Womengand the Revolution

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*'The success of the revolon depends on how many omen take part in it" • Wrote min. Trotsky also regarded • extent to which women d broken from the old beat, tracks and that "archaic, iffy and stagnant institution I the family," 'the most reacnary and benighted nucleus ¡the class system" as a baroeter of revolutionary change.

br for evaluating a social sime and state policy" (Surely enough the main phases the movement of the mass of amen workers in Russia did Bect and were a force within the ¡in stages of the revolution.

STRIKES with in 19 le war A AM Demonstration, March 1917, Beginning the massive ke wave 1910, itinuing Dughoui ti eric - when 1h - demanding votes for women 1917 with demands for bread and peace, women workers were an important part of the mobilisation of workers which lead to the seizure of power in October 1917.

Subsequently their struggles in the civil war and in mass organisations of women in the party reflected the determination of the new dictatorship of the proletariat to transform the family and social relations even under conditions of great want.

FAMILY With the restoration of the family under Stalinism the position women again epitomised the political counterrevolution. - The programme of the second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903 on the initiative of the Bolsheviks, included demands for complete equality of rights between men and women and for 10 weeks maternity leave, workplace creches, halt hour allowances for nursing mothers and female inspectors in workplaces employing women [the latter because of the widespread abuse of "amon workere hu male insnecXE:

In the backward Russian economy women formed only a small part of the industrial workforce and were only sporadically involved in the strikes and the revolution of 1905.

The bourgeois women's movement had grown in strength since the 1890s but the Bolsheviks were adamantly opposed to it because of its separatism and reformist stress on individual rights. Only a handful of working class women attended the 750-strong All-Russian Women's Conference in 1908.

Kollontai had persuaded the Bolsheviks to attend at the last moment and their class analysis of women's emancipation was received with bitter hostility.

BOLSHEVIK

Kollontai, who later became a leading Bolshevik and whose writings about the personal transformations necessary for socialist women remain brilliant, had to flee from Russia during that conference.

She alone among the Bolsheviks (and she wavered between Bolshevism and Menshevism until 1917) ance of work amongst thạt time.

200-300 , women textile, cardboard, rubber, tobacco, footwear and domestic workers attended her women's club • - one of the few forms of political organisation permissible under the prevailing conditions of illegality.

In 1909 the Ist International Conference of Socialist Women was held in Stuttgart followed by another in Copenhagen in 1910. There, Clara Zetkin, editor of the German socialist women's paper Die Gleichhett (Equality) since 1889, and who later played an important part in mobilising women against the imperialist war, the question which split the Second International, argued for a special organisation amongst women.

If the mass of proletarian women were to be brought to socialism, account must be taken of their political backwardness, their emotional peculiarities, their twofold burden in the home and in the factory, in short, all the special features of their existence.

Other points of contact with them must be sought and somewhat different ways and means of Part of the international strugrle again isational work must be found.

1910 brought a massive wave of strikes to Russia in which women were solidly involved, winning concessions on such questions maternity leave and pay. But it was not until February 23rd, 1913, the first Russian celebration of international women's day (which had been started five years before by textile workers in Manhattan) that the Bolsheviks really took up the struggle among women.

A special issue of Prayda was produced, congratulating women for entering the ranks of the fighting proletariat and insisting, contrary to the Mensheviks, that the day be celebrated by the entire working class and not just women.

Bolsheviks all over Russia gave speeches on the road through socialist revolution to the emancipation of women.

INVADED That year also, Bolshevik women invaded a meeting organised by the Mensheviks. Seizing the microphone, one of them made such a fiery speech about the aims of the revolution that all the women and soldiers present left singing the International, leaving only one Menshevik behind.

The correspondence resulting from this lead was so great that by the autumn the Bolsheviks decided to start a women's newspaper, Rabonitsa - The Working Woman.

Eight factory workers worked with the editorial board on the first edition which called on women to join the fight for socialism hand in hand with men.

The paper declared that it helped women to become conscious and organised and while it included articles on maternity insurance, female labour, child care centres, hygiene information, the tamily and children's stories, it emphasised the common cause, the common goals, the common path to these goals.

