,1. 7.
57Ibid., d. 3511, 1. 15.
58Ibid., d. 1975,1. 42. See also ibid., d. 3511,1. 15.
59Ibid., d. 163,1. 37.

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 612 Deborah A. Field

case involving reports to a party organization, the couple spent two years battling over the
division of their property, which included a house in Moscow, a car, substantial savings,
and several pieces of diamond jewelry.60
I have little evidence about whether women were more likely than men to file com-
plaints about their spouses, but anecdotes suggest this was so.61 The complaining wife
was enough of a cliche to become the topic of a joke during this period; in the recollection
of one scholar it described "the ways that women of different countries held on to their
husbands: the German by being a good housewife, the Spaniard by being passionate, the
Frenchwoman by her elegance and refined caresses-and the Russian by the party com-
mittee."62
The fundamental gender inequality that persisted in Soviet society, despite claims to
the contrary, perhaps made women more anxious to preserve their marriages. Women
made less money than men did, and so were more likely to depend financially on their
husbands, especially if they had children.63 Furthermore, as a result of war causalities,
women far outnumbered men throughout the Soviet Union during this period. According
to census data from 1959, there were 81.9 men per 100 women, but this ratio was much
higher in certain age groups; in the 45-49-year-old cohort, for example, there were only
62.3 men per 100 women.64 It was thus much harder for women to find new spouses.
The relative vulnerability of women suggests that retribution was not the only pos-
sible motivation for appealing to outside authorities. Perhaps in some instances such
petitions were the last resort of impoverished or frightened women. For example Mrs. S.'s
husband abandoned her, leaving her to support her elderly mother and her paralyzed,
brain-damaged son. She refused to institutionalize her son, as her husband had wanted.
But on a salary of sixty rubles a month, she could not afford to hire help, nor could she
afford to quit her job.65 After her husband left, perhaps she had nowhere to turn, and her
complaints to the house committee and her husband's party organizations were acts of
desperation.
Malice, revenge, neediness, despair, or some combination thereof, lay behind many
complaints to party and societal organizations. Communist morality required these groups
to intervene in order to insure that people led their personal lives correctly. In the cases I
have described, however, it was individuals rather than collectives who took initiative.
This shift had the effect of undermining Communist morality. Collective and party inter-
vention was meant to help create the kind of people who could build communism; in other
words, the proper family life was an essential tool for the construction of communism.

60Ibid., d. 190, 11. 47, 77.

611n a tangential comment in an article on another topic, a psychiatrist from Moscow observed, "Toward the end
of the fifties, it would not have been incongruous for a woman who had been abandoned by her husband to make
an appeal for the help of the local party official to regain him." See Valery Maksimenko, "Le Pouvoir Psychologique
dans la Famille Urbaine Russe," in L'tvo/ution des Modt?/es Fami/iaux dans les Pays de L'Est Europelen et en
URSS, ed. Basile Kerbley (Paris, 1988), 139.
62Igor S. Kon, The SexualRevo/udion in Russia (New York, 1995), 83.
63Janet G. Chapman, "Equal Pay for Equal Work?" in Women in Russia, 225.
64The complete figures are in Warren W. Eason, "Demography," in Handbook ofSovietSocia/ScienceData, ed.
Ellen Mickiewicz (New York, 1973), 53.
65TsMAM, f. 819, op. 3, d. 2825,1. 54.

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 Divorce and Conceptions of Private Life 613

The people who sought outside help, however, were appropriating the language of Com-
munist morality and involving the institutions that were supposed to support it to pursue
their own goals of preserving their marriages, punishing their spouses, or securing a satis-
factory private life. Ironically, they were using Communist morality as a means of ad-
vancing the individual interests that official moralists demanded they suppress.

According to the Soviet leadership, the order of citizens' internal lives ensured the social
and political order of the country. Personal relations were consistent and straightforward,
reason and morality governed passion and impulse, and individuals' interests and needs
never conflicted with public requirements nor superseded them in importance. In divorce
cases, however, judicial decisions were based on an assumption of the uncontrollability of
love and the fragility of marriage. The actions and explanations of plaintiffs and defen-
dants reveal, furthermore, a determined pursuit of personal, rather than social, goals. The
resilience of these unofficial notions about private life had an important effect on the
success of Khrushchev's campaign to reform Soviet society. In Khrushchev's vision,
developing the economy, keeping order, and progressing from socialism to communism
required active, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing workers, people untroubled by family prob-
lems, conflicting emotions, and illicit desires. The philosophers who developed Commu-
nist morality and the agitators and experts who publicized it were supposed to produce
these exemplary citizens; their attempts to inculcate official prescriptions about private
life were thus vital for the achievement of government priorities. However, these endeav-
ors did not always meet with success. As we have seen in divorce cases, judges often
ignored the principles they were supposed to enforce. In some cases, efforts to instill the
Communist version of private life even strengthened opposing ideas: the courts and party
organizations charged with putting Communist morality into practice afforded people
new means by which they could pursue their supposedly obsolete personal interests. This
suggests that in addition to the structural weaknesses of the planned economy, the intrac-
table problems of agriculture, and the disaffection of military, industrial, and government
elites, another reason for the Khrushchev government's inefficacy was the determination
of Soviet citizens to define and defend private life.66

66These are reasons scholars have cited in explaining Khrushchev's difficulties in implementing policy and his
ultimate political demise. See George W. Breslauer, Khrushchev andBrezhnev as Leaders. BuildingAuthority in
Soviet Politics (London, 1982), 143; Carl A. Linden, Khrushchev and the Soviet Leadership, updated ed. (Balti-
more, 1990), 207-8; McCauley, The Khrushchev Era, 92; and Roy A. Medvedev and Zhores A. Medvedev,
Khrushchev: The Years in Power (London, 1978), 184.

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