FOSTERING A RESPONSIBLE ATTITUDE TOWARD THE FAMILY AS PART OF THE COMMUNIST EDUCATION OF YOUTH

K. T. VINICHENKO

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Scientific Communism)

One of the requirements of a scientifically grounded program of education is the determination of that complex of educational tasks which must be solved in the process of purposeful influence upon the individual. Within this complex of tasks, the fostering in young people of a responsible attitude toward the family occupies its own definite place. In the practice of educational work we proceed from the fundamental thesis of Marxist philosophy concerning the decisive role of labor in the life of society and of the human being. At the center of all educational work in socialist society is placed the formation of the professional-labor and socio-political qualities of youth. All other tasks of education, connected with the regulation of free time and leisure, with the development of cultural values in everyday life and in relations between the sexes, are subordinated to this most important goal of civic education.

However, the dialectic of the educational process is far from being exhausted by the presence within it of a principal link of tasks. Other tasks of education, in particular the formation of a communist attitude toward the problems of sex, marriage, and the family, are by no means reducible merely to a passive consequence of solving the chief problems of socio-class education.

The relative independence of the problem we have posed is conditioned by a whole series of factors. It is necessary, for example, to take into account that the sphere of relations between the sexes, while coinciding in the main with social relations, nevertheless possesses its own relatively independent content. It is connected above all with the biological differences between the sexes and the regulation of the sexual instinct. This distinctive “residue” of rel—

…between the sexes objectively requires the inclusion in the system of communist education of a whole complex of specific problems—the formation of the ability to overcome the contradictions that inevitably arise between natural instincts and the norms of public morality, the cultivation of a culture of feelings in relations of love, marriage, family, and so forth.

The behavior that is formed in this distinctive sphere of personal life is far from indifferent to the values of a person’s civic relations with society and the collective. It exerts its own reverse active influence on these values; moreover, in particular cases, depending on people’s subjective characteristics, this influence may be decisive. In the feeling of individual sexual love, A. M. Gorky saw an enormous social meaning. “By the power of this feeling,” he said, “man became a being immeasurably more social than the cleverest animals. The poetry of earthly, healthy romanticism in relations between the sexes had enormous social-educational significance”¹).

Among us there still quite often exists a false notion that everyday life as a whole, and the so-called microworld of human relationships (love, intimate life, etc.), do not influence the social macroworld—the relation of a person to society, the state, the collective, and so on—and that one may neglect the “small” scale of an individual’s actions and the cognitive and educational problems that arise here. Such neglect causes considerable harm to the development of the personality and to communist education as a whole.

The ancient Greek philosophers correctly noted the connection between people’s errors and vices. Democritus wrote that bad deeds are committed “as a consequence of blindness of mind and imprudence”²). Under conditions in which socialist society is creating ever greater socio-economic conditions for the creation of a “communistically feeling, thinking, and acting person”³), an underestimation of the role of knowledge and education as applied to all spheres of the culture of human communication can create a direct source of people’s antisocial behavior. Ignorance, helplessness, and negative behavior in the so-called “non-main” sphere of life may exert a dominant influence on the development of a person’s professional and ideological-moral qualities. If it were possible to measure quantitatively how many talents have perished for society as a result of personal family-domestic collisions, this would be an enormous total of losses, perhaps comparable with losses from natural disasters and diseases.

Citizen B., a senior research associate and a talented inventor in the field of technology. In family life, however, he is a weak-willed, helpless person. He lacks elementary moral responsibility for his actions toward his wife and children. As soon as an effort of thought and the fulfillment of obligations to his family are required of him, he becomes a failure in his own eyes and leaves one family after another. B. has been in three legal marriages and has been subjected to judicial liability as a bigamist. In his personal life he has created such a tangle of contradictions

¹) M. Gorky. Articles and Pamphlets, p. 160, Moscow, 1949.
²) F. A. Selivanov. Errors and Vices. Tomsk, p. 15, 1965.
³) K. Tsetkin. V. I. Lenin’s Precepts to the Women of the Whole World. Moscow, p. 24, 1958.

and conflicts that had a destructive influence on his activity in the field of science and technology¹.

