“The Battle of the Sexes”: Postwar Marriage and Marital Identities in the Soviet Union

What happened to marriages and families after the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union? During the war, the ideal image of the family was of girls and wives faithfully waiting for mobilized boyfriends and husbands, as evoked by Konstantin Simonov’s famous and popular 1941 wartime poem “Wait for Me.” However, after the war was over, reality was much more diverse and complex than happy reunions for many Soviet citizens. Divisive causes were many, most tragically death, but also by wartime liaisons and fraternization in occupied areas. On top of all of the problems caused by the war, postwar Soviet population policy added a crucial legal structure of conflictual gendered interests, where women wanted to register marriages, while many men desired divorce from prewar wives. These divergent perspectives drove a battle of the sexes that led to the dismantling of many marital relations. However, postwar divorce statistics never captured this reality, as the postwar family law introduced complex and costly divorce procedure.

En savoir plus