User:King Canine/Women in the Russian Revolution

Women played integral roles in the Russian Revolutions of 1917, by acting as social and civil agitators for mass participation in the Revolutions, contributing to both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary causes. The Revolutions of 1917 ultimately precipitated the end of Tsarist rule and the beginning of Bolshevik rule in the February and October Revolutions respectively.

The "Woman Question" was a central theme to the participants of the Revolutions; while some of the aristocracy under the Tsarist time and leaders of the succeeding Provisional Government drew heavy influence from Western European thinkers in viewing women emancipation as coming through liberal reforms and gradual, reformist enfranchisement, the Marxist radicals rejected the Western liberal position. The Bolsheviks instead saw the subjugation of women at the time as a result of bourgeoisie capitalism, which was defended through moderate and liberal reforms rather than destroyed. As a result, whereas Russian feminists believed the Revolutions as a liberal uprising where women will gain suffrage in a similar fashion to their Western European contemporaries, the Bolsheviks contended that women emancipation comes as a subtext within a broader worker's emancipation, which would eventually be achieved by a socialist revolution.

Following the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, they liberalized laws on divorce and abortion, decriminalized homosexuality, and proclaimed a new higher status for women. Inessa Armand (1874-1920), Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952), Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939) and Aleksandra Artyukhina (1889–1969) were prominent women Bolsheviks. A decade later, General Secretary Stalin reversed many of the Bolshevik wartime reforms, though some women Bolsheviks still remained highly visible.

Pre-1917 uprisings

Political turmoil and uprisings against the establishment was not unique to the Revolutions of 1917. Earlier demonstrations such as Kazan demonstration, date back to 1876, while prominent revolts such as the Decembrist Revolt occurred in 1825. One of the most successful examples of anti-Tsarist activity before 1917 was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, by Andrei Zhelyabov and the terrorist group People's Will (Russian: Наро́дная во́ля). Vera Figner would become one of their most prominent members, and gain somewhat of a celebrity status after her release from prison.

Before the Revolutions of 1917, most women lived under a highly patriarchal society irrespective of the class they were born in. The vast majority of women lived their lives as peasants, where their primary role was to be the household laborer and bearer of children. Even women in the upper classes were subject to a series of divorce, inheritance, and property laws that were unequally favored to patriarchal figures (though comparatively more lenient to that of peasant women), and an education system that did not prioritize academic instruction but rather the cultivation of the "ideal", household woman.

The young Russian feminist movement was exhilarated by the uprising of 1905, which was followed by a liberalization of some of the tight restrictions on women, and the creation of a national parliament. However by 1908, the forces of reaction were pushing back hard, and feminists were in retreat. Women were barred from universities, and there was a general sense of despair among liberal forces. Though revolutionaries were quashed in the 1905 uprising, the uprising was retrospectively seen by Lenin as "The Great Dress Rehearsal" of the Revolutions of 1917, arguing that the failed 1905 uprising served as a prelude to the successful 1917 revolutions. Indeed, the reforms ushered in by the 1905 uprising such as the October Manifesto and the creation of the State Duma had granted the political enfranchisement necessary for groups such as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; Russian: Российская социал-демократическая рабочая партия (РСДРП), translit.: Rossiyskaya sotsial-demokraticheskaya rabochaya partiya (RSDRP)) to legitimately participate in public affairs, with the RSDLP eventually splitting off into the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions.

Maria Bochkareva, circa 1919

WWI and The February Revolution

The outbreak of war in August 1914 was an unwelcoming surprise; the Empire, having positioned itself as the protector of Slavs given its history with the Ottoman Empire, entered the war against Germany poorly prepared. As men were hurriedly put into uniform by the millions, the opportunities for women in the military and workplace expanded greatly. The number of women workers in industrial centers rose to over one million as 250,000 women joined the workforce between 1914 and 1917. Peasant women also took on new roles, taking over some of their husbands' farm work. Women fought directly in the war in small numbers on the front lines, often disguised as men, and thousands more served as nurses. The social conditions of women during World War I affected the role they played in coming revolutions.

Some of the earliest women's rights groups in Russia were formed by Russian feminists whom were typically Western educated, upper-class women. During the February Revolution, the most relevant and important feminist organization was the League for Women's Equality (Russian: Лига равноправииа женщин). The League would be the most visible and successful of the feminist organizations, being able to draw support and inspiration from other feminist groups at the time. This resulted in an appreciable consolidation of feminists into the League, homogenizing the feminist front as the feminists found themselves becoming equally estranged by the war defeatism and radicality of the left wing revolutionaries.

