So, October, the year 1924 from the Nativity of Christ, NEP, the people are more or less well-fed, the horrors of the civil war are behind us, the chervonets has become gold. For 1.94 rubles they give 1 dollar. Pride and strength! Get rich! Accumulate tenderness in material values! Right? Of course not! “Our family should not become a unit whose task is to accumulate property. The family of a communist should be the prototype of a small communist unit” (Pravda, November 4, 1924). Like this! Accumulate? In the family? You don’t need anything! You have other tasks!
What about carrot love? “To say that there should be complete freedom of feelings does not mean that depending on your random and temporary moods you can change relationships – this is wrong.” Wrong – change! Divorces – nothing! Meanwhile, what a prosperous time it was! “In 1921 in Petrograd, the proportion of divorces among marriages that lasted less than a year was 33%, among marriages that lasted from one to two years – 19%” (“Demographic modernization of Russia” (ed. A. Vishnevsky). Total- then! And now for every 100 marriages there are 72 divorces (2023, Rosstat).
And here’s another damned question: “Is life pleasure? Or is class struggle more important?” The Pravda newspaper teaches: “Promiscuous sexual relations undoubtedly have a harmful effect on the body, undermine its strength, weaken a person as a fighter, as a communist. Human strength is limited, the more strength and attention – mental and otherwise – is given to this side of life, which is completely legal and correct – the less energy remains for the other functions of a communist. If he seeks a lot of variety in the sexual area, then he undoubtedly devotes too much energy to this and gives us a communist with a flaw” (“Pravda, November 4, 1924). .).
There shouldn’t be a flawed communist! Its functions should not be limited! Down with the lack of strength, you know why! This is what A. Solts, a member of the Central Control Commission of the RCP (b), taught us in a report in Pravda. But how to get rid of this flaw? How to prevent a party member from going to the left? Or somewhere else?
There is an answer to this, and also in Pravda. Thursday, October 30, 1924, one hundred years ago, front page, almost front page. Once upon a time there lived the owner of party card N 471642 – “a burning brunette, blue eyes, average height.” At the age of 29, “Party card 471642 concluded that the result of melancholy and despondency is loneliness,” submitting a marriage advertisement to “the neighboring state, Latvia,” where a “marriage newspaper” was allegedly published by the government, for there had never been one in red Moscow.
He gave the following announcement: “Mr., intellectual, 29 years old, financially secure, in Moscow, seriously wants to marry a Latvian, wants to correspond.” To which he received “90 elegant letters, tied with a pink ribbon, with photographic cards enclosed.”
Elsa: “We have to assume that there is a shortage of women in Russia, that citizens should look for them in neighboring states. I am the owner of small real estate in Latvia. I am 21 years old, tall, blonde, and have a rather cheerful disposition.”
Sounds promising. But the lack of women in Russia? It’s a shame! Another one – Anita: “Reading your lines, I was overcome by some strange feeling, as if we were not strangers, as if we had met somewhere before, maybe not in this life, but a long, long time ago, no one strength to remember, like after a sweet dream.” What happened to her, Anita? Where is she? Where was her life, floating slowly in the 1920s?
Gilda: “You are persistent, and so am I.” And so on, until the watchful eye of the party establishment interrupted this postal and marriage exchange. What happened to you, N 471642? Where did you run, covering your lonely head? For the letters, there were ninety of them, exactly one hundred years ago were “attached with party card No. 471642,” clearly from the owner’s pocket. And “all this found a place on the shelves of the archives of an institution zealously occupied with violations of party ethics.”
How strict! Down with marriage exchanges with neighboring states! And what else is this: “The Price of Chastity”! An underground film? Indelicate romance? No, this is an article in Pravda, October 22, 1924, 100 years ago, the first page – which means it’s super important! Two newlyweds stand in the registry office and want to get a divorce a month after the wedding. She, “young, busty, bursting with peasant strength and spontaneous health, turned sharply to her husband and stared at him with a sparkling gaze. “So he’s not my husband,” she said mockingly. “For more than a month we go to bed like two logs: he’s lying next to me.” , and nothing.”
Theater break. “An explosion of laughter shook the entire dilapidated building of the volost council. She, crimson with excitement and an attack of suppressed girlish shame, almost crying, says: “At least now bear witness to me – a girl.”
What follows is an interesting clarification of the circumstances. “Why are you, guy, letting us down? Are you a living person or not?” – “Alive!” – answered the newlyweds. Are you healthy? Hello! Are you completely healthy? At all! Then what?
“A divine trick!” she explains to those around her. “They needed a worker, but they couldn’t hire her: she had to pay, and she would have the power to put pressure on the owner, and it wouldn’t be someone else’s job to work like that. So they married him to me for a while.” “Why did he take care of you?” – “And they had an agreement with their father: I will work for them as long as I have enough strength, and then he will divorce me and drive me away. And he will not give anything back except the dowry. And if there is a child, then the Soviet government will award pay for it. So he didn’t touch me, so that there wouldn’t be any loss to them in the house. Well, I guessed right away, it’s my maiden years!” – she exclaims desperately.
“And she moved forward, carrying her chest high, rising high with anger, shame and resentment for the desecration of the best girlish dreams, spat upon by the bestial men’s acquisitiveness.”
Never again! Bestial male acquisitiveness! Don’t marry, girls, nothing good – to kulaks! For their kulak skill! Marriage is a class struggle. Let’s leave the kulak class without posterity!
Life was fun in the 1920s. Please don’t laugh into your fist, by the way, the articles are serious. Well, in a hundred years there will be something about us. Both for jokes and for simply shrugging shoulders.
What should you think about? Don’t poke families with a stick. Don’t demand too much, loudly and bassly – that’s the only way, and not otherwise. To be with affection, not dragging. To help make it easier, calmer, more satisfying and more reliable for Russian families to raise their children. Don’t push too hard – no one likes to be pressured. Families will scream and fight back. Do everything so that they accumulate property in calm conditions, get together as they want – preferably stronger – and can serenely love each other, without thinking about pleasing the state or anyone else. To make it more profitable to have as many children as possible, especially the first. Human nature – being together – will still take its toll.
Source: rg.ru
