Women and revolution: myth and history
On the eve of the 82nd anniversary of Russia's 1917 revolution, socialist revolution remains significant for women's liberation. An analysis of Russia's experience collapses the myth that women's liberation can be achieved merely through accessing bourgeois structures of power — particularly in electoral politics.
Women's involvement in politics relied upon a revolutionary overturn of state institutions. It was during the 1905 revolution, for example, that women entered soviets, and they were organised into the Women's Club in St Petersburg under Alexandra Kollontai in 1907. In an unforgettable historical moment, the International Women's Day march demanding bread and condemning Russia's involvement in the world war sparked the outbreak of revolution in 1917.
The state's role as the ruling class's means of maintaining control over citizens renders it the core institution to be smashed for any fundamental change in power relationships between men and women. The Bolsheviks' smashing of the tsarist state after the October Revolution achieved unique advancements in women's liberation, including legal abortion, marital equality, simplified divorce and the abolition of the concept of illegitimacy.
As commissar for social welfare, Kollontai was instrumental in establishing rights for all workers, rights that were also in the interests of women. The eight-hour day, social insurance, pregnancy leave of four months and the prohibition of both night work and child labour were all implemented immediately.
Women emancipated themselves through taking part in the political process. The Women's Department, for example, conducted a scheme in which women delegates from factories served three months leading local soviets, touring surrounding soviets to enforce the new laws.
International hostility to socialism rather than an absence of consciousness within the party hindered the liberation of women. War and civil war increased demands on the working class, and the economic burdens fell disproportionately upon women because in 1918-21 the social structure had only begun to be transformed. Women bore the brunt of domestic duties and child-care as the government reallocated resources to combating the capitalist threat. The forced "great retreat" to the New Economic Policy brought a steady decline of the number of female party members after 1922. The private sector, of course, was intrinsically hostile to laws protecting women's rights.
This period fostered bureaucratic tendencies that had emerged within the Communist Party, particularly after Lenin's death in 1924. The triumph of Stalin was detrimental to women because it put the need to maintain political power ahead of implementing the new social order.
The Women's Department's funding was diminished on the false notion that women were now liberated because they had legal equality and participated in the work force. Stalin's cult of domesticity during the mid-'30s meant a regression to "feminine virtues" and the celebration of large families. The reactionary family code of 1936 entailed an official revival of the traditional family and the banning of abortion, and made divorce both costly and legally complicated.
Stalinism did not reflect the Marxist-Leninist position on the liberation of women, and it is a mistake to blur the stages in revolution in an attempt to portray socialism as inherently oppressive to women.
The myth that a free market economy enables women to emancipate themselves economically and therefore socially is collapsed by any historical analysis of revolutionary social change. Ostensible legal equality under capitalism is the greatest mirage, because it is precisely this seeming equality that serves to convince capital's subjects that they are free. As we reach the anniversary of October 1917, let us learn from Russia's experience.
By Sarah Irving and Jacqui Mills