Women actively participated in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the two revolutions of 1917, which deposed the tsar and established a Bolshevik government. Women worked both within the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) and in the many opposition groups and in non-political organisations. Seeking to improve the rights and opportunities of women of all classes, women agitated for change through journalism, political writing, party activism, strikes, assassinations, and forming both political and non-political philanthropic organisations across the Russian Empire.
Ever since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution of the 18th century, women in Russia began to apply the ideas of rationalism and egalitarian liberty to their own situation in society. As elsewhere, convincing male-dominated political institutions that women should have equal rights with men proved to be an immensely difficult task, with ridicule being the typical response to such demands. In Russia, the social reforms of the second half of the 19th century, which included allowing girls into secondary education, did finally give women hope that further change was possible. The women's rights movement was small in terms of numbers, but thanks to women journalists, writers, and political activists, its voice was heard regularly throughout this revolutionary period of Russia's history.
Women in Russian Society
In rural Russia, many teachers and doctors were women, but most women were expected to fulfil their traditional role of wives and mothers. In the cities, several universities admitted female students, but the University Statute of 1884 then reversed this trend when it prohibited women from entering higher education. It was in the second half of the 1880s that women really began to agitate for change and secure more equal rights with men. Women wanted opportunities beyond a domestic home life, equal voting rights with men, access to higher education, professional training, and the right to enter any profession. Women also worked to improve the lives of women who were victims of circumstances beyond their control. For example, late-19th-century Moscow had a charitable organization to help poor women, the Society for Improving the Lot of Women.
The women's movement was essentially split into two groups:. The reformers sought change by working with and within existing male-dominated institutions. Reformers believed in discussion, petitions, philanthropy, and compromise. The radicals, in contrast, believed only direct and often violent action would achieve their aims. Radicals often wished to be clearly identified as such and so cut their hair short, wore simple clothing, and broke social conventions like women not smoking in public. One such radical was the student, Vera Zasulich, who shot the governor-general of St. Petersburg, Colonel Trepov, in 1878. Trepov survived, and Zasulich was acquitted; she later helped found the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). Assassinations became part and parcel of Russian politics, and the women's rights movement was obliged to adopt increasingly extreme measures as Russia plunged into a period of violent revolution in the early 20th century.
Many radical women joined radical male-dominated underground political parties where the idea of equality for women received sympathy but ultimately became subordinate to the overall aim of completely overthrowing the existing political system and creating an entirely new form of society, ideally a completely fair and equal one. Some political groups wanted to postpone the issue of women's rights until a revolution had been achieved that brought down the present form of government and society. A particularly successful group in attracting women was the terrorist People's Will, one-third of whose executive was composed of women. The People's Will was responsible for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II (reign 1855-81). At the other end of the scale, there were more moderate seekers of change, such as Anna Shabanova (1848-1932), a founder member of the non-political Russian Women's Mutual Philanthropic Society; Shabanova served as its president from 1896 until 1917.
The 1905 Revolution
Although the state had repermitted women to join institutions of higher education in the 1890s, the lot of women in Russian society had otherwise not greatly improved. As politics in general became more radicalised, so, too, the women's movement followed suit. By 1905, two of the most important socialist political parties, the Social Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries, promised equality for men and women in their programmes.
Women were involved in the notorious massacre of Bloody Sunday, which sparked off the Russian Revolution of 1905. On 22 January 1905, unarmed and peaceful male and female protestors were led by Father Georgy Gapon (1870-1906). who wanted to present a petition for reforms to the tsar at his residence, St. Petersburg's Winter Palace. When the marchers refused to disperse, soldiers fired upon the crowd and killed over 1,000 people. The wider population reacted immediately, and a general strike was called along with other forms of protest against the Tsarist regime. The protests involved peasants, industrial workers, the urban middle class, and elements of the military.
A Union of Equal Rights for Women was formed with branches across Russia. The union sought the following:
- All women to gain equality with men in terms of political and civil rights
- All women to be treated equally, irrespective of race, nationality, religion, or class
- To increase protection for working women
- To give peasant women equal rights in land redistribution as men
- To give women access to education of all kinds
- To give women access to state and public employment.
The tsar ultimately ended the revolution by promising reforms, but he largely ignored the demands of women. The Electoral Law of December 1905 was particularly disappointing for women since only men were given the right to vote in elections (with some male workers and all soldiers being excluded, too). In the end, the tsar's promised reforms were few and far between.
