Working-Class and Peasant Women in the Russian Revolution, 1917-1923

Author(s): Barbara Evans Clements

Source: Signs, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Winter, 1982), pp. 215-235
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Working-Class and Peasant Women in
the Russian Revolution, 1917-1923

Barbara Evans Clements

Scholars studying the historyof women in revolutions,especially in

twentieth-century Marxistrevolutions,have usuallybegun byexamining
the ideology of the revolutionary leaders and the programs they
established to accomplish women's emancipation.' This is a logical and
easilyjustifiableapproach. But crucial also is an analysisof the attitudes
and behavior of women themselves.The female masses play an often
overlooked part in shaping a revolution's course and results; and,
equally important,women's responses to revolutionreveal much about
theirbeliefs,loyalties,and fearsand about theirpositionand roles in the
social system.
The study of the female masses in the Russian Revolution is only
beginning. Published materials and archives that hold the record of
women's experience in the years 1917-21 have yet to be explored in
depth. This articlethereforeoffersa preliminaryexaminationof some
of these documents,suggestinginterpretationsthatmay prove useful as
guides to deeper analysis.
The period of the Russian Revolutionwas forwomen,as formen, a
time of paradox, in which the lavish promises of the new government
were accompanied by enormous deprivationand frighteningsocial dis-
integration.However, the chaos of revolutionheld a particulardanger

1. See, e.g., Richard Stites,TheIWomen's

Liberation
Movement in Russia (Princeton,N.J.:
PrincetonUniversityPress, 1978), pp. 317-421; Gail WarshofskyLapidus, Womenin Soviet
Society(Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1978); Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal,"The
Role and Status of Women in the Soviet Union: 1917 to the Present," WomenCross-
Change and Challenge(The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 429-55; Sheila Row-
culturally,
botham, l'Women, Resistanceand Revolution(New York: Vintage, 1974); Elisabeth Croll,
Feminismand Socialismin China (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978); Studiesin Com-
parativeCommunism 14, nos. 2 and 3 (Summer/Autumn1981): 106-218.

[Signs:Journalof l'omen in Culttreand Societyt

1982, vol. 8, no. 2]
?1982 by The Universityof Chicago. All rightsreserved. 0097-9740/83/0802-0007$01.00

215

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216 Clements RussianWomen

for working-classand peasant women, because it threatened to strip

away all their traditionaldefenses, leaving them-often illiterateand
burdened with children-to cope with a world at war. Whether these
women chose to preservetraditionalinstitutionsas a defense againstthe
chaos or to accept the Bolshevikvisionof emancipated womanhood was
of consequence to the finaloutcome of the revolutionitself.Only a small
minorityof women,motivatedbyconvictionor by the lack of defensesin
traditionalsociety,followed the Bolsheviks. Most women preferredto
cling to the time-honoredpatriarchalformsof the familyand village.
Their ostensiblyself-defeatingresponse to revolutionwas seen by the
Bolsheviksas proofof theirbackwardness.In fact,these Russian women
were behaving in their own interests,but their motives can be ap-
preciated only by examining the revolutionas they themselvesexperi-
enced it.2
The revolutionbegan in February 1917 withdemonstrationsin St.
Petersburgthatled to the abdicationof Nicholas II. Afterthe tsar'sfall,a
thoroughgoingassault on the old regimespread outward fromthe cities
to the countryside.Attackson the ruling class took a varietyof forms,
fromthe symbolicdestructionof statuesof the tsars,to more substantive
acts of propertyconfiscation.The peasants, who constituted85 percent
of the population, began the revolution in rural areas by seizing the
aristocrats'land, land which they believed God had created for the
people's use but which,according to the same mythology, the idle nobles
had usurped. For centuries,rumorshad circulatedamong the peasants
thatthe tsarwas planningto correctthisancientinjusticebygivingall the
land to the people. But these rumorshad alwaysproved false. Suddenly
in 1917 the tsarwas gone, and the peasants began to rectifythe situation
themselves.There are indicationsthatsome peasant womenjoined men
in lootinghouses, butcheringlivestock,and drinkingthe liquor thathad
been locked up since Nicholas declared prohibitionin 1914. Women did
not play a role in the peasant committeesthat led the land confiscation,
however, for those committeeswere composed of the leaders of the
village communes. The commune, or assemblyof village men, had for
centuries periodically redivided the land into strips,which they then
assigned to individualhouseholds forcultivation.Thus in 1917 the peas-
ants naturallyused this assemblyto distributethe nobles' land and to
govern the villages.3Having seized the landlords' property,most peas-
2. This articleconcentrateson Great Russian iwomen, those wvholived in the central
provincesof the Russian Empire and who belonged to the nation'sdominantethnicgroup.
The other nationalitiesof the empire, whose experiences differedin many respectsfrom
those of the Great Russians,deserve detailed studyfarbeyond the scope of an article.For
the only such stud) in English to date see GregoryJ. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat
(Priinceton,NJ.: PrincetonUniversityPriess,1974).
3. Graeme J.Gill,Peasantsand Goernmnent in theRussianRevolution(New York: Barnes
& Noble, 1979), pp. 30, 36, 151; Teodor Shanin, The AwkwardClass: PoliticalSociologyof
Peasantryin a DevelopingSociety,Russia 1910-1925 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp.
160-61.

