ABSTRACT
The position of women in Soviet society has been the subject of a number of other recent studies, both Soviet and Western. The Marxist analysis of sexual inequality can be paraphrased as follows: women’s inferior status under capitalism is a consequence of their dependence upon men within the context of the bourgeois family. By the early years of the twentieth century, this Marxist analysis had crystallised into a distinctively socialist perception of the sources of sexual inequality and a socialist programme for its eradication. Among the urban intelligentsia, and possibly among certain members of the working class, the 1920s witnessed a measure of intellectual ferment, a preoccupation with new forms of family arrangement, even with sexual liberation. The chapter also presents an overview on the key concepts discussed in this book.
