Reddit mentions of Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941

Well I don't know that "following" Stalinism in 2019 would require you to be homophobic, as if Stalin's homophobia logically follows from the rest of his thought or from Marxism-Leninism generally rather than just him being characteristically bigoted. It was also the case that homosexuality was illegal in much of the United States, with the first state to decriminalize it being Illinois in 1962 -- punishment being imprisonment and/or hard labor prior to that (my state decriminalized it in 2003 and only because the federal government forced it to). Incidentally, I'm gay and I would've probably found it personally difficult being in any communist party at the time that supported discrimination against gays -- or any of the few communist parties in the world that still do. But generally IMO if you look at the history, the communist parties were usually ahead of the curve on this.

But I don't think it's so much of a communism vs. capitalism question, but is really one of a political demand by the LGBT community directed at the straight population.

Stalin's conservative "turn" is interesting though and I would recommend the book "Stalinist Values" by David Hoffmann. A review from the Amazon page:

>David Hoffmann's book "Stalinist Values" discusses a widely noticed but not often fully analyzed phenomenon in Soviet history: the shift away from avant-garde, progressive socio-cultural values to traditionalist cultural conservatism in the 1930s. For many opponents of Stalin and his government on the left this has been seen as one of the proofs for Stalin's alleged betrayal of real socialism; for some rightist critics, of whom Hoffmann interestingly cites some examples, this has been interpreted as a necessary and obvious move away from untenable avant-gardism. But the shift itself has not been much analyzed from the point of view of Stalin c.s. themselves, and that is particularly what this book is about.

>Hoffmann's thesis is that the conservative turn (to coin a phrase) should not be read as a move away from socialism, because the people involved did not perceive it as such. The book studies all the different fields in which the shift presented itself noticably, from family relations and sexuality to artistic and literary endeavours, and in each case Hoffmann tries to show that the Soviet leadership saw their move as one consolidating the reality of socialism rather than a move away from it. His thesis rests strongly on the fact that Stalin declared in the early 1930s that 'socialism had been achieved'. This implied that where before this period avant-gardism, strongly progressive social reforms and general anti-authoritarianism in social relations were positive for socialism and warranted, from the moment of socialism being 'achieved' on this was no longer the case. Any kind of conservatism would now not be a conservatism maintaining capitalist relations, but a conservatism maintaining socialist relations stably as they were, and therefore now a good thing. Accordingly, things that were perceived as tending to individualize people and undermine unity and stability were now a bad thing. This, according to Hoffmann, explains how the Soviet leadership could re-ban homosexuality and abortion, implement strong restrictions and guidelines on artistic expression, and so on, without seeing this in any way as contradictory to socialist goals (although even at the time many did).

...

>The thesis is a strong and interesting one. Its main flaw is that Hoffmann does not really analyze or contextualize the central concept itself, namely Stalin's idea of having 'achieved socialism' in the early 1930s. Based merely on the works of Marx and Engels, or even those of Lenin, this is a very odd claim indeed and if it played ao central a role in Soviet policy shifts as Hoffmann makes it seem, it deserves more thorough political and historical scrutiny. Moreover, there are a couple counter-examples that the author mentions himself; for example, Lenin himself and many others close to him in governing circles disapproved of the avant-gardist tendencies in art and probably of many sexual and family reforms too, as has been shown in Richard Stites' fantastic work on the Soviet values of the 1920s (Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution). Yet, they did not implement prohibitions on this nor did they seriously attempt to politically repress them, since they generally seemed to see this as part of the socialist transformation, even if sometimes distasteful or unnecessary. This fact works somewhat in favor of the 'Stalinist betrayal' school. Also, Hoffmann cannot explain entirely why the Stalin government of the 1930s did keep some of the social reforms, such as relatively extremely liberal divorce laws and a commitment (not always fulfilled in practice) to female participation in the labor force. Finally, the book puts some of the 1930s 'reversals' into a comparative context, showing that other European nations, fascist and liberal, were implementing many of the same restrictions and pro-natalist policies during the same period and much for the same reasons. It is an excellent and long overdue thing to place such controversial subjects of Soviet history into a larger comparative context, and Hoffmann should be praised for doing so, but it also to some extent undermines his case that the reversals were due to a very Soviet Union-specific political shift (the 'achievement of socialism').