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Signs Winter1982 217

ants were then satisfiedto see the revolutiongo no further.They had

littleinterestin changing the customsand organizationof village life.
The village, with its communal, patriarchal values, was the only
world the majorityof peasants knew. Indeed the Russian word for
village-mir-also means "world." And ithad alwaysbeen a harshworld.
Until 1861 the peasants were serfsbound in lifetimeserviceto the nobil-
ity,or to the governmentif theylived on land belonging to the crown.
Afteremancipationtheycontinuedto labor under crushingburdens,for
theywere required to pay forthe land theyhad receivedwhen theywere
freed. Furthermore,theywere unproductivefarmers,ignorantof mod-
ern agriculturalmethodsand lackingthe means to buy the livestockand
tools necessaryto improve their output. To cope with povertyand an
oppressive ruling class, the peasants had developed strongcommunal
values. Submissivenessto the group supported the collectivelabor sys-
tem considered essential to village survivaland produced the solidarity
needed to deal withthe landlord and the tax collector.Faced withcon-
stant insecurityand hardship, the peasants had built a societywhich,
oftendefensively,clung to itscollectiveidentityand to all itsother tradi-
tions.
Central to these traditionswas the division of power between the
sexes. The peasant woman worked with the men, doing all but the
heaviest chores, such as plowing the fields.She also tended the house-
hold vegetable garden, made milk into butter and cheese, cooked,
cleaned, made and washed the clothes, manufactured small articles
forsale in town,bore and reared children.Her endless labor,essentialto
familysurvival,was valued by the peasants, but the labor of men was
valued more. A woman was taught from childhood to submit to the
power of men, to accept theirrightto command obedience as heads of
the familyand leaders of the villagecommune. It was God's willthatshe
do so, she was told,just as it was God's willthatshe endure the privations
of her life. If she accepted her lot, if she was hardworkingand married
to a hardworkingman, a peasant woman had the mostshe could expect
from her society:food, family,and a respectable place in the village.
The revolutionremoved the landlords who oppressed her people,
and forthatthe peasant woman was grateful.She soon found,however,
thatthe revolutionwould not leave her familyin peace to farmitsnewly
enlarged lands. In 1917 a vast movementof people was underway: sol-
diers coming home fromthe front,factoryworkerscirculatingbetween
the cities and villageswhere theyhad relatives,revolutionariesfanning
out to rouse the peasants. All these driftersbroughtwiththemdrunken-
ness, random violence, continuingattackson the aristocracy,speeches
about revolution,even occasional lootingof churches. This new-found
freedomof expressionand movementcould be exciting,but forpeasant
women itwas probablyalso alarming.There was furthercause foralarm
in the gradual disintegrationof the Russian economy,already weakened
by years of war. Fewer and fewer manufacturedgoods were available,

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218 Clements RussianWomen

and inflationwas destroyingthe value of the ruble. Withso littleto buy

in town,the peasants stopped takingtheircrops to market,fallingback
instead on subsistenceagricultureand black-marketdealing. By the fall
of 1917, therefore,village stabilitywas threatenedby the weakeningof
authorityand order throughoutsocietyand by economic collapse.
In the middle of this crisis,in October 1917, the Bolsheviksseized
power in Petrograd and Moscow. The relationshipbetween the new
rulers and the peasants was difficultfrom the first,in part because
neithergroup trustedthe other.The Bolsheviksconsidered the peasants
to be backwardand conservative,the peasants saw the Bolsheviksas city
folk,outsiders.Often peasants responded to the Sovietofficialswho first
ventured into the countrysidewith much the same contempttheyhad
showvntsaristor ProvisionalGovernmentofficials.The peasants under-
stood, to some degree, that the Bolsheviks differed from the former
rulersin thattheywere revolutionarieswho approved of the destruction
of the nobilityand who called for a governmentthat would help the
people. But the peasants wverenot sure what the latterproposal would
mean in practice,and theirsuspicionswere heightenedin the summerof
1918 when civilwar erupted, and the Bolshevikgovernmentbegan req-
uisitioninggrain and draftingpeasant men into the Red Army.4
To this scene of social disintegrationand peasant distrustcame
wvordof the Bolshevik goal to grant women full equality; newspapers
and pamphlets, pro-Bolshevikspeakers, Red Army soldiers, and city
cdIellersreturningto theirnativevillagesbegan to announce the party's
commitmentto and plans forfemaleemancipation.Shortlyafterseizing
power, the Bolshevikshad institutedcivilmarriageand no-faultdivorce
and had declared the full legal and civilequalityof women. They were
also promisingto provide equal educational and job opportunitiesfor
women, as well as publiclyfunded maternitycare and day care.
How quicklynews of this Bolshevik program reached the country-
side is difficultto determine,since the party'spenetrationof rural areas
was generallyhaphazard, especiallyin the firstmonthsof itsrule. One of
the earliest indicators of peasant awareness that the Bolsheviks were
proposing to change the position of women in societyis a letterthat a
group of peasant men wroteto Maxim Gorkyin the springof 1918. The
peasants asked the writerto tellthem"by registeredletteror in detail in
a newspaper, how we are to understand the proclaimed equality of
womnenwvith us and what she [sic] is going to do nowv.The undersigned
peasants are alarmed by this law fromwhich lawlessnessmay increase,
and the village now is supported by the woman. The family is abolished,

4. For discussions of peasant attitudestoward governmentofficialsand other out-

siders during the revolutionaryyears,see Marc Ferro,October1917: A1Social Historyofthe
Russian Reviolutio, trans. Noirman Stone (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1980), pp.
112-39; (ill, pp. 154-57, 170-73; Shanin, pp. 177-99, esp. pp. 185-90.

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Signs Winter1982 219

and because of thisthe destructionof farmingwillfollow."5These peas-

ants saw quite clearlythe connectionbetweenwoman's place in the fam-
ily,the structureof that familyas an institution,and the economic or-
ganization of peasant society. "The village now is supported by the
woman," theyargued plaintively,referringto the increased importance
of women's labor followingthe call-up of men into the armysince 1914.
These men were probablynot alone in fearingthatwomen's emancipa-
tion would "abolish" the familyand lead to the "destruction"of the
village.
Peasant men no doubt also feltthat any change in the position of
women threatenedmale power and status; in theirview theyhad much
to lose and littleto gain fromthese Bolshevikproposals. Thus the nega-
tiveresponse of peasant men,of whichthisletteris but one example, was
to be expected. More perplexingis the reactionof manypeasant women:
theytoo rejected the message of female equality. The best evidence of
this response is their refusal to attend meetingsorganized by the Bol-
shevik Woman's Bureau (the Zhenotdel) in 1919, 1920, and 1921. The
women were told that the meetingswere held to informthem about
Bolshevikplans to improvetheirlives,and yettheywould not come. For
example, in 1921 only 14,709 peasant women attended Woman's
Bureau meetingsin fifteenof the centralprovincesof Russia, where the
population numbered in the millions.6Admittedly,this low attendance
can be explained in part by the small number of organizers from the
Zhenotdel workingwith peasant women. But those workerswho were
active in the countrysidefreelyacknowledged that, despite their best
efforts,they were able to persuade very few women to come to the
meetings.Occasionally a group would show up to protestagainst gov-
ernment policies, but more commonly women stayed away and os-
tracized those who did go.7
The peasants also expressed their fears of the Bolshevik program
for female emancipation by accusing the partyof tryingto undermine
village morality.The Bolsheviks were city people, women said, loose-
living atheistswhose women bobbed their hair and smoked cigarettes.
5. Maxinm(Gorky,CUntimely Essayson Revolultion,
Thotlghts: Cultlle and theBolsheviks,
1917-1918, trans. with an introcduction and notes by Herman Ermolaev (New York:
Eriksson, 1968), p. 56.
6. B. Kanatchikova,"Svodka raboty zhenotdelov po 15 guberniiam,"Kommuntistka,
1921, no. 11-12, pp. 40-41.
7. For discussions of womnen'sresponse to meetings,see Putilovskaia,"Vovlechenie
rabotnitsi krest'iankiXobshchest-ennio-politicheskuiu
zhizn,"Konmmunistka,1920, no. 5, p.
15; Inessa Armancd [E. Blonina], "Volostnye delegatskoe sobranie krest'ianok," Kom-
munistka,1920, no. 1-2, pp. 34-35. Women also refusedto vote in electionsforthe soviets
in the firstfive sears of the revolution. See P. Zaitsev, "Krest'ianka v sovete," Kommunistka,
1924, no. 4, pp. 14-15. Women constituted 10 percent of those voting in village soviet elec-
tions in 1924, 1-2 percent of those elected to these soviets, and .5 pertcentof those elected to
the executive committeesof the soviets.Figures for the civil war years were even lower.