ARRESTED

While preparing the second issue of the paper, however, the whole editorial board was arrested.

Only Lenin's sister, arriving late to a meeting, escaped and she managed to bring out that issue single handed and four more in the spring of 1914 - one of which was confiscated for publicising mass poisonings at a rubber factory and other industrial hazards.

During the war women comprised 40% of the Petrograd industrial workforce. As inflation mounted, bread queues lengthened and wages were held down, so their fury mounted.

Street demonstrations had been occurring in several major cities before February 1917, but on international women's day they took a new turn, becoming city wide actions. Thousands came out on strike, railroad cars were overturned and police attacked in their

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women's oppression - suffragettes march in New York, 1917 In preparing for the marches on February 23rd the Bolsheviks had seen opposed to strike action. They wanted to encourage discipline and elf control in the demonstrations ind issued instructions that the party committee should be obeyed.

As Trotsky wrote later, however, he February events were:

..a revolution begun from elow, overcoming the resistance of ts own revolutionary organisations, he initiative being taken over of heir own accord by the most ppresser and down trodden part the proletariat - the women extile workers, among whom no loubt were many soldiers wives." : The March strikes for pay and he eight-hour day which soon urned into a struggle not just bainst the employers but against ne newly elected Menshevik and ocial kevolutionary Soviet leaders. so involved great numbers of omen. At the Folik factory a 00% wage rise for men and 125% it women was won and new trade hions were formed among laundry id restaurant workers in order to it representation on the Soviet. : A demonstration calling tor pmen's suffrage, organised on arch 8th, by bourgeois feminists ul Mensheviks, attracted 35,000, hile soldiers wives marching for wernment grants in early April ew 100,000.

• AGITATION On March 11th the Petrograd recutive Committee of the Boleviks placed Vera Shutskaya in large of agitation among women. A women's bureau was formed part of the Petrograd Committee : which each district committee «i to elect a representative. i There was to be no independent amen's organisation whatsoever. stead, all work was to be carried i in full agreement with the trograd Committee. : These special forms of organition around women still aroused great deal of controversy in the ry, with accusations that it ked of 'feminism'.

At Lenin's suggestion a working ›men's conference attended by all idencies was organised and a Bolevik resolution that all industrial ganisation among women should carried out under the guidance Bolshevik organisations was ised in the face of Menshevik uments that it should be indeplent and not subordinated to any litical party. 'Rabotnitsa was resumed in May i in June organised an intertional anti-war protest attended 100,000 and another large ›test against the cost of living in JULY DAYS In the repression of the July ps it was the only Bolshevik can still being printed. July saw development for men workers as for workers erally. For when the Mensheries ARE 83*• h a: 80= and Canial Darnist.

aul pullar novululunaries Iriea to blame the Bolsheviks for the abortive uprising, workers began to see their treaharnie and rauntan revolutionary role.

The conference of Petrograd Working Women organised October by Rabotnitsa and attended by 500 delegates representing 80,000 workers, was cut short by the seizure of power.

The purpose had been to prepare non-party women for the coming uprising and to acquaint them with the programme of the new Soviet government. But now the real task of transforming the role of women could begin.

MARRIAGE

Within six weeks of the revolution, ecclesiastical control of marriage was replaced by civil registration and within a year the new Matrimonial Code established equality of rights between men and women in marriage and abolished the legal distinction between legitimate and illegitimate ildren.

Women could chose their own name and nationality, divorce was obtainable by mutual consent and later by the decision of one party, and abortions were legal and free.

Alimony had to be paid for six months only after a separation if one partner was unemployed or unable to get a job.

The involvement of women in these questions was intense. Already in November 1918 Rabotnitsa convened the first All-Russian Conference of Working and Peasant Women in Moscow.

Because of the difficulties of communication in the civil war, agitators were dispatched all over Russia to inform women about the conference and facilitate the election of delegates. 300 were expected but 1,147 came.

Problems of working women in Soviet Russia, the family and Communist government, social welfare, organisational problems, prostitution, child labour and housing were discussed.

