Ilango Arasiyal

women efore and after bolshvik revolution part-1

The history of Bolshevism from the very early days right up to the Russian revolution contains a wealth of lessons on how it is the class struggle that provides the final answer to the women’s question. In this article Marie Frederiksen looks at the approach of the Bolshevik Party to the women’s question from its early days, right through to the revolution and after taking power.

She looks at the measures taken by the party to involve women, the progressive measures introduced by the Bolsheviks once in power, but also the negative consequences for women of the later Stalinist degeneration.

The situation of women before the revolution

Before the 1917 revolution in tsarist Russia the majority of the population was made up of peasants living in rural backwardness, as they had done for centuries. In such conditions the women were treated as the property of men. Russia was still extremely patriarchal. According to Tsarist law, women were not much more than men’s slaves, and men had, by law, the right to beat their wives. Oppression of women was widespread in the culturally backward countryside where the Church and tradition had a firm hold. According to an 1897 report, only 13.1% of Russian women were literate.

In his analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia written between 1896 and 1899, Lenin studied in detail the situation of the Russian working class and the double burden of women. Children and especially girls were expected to help out at home and in the field or the factory. Many girls were taken out of school after a year of schooling, that is, if they even made it to school in the first place. Women workers started working in the factory at an average age of 12-14 years, many of them even earlier. The working day was up to 18 hours long for meagre wages.

But Lenin also described how  industrial development  was a progressive step because it pulled women out of the home and the patriarchal relationships and instead made them an independent part of society:

”Large-scale machine industry, which concentrates masses of workers who often come from various parts of the country, absolutely refuses to tolerate survivals of patriarchalism and personal dependence, and is marked by a truly ’contemptuous attitude to the past’.

“It is this break with obsolete tradition that is one of the substantial conditions which have created the possibility and evoked the necessity of regulating production and of public control over it. In particular, speaking of the transformation brought about by the factory in the conditions of life of the population, it must be stated that the drawing of women and juveniles into production is, at bottom, progressive. It is indisputable that the capitalist factory places these categories of the working population in particularly hard conditions, and that for them it is particularly necessary to regulate and shorten the working day, to guarantee hygienic conditions of labour, etc.; but endeavours completely to ban the work of women and juveniles in industry, or to maintain the patriarchal manner of life that ruled out such work, would be reactionary and utopian.

“By destroying the patriarchal isolation of these categories of the population who formerly never emerged from the narrow circle of domestic, family relationships, by drawing them into direct participation in social production, large-scale machine industry stimulates their development and increases their independence, in other words, creates conditions of life that are incomparably superior to the patriarchal immobility of pre-capitalist relations." (The Development of Capitalism in Russia - V.I. Lenin)

The outbreak of world war in 1914 accelerated the process of integration of women into the workforce. In the textile industry women became the majority of workers in many factories. Also in the metal industry the presence of women workers increased significantly. This was to have a huge impact on how the revolution unfolded.

The first organization of women workers

Women had participated in revolutionary work and also played an important role in the revolutionary events during the nine months between February and October. It would be wrong, however, to simply see women as having come on the scene in February 1917. It is true that prior to the revolution the mass of women had been kept in a passive condition. Nonetheless, for years the Bolshevik party had consciously worked to win the most advanced women and organise them within the ranks of the party. That the Bolsheviks could take power in October 1917 was, therefore, not a coincidence but the result of a conscious effort to raise class consciousness and to organise and unite the working class not just across the national divisions, but also across the gender divide.

This approach of the Bolsheviks to the women’s question contrasted starkly with the attitude of the bourgeois liberals to women who had a condescending and moralistic view of the question. In words they preached equality, while in practice they supported policies that kept the majority of working women in poverty and thereby economically dependent.

If we go back to the early days of the Russian working class movement we see isolated study circles that mainly focused on the education of workers and the study of the ideas of Marxism. The social democratic movement, which in its beginning was based on Marxist ideas and had as a goal a socialist revolution, emerged in 1889 when Mikhail Ivanovich Brusnyev set up the first study circles in both St. Petersburg and Moscow. Initially, the circles were composed mostly of skilled male workers, but gradually women also began attending.

From around 1890-91 women started participating in Brusnyev’s organization. The women’s circles that were set up were particularly directed towards female industrial workers, especially in the textile industry, but also reached out to non-factory workers such as seamstresses and maids. By the end of 1890 there were at least 20 such circles. (Revolutionary Women in Russia 1870-1917 - Anna Hillyar and Jane McDermid, p. 64)

Sofia Pomeranets-Perazich, one of the most active women recalls the miserable conditions in Kiev in the mid-1890s:

"I remember one circle in Podol. Somebody introduced me to a woman worker from a seamstresses’ workshop. Through her I was able to start a circle consisting of eight people. These were young Jewish women seamstresses forced to work under terrible conditions. They slept on the floor and ate in the room where they also had to work; the only time we had for our studies was when the workshop owners, a childless couple, went to see their friends." (Revolutionary Women in Russia 1870-1917, Anna Hillyar and Jane McDermid, p. 77).