I completely agree with your dismissal of Solzhenitsyn and Kuznetsov. This sad fact about the USSR needn't be denied to be a good communist though. David L. Hoffman's book Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941 has a pretty nice discussion of this, much better and more contextualized than this libcom piece. He writes:

> The Soviet government did not champion the family as a private commitment or as a means to personal fulfillment. Instead it explicitly promoted the maintenance of one's family as an obligation to society and to the state. Komsomol head Kosarev stated in 1934, "The stronger and more harmonious the family is, the better it serves the common cause.... We are for serious, stable marriages and large families. In short, we need a new generation that is healthy both physically and morally." A Soviet jurist added that "marriage receives its full value for the state only if there is progeny." Soviet propaganda also stressed that parents were to raise their children for the sake of the Soviet state. One official stated that "the education of children in the spirit of communism is a civic obligation of Soviet parents," and another commentator wrote, "Hand in hand with the state's establishments, the parents must rear the children in to conscious and active workers for socialist society.... Parents must instill in their children... readiness to lay down their life at any moment for their socialist country." (107)

>The family as an institution was central to the entire issue of social reproduction. As in many societies, the family acted as the key institution that mediated between individual desire and state or societal interests. Family values set norms of sexual behavior and social organization that determined the way Soviet society reproduced itself. The Soviet government used the traditional institution of the family to create norms of sexual and social organization, because stable marriages and large families promoted population growth. Soviet leaders also chose the family because it corresponded to their own sense of propriety. The family offered a normative model of monogamous heterosexual relationships which fit their notions of how society was to be organized.

>It was just before the campaign to strengthen the family that the Soviet government recriminalized male homosexuality. In December 1933 the head of the Soviet secret police, Genrikh Iagoda, sent Stalin a draft decree outlawing sodomy, and justified it by citing "associations of pederasts" engaged in "the recruitment and corruption of completely healthy young people." The Politburo approved the ban on male homosexuality and it was issued as law in March 1934. Dan Healey notes that the Soviet recriminalization of sodomy was preceded by Hitler's accession to power and a virulent propaganda war between fascism and communism, which included mutual accusations of homosexuality. In this atmosphere, homosexuality became associated with fascism in the eyes of Soviet officials, and in fact Maxim Gorky justified the antisodomy law with the slogan "Destroy the homosexuals - fascism will disappear."

>Healey also points out that attacks on homosexuality coincided with the Soviet government's drives in the mid-1930s to cleanse cities of "social anomalies" and promote the (heterosexual) family. In 1936 Commissar of Justice Krylenko linked homosexuality with bourgeois decadence and counterrevolution, and stated that it had no place in a socialist society founded on healthy principles. He called homosexuals "declassed rabble, either from the dregs of society or from the remnants of the exploiting classes." Employing a heteronormative discourse, Krylenko declared that homosexuals were not needed "in the environment of workers taking the point of view of normal relations between the sexes, who are building their society on healthy principles." Emphasis on the family should thus be seen as part of a larger effort by the Soviet government to make heterosexuality and procreation compulsory in the interests of the state and the larger society.

>While the family was a traditional institution, Soviet policy should not be confused with a return to the traditional family. The family fostered by official Soviet culture of the 1930s was not the patriarchal family of Russian peasant society. Traditional patriarchalism and gender roles were rooted in village culture and based on the father's control of household property and his voice in village decisions, through the exclusive right of male elders to attend the commune gathering. Taken out of the village, patriarchy and gender roles had to be established on a new basis - in this case, legislation that strengthened marriage and child support and propaganda that promoted motherhood and paternal responsibility. That the Soviet family did not conform to traditional models was even more apparent in policy toward national minorities. In the late 1930s, Soviet authorities actually increased the prosecution of Uzbeks who followed their traditional marriage customs of bride-price and female veiling and seclusion. For this reason, it is misleading to characterize Soviet family policy as a retreat. While Soviet leaders relied on the traditional institution of the family, they denied its autonomy and stripped it of its traditional organization, using it instead as an instrument of the state to augment the population. (108-9)