Caritas et veritas 2015, 5(1):123-134 | DOI: 10.32725/cetv.2015.013

The Characteristic of Family and (Re-)Education in the Communist Perspective

Martina Pavelková

Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích, Teologická fakulta, Katedra etiky, psychologie a charitativní práce, Kněžská 8, 370 01 České Budějovice

The paper tries to characterize the transformation of conceiving the institution of family and interpersonal relationships in communist ideology. First the basic goals of communism are presented - creating a "new morality" which no longer rests on religious or traditional values and a "new human" who obtains her nature only by relationship to society. The new conception of human being was necessarily projected into the conception of family and relationships between spouses and between parents and children. The paper mentions four basic periods in which the conception of family in the Soviet Union developed. The family was first regarded as bourgeois residue and therefore condemned to extinction. But it gradually turned out that the family is a fundamental institution without which no political order can get by. So the communist regime at least tried to intervene in the privacy of individuals as far as possible throughout their lives.

Keywords: family, marriage, communism, new human, ideology, Marxism-Leninism, interpersonal relationships

Published: March 30, 2015  Show citation