Sunday Schools in the working class neighborhoods played an important channel for the spreading of socialist propaganda among the workers. They had been initiated by the government to teach the growing working class in the cities to read and write. Liberal and Marxist intellectuals used the schools to teach and to attract new members to their underground circles. The schools were also used to distribute illegal literature. An increasing number of Sunday school teachers were female students from colleges for women.

In 1895 several of the different social democratic circles merged and formed the Union of Struggle, the forerunner of the Social Democratic Party. There were 4 women among the 17 founding members: Radchenko, Krupskaja, Nevzorova and Lakubova. The last three of these were all assigned responsibility for different districts of Saint Petersburg. The revolutionary work was directed more and more towards mass work among the working class, which was becoming increasingly involved in strikes from the mid-1890s onwards. This also applied to women workers, especially in the textile industry.

In Moscow the trade unions had initially been against accepting female members as they considered them to be more backward and conservative - an idea that was prevalent in all countries in the early stages of the labour movement. But gradually the most advanced workers realised the need to overcome the division within the working class along gender lines.

The Moscow Workers Union, which mainly consisted of male workers, attempted to campaign for unity in the working class with leaflets distributed among the workers in the factories. One of them said the following:

”We must never separate male from female workers. In many factories in Russia women workers already constitute the majority of the workforce, and they are even more cruelly exploited by the factory owners. Their interests are no different from the interests of male workers. Male and female workers must grasp each other by the hand and together struggle for their liberation.” (Revolutionary Women in Russia 1870-1917, p. 75).

Women in the Bolshevik party

Lenin gave great importance to the women's question. As his wife Krupskaya recounts: ”When he was in exile in 1899, Lenin corresponded with the Party organisation (the First Party Congress was held in 1898) and mentioned the subjects he wanted to write about in the illegal press. These included a pamphlet called ’Women and the Workers' Cause.” (Preface to The Emancipation of Women - Nadezhda K. Krupskaya).

Krupskaya also dealt with the women’s question. She was born in 1869, joined the Brusnyev group and through that in 1894 met Lenin, whom she later married. In 1896 she was arrested for membership of the Union of Struggle. In 1898 she joined the Social Democratic Party and was one of the leading female Bolsheviks.

In exile Lenin spent much time on the drafting of the party program for the 1903 Congress. At his suggestion the demand of "complete equality of rights for men and women" became part of the program. This demand, however, was not unique to the Bolsheviks - it was in the programme of all the Russian opposition parties, just as it was an integral part of the programme of all the social democratic parties of the Second International.

The difference with the Bolsheviks was that they were thoroughly consistent on this question. Krupskaya wrote: ”In 1907, in his report on the International Congress in Stuttgart Lenin noted with satisfaction that the Congress condemned the opportunist practices of the Austrian Social-Democrats who, while conducting a campaign for electoral rights for men, put off the struggle for electoral rights for women to ‘a later date’.” (Preface to The Emancipation of Women - Nadezhda K. Krupskaya). What further distinguished the Bolsheviks from all other political currents, was that they actually immediately implemented the demand on coming to power in 1917.

The years after the Congress in 1903 were marked by a strike wave that culminated in the revolution of 1905.  Women workers also participated in this. It is a sure sign of a revolution when the most oppressed and politically backward sections of the working class move onto the political scene. The Revolution of 1905 was described by Lenin as the "dress rehearsal" for the October Revolution in 1917. Here, for the very first time, the workers began setting up workers councils, in Russian “soviets”.

The first Soviet was established in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. The Soviet was active from 12 May 1905 to 27 June 1905. It was set up as a series of local strikes in the spring of 1905 culminated in a general strike in the city. A total of 151 delegates were elected to the Soviet as representatives of the striking factory workers. At least 25 of them (16.5%) were women and Kashintsev, a cotton weaving factory, elected more women than men to the Soviet: 7 out of 8. The proportion of women in the Soviet was in fact remarkable. As Hillyar and McDermid write in Revolutionary Women in Russia, "in such a patriarchal country where there was no history of democratically elected governments, this number of female delegates is seen as a remarkable achievement." (Revolutionary Women in Russia 1870-1917, p. 111)

Information is available for only about half of the delegates elected to the soviet in 1905. About 70, i.e. 46.3 percent, were known to be Bolsheviks. In the first half of 1905, the Bolsheviks in Ivanovo had 400 members, of which only 4 percent were women. However, 11 of the Bolshevik delegates in the Soviet were women. This means that 62.5 percent of female Bolsheviks in the city were chosen for the Soviet, while the corresponding figure was 15.6 percent for the male Bolsheviks. This reveals something about the level of women's activity and the authority they must have had among their male colleagues.

