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Womens Roles in Communist Russia When the Womens Suffrage Movement was deemed a success in the early 1920 s, women lowered their voices, apparently satisfied with their accomplishment. They did not dare to acknowledge the remaining gender-related inequalities, much less vie for their decline. For over a century, women had fought for the most basic of rights. Mary Wollstonecraft laid the path for future women to follow, but women did not follow this path until they started to become used to the minuscule amount of attention that Wollstonecraft afforded them. When this happened, women began to see more room for improvement in their treatment and rights.
The step proceeding Wollstonecraft was Womens Suffrage, and when this was achieved, as previously mentioned, feminism again became quiet. After three decades of inactivity, women again began to see more rights that males were allowed yet not them; so again, feminists began pushing for advancement in their cause. This renewal of interest, however, was not only because women saw room for improvement through familiarity with established rights of women. During World War I and Russian revolution, women were allowed to occupy various traditional male roles, even if for no reason other than necessity. Though these tasks did help in the advancement of womens ideas of their ability, they also added to the girlish identity of all women. Russian women joined the revolutionary struggle as rebels against a future as a dutiful wife of an authoritarian husband or a life of poverty and toil in a factory.
They became Marxists because of the Marxist critique of women's oppression being rooted in private property and the family. The middle-class feminists offered independence only for women of wealth. Risking death, prison and exile, the women revolutionaries entered an egalitarian world. They ran printing presses and workers's tudy circles alongside their male comrades. Rejecting the indecisiveness and self-defeating caution of the moderate socialists, most went on to accept Lenin's leadership during and after the revolution. They worked to make women's liberation a high priority, to win over women to the Bolsheviks and the Bolsheviks to women's emancipation.
Women did come into action with the entry of the working class into the arena of industrial struggle. The story of women workers industrial struggle between the 1870 s and 1905 is best told by Kollontai, a leading participant in the revolutionary movement. The movement of women workers is by its very nature an indivisible part of the general workers movement. In all the risings and in all the factory riots, which were so distasteful to tourism, she took an equal part, alongside the working man. Working women played an active role in the unrest at the Krengelmskaya factory in 1874; women were involved in the 1878 strike at the Novaya Pryadilna factory in St Petersburg. In 1885, they led the textile workers in that famous strike in Orekhovo-Zuyevo, when the factory buildings were destroyed and the tsarist government was forced to hurry through, on 3 July, a law banning night work for women and young people.
At a time of unrest and strike actions the proletarian woman, downtrodden, timid and without rights, suddenly grows and learns to stand tall and straight... participation in the workers movement brings the woman worker towards her liberation, not only as the seller of her labor power but also as a woman, a wife, a mother and a housekeeper. Kollontai does not glorify working-class women. She paints them warts and all. She notices their lack of perseverance and the weakness of the political socialist element among them (as soon as the wave of strike activity died down and the workers returned to work whether in victory or in defeat, the women would be scattered and isolated once again). 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. ) The story of the womens movement in Russia demonstrates clearly how the sharpening class struggle polarizes women into two antagonistic womens movements: working-class and bourgeois. The greater the polarization of women was, the stronger the bonds between working-class women and men became. This conclusion was central for the Bolsheviks, who were intransigent in their opposition to the bourgeois feminists.
Against this, the Mensheviks, who advocated a political alliance with the liberals, were also for conciliation between working- class women and bourgeois feminists. The Bolsheviks understood the difficulty of organizing working- class women, who are held back as victims of a double oppression as wage slaves and household slaves. The conclusions they drew from this were fundamentally different from those of the feminist separatists. The Bolsheviks argued that women and men workers face the same bosses, the same capitalist state. It is in the workplace that women can overcome their passivity and their isolation from each other (which is imposed largely by the family structure of society), gaining confidence in their capacity to act collectively. As workers too, the needs of men and women are identical.
Because of these things, any separatism between men and women workers will damage both, and will damage women more than men. Likewise, because the role of the party is to lead the struggle of the working class, the structure of the party including any of its organizations relating to women must fit the constituencies of the workers struggle, not the political constituencies of bourgeois society. This again means focusing on the workplaces, where the interests of women and men stand together. Conclusive proof of the correctness of the Bolshevik stand on the woman question was the revolution itself.
It was women workers, who, together with men, inaugurated the festival of the oppressed and the October revolution opened up the grandest chapter of womens liberation. To communicate to women the new values embodied in the new legal and civil code, which proclaimed the equality of women in economic, political and family life, the Bolsheviks launched a major campaign for the political mobilization of women. In September 1919, Lenin declared, the emancipation of working women is a matter for the working women themselves. (Rothchild-Goldberg, p. 89) In similar vein, Inessa Armand wrote, If the emancipation of women is unthinkable without communism, then communism is unthinkable without the full emancipation of women. (States, p. 199. ) The first conference of women convened by the Bolsheviks after the October revolution took place on 19 November 1917. Five hundred delegates representing 80, 000 women from factories, workshops, trade unions and party organizations attended. The conference was called specifically for mobilizing support for the Bolsheviks in the elections to the Constituent Assembly.
A year later, on 16 November 1918, the Bolshevik Party convened the first all-Russian Congress of Working Women. It was organized by a commission which included Inessa Armand, Alexandra Kollontai, Klavdiia Nikolaeva and Yaakov Sverdlov (secretary of the Bolshevik Party), who sent agitators to the provinces to arrange for the local election of delegates. In the Kremlin Hall of Unions there gathered 1, 147 women, including workers and peasant women from distant regions of the country. The program presented to the congress was impressive: to win the support of women for Soviet power; to involve women in the party, government and trade unions; to combat domestic slavery and a double standard of morality; to establish communal living accommodation in order to release women from household drudgery; to protect women s labor and maternity; to end prostitution; to refashion women as members of the future communist society. Nikolaeva chaired the congress.