Great division in answering the Woman Question arose between women who sought to maintain Russia's efforts in the Great War and those who sought to expedite its end. While the efforts of Maria Bochkareva in organizing the Women's Death Battalion was laureated by feminists such as Anna Shabanova and Emmeline Pankhurst, they were sharply vilified by leftist radicals who viewed them and their efforts for continuing the war as tools for capitalists, under the guise of overzealous patriotism. As a result, women were split between two extremes: those who felt inclined to support the Russian war effort until the very end, such as Bochkareva and her feminist sympathizers, and those who sought to withdraw Russia from the war at any cost, as was the position of Kollontai and the Bolsheviks.

Russia's failure to turn the dire situation on the warfront around led to mass disillusionment with the efforts of moderates and Imperial patriots in continuing the war. This made the Bolshevik's stance of separate peace more and more palatable to the increasingly desperate women and workers at home. The rise in antiwar sentiments and frustration as a result of the economic and social problems the tsarist government left unaddressed and festering under the Great War had led to particularly disgruntled individuals in Petrograd to enter the streets and arouse people around them in protest. After days of sparse demonstrations and protests in Petrograd, the first great demonstration of the February Revolution occurred on International Women's Day of 1917, where women industrial workers were the first to take the initiative to halt work and encouraging others and their male counterparts to follow suit, demanding for bread and an immediate end to the war and tsarism. Women workers protested hand in hand with disillusioned soldiers in Petrograd against the failures of the Russian Army in the ongoing war, and the economic turmoil that was only exacerbated by the mobilization of men and resources for the war.

Alexandra Kollontai, Bolshevik Central Committee member and founding member of the Zhendotel

Growing less and less confident in the military leadership of the Romanovs, soldiers sent to police the demonstrations not only refused to crack down on the protests but eventually became part of the protestors as well. As a result of the joint frustration of workers and soldiers, call for their representation in the State Duma was heard, and the leadership of the preceding Central Workers' Committee were freed from imprisonment, eventually leading to the formation of the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, otherwise known as the Petrograd Soviet. The Petrograd Soviet would act as a rival government to the Provisional Government, leading to a power struggle that would persist until the elimination of the Provisional Government and the ushered supremacy of the Soviet system in the October Revolution.

The demonstrations of the February Revolution had placed immense pressure the political system at the time, with 128,000 people participating on the first day of the march and eventually growing to 520,000 by March 13th (Gregorian).. On March 20th, the League staged a march with approximately 40,000 women, with revolutionary icon Vera Finger in an automobile, from the City Duma to the State Duma to demand the procurement of women's suffrage. Two days later head of the Provisional Government, Prince Lvov assured the granting of women's suffrage, which was made into law weeks later. The prolific nature of women's involvement in the demonstrations and in the political revolution had resulted in the procurement of legal women's emancipation in the framework of the Dual Power structure. On July 20, 1917, as a result, Russia became one of the world's first major power to grant women the right to vote and hold public office. Ultimately, the Bolsheviks' disillusionment with moderate liberal reforms done by the Provisional Government and the feminists would prove irreconcilable and precipitated to the subsequent October Revolution, in which women would continue to play important roles both for and against the Bolshevik coup.

The Bolsheviks and the October Revolution

The weakness of the cult of domesticity in the Imperial era facilitated the introduction of innovative Bolshevik policies. After 1905, radical elements increasingly conceptualized women as locked out of the public sphere, where legitimate participation was restricted to men. Without much exposure and involvement in public affairs, reformers and revolutionaries generally viewed women as backward and superstitious, and not to be trusted politically. Some Marxists referred to women workers as the "most backward stratum of the proletariat" and accused them of being unable to develop a revolutionary consciousness without party guidance. Many wrote and theorized on the issue, but many Russians associated the issue mainly with feminists. Before the revolution, feminism was condemned as "bourgeois" because it tended to come from the upper classes, and was considered counterrevolutionary because of the perception that it would have divided the working class. Engels' 1890 work on The Women Question influenced Lenin heavily. He believed that the oppression of women was a function of their exclusion from the public production sphere and the relegation to the domestic sphere. For women to have been considered true comrades, the bourgeois family had to be dismantled and women needed full autonomy and access to employment. In light of the participation of women in the February Revolution, the Bolshevik Party began to rethink and restructure its approach to "the women question."

What the October Revolution gave to the female worker and peasant. 1920 Soviet propaganda poster. The inscriptions on the buildings read "library", "kindergarten", "school for grown-ups", etc.

The Bolsheviks had opposed any division of the working class, including separating men and women to put some focus specifically on women's issues. They thought men and women needed to work together with no division, and because of this, in the party's early days, there was no literature printed specifically targeting women, and the Bolsheviks refused to create a bureau for women workers. In 1917, they acquiesced to the demands of the Russian feminist movement and created the Women's Bureau.