The female Bolshevik delegates came mainly from the textile industry. They were on average 24 years old, but already had many years of work behind them. Six of them had started factory work at the age of 14-16 years, two of them at the age of 12. Many of them had, however, started to work even earlier as nannies. Four of them could not write, and other delegates had to sign the Soviet documents on their behalf.

In the town of Kostroma about a third of the delegates were female textile workers. The number was even higher in Rostov, although women generally accounted for a lower share in the Soviets of the bigger cities.

Trotsky, who in 1905 was elected chairman of the leading St. Petersburg Soviet, later described the Bolshevik Boldyreva, one of the only women workers elected to the St. Petersburg Soviet as "a voice of hope, despair and passion... like an irresistible reproach and appeal." Boldyreva had strongly criticized the predominantly male workers of the giant Putilov factory, who in spite of their revolutionary traditions, had not supported the call for a general strike demanding an 8-hour working day: "You have inured your wives to a comfortable life and therefore you are scared to lose your wage. But we are not afraid of that. We are ready to die to secure an 8-hour working day. We will fight until the very end. Victory or death! Long live the 8-hour working day!" (Revolutionary Women in Russia 1870-1917, p. 124)

The revolution of 1905 ended in defeat, followed by counter-revolution. The Bolsheviks were forced back to mostly underground work. The female Bolsheviks were active on an equal footing with the men. One of the tasks that were often assigned to the female revolutionaries, extremely dangerous one at that, was to organise "safe houses". At least 8 out of the 11 female members of the Ivanovo Soviet in 1905 had organised  "safe houses".

Many women took on the role of secretary. This is sometimes dismissed as being a minor role, and "proof" that the female Bolsheviks were not allowed to play an important role. But this completely misses the point. Both Lenin's sister Maria and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya had the position of secretary, a role which Lenin considered to be extremely important. For example, Krupskaya was party secretary in the years when Lenin was in exile and had the indispensable task of maintaining contact between the party’s exiled leadership and those active in Russia. One only has to remember Lenin’s attempt to get Stalin removed as party secretary, before he died, to understand that it was not an unimportant position.

Another leading female Bolshevik in those reactionary years was Samoilova, codenamed Natasha. Samoilova’s political activity is described in Katasheva’sNatasha - A Bolshevik Woman Organizer.

Samoilova was born in 1876 and started her revolutionary activities as a student. After some months under arrest she left for Paris in 1902. In Paris she received lessons from Lenin, among others, and became a convinced Marxist and joined the Bolsheviks in 1903. She went back to Russia, where she participated in underground work, and had to move from city to city due to her revolutionary activities. When Molotov was arrested in December 1912, Samoilova took over his position as editor of Pravda, the Bolshevik party newspaper. Pravda was at that time almost the only place where workers could have their say. Hundreds of workers sent letters or went directly to Pravda's office. Often there were up to 300-400 visitors passing through Samoilova’s office during a single day.

"The humble editorial office was like a beehive. The workers came in streams: representatives from factories on strike, representatives of trade unions, benefit societies and workers' clubs also came to relate the conditions of their life and work. Meetings of workers in factories collected money in small sums for ’our beloved Pravda’. […] Often a washerwoman or cook, a blacksmith or an unskilled worker came simply to ’tell the paper’ of their troubles. Then the workers of the paper and the secretary herself sat down beside them and wrote what they said, trying to get the actual words of the speaker.” (Natasha - A Bolshevik Woman Organiser, L. Katasheva, 1934).

The Bolsheviks and the petty-bourgeois feminists

The Bolsheviks were generally much more successful at organizing women than the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks had five female delegates for every female Menshevik delegate at the Social Democratic Party’s (united) Fifth Congress in 1907. However, it is also true to say that the organization of work among women was difficult, especially in the reactionary conditions that followed the defeat after 1905. For example, no women attended the party congress in 1912.

The new revolutionary wave just before the First World War, once again led to an increased participation of women in political activity. For example, 10 out of the 171 delegates to the Bolshevik Sixth Party Congress in August 1917 were women, about 6 percent. Here three women - Kollontai, Stasova and Iakovleva – were also elected to the Party Central Committee, the leadership that was to eventually lead the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. The proportion of women on the Central Committee was over 9 percent, while the proportion of women among members was under 8 percent.

In the period from 1914 when there was a surge in the class struggle, many new female members joined the party in the general increase in membership. However, the proportion of women remained relatively low. It was nonetheless a huge achievement to organize the women under these difficult conditions.

