1917-2017 CENTENARY

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF WOMEN’S REVOLUTION

The Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF)'  worldwide campaign aims to

• highlight the women's protagonism in October Revolution
• highlight benefits that the Bolshevik revolution brought not only to the Russian people and women, but also all over the world;
• enhance political principles and ideals that motivated  the revolutionary process in Russia and have been influencing every revolutionary processes in the world, including the women's liberation movement.

"The Bolshevik revolution has uprooted more prejudices about women than mountains of writings on women's equality", Lenin declared with justifiable satisfaction in 1920, during his famous interview with Clara Zetkin.

"Women occupy management positions in the Soviets, Executives, in all kinds of ministries and public offices and this is a great value for us "- the leader of October Revolution added - "This is important for women all over the world, because it highlights the women’s capacity and the great value of their work  in our society."

It’s true, in fact, that the 1917 Russian revolution has imprinted on itself the sign of the female leading role since its inception.

On March 8, 1917 (corresponding to 23rd of February of the Russian calendar), textile women workers went on strike and took to the Petrograd streets  and shout their protest against war and tsarist autocracy which deprived their children of bread. They crossed the popular neighbourhoods of the city and asked people to get out of houses and join them. Their cry was heard by thousands of citizens in Petrograd and, day after day, other women and men joined their protest. The police sent to disperse the crowd mutinied and ended up siding with the people. The Tsar was forced to abdicate and Revolution began.

In the summer  of that year, Bolshevik Party asked Kerenskj’s provisional  government  the unconditional withdrawal from the war and launched the slogan: "All Power to the Soviets!", i.e. the People’s Councils . In October, the Winter Palace was assaulted and occupied by the insurgent proletariat.  

Today we also know that the spark lit in Petrograd, which had flare the revolution’s flame  throughout the tsarist empire, few years later inspired women the idea of choosing March 8 as International Women's Day.

A huge female rejuvenating energy - in the words of Aleksandra Kollontaj who was among the protagonists of October Revolution - sprang from the "revolutionary  Storm" and it stood out because of the leading role that many women played in it. That role had been consolidated through some essential steps that must be remembered.

By winning the Tsarist repression and juggling theirselves between exile abroad and clandestinity at home, Bolshevik women since 1912 were able to publish the paper "Rabotnitsa" (Women workers). It was the first newspaper designed and published for women workers in Russia, and it spread revolutionary ideas on labour and specific female issues. In the newspaper editorial board we read the names of women who were protagonists of the 1917 revolution: Nadezhda Krupskaja, Anna Elizarova, Inessa Armand, Lyudmila Stal',  Alexandra Kollontaj, Konkordiya Samoilova, Klavdia Nikolajeva.

In 1914 these same women launched an international women's conference in Bern against war and then organized the first conference of  Russian women workers in Petrograd.

Unlike the bourgeois feminists, the Bolshevik women were convinced that gender oppression’s issues should be connected to that of class and the political, social and economic context that determined them. As long as women remained excluded from the public sphere of production and relegated to the domestic sphere of reproduction, the bourgeois family model would remain the core where women's private oppression took place. The prerequisite for women to acquire the necessary political space for themselves was access to employment and economic autonomy. But overcoming the capitalist exploitation, which forced women workers to double slavery in the factories and at home, was a necessary condition to actually free all women from patriarchal oppression.   Thus, the working women’s liberation was inextricably linked to the socialist revolution, which would give women the strength to transform the whole society. 

Thousands of young women  joined the revolutionary movement  in Russia, but inevitably some of them took on the roles of great responsibility and relief in the start of the new Soviet state building, by deploying the most of their courage, intelligence, spirit of sacrifice and dedication.

Alessandra Kollontaj (1872-1952) was one of the top leaders of the Bolshevik Party and part of first Soviet government as Commissioner for social services. She was the first woman minister in history. Later and for many years she was USSR ambassador (the second woman in the history of diplomacy) and played a valuable diplomatic work during World War II. Aleksandra was a brilliant and tenacious woman and wrote numerous essays, articles, books which dealt with the problems of women, motherhood, sexuality.  She died at 80 years in Moscow in 1952.

Nakzhezda Krupskaya,  married Lenin at the time when they were deported to Siberia and was close to him until his death (January 21, 1924), but she had her own crucial role in education and spread of schools and libraries in the new Soviet state. Nadezhda worked in the Ministry of Education and wrote  essays on education of great value (in addition to the most famous autobiographical book "My Life with Lenin"). She died in Moscow in 1939.

Inessa Armand (1880 - 1920) was of French origin, carried out her studies became a political activist in Russia. She was a Bolshevik leader of well-known intelligence and specially cared for the activities of the mythical Zhenotdel , the women's department of the Party which very effectively promoted women’s  equality by organizing literacy courses  in the newly born Soviet republics and helping the submissive wives of farmers to transform themselves in emancipated women workers.  Unfortunately  in 1920 Inessa contracted typhus and died just over forty.

Anna Ul'janova Elizarova (older sister of Lenin), was inspiring and editor of the newspaper "Rabonitsa" and subsequently she was at the head of the Department for the children’s protection in the Ministry of Education.

