The USSR Forged Women Into Superhumans and Spoiled Men Into Wrecks
After World War II killed 27 million Soviets, men became a scarce resource; the state used abortion bans, rewards for out-of-wedlock births, and the decriminalization of domestic violence to forge women into superhumans and spoil men into wrecks — an order that still underpins Putin's patriarchal mobilization.
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The Soviet female elite was a product of the radical tradition of tsarist Russia
Under tsarist law women could not do many things without their husband's permission; but the radical tradition bred women revolutionaries — Sofya Perovskaya, who assassinated Alexander II, was a woman, and there were so many women revolutionaries that the tsar had to build a separate women's prison. Radical women were shut out of universities, and those who could went to Switzerland to study medicine, until the secret police, worried they would be radicalized abroad, had Russia open a women's medical school to "keep an eye on them nearby." After the 1917 revolution free higher education opened to women and Jews, and two generations of Julia's family benefited — but the roots lay in the pre-revolutionary radical tradition.
— Julia IoffeAbortion became the only contraception Soviet women had
The Bolsheviks legalized abortion in 1920 and followed with contraceptives in 1923, but contraception was always in short supply, and abortion became the only means of birth control for Soviet women. By the end of their childbearing years, the average Soviet woman had had 3 to 12 abortions, and many far more. In 1936 Stalin recriminalized abortion, but elites could still find doctors while ordinary people went underground. Ioffe says there is an old Russian saying: the severity of the law is diluted by the need to circumvent it.
— Julia IoffeThe Soviet Union used population policy to split childbearing from fatherhood
World War II cost the Soviet Union 27 million lives, 20.1 million of them men. To "replace the dead," Stalin and Khrushchev rolled out a 1944 policy: divorce became extremely difficult, locking men into marriage; at the same time they were encouraged to father children outside it — children born out of wedlock could not carry their father's name and could not claim child support from him, while the state paid a monthly allowance and awarded medals by number of children, a medal system copied directly from the Nazis. The result was that a third of the postwar baby boom was born out of wedlock, and a whole generation had a blank father's name on their birth certificates. Childbearing was thus decoupled from fatherhood, single motherhood became a protected legal status, and men gradually became superfluous at home.
— Julia Ioffe"Men don't grow on trees" is a belief left behind by policy
The gender imbalance evolved into an intergenerational belief. Ioffe says her grandmothers often said "men don't grow on trees," and her mother warned her to catch a husband in university or "all the good men will be picked over." Women were taught to maximize their attractiveness, or another woman would "lead their husband away by the rope" — as one Russian sociologist grumbled: are men calves, that you can lead them by a rope to another barn? After the war a whole generation of women never married because there were no men to marry, becoming pitied "old maids," and that trauma still distorts Russia's marriage market today.
— Julia IoffeThe cost of being a superwoman was 40 extra hours of housework a week
The Soviet Union required women to work — as early as 1920 women were mandated to be employed; after the war, to boost births, they were not allowed to go home, and food rations and daycare were tied to female workers. So women had to take on all housework and child-rearing on top of their jobs, and still "look effortless." Ioffe's grandmother was a chemical engineer running a water-treatment lab, picked mushrooms in the forest on her lunch break, and after work queued three times with her children for bread, milk, and meat; at night, with no washing machine, she boiled water and scrubbed the whole family's clothes on a washboard, then ironed each piece. By the late Soviet period, urban women spent an extra 40 hours a week on housework, rural women 55. One reader wrote to a newspaper: "A Soviet woman can do anything — we just don't want to anymore."
— Julia IoffeThe bias of low expectations spoiled Soviet men into wrecks
After the war men became an endangered species, fought over by women and protected by the state, and almost nothing was demanded of them. Ioffe calls it "the prejudice of low expectations" — expectations were so low, and men met them exactly. Add to that a definition of a "real man" as someone who drinks, smokes, takes risks, and dies young, and they had even less incentive to take care of themselves or invest in family life. American men will marry Russian women, but American women don't want to marry Russian men — that is the signal the market gives. The one exception is Jewish men: they don't drink, don't beat, and care for family, so Russian women are willing to marry Jews — yet the same poll says they don't want a Jewish president.
— Julia IoffeGiving flowers is not etiquette but a loyalty signal in a low-trust society
Russia has an extremely high density of flower shops; birthdays, March 8, New Year, and visiting someone's home all require bringing flowers to the hostess. Ioffe argues this is not just politeness but a repeated proof of ongoing loyalty in a low-trust society. The most telling is the gender gesture at the very top: Putin always presents flowers when awarding medals to women; at the Minsk peace talks, Russian negotiator Surkov brought each of two American women diplomats a bouquet of the "Donetsk People's Republic" national flower — as if to say, "you are a woman first, a negotiator second." Westerners treat flowers as etiquette; Russians treat them as a reaffirmation of the gender hierarchy.
— Julia IoffeThe wartime division of labor is men die, women give birth
After the war broke out, one Russian Defense Ministry ad turned a lazy man drinking beer on the couch into a soldier in the trenches, with the slogan "Be a real man, go fight in Ukraine"; another ad used "Europe has no heating, but Russia is warm as spring at home" to attract Western women. Meanwhile, Putin, in the name of "protecting the traditional family," restricted abortion and made the "child-free movement" a crime; the Duma speaker said the most important course for girls is learning to cook and care for men, and a minister advised girls not to bother with university and to have children early. In 2016 Russia also decriminalized domestic violence; Ioffe relays a striking explanation: it is a "steam valve" letting men's pent-up aggression in a stagnant economy be vented at home. Ukraine is the opposite — both after the war and today it is bringing women into the military.
— Julia IoffeIn their own words · checked verbatim
There were villages where all the men left for war and one came back
Julia Ioffe16:20
find a husband in college because before you know it all the good ones will be taken
Julia Ioffe20:05
We all grew up in a single sex family.
Julia Ioffe22:04
Soviet women can do it all, we just don't want to anymore.
Julia Ioffe27:50
It's, it's the bigotry of low expectation.
Julia Ioffe29:45
men are men and women are women
Julia Ioffe36:50
be a real man, go fight in Ukraine
Julia Ioffe44:45
It was to be a kind of steam valve.
Julia Ioffe48:00
Figures
| Average number of abortions per Soviet woman | 3-12 | 8:41 |
| Soviet World War II deaths | 27 million, of whom about 20.1 million were men | 15:20 |
| Postwar gender ratio in some areas | 100 women to 19 men | 16:10 |
| Share of Soviet population lost over four years | 15% | 16:50 |
| Share of postwar births out of wedlock | about one third | 18:50 |
| Weekly housework hours for women in the late Soviet period | 40 hours urban, 55 hours rural | 27:15 |
| Russia's birth rate in September 2024 | the lowest since Putin took power | 46:50 |
Glossary
- woman question
- The 19th-century European intellectual shorthand for women's emancipation and social role.
- single sex family
- A family structure with only mothers and grandmothers, no male role.
- gender essentialism
- The belief that men and women have fixed natures and should each stay in their place.
- pronatalist policy
- State interventions that reward childbearing in order to increase population.
- steam valve
- A mechanism that gives pressure somewhere to escape; here, using domestic violence to soothe male aggression.
How to listen
Investors watching Russian markets and political risk, analysts studying gender and population policy, and readers curious about how postwar society reshaped the sexes.
Those with little interest in Russian cultural minutiae can skip the names segment at 37:35–39:51; the rest is very information-dense.