A Revolution for Russian Women

Did the Revolution improve Russian Women’s Rights?

When they first came to power, Lenin and the Bolsheviks had a very progressive program for
women intended to free them from domestic labor and even economic dependency on a husband.
Bolshevik female activists like Alexandra Kollontai became leaders in this effort and promoted a
new vision of women as the equals of men and a new vision of communal society where domestic
chores including childcare were the responsibility of the soviet state. As the statebuilding
progressed under Stalin, however, these ideals were sacrificed to practical reality of workforce
needs, more restrictive views of morality, and a pro-natalist policy that returned women’s roles to
those of mother and home maker. Historians of Russian women find it difficult to generalize
about the experience of women across such a large region. Elite, urban Russian women often had
access to education and opportunities for advancement that rural peasant women did not. Religion
could create differences too since women in areas like Petrograd, where an end to organized
religion was promoted actively by the Bolsheviks, had fewer restrictions on their behavior than
Muslim women in soviet republics like Turkmenistan. Evidence of equality is also debated. For
some scholars, women’s suffrage is one of the key indicators of a culture of equality while other
scholars look for signs of equality in the workplace and division of family labor. Sources from the
women themselves also paint a varied picture of equal rights. While the opportunity to vote, hold
office, and work alongside men was valued, women also felt they needed to care for their children
and handle the household chores like shopping and laundry. For this reason, expectations that
women would participate equally in public life and labor often caused women more stress than
they had suffered before the Revolution.

Primary Sources
Alexandra Kollontai, The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (New York:
Herder and Herder, 1971).
Alexandra Kollontai was a communist revolutionary who became a devoted Bolshevik in 1915.
Immediately after the revolution, she was named the People’s Commisar for Social Welfare and
by 1919 had founded the Women’s Department. Her critiques of soviet policy in the early 1920s
resulted in censure but not persecution. Despite her critiques of the regime, Kollontai was
appointed Soviet ambassador to Norway in 1923. This post allowed Kollontai to be a model for
politically active women but also kept her out of the USSR while the new policies on the roles of
women were being debated by the party. She later served as ambassador to Mexico and Sweden.

I always believed that the time inevitably must come when woman will be judged by the same moral
standards applied to man. For it is not her specific feminine virtue that gives her a place of honor in
human society, but the worth of the useful mission accomplished by her, the worth of her personality as
human being, as citizen, as thinker, as fighter. Subconsciously this motive was the leading force of my
whole life and activity. To go my way, to work, to struggle, to create side by side with men, and to strive
for the attainment of a universal human goal but, at the same time, to shape my personal, intimate life as
a woman according to my own will and according to the given laws of my nature.
… I managed to become a member of a government cabinet, of the first Bolshevik cabinet in the years
1917/18. I am also the first woman ever to have been appointed ambassadress, a post which I occupied
for three years and from which I resigned of my own free will. This may serve to prove that woman
certainly can stand above the conventional conditions of the age. The World War, the stormy,
revolutionary spirit now prevalent in the world in all areas has greatly contributed to blunting the edge
of the unhealthy, overheated double standard of morality… Diplomacy, however, is a caste which more
than any other maintains its old customs, usages, traditions, and, above all, its strict ceremonial. The fact
that a woman, a "free," a single woman was recognized in this position without opposition shows that the
time has come when all human beings will be equally appraised according to their activity and their
general human dignity. When I was appointed as Russian envoy to Oslo, I realized that I had thereby
achieved a victory not only for myself, but for women in general and indeed, a victory over their worst
enemy, that is to say, over conventional morality and conservative concepts of marriage.
… In my opinion the most important accomplishment of the People's Commissariat, was the legal
foundation of a Central Office for Maternity and Infant Welfare. The draft of the bill relating to this
Central Office was signed by me in January of 1918. A second decree followed in which changed all
maternity hospitals into free Homes for Maternity and Infant Care, to set the groundwork for a
comprehensive government system of pre-natal care.

Pravda, "On the Path to a Great Emancipation," March 8, 1929.

Pravda was the official newspaper of the Bolshevik and later the communist party. In March
1917 Joseph Stalin and Lev Kamenev took over the editorial board and altered the political
direction of the paper. Communist policy and party line on every issue was distributed to the
people through Pravda and so subscriptions to it were mandatory for businesses. This article
was one of many celebrating, March 8, International Communist Women’s Day.

