We take for granted what a luxury it is to enter a store and have the freedom to walk around and look through the shelves of goods here in the Western World. It’s easy to forget how many areas haven’t had this type of system–one of which was the former Soviet Union. Most of us are familiar with the photos of long-winded lines reaching out the door, filled with exhausted men, women, and children waiting for hours to get their groceries but few sources go into detail into how these shops worked.
Of course, there were many different types of market systems during the Soviet Union’s 75+ years history but by the post-WWII era, the country had three main networks: government/state stores, co-operative stores, and kolkahz (collective farm) markets. However, since the government store dominated national sales by a wide margin, this article will primarily focus on that experience.
The traditional Soviet purchasing procedure was made up of a three-step system which involved the consumer having to wait in three separate lines before getting their products. To accommodate the average citizen, shops were open on Sundays and secular holidays when most workers had the day off.
Upon entering the store, the consumer begins the process by joining the first line leading to the store clerk. At the end of that wait, they can meet with the employee, who will inquire about their needs in a cold, unsolicitous tone, give them the price, and let them examine the product. While companies in capitalists encourage their employees to be friendly and engaging to boost sales, this type of behavior is seen as shallow and fake in former Eastern Bloc nations.
After making their selection, the consumer leaves the salesclerk without any items and enters another line leading to the cashier (or kassa in Russian). At the end of this line, they pay the ruble amount quoted by the original sales clerk and receive a receipt providing proof of purchase.
Finally, they enter the last line where the kontroler will take their receipt and hand them a box filled with their groceries.
Obviously, this was a time consuming and costly process compared to the self-serving system in the United States but it was a daily reality for millions of Soviet citizens.
Bibliography
Goldman, Marshall I. “Retailing in the Soviet Union.” Journal of Marketing 24, no. 4 (1960): 9-15. doi:10.2307/1248398.
Boys in a crowded and poorly run orphanage–a common sight with the surge of unwanted children due to the Decree
When you think of communist atrocities, which crimes come to mind? Stalin’s purges? Mao’s Great Leap Forward? Pol Pot’s killing fields?
One crime I rarely see explored in communist historiography is Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Decree 770, which banned nearly all access to birth control and abortion as a way to increase the nation’s plummeting birth rate. Rather than address the socioeconomic factors leading to this drop, the state decided to destroy the people’s right to choose not out of any moral or religious objection but because they wanted them to breed like livestock.
Background
Romania’s falling demographic first began in the post-World War II period after the war and Soviet colonialization led to excessive mortality, reduced birth rates, and growing migration. To counteract this, the newly instated puppet government provided special programs and resources for families to encourage birth rate and help increase their standing with the public.
But birth rates continued to decline, hitting its lowest in 1966. This drop was primarily caused by the modernization and urbanization of Romanian society, the high rate of women joining the labor force, and the resulting low standard of living in the general population. When the communists came into power after WWII, they launched a campaign of industrialization, extending the cities and creating new urban settlements to fill the demand for a migrating population. But with little time and limited resources, they were forced to build small cramped apartments, often times finishing without running water or adequate heating systems. These new industries required a large workforce and an increasing number of women had to join the workforce to provide for their families, many working strenuous occupations that required odd hours away from the home.
Furthermore, with the standard age of compulsory education increasing, more people waited longer to join the workforce, marry, and start a family. Children were no longer seen as a source of income or labor but rather had to be supported by their parents for much longer.
All of these issues led to a substantial drop in the country’s birth rates. But rather than addressing any of these issues directly, Nicolae Ceaușescu’s government decided to wage a war on birth control as a way to force the population into giving birth. While Romania’s abortion policies were one of the most liberal in Europe at the time, it was not to blame for the falling birth rate.
The Decree
The Decree banned abortions except for cases when the women over forty-five years old (later changed to forty), already had four or more children (later changed to five), her life was threatened by the pregnancy, or if her pregnancy was the product of rape or incest. The state’s goal was to increase the Romanian population from 23 million to 30 million and these policies, in essence, stated that women of childbearing age had the patriotic duty to produce at least four or five children for their country.
Because abortion is such a hot topic issue in Western society, before continuing I must stress that:
The decree was at its core a ban on birth control, not simply abortion. Abortion was the main focus because it was the most common form of family planning in Romanian society at the time since access to other forms of contraceptives were limited.
The state did not oppose birth control on any moral or religious grounds.
The decree was made solely to force the population into giving birth at all costs–they did not care if the parents were teenagers, unmarried, financially unstable, sick, etc., as long as they provided more children for the state.
To fully comprehend the decree and its consequences, you cannot look at this issue through the lens of modern Western society where the issue of birth control is governed by moral and religious stances. There were no protests in front of clinics or posters of aborted fetuses–the statesmen enacting this decree did not find anything morally wrong with abortion but simply wanted an easy way to increase the birth rate.
Implementation
To implement their goal, the state formed entire webs of organizations, laws, bureaucracy to control Romanian society. Most notably was the Securitatea, a secret police that snuck around medical facilities, patrolling the activities of doctors, medical personnel, and hospitals.
All women within childbearing age, even teenagers, were forced to take part in state required gynecologist appointments every month where detected pregnancies were to be closely monitored until birth and any miscarriages were investigated by the state. To initiate women into taking part in these monthly inspections, the state made them a requirement for access to any form of health care.
