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Courtesy of Mie Nakachi

On August 15, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin revived the title “Mother Heroine.” It is well known that originally the Soviet government introduced the title as a part of the 1944 Family Law, its pronatalist policy after World War II. Less known is the fact that Nikita Khrushchev, Party Secretary of depopulated Ukraine, wrote the policy to address the skewed postwar sex ratio by encouraging out-of-wedlock births. In this book talk, Mie Nakachi will present her book Replacing the Dead and examine the hidden process that created a law undermining the well-being of women and children, while fundamentally affecting Soviet family and gender relations for generations. She will argue that women’s quiet mass resort to illegal abortion eventually mobilized Soviet doctors to recognize women’s right to abortion and push through legalization in 1955. Michele Rivkin-Fish will join the conversation as a discussant.