Between Revolutions
Although revolutionary activities by both men and women receded following the tsar's brutal and sustained crackdown after the 1905 revolution, some women remained prominently involved in the wider revolutionary movement, participating and managing those underground parties and organisations forbidden by the Tsarist regime but which, nevertheless, worked to promote changes for a fairer society. International Women's Day (8 March) was inaugurated in Germany in 1910, and it was first celebrated in Russia in 1913. The two main factions of the RSDLP, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, both issued literature addressing women's rights in 1914. The attitude of the Bolsheviks (who eventually dominated over the Mensheviks) was often ambivalent towards women's rights. There was much debate as to how to best use women in the revolutionary movement. Bolsheviks had "a theoretical commitment to women's liberation via socialist revolution, but a distaste for separate organisation and an unwillingness to accept that women's interests were not always identical with, or protected by, men's interests" (Shukman, 35). Very often, the solution to this conundrum was simply to postpone the issue until after the revolution had been achieved. This attitude perhaps explains why some female activists preferred to join other socialist groups or create their own.
In contrast, a notable figure who worked within the Bolshevik faction was Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939), the wife of Lenin, who served as the accountant and secretary for the Bolsheviks and their newspaper Iskra from 1903 until 1917. Another key figure was Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952), who was on the editorial board of the Bolshevik newspaper Woman Worker (Rabotnitsa) and was made a member of the Bolshevik central committee. A third important female Bolshevik was Inessa Armand (1874-1920), secretary for the Committee of Foreign Organizations, which coordinated the various Bolshevik groups around Europe. Armand had founded Rabotnitsa and edited it along with Kollontai.
Women activists across the political spectrum made sure the pre-1905 momentum was not entirely lost by regularly publishing their own articles and organising all-women congresses, often addressing specific themes such as prostitution and education. There was some progress made in the tsar's popular assembly, the Duma, notably new laws concerning marriage separations and women's inheritance rights. Married women also won the right to hold their own internal passport. No progress was made on awarding women any voting rights in elections.
The First Revolution of 1917
The tsar had been deeply unpopular ever since the Revolution of 1905, and although he survived, his authoritarian rule and unwillingness to pass reforms finally caught up with him in the early months of 1917. Nicholas was unpopular, too, because of his close association with the distinctly odd and self-proclaimed holy man Grigori Rasputin (1869-1916), around whom swirled all kinds of unsavoury rumours concerning his conduct and just how much influence he had over the royal family. On top of all that, the cost of living had risen dramatically during the First World War (1914-18).
Women workers increased during the war because millions of male workers had been conscripted into the armed forces. "In 1917 the proportion of women workers was 40 per cent" (Shukman, 19). In some cities, the figures of women in industry rose even higher. In Moscow, for example, the percentage of women workers rose from 39.4% in 1913 to 48.7% in 1917. Most of the new jobs were blue-collar ones or in agriculture, as there was only a small increase in women in white-collar professions. Women did contribute to the war effort in other ways, notably through their work as doctors and nurses. Some women's organisations set up their own hospitals for the wounded. As in other countries, as the war dragged on, "women's vastly expanded roles in the public arena enhanced their claims for civil rights" (Suny, 471).
Women workers and housewives in Petrograd (the new name for St. Petersburg) were one of the sparks of the Russian Revolution of 1917 when they marched in the streets to celebrate International Women's Day. The authorities had banned any such gatherings, but the women, angry already at severe bread shortages and high food prices, marched anyway when the plan to ration bread was announced, and women in textile factories in the capital went on strike.
The following day, 200,000 workers and demonstrators (men and women) marched in Petrograd, and a general strike began. The demonstrations continued, and things escalated when they were fired upon by the Volhynian and other units of the state armed forces. The crowds responded by storming prisons and police stations, grabbing the city's arsenal, and putting the tsar's ministers under arrest. Tsar Nicholas, without the support of the army, was obliged to abdicate on 2 March. A Provisional Government took over, actually a series of coalitions of liberal and moderate Duma ministers.
New Rights under the Provisional Government
The Provisional Government also struggled with its task of modernising Russia and improving the economy, although universal suffrage was awarded to all adults on 20 July. This latter achievement was thanks in part to the work of women's groups like the League of Equal Rights and the League of Women's Equality, who had organised a demonstration calling for more rights for women in April, which involved 40,000 participants. The women had carried banners with slogans like "A Woman's Place is in the Constituent Assembly", "Strength is in Unity", and "Female Citizens of Free Russia Demand Electoral Rights".
Women over 20 years of age (as with men) were given the right to vote for a future Constituent Assembly and in local elections. Other victories included equal rights for women in the civil service, legal professions, schools, and higher education. In order to ensure mothers were not absent too long from the family home, night work for women was restricted. Ironically, after being granted these rights, the women's rights movement lost influence in the revolutionary parties. As the historian S. A. Smith notes, "women soon found themselves on the margins of revolutionary politics" (Suny, 122).