Beginning in October 1918, the nascent Soviet Union liberalized divorce and abortion laws, decriminalized homosexuality, permitted cohabitation, and ushered in a host of reforms that theoretically made women more equal to men. The new system produced many broken marriages, as well as countless children born out of wedlock. The epidemic of divorces and extramarital affairs created social hardships when Soviet leaders wanted people to concentrate their efforts on developing the economy. They gave a high priority to moving women into the urban industrial labor force. There was a precipitous decline in the birth rate, which the Kremlin perceived as a threat to Soviet military power. By 1936, Joseph Stalin reversed most of the liberal laws, ushering in a conservative, pro-natalist era that lasted for decades to come.

Inessa Armand, founding member of the Zhendotel

The Bolsheviks came to power with the idea of liberation of women and transformation of the family. They were able to equalize women's legal status with men's by reforming certain laws such as the Code on Marriage, the Family, and Guardianship ratified in October 1918 which allows both spouses were to retain the right to their own property and earnings, grant children born outside wedlock the same rights as those born within, and made divorce available upon request. The Bolsheviks launched a movement for women's self-activity; the Zhenotdel, also known as women's section of the Communist Party (1919–1930). Under the leadership of Alexandra Kollontai, and with the support of women like Inessa Armand and, Nadezhda Krupskaya the Zhenotdel spread the news of the revolution, enforced its laws, set up political education and literacy classes for working-class and peasant women and fought prostitution.

While men were forcibly conscripted for service in the civil war when multiple enemies tried to overthrow the Bolsheviks, women were not required to participate. Nevertheless, they did, in large numbers, suggesting the Bolsheviks had gained some women's support. About 50,000 to 70,000 women joined the Red Army by 1920 to make up 2% of the overall armed forces.

During this time Bolshevik feminism really began to take form. Lenin spoke often of the importance of relieving women from housework so they could participate more fully in society, and an effort to pay workers for household chores began. The principle "Equal pay for equal work" was officially legislated. Some changes to the traditional emphasis on family were implemented, including making divorce easily attainable and granting full rights to illegitimate children.

One former revolutionary fighter, Fanni Kaplan, attempted to assassinate Vladimir Lenin in 1918, but was arrested and executed.

See also

• Women in WWI
• Women in Russia
• Feminism in Russia

Further Reading

• Clements, Barbara E. "Working-Class and Peasant Women in the Russian Revolution, 1917-1923" Signs 8#2 (1982), pp. 215-235 online
• Clements, Barbara E. Bolshevik Women (Cambridge UP, 1997).
• Clements, Barbara E. Daughters of Revolution: A History of Women in the U.S.S.R (1994)
• DeHaan, Francisca, Krassimira Dasskalova, and Anna Loutfi (eds.) Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries. (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2006).
• Dzhumyga, Ievgen. "The Home Front In Odessa During The Great War (July 1914–February 1917): The Gender Aspect Of The Problem." Danubius 31 (2013):pp 223-42. online
• Hillyar, Anna, and Jane McDermid. Revolutionary women in Russia, 1870-1917: A study in collective biography. (Manchester UP, 2000).
• Holmgren, Beth, and Rochelle Goldbrg Ruthchild (eds.), A Very Short Course on Russian Women's History Contextualizing Russian Feminism: Twenty Years Forward, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009.
• McDermid, Jane. "The role of women workers in the 1917 Russian Revolution." Theory & Struggle 118 (2017): 82-95.
• McDermid, Jane, and Anna Hillyar. Midwives Of Revolution: Female Bolsheviks & Women Workers In 1917 (1999)
• Porter, Cathy. Fathers and Daughters: Russian Women in Revolution (London: Virago, 1976).
• Ruthchild, Rochelle Goldberg. "Women's Suffrage and Revolution in the Russian Empire, 1905-1917" Aspasia (2007) 1#1 pp: 1-35. DOI:10.3167/asp.2007.010102
• Ruthchild, Rochelle Goldberg. "Women and Gender in 1917." Slavic Review 76.3 (2017): 694-702. online
• Ruthchild, Rochelle Goldberg. "Women's Suffrage and Revolution in the Russian Empire, 1905-1917," in Karen Offen, ed., Globalizing Feminisms, 1789-1945. New York: Routledge, 2010, 257-274.
• Ruthchild, Rochelle Goldberg. Equality and Revolution: Women's Rights in the Russian Empire, 1905-1917 (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2010) online review; also complete text online
• Shcherbinin, Pavel Petrovich. Women's Mobilization for War (Russian Empire) in Ute Daniel, et al eds. 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War ((2014) DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.10278. online
• Stites, Richard. The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism (Princeton UP, 1978).
• Turton, Katy. "Revolution begins at home? The life of the first Soviet family." Family & Community History 8.2 (2005): 91-104.
• Wade, Rex A. The Russian Revolution, 1917 (3rd ed. 2017) ch 4.