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220 Clements Russian Women

Bolshevikwomen were said to have sexual designs on the married men

of the village; some peasants charged that the partywas even tryingto
destroymarriage itself.Storiescirculatedof good familymen who had
gone to town to work with the Bolsheviks,and who then took up with
young women and refused to support their country-boundwives and
children. It was also rumored, not entirelyinaccurately,that the Bol-
shevikswanted to take childrenaway fromtheirparentsand put themin
nurseries.In 1921 one meetingof peasant women unanimouslypassed a
resolution vowing "to refuse to open and organize kindergartensand
nurseries,since among us there are no motherswho would give up the
rearingof theirchildren."8
This resistancesuggeststhat many peasant women agreed withvil-
lage men thattalk about femaleemancipationthreatenedmorality,reli-
gion, and the survivalof village life. And in factit did. The Bolshevik
partywas committed,at least on paper, to the root-and-branchdestruc-
tion of the patriarchalstructureof the peasant family,Orthodox Chris-
tianity,and private land ownership-in short, to the abolition of the
traditionalvillage.The peasant womenwho criticizedthe revolutionaries
may have understood fewof the specificsof the Bolshevikprogram,but
theirhostilityindicatesthattheygrasped, or at least suspected,the ulti-
mate purpose. Thus theyresponded to any attemptto draw them into
organizationalmeetingsor into other nontraditionalactivitiesby raising
their traditionaldefenses: stayingat home, censuring association with
outsiders,and accusing the outsidersof immoralityand godlessness.
Realizing thatvwomenwere frightenedby talkof emancipation,the
Woman's Bureau organizers tried to reassure them that the partywas
not planningto destroyXillage life.Zhenotdelworkerswere instructedto
avoid speeches on communistideology,which,in the words of Konkor-
diia Samoilova, a leader of the Woman's Bureau, peasant women feared
"like the boogeyman."9The organizerswere told to concentrateinstead
on "practical"measures of immediate,tangiblebenefit,such as teaching
the women more efficientfarmiing techniques.They were also to prom-
ise that when the civil w-arwas over, the party would bring schools,
hospitals,and manufacturedgoods to the countryside.Any possibilityof
winning the wvomenover by giving them social programs, however,
foundered on the Bolsheviks'inabilityto financeeven the most modest
projects during the crisis of war. The new leaders were reduced to
promises, and the suspicious peasants had heard promises before.
Sometimespeasant women would cluotefor Bolshevikor-ganizersa Rus-
sian proverb: "Don't p-romise us a crane in the sky, give us a titmouse in
the handc."'0Bolshevikssoon learned thattheyshould never announce a
8. 0. Sokololva,O()pt vovxlecheniiakrest'ianok Penizenskoiggubernii\ Sovetskoe
Kommunistka,
stroitel'stvo," 1921, no. 12-13, p. 67.
1920, no. 7, p. 33.
9. K. Samoilova, "() abote sredi krest'ianok,"Kommunistka,
10. Ibid.

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Signs Winter1982 221

project they could not see through to completion,for any failureonly

strengthenedpeasant women's hostility.The feworganizersworkingin
the countryside kept tryingto break through what one called "the
Chinese wall" of women's resistance," but the Woman's Bureau as a
whole concentrateditsattentionon citywomen. Its leaders did not want
to squander their meager resources on the rural women who were so
difficultto reach, both physicallyand spiritually.12
Peasant women's resistance to the Bolsheviks may have been
heightened by the increasinghardshipsof theirlives. The early,trium-
phant, land-grabbingdays of the revolutionhad givenway in 1918 to an
often unintelligible,and frequentlybrutal, civil war. The death toll
mounted,the economycontinued to deteriorate,lifebecame a primitive
struggleto survive.Had the revolutionstirredin peasant women a desire
to break out of traditionalsocial constraints(and there is no available
evidence that it did), the crisisof the civil war would have quelled that
desire by making familyand village solidaritymore essential than ever.
Only the cooperative effortsof the peasants could keep the land culti-
vated. Withoutthe familyand the village,a peasant, especiallya peasant
woman, was adriftin an often lethal chaos.
The upheaval of the civilwar notonlyincreased some women'sneed
fortraditionalinstitutions, but also created a group of women who could
not relyon those same traditionalinstitutions. These were the millionsof
soldiers' wives who farmed their households' lands alone while their
husbands were away at war.'3 Occasionally women had farmedwithout
their husbands during the prerevolutionaryperiod, when it was fairly
common for young men to leave their families for seasonal, or even
full-time,work in the cities. According to custom in most provinces,a
woman had everyrightto continue to work the familyallotmentin her
husband's absence. Before 1914, however,widowswho had triedto farm
alone had consistentlyfailed, in part because they did not have the
strengthto shove the plows into the soil or to chop wood, but also
because the men of the village often forced them to give the land up.
Communal traditionsof the prerevolutionaryyears did not extend to

