Why didn't the Soviet Union allow polygamy after World War II for European ethnic groups?

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi M-f-V,

It depends. What are you LOLing at?

Cheers,

Sid.

[Martin_from_Valhalla]

Hi, sir. The question in itself is undeniably a joke.

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi M-f-V,

Nope. A serious question. What is your answer?

Cheers,

Sid

[Martin_from_Valhalla]

Name is Vladimir. I'm afraid everyone who has a slightest idea of what Stalin's USSR was would take this question with a pinch of salt. Lest we forget that christianity wasn't fully eradicated from society by the end of Stalin's life.

[Futurist]

Name is Vladimir. I'm afraid everyone who has a slightest idea of what Stalin's USSR was would take this question with a pinch of salt. Lest we forget that christianity wasn't fully eradicated from society by the end of Stalin's life.

My own grandparents actually spent their childhoods living in Stalin's USSR.

[Futurist]

See this:
The Black Stork (1917)
https://youtu.be/9m6OCT8YmfU
https://youtu.be/9rWkGCsEuxY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Stork

https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/

Interesting.

[wm]

Some solutions advocated by eugenists have been implemented: abortion, late abortion, euthanasia.
After-birth abortion is just around the corner.
It's not like they were monsters, we have to be monsters too.

[wm]

Name is Vladimir. I'm afraid everyone who has a slightest idea of what Stalin's USSR was would take this question with a pinch of salt. Lest we forget that christianity wasn't fully eradicated from society by the end of Stalin's life.

It's not because they didn't try. They tried hard and failed.

[Futurist]

Some solutions advocated by eugenists have been implemented: abortion, late abortion, euthanasia.
After-birth abortion is just around the corner.
It's not like they were monsters, we have to be monsters too.

After-birth abortion = infanticide?

[gebhk]

Some random thoughts

The thing is that by mechanisms which are very poorly if at all understood, the relevant male/female ratio, all things being equal, tends to revert to 1:1 very rapidly, naturally, after any upset.

I don't buy that Christian morality was a significant or even any factor in this. The Soviet regime clearly had no qualms about ignoring that fairly fundamental moral proscription 'thou shalt no kill', on an industrial scale. The only morality that mattered was that which promoted the wellbeing of the Soviet Union and/or of Comrade Stalin (the two, no doubt, viewed as much the same by the faithful). Had the interests of the Soviet Union been seen to be benefited by polygamy, I have little doubt that it would have been permitted and promoted; in much the same way that the views on abortion changed in line with perceived interests of the state. If it didn't happen it would have been because the lords and masters of the USSR did not see any benefit in it.

There is nothing inherently immoral or amoral in polygamy. Morality is merely a codification of cultural norms of behaviour. And marital arrangements vary, primarily dependent on economic reality. Where it is routinely possible for one man to support more than one family, having more than one wife is a reasonable arrangement. Clearly a 1:1 arrangement is one that works for most of humanity and may well have some roots in our hunter-gatherer origins. However, in particularly poor areas with an agricultural basis, two or more men sharing one wife is common - with the wives often shared by brothers (which makes entire sense to an evolutionary biologist).

[Martin_from_Valhalla]

[wm]

Better that than nothing even if perversions aren't allowed.

[gebhk]

And, when all is said and done, perversion too is a societal construct.

[Futurist]

Some random thoughts

The thing is that by mechanisms which are very poorly if at all understood, the relevant male/female ratio, all things being equal, tends to revert to 1:1 very rapidly, naturally, after any upset.

Yes, because the older generations gradually pass away while the newer generations are born almost perfectly 50:50 male:female. But of course polygamy would have given the Soviet Union more births in the post-World War II years and decades, thus ensuring the same sex ratio for Soviet newborns but much more total Soviet newborns.

[gebhk]

Yes, because the older generations gradually pass away while the newer generations are born almost perfectly 50:50 male:female.

Unfortunately as an explanation that does not really work. Those doing most of the dying are in the youngest adult age group, so it would take another 40 years or so for the gap to 'work itself out' through natural wastage (the gap from WW1 was still painfully visible in Scunthorpe where I did my nurse training, in the mid-late 80s). The fact that simultaneously the greatest losses are among the most reproductively active, further works against normal approx 50/50 birth ratio quickly balancing out the overall sex ratio.