Today is international communist women’s day, the international day for working women.
Today is a holiday in honor of one-half of the international proletarian army and in honor of the
women workers of the socialist Soviet Union.

…Our woman worker in the past . . . during the barbaric, savage, and blood stained tsarist
regime. The heavy and hopeless fate of the woman worker—as mother, wife, and girl. All of the
striving of the woman worker toward the light, toward freedom, and to a human existence were
snuffed out by the criminal arm of the autocracy. The exploitation and debasement were tripled:
in politics, in factory labor, and in daily life.

…Only we in the Soviet Union have at hand all of the preconditions and foundations for the
complete emancipation of working women. … Only our women have been emancipated in
practice, acting as conscious builders of a new society and a new governing commune, and
speaking out as active citizens with fully equal rights in the socialist family.

For more than eleven years, our woman worker has made her way along the path set by the
proletarian dictatorship. Together with all the proletariat she fought for power in October.
Together with her working brothers she passed through the crucible of sacrifice and suffering
during the civil war. She stands in the most advanced ranks of our working collective in the
present-day glorious and productive period of socialist construction. In the factory workshop and
at the controls of the state ships, in the cooperatives and at the shooting range, in the nursery
school and at the thundering machinery, everywhere the tractors of our increasingly strong state
farms and collective farms are plowing the virgin soil of our Soviet land, in the workers’
faculties and in courses for the red sisterhood where the proletariat struggles relentlessly to
master science, and everywhere that life is in full swing and the anthills of labor are humming—
in none of these places have the working women of the Soviet Union been forced into last place.
Everywhere the vigorous stream of activism of our women workers is flowing. With ever more
firm and certain steps they are advancing on the path to complete emancipation under the tested
leadership of our Party.

All of these tasks need to be accomplished, and they will be accomplished. The path to the
complete emancipation of working women is clear. …For surely we are talking about one of the
greatest tasks that has been set by history: the complete liberation and emancipation of working
women from any kind of exploitation, from material need, from lack of culture, and from
barbarism.

Pravda, “International Communist Woman’s Day,” March 9, 1939.

Ten years later Pravda continued to advocate for women on International Communist Woman’s Day.

Comrade Nikolaeva talked about the rise of the Soviet woman, about the heroic and energetic
path taken by women of our country, and about the concern for women shown by the Soviet
government and party of Lenin-Stalin. In her speech, comrade Nikolaeva referred to clear
evidence that the Soviet woman had secured an honored place on all fronts of socialist
development and in all areas of the political and public life of our country. The deputies to the
Supreme Soviet of the USSR include 189 women, and the deputies to the Supreme Soviets of the
union republics include 848 women. What a clear example of the growth of the political activism
and the political maturity of the Soviet woman! Comrade Nikolaeva spoke about the heroism of
the Soviet woman and the unforgettable flight taken by V. Grizodubova, P. Osipenko, and M.
Raskova. The heroines were located right there, on the presidium, and the hall greeted them with
warm applause. Comrade Nikolaeva described how Soviet women had mastered technology and
knowledge and had become powerful economic leaders. She cited the example of Zinaida
Troitskaia, who successfully mastered the complex craft of driving a locomotive engine, became
an engineer, and now is the director of the Moscow regional railway. Zinaida Troitskaia was also
located right there on the presidium, and her success was recognized with warm applause.
Speakers also talked about the tremendous assistance that had been provided to the woman in our
country by the Soviet government and the party of Lenin-Stalin, about the many millions of
benefits given to mothers with many children, and about the steady growth in the number of
nurseries and kindergartens.

Pravda Severa, “Maria Semenovna Requires Assistance from the Party Collective,” September 9,
1932.
Pravda Severa is a newspaper of the northern region of Arkhangelsk that has been in publication since
1917.

