Drawing on Soviet accounts, published and unpublished Western materials, numerous interviews, and personal observations, H. Kent Geiger presents a study of the family in the USSR from the Revolution to the present. His analysis is pursued from several vantage points: the family unit as an idea and ideal, the family as a social institution in the context of a totalitarian society, and the family in terms of individual members' opportunities and problems. This vivid portrait of Soviet life at the grass roots level touches upon dimensions of Soviet society, such as marital difficulties and class differences, which have previously been virtually unknown.