11. Putilovskaia,"Vovlechenie rabotnitsi krest'ianki...," p. 15.

12. V. Golubeva, "Ocherednye zadachi otdelov po rabote sredi zhenshchin,"Kom-
munistka,1921, no. 10-11, p. 28; V. Moirova, "Rabota sredi krest'ianok,"Kommunistka,
1924, no. 3, p. 24; A. Galina, "Itogy rabotysredi krest'ianok,"Konmmunistka,
1923, no. 10, p.
28.
13. There were some divorcecdwomen among the women farmingalone, but limited
figuresavailable indicatethatthe ruraldivorce rate was low (Rudolph Schlesinger,ed., The
Familyin theU.S.S.R. [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949], pp. 118, 150-51). Wom-
an's Bureau organizersnever mentiondivorced women,althoughtheydiscuss widowsand
Red Army wives at length. The debate on the marriage law in 1925 contains lengthy
statementsfrom peasants who were worried about the effectof divorce on the peasant
household, but they expressed more fears of the possibilityof widespread divorce than
complaintsof its already existing(Schlesinger,pp. 81-153).

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222 Clements Russian Women

helping women to keep land thatmen could use. The land-hungrypeas-

ants believed thata woman alone or withyoung childrencould not farm
as productivelyas a familyin which there were adult men, so villagers
not only refused to help single women but also oftencontrivedways to
make their lives more difficult.Peasant men would charge women for
lendinga hand withheavychores,or would refusesuch aid altogether.A
peasant with stripsbordering a single woman's allotmentmightvolun-
teer to repair her fence, and in the process move the posts so as to
enlarge his field,a Russian custom known as "curving the line." Some
provincesdid not permitwomen to speak at commune meetings,so such
depredations often went unchallenged; in provinces in which women
did enjoy the rightto speak, theircomplaintswere oftenshouted down.
Women withyoung sons mighthope to hold out until the boys became
men and could prove themselvesto the commune. Women whose hus-
bands came back to the villageto defend themhad an even betterchance
of keeping theirland allotment.But many widows,defenselesswithout
men, capitulated and either married again, moved in withrelatives,or
leftthe countryside.14
The revolutionand civil war transformedoccasional incidentsof
conflict between single women and village men into a common
phenomenon. During the period 1917-21, more women than ever be-
fore were attemptingto farmtheirfamily'sallotment,at the same time
that more men than ever before were demanding allotmentsof their
own fromthe village'sholdings.The revolutionhad released millionsof
soldiers fromthe tsaristarmy,while the ensuing civilwar drove millions
more people out of the starvingcities and back to their native villages.
The men of this great migrationjoined in a chorus of demands for
allotmentsthat forced village leaders to spend years of the revolution
dividing and redividingthe land.15
In tryingto satisfytheir male claimants,the commune leaders re-
sorted to the time-honoredtacticof victimizingthe most defenseless,
and, according to legend, least productivelandholders-single women.
Single women were pressured to accept diminished allotmentsor less
fertilefields.A peasant wroteto Maxim Gorkyin 1918, "I declare to you,
a friendof the people, that a lot of nonsense is going on in the villages
because soldiers' wivesare allottedland whichis bad and good fornoth-
ing, and they are howling like mad. When their husbands come back
from the war, you can be sure there will be a good fightbecause of
this."16Other women found themselvesin a struggleto keep theirhold-
ings frombeing taken away altogether.
In desperation, some of these single women sought help fromthe
14. Shanin (n. 3 above), pp. 85, 81; V. Romanov, "Krest'ianka i lderevenskii 'mir' ,"
1922, no. 8-9, pp. 35-36.
Kotnmunistka,
15. Shanin, pp. 2 12,157.
16. CGorkN(n. 5 above), pp. 57-58.

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Signs Winter1982 223

Bolsheviks.Significantly,it was primarilywidowsand soldiers'wiveswho

attended the Woman's Bureau meetings in the countrysideand who
came to Woman's Bureau officesto ask for the establishmentof nurs-
eries, courses in farming,and other social services. A few of these
women became supporters of the work of the Zhenotdel, a handful
growingso bold as to stand forelectionto the local soviets.17It took great
courage to take these steps, however,especiallyto appear at sovietelec-
tions or commune meetings. The men there ridiculed the women or
cursed at them in order to frightenthem back into silence. Cursing
seems to have been especiallyeffective,for it was both a threatof more
violentpunishmentif the women persistedand an offenseto theirmod-
esty. One woman told a Woman's Bureau organizer, "You stand up to
speak, theycurse at you. I stood it. I stood it. I spoke once. But then I
became frightenedand I began to hand in applications." She had given
up attemptingto press her claims beforethe commune,deciding instead
to rest her hopes with less effectualrequests for governmentaid. She
knew the governmentwould be unable to persuade the commune lead-
ers to treat her more justly. What she needed, she told the Woman's
Bureau worker,was forthe armyto returnher husband, so thathe could
speak for her, but there was no application she could file that would
8
bring him home.
Despite the single women's effortsto defend themselves,many
could not keep their land in the face of village harassment and the
difficultiesof farmingalone. By 1924 most peasant women who were
heads of household had no land at all; theyand theirchildrenworked as
day laborers. One 1924 study discovered that 23 percent of landless
families in thirty-fourprovinces of central Russia were headed by
women. In contrast,women headed 16 percentof small-holdinghouse-
holds and 8 percent of those withmoderate allotments.There were no
women recorded among the heads of the most prosperous peasant
households.19It is likelythat the mischievous"nonsense" mentioned by
Gorky's correspondent, the rather predatory engrossment of single
women's lands during the years 1917-21, was primarilyresponsiblefor
the growing povertyof single rural women. If not for this factor,the

17. Local organizers' reportsto Moscow frequentlyrefer to the wives of Red Army
soldiers and widows as the women attractedto Woman's Bureau projects. See, e.g., But-
sevich, "Krest'ianka i sel.-khoz. obrazovanie," Kommunistka,1921, no. 1, p. 10; A. Krav-
chenko, "O nashei rabote sredi krest'ianok," Kommunistka,1922, no. 3-5, p. 33;
N. Alekseeva, "Rabota sredi rabotnitsi krest'ianokv Donbasse v 1923-24 godu," Kom-
munistka,1924, no. 4, p. 32. See also Shanin, pp. 175-76.
18. Sokolova, "Opyt vovlecheniia krest'ianok Penzenskoi gubernii v Sovetskoe
p. 67. For male pressureon women at meetings,see also A. Unskova,"Rabota
stroitel'stvo,"
vologanizatora v derevne," Kommunistka, 1922, no. 1, pp. 24-25; "Iskru derevne," Kom-
munistka,1922, no. 8-9, p. 35; 0. Sokolova, "Odna iz ocherednykhrabot,"Kommunistka,
1923, no. 8, p. 6.
19. Moirova, "Rabota sredi krest'ianok,"p. 23.

