Ilango Arasiyal

women before and afr revolution part-2
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A number of women played a leading role in the Bolshevik Party. Aleksandra Kollontai, in addition to her efforts to organize women workers in the social democratic movement, had written a number of articles on the issue. In 1914 she joined the Bolshevik Party and was elected to the Central Committee in 1917. Krupskaya and Samoilova, have already been mentioned. Elena Stasova was already a member of the Central Committee before 1917, succeeding Krupskaya as party secretary that year.. Inessa Armand began her revolutionary activities in 1901 and  from 1910 worked closely with Lenin, whom she was personal friends with. She was the first leader of Zhenotdel, the women's department of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), created after the revolution to organize women politically.

These women all played  an important role not only in building the Bolshevik party but also in organizing women in the Party, not least from 1914 onwards when the party began to step up efforts to attract women to its ranks.

As we have seen, from 1912 onwards, the Russian workers began to raise their heads again after the reactionary years that had followed on from 1905. Strike activity grew, and it also included women workers. On the verge of World War, in 1914, the Bolsheviks began to publish a journal aimed at working women, Rabotnitsa (Women Workers). The first edition came out on International Working Women's Day of that year, with a total of seven issues that year. The regime then clamped down and the paper ceased publication until 1917.

The First World War had cut across and put a temporary halt to the revolutionary wave. Although, it is also true that the war gave renewed energy to women's political organization. The mobilization of millions of men into the army resulted in a huge inflow of women into industry. At the end of the war, women accounted for 40 percent of the workforce in large industry and 60 percent of all textile workers in the Moscow region.

In these conditions, the work of the Bolsheviks bore fruit and they attracted an increasing number of women, especially women workers. Before 1905, over 60 percent of female Bolsheviks had been from the intelligentsia and 28.2 percent were workers. After the February Revolution workers represented 45.6 percent of female members (in these figures maids, nurses and the like were not included in the category of workers). (Revolutionary women in Russia 1870-1917 p. 164).

The political apathy created by the War, however, did not last for long. Military defeats, economic collapse and soaring food prices brought out a large number of workers, including women, in sporadic strike actions against these miserable conditions. All this was to culminate in the February Revolution in 1917.

The outbreak of revolution

The Russian Revolution began on International Women's Day of February 23, 1917 (according to the Julian calendar, March 8 in the West). Even the most advanced layers of the organised working class, including the Bolsheviks, had not fully grasped how mature the situation was for revolution. Although they could see it coming, they felt more preparatory work had to be done, such as winning over the soldiers first. Their perspective was for a general strike on May Day, and in order to avoid premature clashes with the state apparatus, they tried to keep the workers from taking to the streets and limit the scope of the movement, at that point, to assemblies in the factories.

At the M. Aivaz factory women workers suggested celebrating the day as a day for women's equality. They pointed out that women had to both work in the factory, and also had to take care of their children at home. They asked the male workers to support their demands. A factory meeting decided to go on strike and sent workers’ delegations to other factories. More and more factories joined the strike and demonstrations.

A male Bolshevik worker from the Nobel factory in Petrograd described how the female textile workers from the cotton spinning mill Bolshaia Sampsonievskaia had taken to the streets on that day and came to his factory to convince him and his co-workers to join them.

”The gates of the 1st Bolshaia Sampsonievskaia manufacture were wide open. Masses of militant women workers flooded the narrow street. Those who noticed us began to wave their hands and shouted, 'Come on out! Down your tools!' Snowballs were thrown through windows. We decided to join the demonstration. A short meeting took place at the main office by the gates, and the workers went out onto the street. The women workers greeted the Nobel workers with shouts of 'Hooray!' The demonstrators started for Bolshoi Sampsonievskii prospekt.” (Revolutionary women in Russia 1870-1917, p. 152)

Before the revolution, women were seen as the most conservative layer of the working class. Being directly responsible for care of the family, they often hesitated, and were even opposed to taking strike action. But this turns into its exact opposite when living conditions had become intolerable, with the lack of bread, the spiralling inflation, and with many of them with their husbands fighting on the front. Thus, women workers, especially in the textile industries, having reached the limit of what was humanly endurable, decided to take action.

From the early hours on International Working Women’s day in 1917, women workers came out on strike and organised mass rallies in the Russian capital of Petrograd, appealing to the male workers to join them. That day, 90,000 people came out on strike. The immediate cause for the movement was the lack of bread. The people of Petrograd were starving and the burden fell mainly on women, who had to stand for hours in endless queues in the February freezing conditions waiting for bread, very often only to be disappointed.

