Abstract
This article traces the evolution of legislation affecting adoptive relationships in the USSR from the promulgation of adoption law in 1926 until its reform in 1968. The author argues that reforms in adoption law and legal practice mirrored political and ideological developments in Soviet history. Outlawed in 1918, adoption was reintroduced in 1926 as a stopgap response to the overwhelming problem of child homelessness, with the law taking shape in a climate hostile to the family. Consequently, adoption law did not even attempt to replicate biological relationships. Attitudes toward adoption changed in response to post-1936 profa mily policies, as well as in response to problems created by World War II. By the time Soviet lawmakers revised the law in 1968, adoptive and biological families had been given legal equality.
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