Real reality is always more complex, richer, and more multifaceted than those ideal schemes that our theoretical consciousness creates about it. The demarcation between the “main” and “secondary” aspects of a person’s life, though correct in the general historical sense, cannot always obtain at particular stages in the formation and development of individual personalities. A person’s inner world cannot be likened to a mechanical device consisting of many compartments. In one, larger compartment there is working social life; in another, the purely individual: love, marriage, family. Yu. Ryurikov is right when he writes: “The notions of the old psychology sit deep within us, and we are accustomed to thinking that the world of a person’s feelings, like an orange made up of segments, consists of separate feelings isolated from one another”². Certain feelings may attain such a degree of development that they become not separate feelings alongside others, but a special state of all manifestations of the personality: a thirst for knowledge and creative search, absorption in art, poetry, and so on. Psychologists say that fear is a special state of the whole human organism, a paralysis of all feelings, will, and consciousness. The same, evidently, may be said of love as well. Depending on the psychological characteristics of the personality and on the different age stages of its development, this feeling may also be a special state of a person’s entire psyche, of all his thoughts and sensations. Successes or failures in students’ studies and public life often prove to be directly connected with successes or failures in love, in personal relationships.

Microprocesses differ from macroprocesses in the sphere of natural phenomena. Something similar also takes place in society. At the level of social microstructures (the personality, small social groups, relations between man and woman, marriage, the family), interaction and mutual influence among all sides of human relationships intensify; the influence of everyday life on people’s productive and public activity, on their many-sided ties with society, increases. The warmth of family relations is the source and beginning of many social values: love for the Motherland and one’s people, respect for human dignity, humanity and nobility, hatred of social injustice. The world of familial kinship is a peculiar condenser, an amplifier of a person’s civic feelings. It is not for nothing that in our song about the Motherland we sing: “Like a bride, we love our Motherland; we cherish her like a tender mother.”

The ultimate goal of communism is the all-round happiness of every member of society. As the socio-economic opportunities for the development of the personality increase, the creation of such a scale of educational work—one that would embrace all aspects of a person’s social and personal life—becomes ever more important. Without the all-sidedness of education, without supplementing civic educational problems with the problems of forming a culture of relations between the sexes, there remains ground for disproportions in the social and individual consciousness and behavior of people, for social losses connected with human imperfection.

The contemporary scientific and technological revolution immeasurably intensi—

has linked all aspects of human life with production. It requires the maximum return of a person’s creative powers and abilities, the rational management of all his ties with society and nature. The imperfection of the system of education and upbringing becomes incompatible with the requirements of modern production. Just as science becomes a direct productive force of society, the organization of everyday life, free time, and leisure turns into one of the decisive factors in the development of a person’s all-round creative abilities. The increased demands of the modern scientific and technological revolution on a person’s intellectual and moral-psychological development heighten the significance of every link in the process of educating and bringing up people—the main productive force of society. One of the necessary links in this process is the formation of a culture of relations between the sexes, the preparation of young people for marriage and the upbringing of children.

Thus, the important place occupied by the education of a responsible attitude toward the family in the system of communist upbringing of youth is determined by the relative autonomy of the sphere of relations between the sexes, by the active influence of this sphere on labor and social life, by the ultimate goal of communism, and also by the demands of the modern scientific and technological revolution.

In many higher educational institutions of the country, concrete programs or long-term plans for the education of students for the entire period of study have been created or are being created. At the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, the authors’ collective of the Department of Scientific Communism has also created a Program for the education of full-time students for the entire period of study at the institute. How is the problem we have posed resolved in this program, and to what extent does it take into account the specific tasks of upbringing connected with the sex-and-age stages in the formation of the student’s personality?

One of the merits of the program is that it does not avoid posing the question of the scientifically grounded management of relations between the sexes. The task of educating a responsible attitude toward the family is placed in the section “Ideological-Political and Moral Upbringing.” This corresponds to the fact that the principal tasks of preparing a young person for marriage and family amount to the resolution of problems of a moral character. However, morality here is inseparably connected with aesthetic values, with a sense of measure, harmony, and beauty. Therefore it is hardly correct that in the section “Aesthetic Upbringing” the problems of educating relations between the sexes are entirely absent.

In the section “Ideological-Political and Moral Upbringing,” the tasks of sex education are formulated with respect to first- and second-year students. The authors probably assumed that by the third year a student is already prepared to create a family. Yet one can hardly agree that a young person at the age of 20–21 has already formed in himself all the qualities necessary for fulfilling the functions of an educator of children and the duties of a Father (Mother). This process is lengthy and, in essence, continues throughout life.

