Step 2 Part 2 Fact Sheet 30: women's rights since fall of communism
Inequality in Soviet Times
From the book review of The House of Government: A saga of the Russian Revolution by Yuri Slezkine (2017):
“On a recent research trip to Tbilisi, I stayed with a retired math professor and master storyteller named Tsiala in the communal apartment she’d remade into an elegant B&B for foreigners on the city’s main drag. Evenings over tea, she told me stories about her life in Soviet Georgia. The one I remember best was about her pregnancy with twins in the early 1970s. Certain she’d lose her job at the university if she took maternity leave, she decided to hide the pregnancy. She bought a long fur coat and wore it whenever she left the house. Heavily pregnant by summer, she looked ridiculous in the coat and thought she might die in the 90-degree heat of the outdoor fruit market. Still, in late August, she managed to give birth to two girls and return to work four days later, leaving the infants in the care of a nanny, as though nothing big had happened.”
(source)