In its day to day work with women, the Party constantly implements the instructions of V.I.
Lenin “to bring women into public and productive work and to pull them out of ‘domestic
slavery’ by freeing them from subordination to the stupification and humiliation of always and
forever being responsible for cooking and taking care of the children.”
But officials of the Party collective and of the factory committee and the directors of timber mill
No. 23 still have not understood this objective. Pravda Severa has already written more than once
about Mariia Semenovna Abramova, and has repeatedly demanded that the Party collective of
the factory committee and directors of factory No. 23 earnestly take up the tasks of eliminating
lines at the stores and improving the work of nursery schools and kindergartens, so that Mariia
Semenovna [Abramova] and all the other housewives of the factory may be liberated from the
absurd lines and kitchen fumes which wash away all the strength of women, isolate them from
production and cultural activities, and undermine the completion of the production plan.

…As before, Mariia Semenovna spends her days standing in line for bread, herrings, and milk,
and as before she rushes around the kitchen preparing supper for her kids. She tries with all her
might to get away from this “vicious” circle, but she cannot. She tried to work at the factory, but
had to quit work after ten days, because the horrible work of the childcare center left her children
going hungry and without supervision. As a result, her youngest son became sick, and this tied
the hands of Mariia Semenovna. The medical assistance was also quite poor.

We categorically demand that the Party collective and the factory committee immediately turn their
attention to issues of women’s work, to freeing housewives from the tenacious grip of lines, to ensuring
the consistent work of nursery schools, and to drawing women into socially productive labor.

Za kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, “School No. 130 Follows its own Law,” February 6,
1937.
Za kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie was a Russian education periodical that included letters
like this one demanding reform.

In the Soviet Union, the rights of mothers and children are strictly protected by the law. For
example, in addition to a four month maternity leave, every working mother has the right to take
breaks during work for nursing until the infant reaches the age of nine months. But it seems that
the administration of school 130 in the Soviet district of Moscow considers that this rule does not
apply to its school.

I have worked as a teacher for nine years, and am in my first year at school 130. Returning from
maternity leave, I placed my infant in a nursery school. At first, I was able to nurse him
regularly, every three hours. But because I could not nurse my infant during the break between
classes (20 minutes), I was always late by 10-15 minutes.

These minutes of tardiness were not absences, because I have the right to an additional half-hour
besides these 20 minutes for nursing my infant. But the head of instruction and the school
director, after repeated warnings, have ordered me to either stop nursing my infant or quit
working in the school, because they consider that the class (42 pupils) cannot and should not be
left without a teacher for even a minute.

I completely agree with the orders of the head of instruction and the school director that pupils
should not be left without a leader for even the shortest amount of time. But it does not follow
from this that I, as a teacher-mother, am not able to lead the children in lessons.
This unequal battle has resulted in the victory of the school administration. Despite the orders of
a doctors, I had to stop nursing my infant and switch to artificial food, which quickly had a
negative effect on the child’s health.

Reading Questions for the Primary Sources

1. How does Kollontai link her position as an ambassador to her belief that Russia is more
supportive of women and no longer has a double standard for unmarried men and
women? What does she consider the most important reform of the People’s
Commissariat?
2. What was women’s life like under the czars according to Pravda in 1929? Where are
women going to be equal participants with men in the life of the nation?
3. By 1939, what evidence is there of women’s equality under the Bolsheviks?
4. What are Abramova’s complaints about her workplace? Who is Pravda Severa blaming
for her situation?
5. What rights does the teacher say that mothers have in the workplace? What does she
claim she should be entitled to?

Secondary Sources
Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-
1936 (Cambridge University Press, 1993) 2-6.
Wendy Goldman is Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of History in the History Department of
Carnegie Mellon University. Her earlier work focused on women, gender, and family issues in
Russia while her more recent work explores Stalinist repression and the effects of World War II
on the Russian homefront.