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224 Clements Russian Women

statisticsforfemalelandholderswould correspond much more closelyto

the norms for the peasant population as a whole, in which the typical
household farmed an allotmentof moderate size.
This demonstrationof the single woman's vulnerabilitywas doubt-
less not lost on women livingwith their husbands. The importanceof
havinga man to provide forand defend the familywas clearer than ever
before. Married women probably tried to help their less fortunate
friends,but theycould not save them fromthe actions of the commune
or fromthe special hardshipsof farmingwithouta man. They mayeven
have been afraid to try;therewere reportsof peasant girlsand married
women fleeingin fear frommeetingswhen the Red Armywivespresent
began to speak angrilyabout the hard times theywere having.20Such
circumstancescould only work to strengthen,rather than loosen, the
chains of conformityanchored in the world of peasant tradition.
The fate of single women points to several other explanations for
peasant women's conservatism.Not onlywere peasant women suspicious
of strangers'proposals to reformthe village, not only did they face a
major crisisin which survivalseemed to demand reliance on traditional
institutions,but theyalso saw the woman who tried to farmalone mis-
treatedand thenhumiliatedwhen she protested.This example of failure
would remind peasant women of theirpowerlessnessand of the possi-
bilityof punishmentfrommen if theystrayedinto associationwithout-
siders or considered new ideas. Incidents were reported all over Russia
of women being beaten or even expelled fromtheirhomes when angry
husbands or fathersdiscovered that theyhad had even fleetingcontact
withthe Bolsheviks.21Such violence no doubt played a part in the con-
servatismof peasant women, as it always had.
Althoughit is possible to identifyreasons whypeasant women clung
to traditionalvillage life during the revolutionand civil war, it is not
possible to determinewhich reasons affectedthem most strongly.The
women's deep loyaltyto familiarvalues, their struggleto survive,the
Bolsheviks' inabilityto woo them withbeneficialprograms,the fear of
punishment from men-all combined to keep peasant women firmly
bound to theiroftenabusive but also protectiveworld. Their seemingly
reactionaryresponses to the chaos around them should not be seen
simply as unenlightened, ignorant behavior. Such responses, though
rooted in customarybehavior, may be seen also as rational choices, a
deliberate embrace of trusted institutionsthat could support peasant
women in a time of frighteningchange and great danger.
In contrast,one mightexpect thatworking-classwomen would have
been more open to the Bolshevikcalls for emancipation. They lived in
the cities, where modernization had weakened traditionalvalues and

20. Alekseeva, "Rabota sredi -abotnitsi krest'ianok.. .," p. 32.

21. Armand, "Volostnyedelegatskoe sobranie krest'ianok,"p. 34.

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Signs Winter1982 225

where deep indignationagainst the old regime had stirredthe working

class to revolution.The urban world accepted change more readilythan
did the village. Furthermore,afterthe revolutionhad broughtthe Bol-
sheviksto power, the partyexpended far more efforton winningover
proletarianwomen than it did on peasant women. The Bolshevikshad
reason to believe, therefore,that working-classwomen would look on
them as liberatorsand would flockto support them.
Censuses from the period 1897-1914 indicate that there were ap-
proximately20 million women in the paid labor force of the Russian
Empire. Large numbers of women were employed as day laborers in
agricultureand a few more in semiprofessionaland professionaljobs,
but almost half of all women workingfor wages were domesticservants
(approximately 10 million),and one-fifthwere industrialworkers(ap-
proximately4 millionbefore 1914). This categoryof industrialworkers
included women workingin factories,in sales and serviceindustries,and
in communicationsand transportation.During the decade before 1917
and especially during the war, the number of women in industrygrew
steadily,until by 1917 the 7.5 millionwomen so employed made up 40
percent of that segmentof the labor force.22
Work in the new enterprisesof Russia's industrializationand lifein
the urban milieu had not been enough to destroythe peasant values of
working-classwomen. Many were originallyfromthe countryside,and,
like many new factoryworkersduring the early stages of modernization
in Western Europe, remained very much under the influenceof the
traditionalsocietytheyhad left.Thus, for the most part, these women
workersdid not participatein the politicalpartiesand trade unions that
were the organizationalexpressionsof working-classradicalism,because
politicswas considered men's business. As in the village,women's busi-
ness was to work for the family.23There were a few women unionists,
primarilyamong the thousands of textileworkers,who were active in
protestbefore the revolution;but mostcitywomen-uneducated, badly
paid, overworked,responsible for children,and subject to abuse from
men-stayed away fromunions and revolutionaries.24

22. These figuresare extrapolatedfromseveral sources: Michael Paul Sacks, Women's

W'ork in theMidstofChange(New York: Praeger Pubs., 1976), pp.
in SovietRussia: Continuity
16, 25; Rose L. Glickman,"The Russian FactoryWoman, 1880-1914," IVomern inRussia,ed.
DorothyAtkinson,Alexander Dallin, and Gail WarshofskyLapidus (Stanford,Calif.: Stan-
ford UniversityPress, 1977), pp. 67-71; Izmeneniiasotsial'noistruktury obshchestva,
sovetskogo
Oktiabr'1917-1920 (Moscow: Mysl, 1976), p. 127.
23. Joan W. Scott and Louise A. Tilly have analyzed the limited impact of early
industrializationon women's roles in the familyin "Women's Work and the Family in
Nineteenth-Century ed. Charles E. Rosenberg (Philadel-
Europe," in TheFamilyin History,
phia: Universityof PennsylvaniaPress, 1975), pp. 145-78.
24. The literacyrate among urban women in 1897 is estimatedat 45 percent,com-
pared with 12 percent for rural women (Norton Dodge, Womenin theSovietEconomy
[Baltimore:Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1966], p. 141).

