The New Fundamental Principles of Soviet Family Law and Their Social Background

Abstract

ACCORDING to Article 14 of the 1936 Constitution of the U.S.S.R.,' it is for the legislative authorities of the U.S.S.R. as a whole to legislate on the fundamental principles applying throughout the Union to marriage, the family and guardianship, but each Union Republic may enact its own code of laws applying these fundamental principles in detail. Until June 27, 1968, no fundamental principles had been enacted, and the only general all-Union legislation specifically dealing with family law was that passed on July 8, 1944,2 when Soviet troops were advancing into Poland ten months before the German surrender in Europe. In the meantime, the law administered in regard to marriage and the family was embodied in the codes of the various Republics. Of these, the Family Code of the R.S.F.S.R., first enacted in 1926, was by far the most important. Not only does the R.S.F.S.R. itself comprise about half the population and nearly three quarters of the area of the entire U.S.S.R., but its Family Code was extended to apply to the Republics of Kazakhstan and Khirgizia, and after 1945 also to the Baltic Republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Esthonia.