The Bolsheviks believed that capitalism had created a new contradiction, felt most painfully by
women, between the demands of work and the needs of the family. As more and more women
were forced to work for wages with the advent of industrialization, the conflict between the
demands of production and reproduction resulted in high infant mortality, broken homes,
neglected children and chronic health problems….Capitalism, according to the Bolsheviks,
would never be able to provide a systematic solution to the double burden women shouldered.
The Bolsheviks argued that only socialism could resolve the contradictions between work and
family. Under socialism, household labor would be transferred to the public sphere: the tasks
performed by millions of individual unpaid women in their homes would be taken over by paid
workers in communal dining rooms, laundries, and child care centers. Women would be freed to
enter the public sphere on an equal basis with men; unhampered by the duties of the home. At
last, women would be equally educated, waged, and able to pursue their own individual goals
and development. Under such circumstances, marriage would become superfluous. Men and
women would come together and separate as they wished, apart from the deforming pressures of
economic dependency and need.
The issue of how to organize household labor provoked extensive discussion. Lenin spoke and
wrote repeatedly of the need to socialize housework, describing it as “ the most unproductive, the
most savage, and the most arduous work a woman can do.” Sparing no harsh adjective, he wrote
that “petty housework crushes” and “degrades” a woman, “chains her to the kitchen and the
nursery.”…He argues that “the real emancipation of women” must include not only legal
equality but “the wholesale transformation” of household into socialized labor.… The family in
Kollontai’s estimation constituted an inefficient use of labor, food, and fuel. “From the point of
view of the people’s economy,” the family was “not only useless but harmful.” And Evgney
Preobrazhenskii, the well-known Soviet economist, noted that the traditional division of labor in
the family prevented a woman from achieving real equality by placing “a burden on her that
comes before all else.”…Unlike modern feminists, who argue for a redivision of household tasks
within the family, increasing men’s share of domestic responsibilities, Bolshevik theorists sought
to transfer household work to the public sphere… The abolition of the family, rather than gender
conflict within it, held the key to women’s emancipation.

Bernice Rosenthal, “Love on the Tractor: Women in the Stalin Period” in Renate
Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz ed. Becoming Visible: Women in European History
(Houghton Mifflin Co., 1977)
Bernice Rosenthal is Professor Emeritus of History at Fordham University. She is the author of
seven books on an array of subjects from Nietzsche in Russian culture to Russian interest in the
occult. In “Love on the Tractor,” Rosenthal shows that under Stalin, these visions for women
and their equality had taken a back seat to demands for increased industrial and agricultural
output.

Child-care facilities were included in the first Five-Year Plan, but did not expand rapidly enough
to keep pace with demand. Even by 1936, only a small percentage of preschool children could
be accommodated, and most married women still did not work. Moreover, the original plan to
have a twenty-four-hour child-care facilities could not be implemented, so working women could
not attend night school or take correspondence courses. As shortages developed, plan managers
tended to shift funds from child-care facilities to direct investment in production…combining
work and motherhood became increasingly difficult, and the birthrate plummeted… factory
cafeterias served lunch only. As late as 1935 only 180 laundries existed in all of Russia. Doing
the weekly washing involved a full day’s work, so working women did it on their day off or at
night. Laborsaving devices, like most consumer goods, were not manufactured, and most men
refused to help at home with ‘women’s work.’… the sexual counterrevolution of the mid-1930s
promoted a return to a conventional family structure, a pronatalist policy, and the promotion of a
puritanical sexual morality. It resulted from several factors: the hardship suffered by abandoned
wives and their children, official dismay at sexual permissiveness, and the precipitous decline in
the birthrate after 1934.

Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild, Equality and Revolution: Women’s Rights in the