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226 Clements Russian Women

Then in February 1917, as inflationand food shortagesmade life

increasinglydifficult, the poor women of Petrogradgrewangryenough
to hurl rocksat the closed door of a bakeryor tojoin a demonstration.As
these protestsswelled, many women found a new, exhilarating,some-
what frighteningfreedom.Typical of such neophytedemonstratorswas
Aleksandra Rodionova, a twenty-two-year-old tram conductress.Much
latershe describedthe mood thatgripped her and manyotherwomen of
her class in those days: "I rememberhow we marched around the city.
The streetswere fullof people. The tramsweren'trunning,overturned
cars layacross the tracks.I did not knowthen,I did not understandwhat
was happening. I yelled along witheveryone,'Down withthe tsar!',but
when I thought,'But how will it be without the tsar?' it was as if a
bottomlesspit opened before me and my heart sank. Nevertheless I
yelled again and again, 'Down withthe tsar!' I feltthatall of myfamiliar
life was fallingapart, and I rejoiced in its destruction."25
The assault on the old order spread fromthe streetsinto the homes
and businessesof Petrogradbecause ittouched deep feelingsof injustice
in manyworking-classRussians,even in old women who had spent their
lives in submission.One such woman, Polia, was a servantin a military
hospital. She could not read nor write,and she probablylearned about
votingforthe firsttimewhen she was elected to the executivecommittee
of her hospital employees' soviet. When she went to Red Cross head-
quarters with the other membersof the Soviet executive committeeto
ask that the hospital matronbe arrestedfor treatingthe employees un-
fairly,she was in fact wearing a hand-me-downdress that the matron
had just given her. Polia believed thatthe revolutionwas being made for
the people, and despite or perhaps because of her yearsas a servant,she
feltthatshe had littleto lose and something-if onlydignity-to gain. It
is probable that Polia, like the peasants, had formerlyaccepted Russia's
injusticesas customaryand hence inevitable.In 1917 she no longer had
to, so witha few fearfuland guiltybackward glances at the authorities
she had served so long, she joined "the people."26 All over Petrograd,
then all over Russia, workingwomen did the same: going to meetings,
listeningto proclamations,condemning the burzhui(bourgeoisie), and
exulting,like Rodionova, in a revolutionwhich seemed to promise an
encl to misery.
The euphoria of March subsided somewhat in April, but working
women seem to have continued to support the destructionof the old

25. A. I. Rodionova, "Semnadtsatyigod," in Zheusshchiny gorodaLenina (Leningrad:

Lenizdat, 1963), p. 89.
26. Irina Skariatina,A W1orldCan End (New York: JonathanCape & Harrison Smith,
1931), pp. 108-17. The demand fordignitywas also commonlyheard firo male workers.
See RobertJames Devlin,Jr.,"PetrogradWorkersand the Workers'FactoryCommitteesin
1917: An Aspect of the Social Historyof the Russian Revolution"(Ph.D. diss., State Uni-
versityof New Yo-k at Binghamton, 1976), pp. 50-59.

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Signs Winter1982 227

regime. They avoided full-timeabsorptionin politics,attendinginstead

to their work and theirchildren,but they were willingto join demon-
strations.Some women also began to seek higher wages through or-
ganizing. For example, thousands of soldiers' wives in Petrogradheld a
march to demand an increase in militaryallotments,and laundresses
launched a strikethat won them higherwages and betterworkingcon-
ditions. Women also voted in elections for the soviets and municipal
dumas, but in lower percentages than men, for voting stillseemed to
manyof thema ventureinto the male sphere of politics.The women had
changed theirliveswiththe revolutionbyending theirsubmissionto the
upper class and scramblingfortheirshare of the food, but theyshrank
from politicalparties and continued to work for their families.27
Unlike noblewomen and peasant women, working-classwomen be-
came the object of great Bolsheviksolicitude.They were,afterall, mem-
bers of that proletarian class which held the starringrole in Marxist
ideology-and on which Bolsheviksurvivalactuallydepended. The sup-
port of workingwomen was important;so the governmentgave them,
and theirmen and children,rationsof the best food available, promised
them publiclyfunded medical care and child care, and encouraged them
to organize cooperatives and work for the soviets. In 1918 Aleksandra
Kollontai and Inessa Armand organized the First All-Russian Con-
ference of Working Women and Peasant Women; the next year they
establishedthe Woman's Bureau withinthe CommunistPartyto coordi-
nate workamong women. Motivatedby genuine concern forthe welfare
of the working-classwoman, Kollontai,Armand, Nadezhda Krupskaia,
Konkordiia Samoilova, and the hundreds of Woman's Bureau workers
under them sought to involve the working-classwoman in her own
emancipation, which they believed required the transferof all house-
keeping and child rearing to public institutions,the legalizationof di-
vorce, and the education of women to work as men's equals.
Thousands joined the projectsorganized by the Woman's Bureau.
27. For the soldiers' wives see Pravda (April 12, 1917); Nina N. Selivanova, Russia's
l'omen (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1923), p. 198; M. P. Dvoretskaia, "Soiuz soldatok,"
Zhenshchiny gotodaLenina (n. 25 above), pp. 77-86. For the laundresses,see V. R. Novik-
Kondrat'eva, "Slovo o prachkakh,"Leningradki:Vospominaniia, ocherki,
dokumenty (Lenin-
grad: Lenizdat, 1968), pp. 61-69. On female voting patternssee Diane Koenker, "The
Evolutionof PartyConsciousness in 1917: The Case of the Moscow Workers,"SovietStudies
30, no. 1 (January 1978): 49-50, and Koenker'sstudy,MoscowWIor-kers and the1917 Revolu-
tion(Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniversityPress, 1981), pp. 203-4, 207. See also Pauline S.
Crosley,IntimateLettersromPetrograd(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1920), p. 221, fora discus-
sion of a maid's attitudetoward voting in November 1917. There is abundant evidence
about workingwomen's attitudestowardwomen's emancipation,especiallyin the writings
of Bolsheviks.See, e.g., Aleksandra M. Kollontai,"Kak i dlia chego sozvan bylI vserossiiskii
s"ezd rabotnits,"Izbrannyestat'ii rechi(Moscow: Politizsat,1972), pp. 254-59; Inessa Ar-
mand [E. Blonina], "Rabota sredi zhenshchinproletariatana mestakh,"in Kommunistiche-
skaiapartiiai organizatsiia Vserossiiskaiakommunisticheskaiapartiia(bol'shevikov)
rabotnits,
(Moscow-Petrograd: Kommunist,1919), pp. 12-16.

