1918 Code on Marriage, the Family and Guardianship

A decree on divorce of 16 December 1917 allowed marriage to be ended without stating grounds, and the decree “On civil marriage, children and the keeping of registers” of 18 December declared that “the Russian Republic henceforth recognises only civil marriages”, making church marriage the private affair of the couple. The code, which brought these decrees together, was adopted on 16 September 1918 and transferred the registration of births, marriages and deaths from the parish registers kept since 1722 to the civil registry offices (ZAGS). The revolutionary jurists led by Alexander Goikhbarg drafted it on the principles of Marx, Engels and Lenin as a temporary framework protecting women and children until communal support by the state could be established; to them the nuclear family was a necessary but transitional arrangement that would soon “wither away”. It allowed no-grounds divorce, abolished illegitimacy as a legal concept and entitled every child to parental support, let spouses choose either surname and keep their own property, made women equal to men in law, and abolished adoption so that orphans would be cared for by the state rather than exploited.

The marriage age was 18 for men and 16 for women. Its limits showed when the Civil War left some seven million homeless children and, after the New Economic Policy of 1921, hundreds of thousands of unemployed women in unregistered unions were left without any protection. Occupation by the Whites prevented its introduction in Ukraine, while Belorussia applied it from the start. After a nationwide debate in 1925–1926 it was replaced by the new Code on Marriage, the Family and Guardianship of 1926.