Karl Marx viewed the nuclear family as an economic arrangement that maintains the functions of capitalism. According to this view, the nuclear family perpetuates class inequality by the transmittance of private property through inheritance.
The Bolsheviks imbibed this warped view and viciously attacked the family in a kind of dress rehearsal for the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
In 1917, two decrees replaced religious marriages with civil ones and established divorce at the request of either spouse. By 1920, the Soviet Union had legalized abortion, allowed cohabitation and decriminalized sodomy. A 1926 article in The Atlantic explored what it called “the chaos, uncertainty and tragedy that hover over the Russian family.”
Russia was immersed in a whirlwind of communist chaos ― the winds of which blew a gale into Eastern Europe.
In 1945, Russia’s errors spread to East Germany and Yugoslavia; in 1946, to Albania and Bulgaria; in 1947, to Poland and Romania; in 1948, to Czechoslovakia; and, in 1949, to Hungary. These communist countries led by the USSR became known as the “Eastern Bloc,” in opposition to the Western Bloc led by the United States in what became the Cold War.
The political and ideological boundary dividing Europe during the Cold War came to be known as the “Iron Curtain” — a metaphorical term that found a concrete symbol in the Berlin Wall, erected in 1961.
Hatred of natural law, and thus of natural virtues, is irrational. Acting on such animosity leads to misery and chaos. But Our Lady crushes such hatred by her perfect exercise of all the natural virtues, elevated and perfected by grace.
Find out more about the Marxist war against nature and natural law and Our Lady’s excellence in all the natural virtues.