From the very dawn of Soviet power and devel­op­ment,  due to a series of tragic events, women sig­nif­i­cantly out­num­bered men by about 20 mln. The Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917, first World War, Stalin’s polit­i­cal repres­sions, sec­ond World War, tough recov­ery peri­ods — all of this con­tributed to the num­ber of men steadily decreas­ing. Not only it affected the mar­riage mar­ket — it had a few more severe impli­ca­tions to the can­vas of the Soviet life altogether.

Love is in the air.

Firstly, indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion was extremely labour inten­sive, and with man­power short­ages, women had to step in to keep the processes going. It didn’t mat­ter too much whether the jobs were mun­dane, or phys­i­cally demand­ing, or sim­ply tough — they had to be done. Thus women were trained as con­struc­tion site work­ers, crane or dig­ger oper­a­tors, foundry work­ers, oil rig work­ers, asphalt lay­er­ers and so on — there was not a job con­sid­ered “too manly” or female unsuitable.

Two is bet­ter than one.

The Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917 gave the women their right to vote, be edu­cated, and, in con­tem­po­rary jar­gon, have equal employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. This allowed the Sovi­ets to call the USSR  one of the most advanced fem­i­nist coun­try in the world. How­ever, all of the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of the USSR never pro­vided women with enough of the home help — and women, com­ing home after an 8-hour shift at a fac­tory, still had to take care of their families.

Nonethe­less, the USSR was noto­ri­ous for its bad roads.

Every­day appli­ances, like wash­ing machines, so wide­spread in the West, were still scarce in the USSR — and, accord­ing to the sta­tis­ti­cal data, on aver­age a Soviet woman would spend another 6 to 8 hours a week hand-washing, iron­ing and mend­ing clothes. These extra 8 hours of unpaid labour did not include cook­ing or clean­ing time. Scary, really.

Ms Kise­l­eva has achieved a 414% excess on her pro­duc­tion plan by 8 March, the board boasts.

Very few women of those times were offi­cially house­wives. Firstly, any­body with­out a job could eas­ily be labelled a vagrant, and that was a jail­able crime in the USSR. More impor­tantly, the wages were still fairly low and a fam­ily of four would need two incomes to sur­vive. The state would also try hard to get as many peo­ple out into the work­force as pos­si­ble;  hence the image of a house­wife was far from a West­ern pin-up beauty with a steam­ing hot pie in her hands.

Quite the oppo­site: in the Soviet books and movies, house­wives were por­traited as sloth­ful women of no edu­ca­tion, lack­ing social graces and ambi­tions — in other words, not good cit­i­zens at all. To be fair, though, the state would pro­vide finan­cial mater­nity sup­port  — women can stay at home to look after the new­borns for up to three years. In a way, that was a win-win sit­u­a­tion: women could stay home pro­vid­ing they popped a baby every fourth year, and the state had its birth rates up. Not too bad, after all.

They wouldn’t miss.

As the mar­riage mar­ket was skewed due to the lack of men, the gov­ern­ment, in a bid to raise the birth rates, issued a bylaw, allow­ing the men not to pay alimony on their chil­dren born out of wed­lock, thus indi­rectly encour­ag­ing sin­gle moth­er­hood and, in a way, adul­tery. Finan­cial sup­port was pro­vided by the gov­ern­ment, as well as a range of social secu­rity measures.

She looks young, grumpy and not very motherly.

Being a woman was chal­leng­ing. All those pretty shiny things that women need were not to be found in the Soviet shops. The state, how­ever, realised that and issued appro­pri­ate pro­pa­ganda lines. Like, spend­ing time on beau­ti­fy­ing was announced to be waste­ful, as this time could be spent on edu­ca­tion and self-improvement.

Hard to call these lin­gerie! Also, it does not look like there was much of a vari­ety in colour, model range or sizes, for that matter

All in all, there is much to be con­tin­ued about here. The list of issues and chal­lenges that women faced in the USSR can be extended for many pages, from Soviet cos­met­ics indus­try to the basic non-existence of hygienic goods; the high morale of a woman-member of the Com­mu­nist Party and dou­ble stan­dards in the soci­ety. Stay tuned. Also, if there is any­thing that par­tic­u­larly inter­ests you, please let us know — new top­ics for inves­ti­ga­tion are always welcome.

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Related posts:

1. A Trip Around the USSR: Leningrad 1972
2. The Very First Miss USSR
3. Inte­rior Design and Fur­ni­ture in the USSR
4. More pic­tures of Soviet Moscow 1960s by Mark Riboud
5. The Fash­ions of the War Times