Opposition to the Bolsheviks
There were many women in socialism who opposed the radical ideas of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who now called for a total revolution. Yekaterina Breshko-Breshkovskaya, aka Catherine Breshkovsky (1844-1934), was an activist and member of the Socialist Revolutionaries, who had worked for greater women's rights since the 1860s. She became known as 'Babushka' or 'Grandmother' of the Russian Revolution but supported the more moderate policies of the Provisional Government. Another vocal critic of the Bolsheviks was Maria Pokrovskaya (born 1852), who created and edited the longest-running political feminist journal Zhenskii vestnik (Women's Messenger) in 1904. The next year, Pokrovskaya, always wary of male-dominated parties, founded the Women's Progressive Party.
Yekaterina Kuskova (1869-1958) was a founding member of the Union of Liberation and, after the 1905 Revolution, the Union of Unions; she also helped found the Constitutional Democratic Party and briefly served on its Central Committee before deciding to pursue social change independent of any particular party. Kuskova opposed the Bolsheviks' revolutionary aims as she believed that "political struggle was a distraction and the social-democratic movement should put its emphasis on economic struggle – that is the day-to-day battle between employers and employees for better wages and conditions" (Read, 41).
There was even more radical opposition to Lenin's Bolshevism. Fanny Kaplan (1890-1918), a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, shot and wounded Lenin in August 1918. Kaplan was arrested and executed. Even after the second revolution of 1917, when Lenin took power, some women remained violently opposed to the Bolsheviks. Maria Spiridonova (1885-1941), who led a new party, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (Internationalists), was against Lenin's policy of withdrawing Russia from WWI. To block this eventuality, Spiridonova ordered the assassination of the German ambassador. This did not, however, prevent Lenin from signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Spiridonova was arrested and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.
Women's Rights After The Bolshevik Revolution
After a summer of strikes and peasant revolts through 1917, the Bolsheviks gained control of worker councils (soviets) and gained wider support with their promise to immediately withdraw from the war. There remained opposition to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, but it was the latter who seized the initiative as 1917 drew to a close.
Lenin, using the Bolshevik Red Guards militia, deposed the Provisional Government and seized power in November. Women had been trained as medical orderlies by Bolshevik medical students, and these were organised into brigades to deal with the wounded during this second revolution. There were, too, some women in the Red Guards. Although the Women's Death battalions of the Provisional Government were disbanded by Lenin after the November Revolution of 1917, in the Russian Civil War which followed, "women, in fact, served in every army on every front in every phase" of that war (Bullock, 110). Women served as soldiers, in logistics, and in medical units.
Lenin believed women, by being released from traditional roles in the home, could be added to the country's workforce. In the new Soviet Russia, tasks like child-minding, cooking, and cleaning were to be collectivised, which would give women more time to work. As Lenin once said in a speech in November 1918, "women have been tied to the home and only socialism can save them from this" (Read, 233). Significantly, such collectives were staffed entirely by women; there was never any debate that men should be involved in these tasks or in child-rearing.
Lenin's new regime guaranteed those women's rights the Provisional Government had already awarded, although upper-class women were now deprived of citizenship. The Bolsheviks also secularised marriage and liberalised divorce. Married couples could adopt the male or female's family name, and either spouse could request and easily obtain a divorce. The right to work for equal pay was guaranteed for women by law. In addition, women, like men, became liable for labour conscription. Women were awarded the right to eight weeks of paid maternity leave if they were labourers, six weeks for white-collar workers. Abortion was legalised in 1920. Women in rural areas benefited from the right to hold land, join communes, and legally act as head of the household.
The Soviet government's intentions were clear by the laws it passed and the gender-neutral language they used. Another declaration of intent was Inessa Armand's organisation of the First International Conference of Communist Women (1920) and the appointment of Alexandra Kollontai as People's Commissar for Social Welfare in the new government, making her the "first woman in the world to hold a ministerial position" (Daly, 90). Through the 1920s, Kollontai led Zhenotdel, the Women's Section of the Communist Party's Central Committee, which promoted women's literacy, ran community kitchens, and cared for abandoned children.
Women featured prominently in Soviet propaganda, such as posters and paintings of workers, farm labourers, teachers, nurses, soldiers, and political activists. In practice, though, not all of the new rights for women were enforced. With male prejudice persisting and women lacking the opportunities to acquire the same levels of education and work-related skills as men possessed, it was too often very difficult or impossible for women to fully realise the rights given to them by law. This was because "the state lacked the means to pursue them, or back up its promises with the resources necessary to support real change" (Suny, 477). Indeed, the opportunities for women were reduced through the 1930s as the Soviet government "ceased even to pay lip-service to women's emancipation as a goal in itself; emancipation became linked exclusively with women's participation in production and contribution to building socialism" (Suny, 479). Much had been won by the women's movement during the three revolutions, but further gains would not come until much later in the 20th century.
