PC: Social Conservatism in a democratic Soviet Union

Can Social Conservatism rise in a post-Cold War Soviet Union?

  • Yes

    Votes: 36 97.3%
  • No

    Votes: 1 2.7%

  • Total voters
    37
Could social conservative parties have risen in a Soviet Union that survived and becomes democratic (New Union) in the 1990s? Like social conservative like OTL's Republicans but willing to use government action unlike the GOP's love for "states' rights".

Also, I think the communists and socialists would be destroyed in any early-1990s recession/turmoil and reformists would rise.

I know though that they would still be statist/economically progressive/communitarian, though, like some Polish parties or the CDU.
 
I'm with GohanLSSJ2 here. As soon as people like Alexandra Kollontai (an early proponent of free love) were sidelined after 1917, the original Politburo grew more and more socially conservative. Stalin did indeed ban abortion later on. How should a proletarian society grow if there are not enough kids to be raised in a Soviet style?

The magic trick word here is "dialectic".

That reminds of a passage from Arthur Koestler in the book "The God That Failed", where he describes his brief involvement in the German KPD and his subsequent disillusion with communism. I only have the German edition, so the translation is by myself:

"Bourgeois morality was objectionable, but Free Love was objectionable as well, so the only true, correct, concrete position on the sex drive was the "proletarian morality". This consisted of getting married in a nice way, being faithful to the spouse, and bearing as many proletarian children as possible. But wasn't this the same like the bourgeois morality? - This question, comrade, shows that you are thinking in mechanistic and not dialectical terms. What is the difference between a gun in the hands of a policeman and a gun in the hands of a member of the revolutionary working class? The difference between a gun in the hands of a policeman and a gun in the hands of a member of the revolutionary working class is that the policeman is a lackey of the ruling class, and thus his gun is a tool of supression, whereas the same gun in the hands of a revolutionary is a means to the liberation of the supressed masses. The same goes for the difference between the so-called "bourgeois" morality and the proletarian morality. The institution of marriage, which only mirrors the decay of bourgeois morality in a capitalist society, is transformed through a dialectical, functional change in a healthy, proletarian society. Did you get that, comrade, or shall I repeat my answer in a more concrete way?"
 
Interesting.

When I meant banning abortion, though, I meant having it banned post-Stalin. At that time, it was allowed again.
 
China under Mao was actively pro-natalist, as Mao was convinced an apocalyptic war was approaching and therefore the more Chinese, the more likely China would survive it and emerge on top. All sexual relations other than for procreation was also denounced as bourgeoisie and against the revolutionary goals. Of course Mao himself was as promiscuous as any Chinese emperor...
 
China under Mao was actively pro-natalist, as Mao was convinced an apocalyptic war was approaching and therefore the more Chinese, the more likely China would survive it and emerge on top. All sexual relations other than for procreation was also denounced as bourgeoisie and against the revolutionary goals. Of course Mao himself was as promiscuous as any Chinese emperor...
This can be further evidenced on Maoist group Shining Path:

Homosexuality to them was nothing more than an bourgueois aberration to be exterminated by proletariat values. And women were essentially seen, in a disturbing paralel to National Socialism, as breeding stock to generate new revolutionaries. In the practize, this would tantamount to sexual slavery of Native Women to force them to breed new babies to train as killing machines from birth, and even pressuring the female membes of Shining Path itself to give sexual favors to their own comrades (The biggest distinction, though. was that they weren't slut-shamed afterwards, but rather upholded as "serving their revolutionary duties" or some insane bull like that).
 
N.K. Krupskaya, Lenin's widow, defended Stalin's ban on abortion...

So in 1920 this matter of abortions became acute. Up to that time abortions had been punishable by law. But the penalty descended not on those who compelled women to have abortions, not on those who performed illegal abortions under extremely unsanitary conditions, and by methods which for a long time after impaired the health of the women concerned – it was the woman who was held responsible. At that time I wrote:

The fight against abortions must be carried on not by persecuting the mothers, who resort to abortions often at great risk to their own lives, but must be directed towards eliminating the social causes that have made it necessary for women to resort to abortions.

...Of course, impunity with respect to abortions cannot rid the mother of the depression produced by an abortion. Her whole organism has, as it were, entered on the path of childbirth, the organism has begun to adapt itself to nourishing the embryo within it, and the mother usually feels an interruption of this process to be a crime against herself and her child. The nervous excitement and yearning that can often be seen in the eyes of a woman who has resorted to an abortion are enough to show at what price the mother buys her freedom.

;It was bitter want that compelled the working women to reject motherhood.

Improvement of general living conditions, and particularly the protection of mother and child and the public education of children, will remove this main cause.

Those who really want to remove from the order of the day all these horrible questions of infanticide, of abortions, of contraceptions, must work without pause to build the new life in which motherhood will take the place due to it.

Fifteen years have passed since that article was written. Our country has become rich, mighty, and prosperous. Our people are better educated and more enlightened. Women have become a force in the collective farm. They have become active in social work. Many of the women are Stakhanovites. They are studying hard. The Party and the government surround the children with public care. They make their childhood a happy one. It is with good cause that millions of working women are so devoted to Stalin – they see his solicitude for the working women.

Under these new conditions the questions of the family and of abortions appear in a new light. The new decree will play an extremely important part in remoulding people’s modes of life


Granted, that was probably the only thing she COULD have said in 1936 without getting herself shot.

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