Sverdlov welcomed the delegates. The main speeches were delivered by Kollontai and Inessa Armand. Lenin addressed the congress on its fourth day. After outlining the measures already taken by the Soviet government to improve womens conditions, he called on women to play a more active political role.
The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it. The congress led to the creation of Commissions for Agitation and Propaganda among Working Women. Their special methods of political work were elaborated by Kollontai at the Eighth Congress of the party in March 1919. She explained that because women were politically backward, the party had not had much success in trying to approach and recruit them based on general political appeals. Furthermore, she argued that it was womens oppression, which led to their lack of involvement in political life; the cares and concerns of the family and the household robbed the woman worker of her time and energy and prevented her from becoming involved in broader political and social pursuits.
Kollontai proposed that the way to attract women to Bolshevism was to draw them into socially useful projects, such as day nurseries, public dining rooms and maternity homes, which would serve to liberate women in their everyday lives. In September 1919 the Bolshevik central committee changed the Commission for Agitation and Propaganda among Working Women into the Womens Section or Department of the Party (zhen ski other, or zhenotdel), part of the central committee secretariat, under the leadership of Inessa Armand. Local branches of the Zhenotdel were attached to the party committees at every level, staffed by volunteers recruited among party women, and charged with conducting activities among the unorganized women in factories and villages, drawing them into public affairs. Inessa Armand drew up a list of guiding principles for the Zhenotdel which she submitted to the first International Conference of Women Communists which took place in Moscow in July 1920. The Zhenotdel, by aiming to involve women who were not members of the Bolshevik Party, attempted to overcome the shortage of women party members: the total number of women in the party in 1920 was only 45, 297, or 7. 4 per cent of all members. (Rothchild-Goldberg, pp. 134 - 5) The basic organizing unit was a Delegates Conference of Worker and Peasant Women. The conference was modeled on the soviets.
Elections were organized among women workers and peasants to select delegates one for every five workers or twenty-five peasants, who would attend meetings and courses of instruction under party guidance and then be assigned to a variety of state, party, trade union and co-operative agencies. The delegates were involved in organizing communal institutions for dining, hospitals, maternity homes, childrens homes and schools. Delegates also served in the peoples courts, sometimes in the capacity of judges. Delegates served for short terms usually two to three months.
The number of women actively involved was large. In the latter half of 1923, the Zhenotdel reported that the total number of delegates was about 58, 000. (Rothchild-Goldberg, p. 103) In addition, the Zhenotdel campaigned to mobilize women for support work in the civil war. Women performed medical services, served in the political departments of the Red Army, worked on communications, served in Saturday and Sunday work brigades, organized campaigns against desertion and epidemic diseases, and provided aid to the families of Red Army soldiers and to homeless children. (Rothchild-Goldberg, p. 129) One of the most important activities of each Zhenotdel was the spreading of literacy. An illiterate person, declared Lenin stands outside politics. He must first learn his ABC.
Without that there can be no politics; without that there are rumors, gossip, fairy-tales and prejudices, but not politics. (Quoted in Rothchild-Goldberg, pp. 144 -S) The literacy schools did not limit themselves to instruction in reading and writing, but became important vehicles for the dissemination of political, cultural and general educational work. One of the leaders in the movement for womens literacy was Nadezhda Krupskaia. Before the revolution, she had taught workers in evening schools. Now she devoted even more attention to this activity. Bolshevik women leaders with their own particular responsibilities and interests such as V. P.
Lebedev a (maternity), Krupskaia (education) and Maria Ulyanova (journalism) interlocked their activities with those of the Zhenotdel. Inessa Armand drove herself to exhaustion, working sixteen hours a day or more. She was ordered by the party to the Caucasus for a rest. There, in October 1920, she caught cholera and died. Kollontai was chosen to succeed her. Her role ended after a year when she joined the Workers Opposition.
Then in 1922, she was assigned to a diplomatic post in Norway. Just as women, and men, in society were split along class lines, so women, and men, within the Bolshevik party split along political lines in relation to democratic working-class power. Their resulting attitude to women's rights was determined by their politics, not their gender. The women and men revolutionaries in Russia who stood for the widest social democracy and the fullest personal liberation did so through the Bolshevik party. Their achievements were brief, and not without flaw, which was due to a lack of resources to root out backwardness, not an inevitable case of Bolshevik men behaving badly. The women of the Bolshevik party were strong, liberated, fully human people that they were, and the models that they can be for today's women in movements for progressive social change.
Bibliography: Rothchild-Goldberg, The Russian Womens Movement 1859 - 1917 (PhD thesis, University of Rochester 1976), pp. 29 - 30. R. States, The Womens Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism 1860 - 1930 (New Jersey 1978), p. 69. Glickman, The Russian Factory Woman 1890 - 1914, in D. Atkinson and others, Women in Russia (Stamford 1978), pp. 80 - 1. Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, edited by Alex Holt (London 1977), pp. 39 - 42.
A. V. Artiukhina and others, Zhenshchiny v Revoliutsii (Moscow 1959), p. 97. R. Dale, The Role of the Women of Petrograd in War, Revolution and Counter-revolution 1914 - 21 (PhD thesis, New Brunswick University 1973), p. 104. V.
Dildo, Krupskaia Nadezhda Konstantinova (Moscow 1966), pp. 31 - 4, quoted in Dale, p. 102. L. Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution (London 1934), p. 122. S. M.
Kingsbury and M. Fairchild, Factory, Family and Women in the Soviet Union (New York 1935), p. 80. F. W. Halle, Women in Soviet Russia (London 1933), p. 91.
Kelly, Catriona. A History of Russian Womens Writing 1820 - 1992. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
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