AN "ALIMONY HUNTER" OR A "VICTIM": SINGLE MOTHER AS A CATEGORY IN THE 1950s AND 1960s SOVIET EVERYDAY LIFE

The article shows that in Soviet society single motherhood existed in a variety of forms. The author claims that Soviet single mothers were contradictory figures, as the 1944 Family Law stated that non-marital childbearing women were officially supported by the pro-natal state. Contemporaries usually did not make any difference between war widows with children, unmarried women with children from cohabitation with men, and "real" single mothers. According to the author, between the 1950s and 1960s, the image of single motherhood in USSR fluctuated from the positive model of a woman, trying her best in single child-rearing to a predatory woman, the "gold digger" who was engaged in adultery with married men and ruined "normal" Soviet families. On the basis of letters to the authorities, the author shows how the term "single motherhood" was associated with the positive and negative sides of Soviet motherhood. Mothers usually refused to identify themselves as "single mothers" because of social stigma, so they chose different strategies in self-representation. Finally, the unstable and contradictory position of Soviet single mothers in people's minds demonstrates both the issues of gender order and social and cultural shifts in the post-war USSR.