By 1918, the Bolsheviks’ Code on Marriage, the Family and Guardianship envisioned a “withering away” of the family itself at some point in the future.[lvi] Preferring one’s children over others smacked of bourgeois values and inequality, both between families and within the family itself. No parent could do as good of a job educating their children as the government could. Indeed, it made perfect sense: the same government was going to educate—if not reeducate—the entire adult population as well. Love for one’s children was “narrow and irrational,” which state educators were not.[lvii]