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228 Clements Russian Women

But millionsmore did not, stillintenton privateconcerns thattheysaw

as unrelated to, or unalleviated by, Bolshevikpromises.What littlethey
understood of the Bolsheviks' plans for theiremancipation,theyoften
did not accept. Like the peasants, some women of the proletariatmut-
tered thatthe Bolshevikswere godless people who wanted to take babies
away fromtheirmothersand encourage men to abandon theirwives.28
Embracing the Bolsheviks' vision of emancipation meant renouncing
religiousbeliefsand social traditionsmore deeply rooted than theirfaith
in the tsar and the nobles had ever been. To take that step, a woman
needed courage-and a new Bolshevik faithto replace the one she re-
jected. Increasinglyin 1918, working-classwomen, like the peasants,
were more and more criticalof the Bolsheviks.
The distrustmanyfeltinitiallywas increased in 1918 by the steadily
worseningeconomic conditions. The countryhad already been at war
for four years and was enteringa devastatingperiod of civilwar which
would last another three. Even women who had taken part in Soviet
projectsnow concentratedall theirfreetimeon the search for food and
greeted Bolshevik organizers with demands that they produce the
promised better life. Aleksandra Kollontai wrote of Moscowvin 1918,
"There was hunger here. Oh, what hunger! The people didn't re-
member anythinglike it. They didn't take into account the reasons for
the hunger,theyforgotthatunder the tsaristregimetheyhad died from
hunger.... They feltonlythattherewasn'tany bread, and therewasn't.
Who was guilty?"29Many women believed that the Bolsheviks were.
They were the government,they had promised food, and the people
were starving.The factthat the partywas strugglingwitha devastated
economy in civilwar was not a sufficientexcuse. The red banners hung
everywheremight proclaim (in strange foreignwords like "republic")
the dawn of a new world, but the new world did not feed hungrychil-
dren. Nor did the party'smany declarationsof its intentionto establish
decent dining rooms and nurseriesand to raise wages afterthe war was
won.
The realitywhich the Bolsheviks could not change required that
women workall day,then search forfood in governmentstoresor on the
black market.They also had to scrounge for fuel with which to cook
theirfood and heat theirwretchedrooms. They had to barterforcloth-

28. Aleksandra M. Kollontai,"Iz vospominanii,"Oktiabr',no. 9 (1945), pp. 88-89; R.

A. Koivnator,"V obshchem strloi," Zhenshchino gorodaLenila (n. 25 above), p. 124.
29. Aleksandra M. Kollontai,Rabottlitsla z god revoliutsii
(Moscow: Konimmunist,1918),
p. 19. Fo0revidence of women'scl-iticism of the Bolsheviks,see also Pravda (May 8, 1919), p.
4; ( Jily3, 1919), p. 4; (JIul 17, 1919), p. 3; (March 20, 1921), p. 4; (March 27, 1921), p. 4;
P. Vinogradskaia, "()dna iz ocherednykh zacdach,"Kommun.ltkistka, 1920, no. 3-4, p. 31;
"Chety-egoda r-aboty," 1921, no. 16-17, p. 3; M. N. Sxeshniko\va-\VXdina,
Kolmmuslli.tka, "'V
olganizatsii-sila!" Zhe.shchinu gorodaLenina (n. 25 ab)oe), pp. 96-97.

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Signs Winter1982 229

ing or find ways to mend what theyhad. They had to struggleto keep
their children in school while hoping that they would not contract
typhus, diphtheria, or cholera from other children. Like peasant
women, working-classwomen also mightsufferpunishmentfrommen
or other women if theyparticipatedin politics.Given theirburdens and
the risksof political activity,it is hardlysurprisingthat these tired and
hungrywomen did not rush to join in Saturdaywork projectsor volun-
teer to aid the war effortin other ways. Some charged that the only
people who were livingbettersince the revolutionwere the Bolsheviks
themselves.30Worn out, thousands, perhaps millions,of women finally
abandoned the cities and returned to their native villages where food
could stillbe found.
A small minorityof women did respond favorablyto the appeals of
the Bolsheviks.They attended the meetingsorganized by the Woman's
Bureau, sent theirchildren to day-carecenters,joined factorycommit-
tees, served as "delegates" workingin governmentoffices,and did vol-
unteer work to aid the army.There were thousands of such women in
1918, tens of thousands by 1921. They were primarily industrial
workers-factory hands and those employed in transportationand
communication.The other working-classwomen of the cities-house-
wives and the few remainingdomestic servants-proved more resistant
to Bolshevik overtures.31By comparison, factorywomen were exposed
to revolutionaryideas in a milieu where such ideas were accepted. They
were also the women thatZhenotdel organizersmade the greatesteffort
to reach, by workingin the factoriesthemselvesand addressing mostof
theirmeetings,conferences,speeches, and writtenpropaganda to these
working-classwomen.
In order to win the support of proletarian women, the Woman's
Bureau's pamphlets and articles stressed that the party had already
given women a great deal-political equality,equal pay forequal work,
protectionfromdangerous workingconditions,and legalized divorce so
that theycould escape cruel husbands. In the future,afterthe war was
won, the partywould make widelyavailable the social services-day care,
public dining rooms, laundries-which would free women fromhouse-
work. Rarely mentioned in the propaganda addressed to proletarian
women was the Marxist hostilityto religion and to the nuclear family,
even though the ideology denounced both institutionsas sources of

30. Pravda (October 16, 1919), p. 4.

31. For representativefigureson attendanceat meetingsand othersuch activities,see
Kommiunisticheskaia partiiaSovetskogoSoiuza, Zhenotdel,Otcheto deiatel'nostiOtdelaTs.K.
R.K.P., po rabotesredi zhenshchin(Moscow: Gosizdat, 1921), pp. 19-22; "Otchet otdela
Ts.K.R.K.P. po rabote sredi zhenshchin,"Izve7stiia
Ts.K.R.K.P. (March 1922), pp. 45-53. On
the resistanceof housewives and servants,see B. Sadovskaia, "Rabota sredi domashnikh
khoziaek,"Konmmuiistka,1920, no. 7, pp. 42-43.

