Introduction
In 1955 the Soviet Union became the first country in the world to legalize abortion on the principle of women’s rights. This was the result of the postwar politics of reproduction. The socialist ideology of women and population, as well as prewar Soviet policy on family and marriage, provided important background. In the prewar period Soviet marriage had already become unstable, but it disintegrated further during World War II. Mobilization, evacuation, and warfare and genocide all played their role. This was the context in which policymakers introduced the extreme pronatalist policy that encouraged out-of-wedlock births while expecting women to work full time. The postwar history of Soviet reproductive politics and practice went beyond Russian and Soviet borders, spreading distinct socialist reproductive practices.