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Interpreting the world or changing it? The “woman question” and the “sexual question” in Soviet social sciences

In post-1917 Russia, state policies addressing “the woman question” and “the sexual question” were intended to be informed by the social sciences. These matters were declared resolved during the Stalin era, but partially reopened during the Thaw. This article explores how, in the long term, the supposedly “socialist” social sciences differed from “bourgeois” sciences not so much in their epistemology, as in the way they prioritized or excluded certain problematics as the political regime evolved. In the 1920s, Russian research on sexuality and birth control was groundbreaking, but it became relatively illegitimate after the Thaw. Between 1960 and 1980, the chief social issues were rather fertility decline and women’s “double burden” of work and home. Central planning seemed ill-adapted to family behaviour, and social science found itself facing the prospect of a governing approach closer to economic liberalism. This period witnessed the emergence of a division still relevant today, between two conceptualizations of social change: one in terms of modernization, both demographic and sexual – to be encouraged – the other in terms of a “crisis” – to be dealt with.