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Abstract
This article examines discussions of love and marriage in a regional newspaper of the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) in the central Urals region. Although framed around the intention to communicate official communist morality and ideals about the family, these discussions included stories and readers’ letters that expressed a range of views that could both draw on and challenge Party ideals. While scholarship has emphasized the conservative elements of communist morality and the lack of support for men in the domestic sphere, these sources point to an understanding of love as central to a man’s life and comradely partnership as fundamental to Soviet marriage.
Highlights
At a 1959 youth conference in Sverdlovsk-45, a closed military-industrial town in the Ural Mountains, the Young Communist (Komsomol) secretary expressed particular concern about the “disorder in young families”—something he attributed to the “amoral behavior” of young men
While scholars have productively engaged with the union-wide newspaper published in Moscow, Komsomol’skaia pravda (Komsomol truth), I use the regional variant from Sverdlovsk oblast, Na smenu!, as questions of love were on the minds and in the public discussions of young people in the capital, and in the industrial heartland of the central Urals.[7]
I argue that romantic love was presented to the youth of the Sverdlovsk region as an integral part of the life-story of the new Soviet person, the logical reward for fulfilling the requirements of communist morality, which should culminate in a companionate, heterosexual marriage based on equal partnership
Summary
At a 1959 youth conference in Sverdlovsk-45, a closed military-industrial town in the Ural Mountains, the Young Communist (Komsomol) secretary expressed particular concern about the “disorder in young families”—something he attributed to the “amoral behavior” of young men.
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