Russian Empire, 1905-1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010) 3-10.
Rochelle Ruthchild is a resident scholar at the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis
University and a research associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, at
Harvard University. Her research interests include Russian feminism, lesbian and gay culture in
the USSR, and Russian Jewish activism. In Equality and Revolution, she argues that feminism,
and the struggle for women's suffrage in particular, was central to the Russian revolutions of
1905 and 1917.
On July 20, 1917, with the publication of its new election statute, Russia, the largest
country in the world, became the first major power to grant women the vote… These
major achievements have been largely ignored. Historians of global feminism generally
portray the first women’s suffrage victories as happening in or connected to the West…
Russia is rarely discussed. Yet the history of women’s suffrage in the Russian Empire
provides a model for a different form of struggle for women’s rights. Women’s suffrage
in this case was not won through a long struggle within an evolving democratic structure,
but through a much shorter process ignited and facilitated by popular revolution within a
decidedly undemocratic multinational state… Scholarly neglect of the Russian suffrage
struggle obscures a significant marker in the global battle for women’s equal rights.
Russian women won full suffrage one year before the British and the Germans, three
years before their sisters in the United States. …In contrast to the Western democracies,
where universal male suffrage came first after long popular struggles, the issue of
women’s and men’s suffrage in Russia appeared simultaneously and only in the early
twentieth century. Except for a tiny segment of the propertied class, neither women nor
men had the franchise until the 1905 revolution forces Tsar Nicholas to issue his October
Manifesto giving men the vote. As the feminist Zinaida Mirovich wrote, up to this point
all Russian adults had been ‘equal in inequality.’ When the possibility of suffrage became
real in 1905, supporters of women’s suffrage found powerful forces arrayed against them.
The tsar and even his most enlightened ministers resisted giving women the vote, fearing
their radicalism; prominent male liberal politicians opposed extending the franchise to
women, fearing peasant conservatism. Further to the left, socialist parties included
women’s suffrage planks in their platforms, but most did not make it a high priority…
Women’s suffrage and women’s rights were very much a part of political discourse in all
parts of the Russian Empire between 1905 and 1917. …Russian women’s attainment of
suffrage in 1917, before the October Revolution, is significant because it represents the
joining of two new social groupings, women workers and the female intelligentsia
demanding political rights, and the embrace by the two main power centers, the
Provisional Government and the Soviets, of the extension of democratic political rights to
women as well as men.

Adrienne Lynn Edgar, “Emancipation of the Unveiled: Turkmen Women under Soviet
Rule, 1924-29” The Russian Review, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Jan., 2003), 132-149.
Adrienne Edgar is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Her recent work explores marriage and inter-ethnic marriage in Eastern Europe and Soviet
Eurasia.

In the Soviet campaign to abolish "backwardness" in Central Asia, some of the fiercest
battles were fought over the fate of Muslim women. It was impossible to build a socialist
society without freeing women from their subordinate status and recruiting them into
Soviet collective farms, factories, and schools, Soviet authorities believed. By doing
away with "archaic" and "degrading" customs, the Soviet regime hoped to transform
Central Asian women into free individuals and active Soviet citizens. In much of Central
Asia, the effort to transform the lives of women centered on the campaign against female
seclusion and the veil. … A campaign to promote unveiling culminated in the hujum
(onslaught) of 1927, in which thousands of women tore off and burned their veils in
public squares.' Yet the unveiling campaign-and indeed, the veil itself-was generally
limited to the urban and sedentary agricultural areas of what are today Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan. In Turkmenistan, as in other parts of Central Asia with a recent history of
pastoral nomadism, women were not secluded and did not wear the heavy veil and cloak
that were the focus of Soviet activists' attention. How, then, did Soviet Communists seek
to "emancipate" Muslim women who did not wear this potent marker of female
inferiority? In the absence of the veil, officials of the Communist party Women's
Department (Zhenotdel) in Turkmenistan concentrated on legal reform to change
women's status within the family. Through the adoption of new laws outlawing
traditional marital practices, they hoped to free Turkmen women from the constraints of
custom and draw them into public life. … Turkmen women, after all, were not full
participants in public life. They attended Soviet schools and joined Soviet organizations
in much smaller numbers than men. Their destinies were still controlled by their fathers,
husbands, and brothers. … under socialism. 1917 through the mid-1930s, the Bolsheviks
moved rapidly to emancipate women the legal and economic constraints that tied them to
the household and made dent on men, preventing them from realizing their individual
potential and in the larger society. Early Soviet legislation called for radical changes in
marital sexual practices and the status of women. The 1918 Russian Federation Code
riage, the Family, and Guardianship ended the religious sanction of marriage vided for
civil registration of marriage and divorce on demand for either partner. code declared that
men and women were legally equal, guaranteed equal pay work, and legalized abortion.

