Soviet Family Law in the Light of Russian History and Marxist Theory

To maintain an equilibrium between change and continuity is a crucial problem for modem -society, and one which "has confronted Soviet Russia during the past decade in an acute form.The Revolution, which set out to annihilate everything that belonged to the past, has come to terms with the pre-revolutionary Russian heritage.If only to preserve the new, it has been found necessary to restore something of the old.And this, in turn, has involved a revaluation of the Marxist doctrines upon which the Revolution is founded.Particularly in Soviet family law, there has been within the last 10 years a partial restoration of pre-revolutionary traditions and a partial restatement of Marxist principles.By investigating the backgrounds of Russian history and Marxist theory, we may be in a position properly to understand these developments. PRE-REVOLUTIONARY RuSSIAN FAMILY LAWThe first written law of Russian history begins with the rules of the blood-feud.I Such law testifies to a public order which existed, when it did exist, only as between families, but which was powerless to reach down into the internal relationships of a household.At best, it Was inter-family law-analogous perhaps to our modem international law.Within the family there was only the law of that family, determined by tribal custom. 2 The first Russian chronicle tells of incestuous marriage, wife-capture, general promiscuity.3 For the husband there was complete freedom of divorce, while the wife was not released from marriage even by the death of her husband but had to follow him into the next world.4 Into this primitive order of family life, the Eastern Orthodox Church t Member, Third Year Class, Yale School of Law. 1. "If a man should kill a man, a brother may avenge a brother, or sons a father, or a father or the son of a brother or the son of a sister [may avenge] a son."Russkaia Pravda (11th century) Art. 1, cited in GOETZ, 1 DAS RUSSISCHE RECHT (1910) 6.2. "In the ancient period of Russian history, the family, as everywhere, exercised autonomy.Personal and property relationships between members of the family were not subject to legislative determination.This circumstance explains the poverty of reference to family rights in historical and juridical documents."SIIERSHENEVICU, 2 TEXTBOOIC OF" RUssIAN CivIL LAW (11th ed.1915) (in Russian) 302-3.3. "The Radimichi and Viatichi and Severiane have the same custom, having wives in two's and three's, and so do the Krivichi and other Poganii.not observing the law of God but themselves creating their own law."The Chronicle of Nestor.See KOVALEVSKY,MOD-