The U.S. is only now catching up

Or, The disappearance of the USSR meant the philosophies had to go somewhere.

“… (T)he family propaganda of the second half of the 1930s is even more notable for being anti-men than for being anti-revolutionary. Women were consistently represented (as they were and would continue to be in Soviet-Russian popular discourse) as the nobler, suffering sex, capable of greater endurance and self-sacrifice, pillars of the family who only in the rarest of instances neglected their responsibilities to husband and children. Men, in contrast, were portrayed as selfish and irresponsible, prone to abusing and abandoning their wives and children. In the inevitable conflict between women’s interests, construed as altruistic and pro-family, and men’s interests, read as selfish and individualistic, the state was unquestionably in the women’s corner.” – Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, 1999, Oxford University Press.