How liberated are Russian women?

Scan page 8

Man and inman unrore lomino Priccian fartory . Ine soviet regime encour-: is caugn in a comracutor- vir: ages everyone to work because the one hand they need women of the shortage of the labour working, but on the other hand, required in the drive for rapid their policies to boost the popu- uneven: some are swamped by industrial growth-85% of lation have the effect of driving sociological data and statistics, women work outside the horne. women out of the labour force. but on the whole it should be of This contradiction is interest to Trotskyists fighting ages reproduction in a more resolved by the long-suffering for the emancipation of womer long-term attempt to ease this Russian married woman, who and for political revolution in ninhlem ends un doina both: Dursuind a the USSR. russia, as uppustu lu int uner empnasise inat Women in Russia is not intended as a book for the average reader: it is, rather, an academic work, heavy with sociology and statistics, and its price alone (£12.50) is enough to put most workers off.

However, for those who do penetrate it, it contains a mass of very interesting information and a fairly thorough picture (given the inadequate data available) of the lives of Soviet women.

It also includes background essays on women in pre-revolutionary Russia and on the debates on the woman ques. tion' within Marxism and Stalinism.

The main theme is an examination of the Soviet claim that women in the USSR are completely liberated.

It is, of course, no surprise to Trotskyists to find that this claim is a myth. In fact it is almost surprising that equal opportunities in jobs and education have gone so far:

Economists CLUHUNDED It is interesting to find out for instance, that in 1970, 82% of: economists and planners, 45% of journalists and 40% of eniant Women make up two-thirds of doctors and teachers and -than in all other countries combined!

The essays concentrate almost exclusively on the situation in the RSFSR-i.e. in Drinnin ann had in tha nthor . 23 ine. Soviet states.

Another valuable area of study would be the position of Wonte! amnna.. tho. minnrity nationalities, especially on the East, where Islamic culture remains strong.

It would be interesting to know how far the legal indepen. dence of women and the abolition of bride-pricelare enforced in these areas.

The contributors correctly anita des • Lind tha maim Review: of "The Military Review of "The Military Writings and Speeches of Leon "Trotsky» " Vol. 1, "How the Revolution Armed", published by New Park Publications, price £10. obstacle to the emancipation of women in Russia is their double burden of work: career .and home..

However, their explanations for this phenomenon are hambered by their liberal feminist perspective.

Instead of rooting their analysis in the development of Stalinism, and the authoritarian need for the family, they see it in terms of the triumph of innato rancorustiem ahd caviém. and a general 'lack of commitment to women's liberation among the *(male) political laarlore At the same time, it encourThis would allow women to have children and go out to work without undue hardship. However, the bureaucracy do not act according to the needs of mothers.

The growth of Stalinism from the late 1920s onwards necessitated a social: policy aimed at stabilisation and the imposition of authority.

The family unit was ideat for this task, as Trotsky points out in Revolution Betrayed:

"The most compelling motive of the present cult of the family is undoubtedly the need of the bureaucracy for a stable hierarchy of relations, and for the disciplining of youth by means of 40,000,000 points of support for authority and power"

Since the provision of communal facilities to supercede the tasks of the family threatens this stability and authority, the Stalinist regime is unable to consider this as a policy option.

Instead, they encourage a high birth-rate by obstructing the use • of contraception (although abortion is widely available, and is the standard form of: birth control), by glorying: mornernood in thel alanifisian lainabaiha edi ini thoir ideology and by increasing of "wages for housework" to pay women to stay at home.

So the Soviet bureaucracy is the "natural" role for women often go unchallenged in the 1ICCR In thie milamtion Mallie Rosenhan's study of "Images of Male and Female in Children's Readers" brings this out particularly clearly.

Alfred Meyer's "Marxism and the Women's Movement" contains some points of more general interest about the rale the struggle for women's liberation plays in Marxist theory:

Beatrice Farmsworth's 'Bolshevik Alternatives and the Soviet Family" argues that the 1926 Marriage Law, generally regarded as a radical attack on the institution of the bourgeois family, was in fact the opposite: an attempt to stabilise, rather than undermine the family.

This essay throws considerable light on the debate within the Bolshevik Party about sexuality and family life-a debate which revealed quite deep-rooted differences between radicals like Kollontai, at one extreme and conservatives like Riazanov at the other.

The dominance of radical ideas within the Bolshevik Party was short-lived; experiments in family law and communal living were one of the earliest victims • outcaue dusalien. of humaniminaticatinn Anyone interested in the Soviet Union, Stalinism or, more generally, women's libert 3452 ation. would do well to got hold book il suggest you borrow it).

The quality of the essays is Indeed by August 1918 the Indeed by August 1918 the Soviet power in Russia hung by Cariot simmer in Disasia bisem hir a thread.

The territory of the Soviet Republic was completely encircled by hostile armies:

All the vital grain producing areas of Russia were held by.

----- pull-quotes -----

there are also, apparently, more women engineers, in the USSR