Reading Questions for the Scholarly Sources

1. What did the Bolsheviks believe about the demands on women under capitalism? What
had been holding women back from active participation in the life of the state? What is
the Bolshevik solution to this problem?
2. According to Rosenthal, what happened to the promised reforms for women by the
1930s? What was the result for most women? Why did the sexual counter-revolution,
which returned Russians to marriage and traditional families, take place in the 1930s?
3. How does Ruthchild say the process of achieving Russian women’s suffrage was
different from that in the West? Even after 1905 what opposition did women’s suffrage
face? What does Ruthchild say the achievement of women’s suffrage in 1917
represented?
4. How is the Soviet vision of women’s equality challenged by soviet controlled areas
outside of Russia? Why did the absence of veils on Turkmen women make soviet efforts
to enforce equality more difficult? What do they choose to challenge and change in
women’s daily life instead?
History Through Literature
Eugenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind (1967)
Journey into the Whirlwind is the English title of the memoir by Eugenia Ginzburg. Ginzburg
was arrested in 1937 during the Purges and imprisoned for 18 years in the gulag for supposedly
belonging to a Trotskyist counter-revolutionary movement led by a writer Elvov with whom she
worked. After Stalin’s death, she was released and “rehabilitated” in 1955. The book detailing
her experiences was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published in multiple languages in
1967. It was not allowed to be published in Russia until 1990. Her experience provides insight
into both the overwhelming atmosphere of fear and the use of terror under Stalin and also into
the life of an individual woman at this time.

My mind told me that there was absolutely nothing for which I could be arrested. It was true,
of course, that in the monstrous accusations which the newspapers daily hurled at "enemies
of the people” there was something clearly exaggerated, not quire real. All the same, I thought
to myself, there must be something in it, however little -they must at least have voted the
wrong way on some occasion or other. I, on the other hand, had never belonged to the
opposition, nor had I ever had the slightest doubt as to the rightness of the Party line.
…"If they arrested people like you they'd have to lock up the whole Party," my
husband encouraged me in my line of reasoning. Yet, in spite of all these rational arguments,
I could not shake off a feeling of approaching disaster…. The chain of "logical" reasoning
in my case was as follows:"Elvov's article contained theoretical errors. Whether he
intended them or not is beside the point. You who worked with him and knew he had
written the article failed to denounce him. This is collusion with the enemy."… . I knew for
certain now that what was left of my life could not be measured in years or months but in
minutes and I must hurry back to my children. What would become of them? … The
windows of our bedroom faced the street and cars drove past all the time. And how we
listened in fear and trembling when it seemed as though one of them might be pulling up in
front of our house. At night, even my husband's optimism would give way to terror- the
great terror that gripped our whole country by the throat…I sent Alyosha off to the skating
rink. He went without saying good-by, I never saw him again. Little Vasya, who was used
to my going and coming and always took it perfectly calmly, ran out into the hall after me
and kept asking insistently: "Where are you going, Mother, where? Tell me. I don't want
you to go!" But I could not so much as look at the children or kiss them-if I h a d , I
would have died then and there. I turned away and called out to the nurse: "Fima, do take
him, I haven't time for him now.” …"Good-by, Paul dear. We've had a good life together.”
I didn't even say "Look after the children." I knew he would not be able to take care of
them.

Anna Akhmatova, Requiem

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) was a highly respected modernist poet. Her work was censored
under Stalin but she was not sent into exile or the gulag and chose to remain and write in the
USSR despite repression. Her first husband was executed on Stalin’s order and her son and
second husband were sent to the gulag along with many of her fellow intellectuals. Her poem
Requiem is about her despair while her son is in prison. It would have been censored in the
USSR but was published in Europe.
I
You were taken away at dawn. I followed you
As one does when a corpse is being removed.
Children were crying in the darkened house.
A candle flared, illuminating the Mother of God. . .
The cold of an icon was on your lips, a death-cold
sweat
On your brow - I will never forget this; I will gather

To wail with the wives of the murdered streltsy

Inconsolably, beneath the Kremlin towers.
[1935. Autumn. Moscow]

II
Silent flows the river Don
A yellow moon looks quietly on
Swanking about, with cap askew
It sees through the window a shadow of you
Gravely ill, all alone
The moon sees a woman lying at home
Her son is in jail, her husband is dead
Say a prayer for her instead.

III
It isn't me, someone else is suffering. I couldn't.
Not like this. Everything that has happened,
Cover it with a black cloth,
Then let the torches be removed. . .
Night.

