Example research essay topic: Social Democratic Party St Petersburg - 714 words

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The few women in the underground party organizations were from the intelligentsia. Working women could not be persuaded to attend either the illegal or the legal meetings where Marxism and revolutionary socialism were presented under the guise of harmless lessons in geography and arithmetic. The working women were still avoiding life and struggle, believing that their destiny was the cooking pot, the washtub and the cradle... However, she wrote, the picture changes swiftly once the red flag of revolution is hoisted high above Russia... In the revolutionary years of 1905 and 1906 the woman worker... was everywhere...

to give full justice to the self-sacrifice of the proletarian women and their loyalty to the ideals of socialism, we would have to describe the events of the revolution scene by scene. (Holt pp. 39 - 42. ) Both wings of the Social Democratic Party the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries did their best to attract women into the trade unions. The Bolshevik-dominated textile union of the Moscow district considered in 1906 that the only solution to the problems of improving the position of the working class in general, and of women in particular, is organization of the proletariat. Given that, women, because of their economic and domestic situation, are much less capable of defending themselves against the bondage and exploitation of capital, it proposed, all measure be taken to attract women on an equal basis with men into unions and all other workers organizations. Strike demands throughout 1905 - 7 more often than not reflected women workers needs.

There is scarcely a strike document in industries employing women that does not mention, in some form, demands for paid maternity leave (usually four weeks before and six weeks after childbirth), for time off for feeding infants, and for construction of nurseries at the factory. (Glickman, pp. 80 - 1) Unlike Britain or Germany, the doors of the unions were wide open to women from the beginning in Russia. But the difficulties of organising women workers were extreme. First there was the low level of literacy and culture, much lower for women than men; then womens low wages about half of mens in manufacturing industry in 1913 also the double burden of being both workers and housewives. So women lacked confidence. One woman worker expressed the feelings of women workers towards participation in workers groups: The result was a very low level of trade union organization of women in a country where trade unionism lagged anyway. Those industries, which employed many women, were particularly backward.

Thus in 1907 only 1. 2 per cent of the workers in the garment industry and 3. 9 per cent of those in textiles were members of trade unions, as against 43 per cent of print workers and 8. 6 per cent of engineers. The proportion of women trade unionists was tiny. In the Moscow textile industry, for example, women made up only 4. 4 per cent of trade union membership. In St Petersburg and the central industrial region, the proportion was higher, but still very low. In the Soviets or workers councils which arose in 1905 women were again very under-represented. While women were about two-fifths of the Petersburg working class, there were only six women among the 562 delegates.

The first time International Womens Day was held in Russia was in 1913. It was held six days early, on 2 March (17 February by the old calendar then in use) for fear of police interference. The Bolshevik newspaper Pravda commemorated the day with a special six-page issue, and a holiday committee was set up by the Bolshevik-controlled Petersburg Committee of the Social Democratic Party, consisting of a group of women textile workers and Bolshevik activists. Celebrations took place in five cities: St Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Samara and Tbilisi. The largest was in St Petersburg. Over a thousand people out of a larger number who failed to get in crowded into the hall, which was heavily policed both outside and inside, the police occupying the first two rows.

One of the main speakers, a textile worker, Ianchevskaia, summed up the meaning of the assembly thus: The women workers movement is a tributary flowing into the great river of the proletarian movement and giving it strength. (Artiukhina p. 97. )

Research essay sample on Social Democratic Party St Petersburg