Stalin and abortion
From Mr Andnj Halushka Sir: As much as I like to read Paul John- son's column (and as much as I admire him as a historian), I feel compelled to com- ment on his mention of Stalin's legalisation of abortions in the Soviet Union (And another thing, 16/23 December). In fact, abortions became legalised during the socially libertarian 1920s, before Stalin got to the pinnacle of power in the USSR, and were swept away (along with child-centred and mixed-ability education and 'common law' marriage) during social restriction in the 1930s and 1940s. Abortion had become a criminal offence in 1944 (the law was changed in the early 1960s), with not only abortionists but their customers penalised by years of hard labour in corrective labour camps (concentration camps). The reason was to make up quickly for the terrible loss- es the USSR suffered in its war with Ger- many (27 million is the latest officially acknowledged figure). Other measures to the same effect included a special tax on `single and small-family citizens', initially imposed on every employed adult male and every married woman with fewer than three children. By 1986, when I started to get my own salary, I only paid until my daughter was born — at the same rate as income tax (which, fortunately, was just 1 per cent).
Andnj Halushka
Wallington, Surrey
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