Was there ever a speech by USSR officials before 1950 where it was asked of Soviet women to uphold traditional female roles?

Question

In 1949 Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir writes:

There is no way to directly oblige a woman to give birth: all that can be done is to enclose her in situations where motherhood is her only option: laws or customs impose marriage on her, anticonception measures and abortion are banned, divorce is forbidden. These old patriarchal constraints are exactly the ones the U.S.S.R. has brought back to life today; it has revived paternalistic theories about marriage; and in doing so, it has asked woman to become an erotic object again: a recent speech asked Soviet women citizens to pay attention to their clothes, to use makeup, and to become flirtatious to hold on to their husbands and stimulate their desire.

I tried googling "speech soviet women pay attention to clothes", but couldn't come up with satisfactory results. Is there any evidence that a quote like that actually had been put forward to the soviet masses?

Answer 1

Here is the French original.

But in a translated version of the book, I discovered, following one chapter's footnotes:

Olga Michakova, secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Organization, stated in 1944 in an interview: “Soviet women should try to make themselves as attractive as nature and good taste permit. After the war, they should dress like women and act feminine … Girls will be told to act and walk like girls, and that is why they will wear skirts that will probably be very tight, making them carry themselves gracefully.”

This gives credence to the idea that Yes, Soviet officials were indeed asking of women to act in more traditionally feminine manner.

But, that is after translation from French into English.

Answer 2

Without identifying the speech in question, we can identify a legal trend toward marriage and traditional roles for women between 1936 and 1955.

According to "The Status of Women in the Soviet Union", a long article by Alice Erh-Soon Tay (1972):

IV. The Retreat to "Conservatism"

The crisis [of gender inequality], evident in the late 1920s and continuing into the 1930s, coincided with the rise of Stalin and the concentration on "socialist upbuilding" through the Five-Year Plans. It produced a steady retreat to "conservatism"....Soviet writers began to refer to the family as "a basic unit",... Domesticity was no longer denounced, household work, once described by Lenin as monotonous petty drudgery, was now proclaimed to be "socially useful labor", love of parents, formerly conditional upon their adherence to Soviet values, was elevated as an ethical absolute.

p. 674

And...

The concern with strengthening the family that becomes so evident from 1936 onward was accompanied by an equally strong concern with increasing the birthrate, greatly intensified---naturally enough---during the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War, 1941-1945.[27] In 1944 the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of USSR decreed an increase of State aid to pregnant women, mothers with many children, and unmarried mothers; it strengthened measures for the protection of motherhood and childhood; it established the title "Heroine Mother" and instituted the order "Motherhood Glory" and the "Motherhood Medal". This legislation, embodied in a single Decree, became an act of signal importance that was to dominate Soviet family life until well after the death of Stalin in 1953.

p. 676

...and also...

The prohibition on non-therapeutic abortions was repealed in 1955; principal justifications were the large number of abortions performed illegally, outside hospitals and under insanitary conditions[31], and fidelity to the Leninist doctrine that no woman should be forced to bear a child she did not want.

p. 680

We read in Russian Law Journal, Vol V 2018 Issue 4, that:

The 18 November 1920 ruling by the People's Commissariats of Health and Justice entitled "On Protection of Women's Health" is a compelling example of reasonable and progressive legislation from the early years of Bolshevik lawmaking.

I. Artificial termination of pregnancy procedures are allowed free of charge in the setting of Soviet hospitals, which guarantees that such procedures are harmless to the maximum extent possible.

p. 89

and...

The country that pioneered abortion recriminalized abortion in 1936.

p. 91

So seemingly, there was a period between 1936 and 1955 when abortion was outlawed, and Soviet policy was to encourage a higher birthrate and stable families. Prison was acknowledged as a marriage-breaker, though:

Resolution No. 1945 [29 August 1946 - USSR Council of Ministers] established that if one of the spouses was certified as missing, was missing in action, convicted for a lengthy term of imprisonment (at least three years), or suffered a chronic mental disease, the other spouse had the right to file for divorce directly to the upper court without preliminary consideration of a case in the people's court.

Russian Law Journal, Vol V 2018 Issue 4 p. 81