At the same time, the government continued their campaign to restrict the citizens’ right to family planning through other means as well. They banned the sale of modern contraceptive forms such as condoms and pills, pulling them off the shelves of specialty shops. All citizens over the age of twenty-five who had not produced children were forced to pay a special income tax ranging from 10%-20% even if they were not married. The state also tackled rising divorce rates by making the process much more difficult, only allowing the dissolution of a marriage in special cases which forced many couples to stay together against their will.
To make matters worse, sexual education was nearly nonexistent in schools and the media, leaving most of the young population in the dark about the consequences of sexual activity. Sex was still a taboo subject in Romanian society and despite the government’s campaign for modernization, families still did not talk about these issues with their children. Instead, state sex education focused on highlighting the joys brought on by motherhood and celebrating the concept of the “heroic mother” who provided her homeland with many children. The media continued this by representing heterosexual relationships and parenthood in an idealistic manner, rarely providing any representation for family struggles or unwanted pregnancies. Because of this, many young people continued to be sexually active without understanding the consequences before it was too late.
Consequences
At face value, Ceaușescu received his wish: in the first year alone, birth rates soared by over 92%, from 273,687 in 1966 to 527,764 in 1967–the highest in Romanian history. The decrease in legal abortions was just as dramatic with only 52,000 being performed in 1967 compared to the one million in 1965. This large boom led the infants born in the first few years of the decree to be nicknamed “Ceaușescu’s children.”
But because the state barely acknowledged the socioeconomic relationship with country’s demographic, this rising birth rate put a large financial burden on individual families. Most of the government’s focus was funneled into investment capital leaving very little for the consumer goods sector. In turn, women were forced to bear the burden of childcare, maintaining the home, and full-time work without the help of the same time and labor-saving consumer goods that were helping women in capitalistic countries.
The massive growth in pregnancies and the lack of medical advancements also led to a monumental spike in maternal and infant mortality rates, making Romania’s the highest in Europe during the 1970s and 80s. Out of the approximate 10 million children that were born between 1967 to 1989, about 340,000 died before their first birthday. On top of that, around 20% of children born around this time were underweight or plagued with congenital malformations which were further aggravated the situation for families who had little resources or were not informed how to care for them.
As a result, hundreds of thousands of unwanted children were born into unstable family and financial environments.
Orphanages became overcrowded as families abandoned their unwanted infants in maternity wards or institutions despite most having at least one living parent. Because of the surge, the conditions for these institutions were repulsive as neglect and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse against the children ran rampant. Many orphanages lacked basic facilities such as washrooms and many went without electricity, heating, or adequate stocks of food for periods at a time due to poor funding. It was common practice for children to be tied to their bed, left naked, and forced to sit in a pool of their urine for days at a time. In many cases, the poorly trained and overworked caretakers shaved off the hair of all the children, making them indistinguishable from each other and leaving them without a proper identity. These abusive and neglectful conditions left many mentally handicapped, physically deformed, lacking in basic life skills such as knowing how to feed or wash themselves, or even infected with HIV/AIDS from the faculty reusing old needles. Without the proper care and support needed, many of these children wounded up on the street where many still live in and raise their own children to this day.
Nicolae Ceaușescu posing with a group of children in front of an orphanage while refusing to acknowledge the abuse and neglect most children faced in these facilities
Exactly how many children were shuffled through this system is unknown due to government censorship and poor documentation. But when the first reports became public after fall of the communist government in 1989, there were a reported 150,000 children still in these facilities.
But despite the government’s efforts to restrict the people’s right to choose, the number began to decline after a few years as the population learned to adapt to the system. Richer women could bypass an unwanted pregnancy by buying illegal contraceptives on the black market or paying a high price to bribe doctors into giving them a false diagnosis, entailing them to a legal abortion. On the other hand, poorer women resorted to dangerous illegal abortions which could be obtained for as little as a pack of cigarettes.
Legacy
The ban was finally disbanded in 1989 after the Romanian Revolution violently overthrew the government and executed Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife after a show trial when the children of the initial boom were about 20-23 years. How many of “Ceaușescu’s children” took part in the civil unrest will never be known but even so, the Decree left its mark in Romanian society through a generation of unwanted children, women dead through illegal abortions, crowded orphanages, and a wave of bribery and black markets.
Decree 770’s true crime was not simply taking away the population’s access to birth control, but denying the people’s humanity by reducing them into numbers. Women were viewed as baby making factories who could be forced to breed while babies only became useful to fill in statistics. Without addressing the socioeconomic factors that originally brought on the decreasing birth rate, families and children were denied the basic care everyone coming into this world deserved. This is something we should never forget when discussing communist crimes.
Bibliography
Bachman, Ronald D. Romania: A Country Profile. London: Overseas Trade Services, 1992.
Johnson, Brooke R., Mihai Horga, and Peter Fajans. “A Strategic Assessment of Abortion and Contraception in Romania.” Reproductive Health Matters 12, no. 24 (2004): 184-94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3776130.
The ban was finally disbanded in 1989 after the Romanian Revolution violently overthrew the government and executed Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife after a show trial when the children of the initial boom were about 20-23 years. How many of “Ceaușescu’s children” took part in the civil unrest will never be known but even so, the Decree left its mark in Romanian society through a generation of unwanted children, women dead through illegal abortions, crowded orphanages, and a wave of bribery and black markets.
The Slavic Historian 