Larissa Rajsner (1897-1928) was a writer and political Commissioner of the Red Army during the civil war that followed the October revolution.  She was special  foreign  correspondent  for the newspaper "Izvestiya" from 1924 to 1925. She died in Moscow by typhoid fever just thirty years old.

Vera Menzhinskaja in Twenties worked in the Ministry of Education with leading roles (and later she directed the Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow).  Mariya Andreeva, actress, was coordinator of Petrograd theaters. She was head of the art section of Narkompros (People’s Commissariat for Education) and finally director of the Scholars’ House in Moscow.

We must also mention; Klavdia Nikolayeva, real animator of the newspaper  "Kommunistka"; Lyudmila Stal '  participated in founding the paper Iskra (Spark) in Paris in 1899 and then oversaw the press intended for Red Army fighters, during the civil war unleashed  in 1918 by the White armies.

That's only  to mention some women. 

Their presence at the top of the revolution  allowed  these women to take part in drafting laws that introduced civil and social equality for women in the Federative Soviet Republic. First of all, the active and passive voting was extended to women to ensure their full participation in political processes. Then the new Family Code was introduced and ratified in 1918,  which pared the civil status of women and men; civil marriage was introduced, establishing the equality of spouses (inter alia, each of the spouses was granted the freedom to take on the surname of the other); the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children  was  eliminated,  which caused fierce discrimination;  the cohabitation  outside marriage was legalized and  divorce proceedings were facilitated. Abortion was legalized and  the women’s right to decide was recognized. Measures were introduced to help women escape prostitution; homosexuality was decriminalized.

In early 1918, a Department for maternity and child protection was established  to provide for application of the new legislation on maternity, which protected working mothers  and established a 16-week leave before and after childbirth, exemption from hard labor, prohibition on transfer and dismissal for pregnant mothers, the night work prohibition for women and institution of clinics and outpatient clinics for maternity, counselling centres’, nurseries for children.

Also forms of socialization of domestic work and public services were introduced  to support working families. The principle "equal pay for equal work"  became law.

In the fall of 1919, Žhenotdel was created, that is a specific department of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party for autonomous women's activities, which promoted political education and literacy courses for working and peasant women. Zhenotdel printed its monthly newspaper "Kommunitska" that was targeting all women, not just the communist ones. It also promoted the spread of women's newspapers in the Soviet republics (in 1927, there were 18) and encouraged political formation meetings where millions of women were involved.

When the reactionary "white army" unleashed the civil war, women voluntarily  in large numbers enlisted Red Army: it is believed that in 1920 about 50 - 70 thousands of women were part of it.

The Bolshevik women had extraordinarily anticipatory ideas, that feminists have been able to resume only in recent decades, such as overcoming the division between public and private life, as well as productive and reproductive work, imposed by the patriarchal social organization  and culture. This division is at the origin of the double sexual morality and subdues women at family enslaving relations. They claimed the social value of motherhood in defining women's oppression and they stressed the importance of the "private" that becomes "political" when all women recognize themselves  in it.  Such conceptions, which were the basis of the new Family Code promulgated by the Soviet government in 1918, make it a legal instrument which is still unsurpassed - for its innovative spirit - in so many countries of the world.

The Bolshevik women devoted themselves to women’s political education with much of passion and unsparing of their selves, to the most remote corners of Soviet European and Asian Republics. They promoted education among Muslim women, who were most oppressed by the traditional patriarchy, in order to make them become agents of social change and socialist values.

But all this did not happen without encountering strong resistances in the traditionalist pre-capitalist societies where patriarchal structures  most deeply were  rooted. Reforms weren’t peacefully accepted by that part of the peasant population under the thumb of the prejudices of the past, especially in the eastern remote regions where women sometimes paid  a high price to their liberation desire. Every day news came to  Zhenotdel on women beaten and punished because they had attended party meetings. In 1928 Zhenotdel denounced in Uzbekistan 203 cases of women killed by their fathers, husbands and brothers.  

All this forced women to slow down their march sometimes, in some cases to recede. To the difficulties that the construction of the new Soviet state met inside, threatening outside complications were added, as the siege of the international bourgeoisie became more and more stringent and the tremendous threat of World War II was approaching, unleashed by European Nazi-fascism and Japanese militarism. A counterforce led the retreat on some achievements and innovative policies. Since 1930 some civil rights were cancelled by the Soviet Family Code: emphasis back on the traditional model of family; abortion and homosexuality were again punished; divorce became more difficult to be obtained. Even the Zhenotdel department was suppressed, before all the women's aims promised by Revolution were actually achieved.

However, the progress of Soviet women could not be stopped and the laws born of the October Revolution continued to be a source of inspiration for the women’s struggles worldwide, especially laws on labour rights and maternity protection. "Let’s do it like in Russia!", it was a very slogan in the  proletarian  demonstrations - even in the decades after World War II - in many countries where capitalist exploitation dominated. 

Even nowadays we can say, without fear of being denied, that the 1917 October Revolution represented a formidable step forward not only for the workers and peoples of the whole word, but also for  women. You can not write the history of the international women's movement without referring to that extraordinary revolutionary season and the wonderful  Bolshevik women’s struggle, if you want to understand the developments of it to this day.