In our view, public attention to the education of the qualities of educators should be strengthened in the senior years. It is precisely during this period that the greatest number of student marriages occurs. The question of creating a distinctive and complex family collective, of raising children, already confronts students not abstractly but concretely and practically. And on how this new…

collective, the future professional and socio-political activity of the specialist may depend to a decisive degree. A happy married and family life increases creative activity and labor efficiency. Conversely, family conflicts and dissatisfaction with one’s personal life lower the emotional tone. For a person, as they say, everything falls apart, attention is scattered, and great efforts have to be expended in order to cope with a burdensome mood, to distract oneself from personal troubles, and to enter into the rhythm of the working day.

Educational work with students in the senior years must include assistance to the student family.

The student family is a real, natural, and inevitable phenomenon in the life of the modern Soviet higher school.

According to data from the Central Laboratory of Social Research of the Ministry of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of the RSFSR, the percentage of married students ranges from 5 to 15%³.

According to materials from the Wedding Palace of the city of Tomsk, in the polytechnic institute on average one student family is created every day. We are far from encouraging frivolous marriages. But the naturalness of students’ entering into marriage, not only in the senior years but also in the junior years (those who have come to the higher educational institution from production, from the army), makes especially urgent the task of fostering a responsible attitude toward love and marriage, the task of providing assistance to student families. This is necessary not only from the point of view of the development of the individual, but also from the point of view of improving the educational and upbringing process. Timely assistance in arranging students’ personal lives is one of the reserves for reducing student attrition and the number of students with only satisfactory grades.

It cannot be denied that the administration and public organizations of higher educational institutions, including the Polytechnic Institute of the city of Tomsk, take a primarily negative position toward the student family. They see here only one side—the family creates additional difficulties in study, especially for female students who have become mothers. But the real contradiction connected with the student family consists not only in this. What is marriage after graduation from a higher educational institution? It is one of the serious factors in the development of the trend toward a decline in the birth rate and depopulation that has taken shape in our country. This trend is undesirable. Demographers, economists, and sociologists are seeking ways to encourage motherhood precisely at this age (21–22 years), which falls in the student years⁴.

In light of this fact, higher education must assume a considerably greater range of tasks both in the moral preparation of young people for creating a family and raising children, and in creating material and everyday living conditions for student families.

Thus, the student family is a real social phenomenon, deserving practical attention and theoretical study.

In the theoretical analysis of this problem, an important place is occupied by clarifying the specificity of the student family.

The student family bears the imprint not only of our socialist society as a whole, but also of the features of students as a social group. These features are reflected in it

twice: in one respect they contribute to the creation of a favorable psychological climate in the family; in another, they create the ground for serious trials in life.

A positive factor is the similar way of life of students, the equality of the social position of the sexes. The generally shared level of education, culture, intellectual, moral, and aesthetic development, of spiritual needs and value orientations; equality in everyday self-service, and so on—all this creates favorable conditions for achieving mutual understanding, mutual assistance, and equality between husband and wife in the performance of family duties. Studies show that as education rises, the gap in the time expenditures of husband and wife on domestic labor decreases in the direction of leveling out. The difference in time expenditures on domestic labor is smallest where husband and wife have higher education^8).

On the other hand, the student family reflects features connected with the social status of students and their role in the system of social production. A student is a learner. He is not yet included in the system of permanent productive activity and therefore does not have an independent, stable source of income. He lives either on a stipend and temporary work, or on a stipend and assistance from relatives. Living and everyday conditions most often do not favor the creation of a family, still less the birth and upbringing of children. It even happens that entry into marriage does not lead to the creation of a common family hearth: husband and wife live separately. As for the system of building student dormitories across the country as a whole, it, unfortunately, does not take into account such a category as the married student. On the part of the administration and the public, the attitude toward the housing problem of married students is often passive. Students active in public affairs are in a better position. They are among those for whom concern is shown and to whom efforts are made to provide separate rooms in the dormitory.

It seems to us that, under conditions of increasing demands on the upbringing of young people, it is entirely legitimate to raise the question of the need for a differentiated approach to work with students, taking into account the various groups within the student body and, in particular, the category of married students. It is no accident that this problem is also raised on the pages of the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda^9).

Thus, the cultivation of a responsible attitude toward the family is an integral component of the communist upbringing of young people, one of the conditions for the further improvement of educational work in higher education at the present stage.

^8) Literaturnaya gazeta, June 4, 1969.
^9) Komsomolskaya Pravda, December 24, 1970.

1. Moscow City Court, case No. 2-2552, 1962. ↩

2. Yu. Ryurikov. Three Attractions, p. 10, Moscow, 1967. ↩

3. Komsomolskaya pravda, December 24, 1970. ↩

4. The age of 21–22, as specialists in the field of demography assert, is the most favorable from the point of view of growth in the birth rate. ↩