In all, more than 100,000 participated in demonstrations that day in Petrograd. The demands were not just for “bread” and “lower prices”, but also demands such as "Down with the war!" could be heard. In police reports from February 23rd you can read of the arrest of women workers who had shouted at the police:

"You don't have long to enjoy yourselves - you'll soon be hanging by your necks!" (Revolutionary women in Russia 1870-1917, p. 152)

Thousands of soldiers were stationed in Petrograd because of the First World War. The women participated in the fraternization and agitation to persuade the soldiers to join the movement: they went to the barracks, distributed flyers and organized meetings. It worked. Many soldiers refused to obey orders to fire on the demonstrators, but instead went over to the side of the Revolution.

In the following days the demonstrations and strikes grew into a general strike and insurrection. Five days later the hated Tsar was overthrown. Without even having realized it the working class had power in its hands. It is no exaggeration to say that it was the women workers who were the most determined and militant and it was they that ignited the revolution.

This was a graphic display of what we have seen in all revolutions throughout history: the normally inert, downtrodden layers, suddenly come to the forefront and the pent up anger and frustrations of years, if not generations, transforms this passive layer into the most advanced section of the movement. Women had been passive; now they were the most active. This process of revolution broke down the established divisions within the working class, in particular that between men and women, and was more effective than a thousand petitions.

After February

This movement of the women workers set in motion the whole of the working class. Hopes were raised high by the February Revolution . The workers raised demands for bread, an 8-hour working day and an end to the war. However, after the first period of jubilation the mood became more embittered, as the workers realised that even the new regime was not prepared to meet their demands. The strike movement increased with mass protests and demonstrations to press their leaders to fulfill the demands.

The thinking of all socialists at the time, although there were key differences between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks - with the exception of Trotsky who had developed his theory of the Permanent Revolution - was that the coming revolution would be bourgeois. It would put an end to the old despotic Tsarist regime and prepare the ground for capitalist development. But the Russian bourgeoisie played no role in the revolution - they were more afraid of the Russian workers than of the monarchy and had tried until the last moment, to make a deal with the old regime. It was only when they realized that they could not stop the revolutionary movement through an agreement with the monarchy that they hastily set up the Provisional Government.

But the working class, based on the tradition of 1905, proceeded to set up workers;’ councils, the soviets, which emerged as organs of working class power. Lenin understood that the old perspective of bourgeois revolution had been superseded by the intervention of the working class. While the moderate socialists continued to offer collaboration with the bourgeoisie, the Bolsheviks rejected any cooperation with the Provisional Government, and instead raised the slogan of "All power to the Soviets", as the only way to fulfill the demands of "peace, bread and land".

Women workers were a key element in this process, not only participating in the strikes and demonstrations, but also organising armed defence of the revolution, for example in Petrograd during Kornilov's reactionary coup attempt in August. They fought and died side by side with the men of the Red Guards. The Bolshevik women naturally took part in revolutionary work, both in the local and national organizational work, speaking at public meetings, distributing leaflets, transporting weapons, guaranteeing communications and providing care for the wounded.

The situation was also dramatically changing the conditions for women in the countryside. The war had only worsened the double burden on peasant women. While their men were at the front, all the responsibility for the farms and the land fell on their shoulders. The Provisional Government was talking about solving the agrarian question with promises of land to the peasants, but nothing concrete happened. It was too concerned about the landlords to implement land reform. During the summer the revolutionary movement spread to the rural areas producing a peasant revolt, with the main demands being for land and peace. Such was the revolutionary ferment affecting the peasantry, that in spite of the dominant patriarchal relations, there were several cases of women peasants rebelling in the countryside.

The Voronezh governorate for example, saw uprisings of soldiers’ wives in the early summer of 1917. The movement began when the authorities ignored the demand of 30 soldiers’ wives, that the distribution of village land should be postponed until their men were back from the front. 200 soldiers’ wives gathered: ”First they scattered boundary posts, then they raided farmsteads of land-owning peasants, destroying their kitchen gardens, taking out window frames, doors and in some cases having entered houses they broke stoves, demolished or stole furniture, house implements and other property. Groups of women burst into properties initially encouraged by cries from men following them, ’Smash it, women, you won't be punished, your husbands are at the front’.” (Revolutionary Women in Russia 1870-1917, p. 154)

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