In spite of this, the Bolsheviks were attacked by petty-bourgeois feminists for supposedly failing to “care” about the women’s question. The petty bourgeois feminist movement in Russia remained outside the labour movement and initially was mainly concerned with women's right to education, a focus which in the then conditions of Russia meant that they were addressing only a very small section of Russian women. A series of school reforms in the years around the turn of the century did create more opportunities for women to receive an education, and many trained as teachers. This was also reflected in the number of female Bolshevik teachers in the Sunday Schools.

Industrialisation and the consequent growth of the proletariat in the cities gave the feminists a new focus: philanthropic work to create a network of charities that could relieve the conditions of the poor proletarian masses. The petty-bourgeois feminists viewed the effects of industrialisation as something to be "compensated" for with charity and reforms. Despite the misery and hardship created by industrialisation, the Bolsheviks, on the other hand, saw it as a positive step, as it meant that women were being pulled into the class struggle.

Around the year 1900 it seemed that formal bourgeois democracy could have become a concrete possibility and the petty bourgeois feminist movement began political organization to ensure that women were not forgotten if voting rights were granted. The most active group in this was the Association for Women's Equality, which was formed in 1905. One of its leading activists was Anna Miliukov who was the wife of the leader of the Conservative Cadet Party. The Bolsheviks also fought for democratic demands, which concerned all women, regardless of class, such as voting rights, the right to divorce and so on. But the Bolsheviks rejected the claim that these could stand alone - for them it was undeniable that women's liberation could be achieved only through socialism. Lenin explained the relationship between the struggle for democratic demands and socialism as follows:

”Under capitalism it is usually the case, and not the exception, that the oppressed classes cannot ’exercise’ their democratic rights. In most cases the right to divorce is not exercised under capitalism, because the oppressed sex is crushed economically; because, no matter how democratic the state may be, the woman remains a "domestic slave" under capitalism, a slave of the bedroom, nursery and kitchen. […]

“Only those who are totally incapable of thinking, or those who are entirely unfamiliar with Marxism, will conclude that, therefore, a republic is of no use, that freedom of divorce is of no use, that democracy is of no use, that self-determination of nations is of no use! Marxists know that democracy does not abolish class oppression, but only makes the class struggle clearer, broader, more open and sharper; and this is what we want. The more complete freedom of divorce is, the clearer will it be to the woman that the source of her ’domestic slavery’ is not the lack of rights, but capitalism. The more democratic the system of government is, the clearer it will be to the workers that the root of the evil is not the lack of rights, but capitalism. The more complete national equality is (and it is not complete without freedom of secession), the clearer will it be to the workers of the oppressed nation that it is not a question of lack of rights, but of capitalism. And so on.” (A caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism, Lenin)

Up until 1905, many different political groups gathered in opposition to the Tsarist regime and fought together for democratic demands. But a revolution puts the class struggle at the top, and all other contradictions are subordinated to class antagonisms. The petty bourgeois feminist movement was promoted mainly by intellectuals from the better-off layers in Russia. The same was true also for the Bolsheviks. The difference was that the feminist movement was based on the bourgeois idea that women had to stand together across class lines, and that women should organize themselves separately. The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, explained that class division is a crucial division in society. When the class struggle comes to the fore, women are divided by class. For working women liberation can only be carried through via a break with the power and privileges of the ruling class, which are also shared by ruling class women.

This lack of class perspective within the petty bourgeois feminist movement led them to support the First World War when it broke out, because they believed that women's increased role in society, as a result of the mobilisation of men, could pave the way for political progress for women. The Bolsheviks opposed the war, which they characterized as an imperialist war that sacrificed the working masses in the interests of the capitalists.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks attached great importance to the women's struggle and the organization of women, but they did it as part of the working class organizing to fight against all oppression. They therefore believed that women should be organised within the Bolshevik Party and the other working class organisations such as the trade unions, and not in separate women's organisations. The ruling class does what it can to divide the working class along gender, national and religious lines. For the Bolsheviks it was crucial to ensure the unity of the working class, including, for example, workers from all the different nationalities that existed in tsarist Russia.

This did not mean that the Bolshevik Party was perfect in every way. But as Lenin explained, the party must carry through the socialist revolution "with people as they are now." The idea that revolution should be postponed to a time when humanity has developed a "socialist" consciousness amounts to completely abandoning the revolution - such a consciousness cannot develop in a capitalist society. The Bolshevik Party could not be a copy of the future communist society they were struggling to achieve. It arose out of - and could not avoid partly reflecting - the society they were fighting against. The constant focus of the Bolsheviks was to build the party so as to best fulfill its purpose: to organize the working class to take power. And in this women played a crucial role.