IV
Giggling, poking fun, everyone's darling,
The carefree sinner of Tsarskoye Selo
If only you could have foreseen
What life would do with you -
That you would stand, parcel in hand,
Beneath the Crosses, three hundredth in
line,
Burning the new year's ice
With your hot tears.
Back and forth the prison poplar sways
With not a sound - how many innocent
Blameless lives are being taken away. . .
[1938]
Questions on the Literature:
How does Ginzburg struggle to reconcile her potential arrest with her innocence? How
does her role as a mother influence her reaction to this crisis? What does this say about
the downside of equality for women?

What has happened to Akhmatova’s son? How does she describe her reaction? What
lines indicate her attitudes toward the Stalinist regime?

Visual Source Materials

The first photo shows women lining up to go work on the collective farms in the background
while their children are watched for the day in collective child care centers. Two posters show
women as a focus for Russian policy: one of woman’s duty to her children printed in 1944 and
one of International Women’s Day 1930. The next photo shows female snipers. Women had
participated in combat as early as 1917 under the Provisional government in battalions like the 1 st
Russian Women’s Battalion of Death. In WWII under Stalin women were in combat roles as
tank operators, snipers, anti-aircraft gunners, pilots and medics. In small type at top of the dual
poster is the caption: Women have the right to vote and be elected equally with men” section 137
of the Constitution of the USSR. In Larger words at the bottom: Hail the equality of Soviet
women.
The last photo shows Farmers wives from the rural districts of the Soviet Union in a class where
they are taught to read and write around March 1931.
Questions for Visual Sources
1. What is happening in the first photo? Where might the women in the back be going? Who
is caring for the children in the middle? How does this represent the new socialist vision?
2. According to the color propaganda poster, even if they joined politics and the workforce,
what were Russian women also expected to do?
3. The next poster is for International Women’s Day. Why might this have been helpful
propaganda for soviet leaders?
4. What do the last three photos indicate that women should be able to do equally with men?
How did this serve the socialist vision?

History and the other Disciplines: LGBTQ Studies

Dan Healey, Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford
combines the scholarship of Russian history with the disciplinary interests and themes of
LGBTQ studies. In his book, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of
Sexual and Gender Dissent, he explores the world of homosexual and transgender Russian
communities during the 1917 Revolution and the Stalinist era to better understand the change in
attitudes toward the LGBTQ community in Russia. In December 1917, the Bolsheviks
decriminalized homosexuality and took great interest in the concept of homosexual
emancipation. However, efforts were sporadic and limited to urban areas; homosexuality was
made a crime in the Asian, Muslim soviet republics. And, under Stalin, homosexuality was
redefined as a mental disease and by 1933 had been once again made a criminal act. During the
brief decade from 1917-1927, however, Russia enjoyed a much more open society that
corresponded to more the more progressive environment for women’s rights. Russian lesbians,
Healey explains, benefited from the legislation in favor of social equality even when support for
homosexuality started to wane. From 1917-1927, the new emphasis on social equality and
participation in the previously male-dominated workplace often translated to a new interest by
women in more masculine deportment and clothing. This, he writes, helped Lesbian women to
disguise their motives of attracting other women as merely engaging in a masculine style that
conferred revolutionary credibility. “Until Stalinist initiatives to reconstruct femininity of the
mid-1930s,” Healey says, “women choosing to occupy masculine social roles who happened to
be ‘happy, well-adjusted lesbians’ were tolerated as part of the revolutionary social landscape.”
A 1923 sex survey of university students in Moscow also recorded females who wanted gender
reassignment and “impatiently await[ed] scientific discoveries of castration and grafting of male
organs.” Healey says that “the medical techniques of gender reassignment in Soviet Russia in the
1920s were as rudimentary and broadly unsuccessful as those then available in the West” and
that the repression of the Stalinist era would slow this progress even further. Not surprisingly the
sexual counter-revolution under Stalin and the return to conservative morality and traditional
roles for women of mother and homemaker coincided with new legislation outlawing
homosexuality and ending toleration for transgender individuals.

Historical Thinking Prompts

1. In what ways did the 1917 Revolutions improve equal opportunities and rights for
women in Russia? Use specific evidence from primary and secondary sources to support
your answer.
2. How did the transition from Lenin to Stalin’s regime in the late 1920s and 1930s affect
women’s equality and their daily life? Include the arguments of Goldman and Rosenthal
as well as visual sources and the outside discipline in your response.