A talk by Mie Nakachi, Visiting Scholar.
July 8 became the Day of Family, Love, and Fidelity in Russia in 2008 through the initiative of Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of President Dmitrii Medvedev. This celebration, promoting the idea of strong marriage, adds to the Russian government’s on-going efforts to increase the birthrate in Russia. The choice of the date is officially associated with the 13th-century legendary couple, Prince Peter and his wife Fevroniia. What is never referred to publicly is the fact that July 8 was the day of promulgation for the 1944 Family Law, the Stalinist pronatalist law drafted by Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the ravaged Ukraine at that time.
This talk will discuss how this pronatalist family law was developed in the context of the Soviet Union’s loss of 27 million citizens and the extremely skewed sex ratio after World War II. As a demographic policy disguised as Soviet caring for mothers and children, the Family Law had long-term, deeply gendered impacts on marriage, divorce, birth and abortion practice, continuing until the present day. Just as Russia’s disturbed demography flows from its Soviet-era traumas, the Medvedevs’ silent choice of July 8 to promote family also points out the Soviet roots of Russia’s contemporary pronatalism. Mie Nakachi’s talk will review the historical background of this ongoing struggle.
New York City, NY; NYC