PARTY COMMISSION

The idea of autonomous women's sections was. resolutely opposed and instead a central commission for women was set up and then a Working and Peasant Women's Department of the Communist Party, Genodtel, which had branches throughout the Soviet Union.

One of the first tasks of Genodtel was to mobilise women for the civil war. Women joined the Red Army and lead a section of guerillas against the White Guards as well as serving as red nurses, digging trenches and carrying out political and agitational work in the front line.

Despite the severity of the economic problems and deprivations many creches, kindergartens, public laundries and canteens were estabThese public facilities were essential to the building of socialism for as Kollontai, now Commissar for Public Welfare urged;

...domestic labour takes up all La woman's] time, takes away her strength, prevents herself giving herself up to direct, active participation in the struggle for communism and construction work."

Rabotnitsa itself closed when the government was moved from Petrograd to Moscow. Then Pravda ran both a women's page and a peasant's page, but in 1920 Kommunistka (Communist Woman) was started.

In the civil war, with the urgency of winning all sections of workers to the Communist cause.

work amongst women assumed double significance, the necessity to win women to the Communist cause.

But women's issues were by no means limited to women. Already in 1918 the Petrograd Committee of Trades Unions, faced with growing unemployment and the demand by men workers that they should have the jobs and women should be fired first led to the decision that no sexual discrimination was permissible and that the most needy workers should be those to get the jobs.

'Only such an attitude will make it possible for us to retain women in our organisations and prevent a split in the army of workers.' HARDSHIP was during the period of greatest hardship therefore, that the greatest attempts were made to change the position of women.

Despite the economic and social compromises necessary to the survival of the new proletarian state the objectives of socialism were continually discussed.

But with the treacherous abdication from driving forward the international revolution under Stalinism and the espousal instead of "socialism in one country" ", even the economic recovery was used as an argument against the replacement of the family:

From 1926 onwards abortion was made illegal, penalties for failure to pay alimony were introduced, divorce became more difficult and expensive, coeducation was abolished and the women's section of the party and all mass organisations of women were dissolved.

'PROSPERITY

Krupskaya, Lenin's widow, wrote in the mid-30's that because the country had become rich, mighty and prosperous, the questions of the family and of abortions appeared in a new light.

In the new conditions there were no material reasons why women should not be able to, and enjoy having children. and since every aTE as = member or potential Clara Zetkin Trotsky mother, she was the natural person to bring up her children.

Stalinism in this way opportunistically negated the comprehensive aims and theory of socialism by restricting its view to the solution of immediate problems.

The revolution however, did produce chaos in personal and social relations, not least of which was the problem of thousands of homeless children. Trotsky recognised that:

"The old family continues to dissolve faster than the new institutions are capable of replacing it." while at the same time the continued generalised want meant that it was impossible to provide childcare, eating and laundry facilities of sufficiently high standards to:

"...deal the deathblow to the closed-in isolated family unit, completely supported on the bent shoulders of the housewife and mother."

But Trotsky appreciated the progressive nature of the social crisis and even of the anarchic individualism resulting not just from the forces of war and revolution but also from critical thought, the conscious study and valuation of family relations and forms of life.

The Stalinist bureaucracy resting lige 7 on the gains of the revolution while at the same time feeling insecure in its betrayal of them, seized upon the restoration of the family as an instrument of counter-revolution.

As Trotsky wrote:

"The most compelling motive for the present cult of the family is undoubtedly the need of the bureaucracy for a stable support of authority and power.

Trotsky had supported the need for women's organisations within the new dictatorship:

"You must be the moral battering ram which will break through the shell of conservatism, rooted in But in a sint aare in pare en and in the prejudices of workers themselves, which have arisen from the worst aspects of peasant traditions."

Under Stalinism these organisations were abolished and with them the determination to drive the revolution through to the full achievement of socialism.

Thus comes about the irony that feminists who out of petty bourgeois tendencies join the Communist Party today, find themselves ensnared in an organisation whose survival depends on the shackles of the family.

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The position of women is the bst graphic and telling indic-