The Patronymic of Her Choice
As the victory over the Nazis came into sight and the demographic disaster became apparent, the Soviet leadership keenly felt the need to strengthen pronatalist policy. Several proposals submitted in 1943–1944 expanded existing pronatalist measures without a fundamental change in the vision of population growth. However, Khrushchev, proconsul of devastated Ukraine, submitted the most comprehensive overhaul based on a new vision for population and pronatalism. The government policy reveals a two-faced practice of Bolshevik language, claiming to “protect motherhood” when addressing the masses, and non-Bolshevik discourse, population engineering language, among the top leadership. In the final law, policymakers prioritized giving men the incentive to father extramarital children over assuring the overall well-being of unmarried mothers and their children. This chapter traces the creation of the 1944 Family Law, legislation that definitively shaped the postwar generation in a deeply gendered manner.