I took my cue. “Has Russia a population policy? Has she formulated any program for the rate of increase of her people?”
The audience stirred as though I had hurled a grenade. The interpreter leaped to his feet and shrieked, “Malthusianism! We will not have Malthusianism here! We do not need it. Do you think or imply that Soviet Russia has to advance Malthusian ideas? We can have all the children we want and Russia can do with twice the population she now has.” He went on and on.
After waiting a few moments for the air to clear, I continued, “I have asked Dr. Kaminsky a simple question which I will repeat. I said nothing about Malthusianism. But I should like to know whether Russia has a population policy. She has had five- and even ten-year plans for agriculture and manufacture and everything she is making. But what has she done about the most important issue today—population, its growth and distribution?”
Fischer was whispering to Dr. Kaminsky, evidently telling him what I wanted to know. The doctor replied, “If I understood correctly, you are asking if there is any policy from the biological or economic point of view.”
“I am asking whether Russia, in planning her industries, has any plan also as to the eventual control of families. I know you have much freedom for women and a fine technique for abortions. To us that is extremely significant, because after a woman has been aborted she returns to the same conditions and becomes pregnant again. Four hundred thousand abortions a year indicate women do not want to have so many children; in my opinion it is a cruel method of dealing with the problem because abortion, no matter how well done, is a terrific nervous strain and an exhausting physical hardship.”
Dr. Kaminsky’s answer was not encouraging. “There is no question as to the increase of population. There is no policy as to the question of biological restrictions; on the contrary there is a policy of increasing the population. For six years we have had a great shortage, not only of skilled workers, but of labor in general.”
Obviously, I was not a particularly welcome visitor.
By chance I was fortunate enough to encounter again Dr. Marthe Ruben-Wolf, who with her husband and children had escaped from Nazi Germany and was then at the head of a Moscow abortorium. Because of her wide experience in Germany, where clinics had been under municipal guidance, she was one of the few Communists who was sane on the subject of population. She very kindly helped me with some of my interviews.
Any woman in Russia who requested it was entitled to abortion on application to a doctor. She was told of the dangers, warned it might result in sterility, charged about two dollars and a half. We talked to about fifty patients who had already been there three days. None had temperatures. They were very jolly and going home that afternoon to rest for another week or two. Then they would go back to work with no deduction in wages. Though some of these women had had five abortions in two years and one had had eight, they could not sing too highly the praises of their country for allowing the operations. When I asked whether they would not prefer to have some information as to how to avoid further ones by protecting themselves from pregnancy, each and all replied, “We have no such thing. We hear of it, but we have nothing. Russia is too poor. We hope she will soon get it.”
In only one place did I see a clinic in the sense that we use the word here, and that was in Moscow where Dr. Kabanova had sixty women the afternoon we viewed it. Great credit is also due Madame Lebedova who organized the original establishment of the Institutes for the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, laid down the principles to be followed, and persisted until they had been embodied in a definite program.