Scholarship on Soviet Family Law in Perspective

Abstract

The radical changes in the norms of Soviet family law over the past fifty years have reflected the convulsions of Soviet society as well as the revisions of Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism. This paper is a commentary on the writing in this field by Americans in particular, and by other non-Soviets in general. In view of the volume of writing in this field, it has been necessary to limit discussion in the text to a few representative articles illustrating a few of the subject matters treated and various typical approaches employed. The topic is a particularly timely one, for new, comprehensive Principles of Family Law' went into effect in October 1968, and we therefore have a relatively recent restatement of Soviet thinking in this area. The paper will use the elements of novelty and continuity in the Principles as a focus for a backward look at our scholarship in this area. In putting together this critical overview of the American literature, it has seemed to me helpful to keep at least one eye on what our European colleagues were doing during the same period (as well as perhaps both eyes on what was being written in England, since that was fully accessible to the English-speaking American reader). Since we suffer from our isolated common-law viewpoint in regard to family law, as in other private law areas, the views of European scholars also provide a helpful check on the apparent degree of deviation by the Soviets from more generally accepted patterns of norms.2