Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 Book

How do you implement a vision of equality for woman in a country ravaged by civil war, where most children have lost their parents and families have disintegrated and where 85% of the people leave in patriarchal peasent households? In this short book, Goldman explores where the Bolshevik vision for women originated, the debates that led to it, and examines how they tried to apply this vision to the USSR in 1917. How the events essentially forced them to retreat in this libertarian vision of free love once and again until the final family code of 1936 which brought a return of some of the worse elements in pre-Soviet Russia, while at the same time claiming to support women liberation. An extremely good read, well sourced, and shows how some ideas simply crash against the material reality. One should not be disappointed by the outcome, but instead use it as a chance to reflect and learn on what went wrong, what went right, and what could have gone better.