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230 Clements Russian Women

female inequality.""The leaders of the Woman's Bureau understood

what a storm of criticismcould be unleashed at a meeting of factory
women if a speaker proclaimed the Bolsheviks' intention to change
women's roles in the familyor to abolish Russian Orthodoxy. Nor did
the Zhenotdel want to stirup the anger of proletarianmen or run the
riskof rousingopposition fromthe partyrank and fileby calling forthe
abolition of the family.33Choosing their words carefully, the pro-
pagandists fashioned a message tailored to appeal to factorywomen's
needs withoutchallengingtheirbasic beliefs.The advocacy of women's
emancipation from familyand religion was usually saved for a more
educated audience, women who were communists or communist sym-
pathizersand secondary-schooland universitystudents.
Despite the moderation of the Bolshevik appeal, most factory
women avoided Zhenotdel projects. Therefore, there must have been
particularcharacteristicsthat made the women who did participatere-
ceptive. One such characteristicwas kinship ties. Some of those who
came to meetingsdid so because other membersof theirfamiliesalready
were allied withthe new regime, for example, the wives of Red Army
soldiers and the relativesof CommunistPartymembers.These women
mighthave picked up a smatteringof communistideology; at the least
theywould be less inclinedthanotherwomen to see the new government
as a threat.Anothercompellingreason to respond positivelyto the Bol-
sheviks'appeals was need. There is impressionisticevidence from 1920
thatthe majorityof urban women who attended meetingswere mothers
in their late twentiesand thirtieswho needed the services the party
promised more thandid youngerwomen withoutchildren.It maybe the
case, as some Bolsheviksbelieved, that theirmaturitymade them more

32. This summaryis based on the folloxwing pamphlets: EkaterinaArbore-Ralli,Mat' i

detiaz' Sovet.Rossii(Moscow: Gosizdat, 1920); Aleksandra M. Kollontai,Kak botiutsiarabot-
nitsaza svoiprava (Moscow: Izd. VTsIK, 1919), Rabotnitsy, kiest'ilakii krasnyifront
(Moscow:
Gosizdat, 1919), and Sen'ia i komnmunisticheskoe gosudarstvo(Moscow: Kommunist, 1918);
Z. I. Lilina,Nuzhnali rabotnitsami krest'iankam
sovetskaiavlalst'? (Petrograd: Gosizdat, 1921);
K. Samoilova,Krest'ianka i sovetskaia
vlast'(Moscow: Gosizdat, 1921), and Rabotnitsy v rossiis-
koi revoliutsii(Petrograd: Gosizdat, 1920). It is also based on two Zhenotdel broadsides
reprintedin G. D. Kostomarov,ed., Golosvelikoirevoliutsii (Moscow: Politzdat, 1967), pp.
203-7, 210-14; and on the column "Stranichkazhenshchiny-rabotnitsy," Prazdac,1919-21.
There were individual differencesin the agitators-Inessa Armand and Kollontai xwere
more feministthan Krupskaiaor ULnskova(the lastone wvasone of the main contributorsto
thePravda column)-but these differencesdid not alter the centralthrustof the agitation.
The published materialsused here cannot be augmented withspeeches made to delegate
meetings,a major formof mass agitation,because usuallyonlythe titles,notthe content,of
those speeches were repor-tedin the press. For a fascinatingexample of a dialogue between
a partyleader and a conferenceof women on the subjectof religion,see A. Lunacharskii,
"O religii,"Pravda (October 2, 1919), p. 2.
33. These fears are expressed in PraIda ( July31, 1919), p. 4; Samoilova, "O rabote
sredi krest'ianok,"p. 33; and in a speech by Aleksandra M. Kollontai at the Eighth Party
Congress, in KPSS, Vos'nois"ezd,mart1919 goda (Moscow: Politizdat,1959), p. 300.

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Signs Winter1982 231

politicallysophisticatedand more willingto defyconvention.34One may

also surmise that many of these women were living without men,
although there is no firmevidence to support this conjecture. It seems
probable, however,thatbeing singlebroughtgreaterdifficulties and also
greater freedom to women in the cities,as it did in the countryside.And
finallysome women were certainlyreceptive to the Bolshevik message of
emancipation for personal reasons. The wife of a and
profligate abusive
husband, forexample, would have a powerfulincentiveforseekingways
of living without him. This mixture of private and collective motives
broughtthousands of working-classwomen to the Zhenotdel lookingfor
help and hope.
Some working-classwomen took the Bolshevik call for women to
emancipate themselvesso seriouslythat theyorganized female unions.
Evidence about these groups is veryfragmentary,so it is impossible to
say how manytherewere,or how manywomen participated.However, a
numberof women's unions are knownto have existed in 1919 and 1920,
probablyin provincialcitiesaway fromMoscow and Petrograd. Perhaps
established withthe encouragementof non-Bolshevikfeministsor even
of the Woman's Bureau workers themselves,they seem to have been
composed mainlyof workingwomen who feltthat the male-led unions
did not treattheir female members fairly.Withdrawingfromthe men,
these women banded togetherto formunions thatwould representtheir
membersin the labor movementand speak forthemto the government.
A representativeof one such group in the city of Tsivilsk, in Kazan
province,explained the complaintsof women in her localityto a soviet
congressin 1919. Althoughthe revolutionhad declared femaleequality,
she said, women were stillnot being treated as equals: "We don't have
the strength[as individuals]to throwoffsuch viewsof men and the habit
of some women to humiliateus and consider us untalentedcreatures."
Such prejudices had in fact led to the creation of her union. Upon
hearing about the meetingof women workersin Moscow in November
1918, the Tsivilskwomen had decided thatthe solutionforthem was to
establisha woman's group. "And now," the speaker concluded, "we or-
ganize our union to protectthe interestsof women with our common
strength.Its goal is the unityof all the women of the city."35
If this woman's speech and her union were typical,then these
unions represented a spontaneous effortby workingwomen to set up
their own representativeorganizations to defend their interests.Such
democratic,liberationistactivitywas common in the revolution;men of
the lower classes had been establishing such organizations-factory
committees,soldiers'committees,and the sovietsthemselves-since Feb-
ruary 1917. Independent, grass-rootsgroups did not findfavorwiththe
34. R. A. Kovnator, "Krasnyi ugolok," Kommunistka,
1920, no. 1-2, p. 38; Vino-
gradskaia, "Odna iz ocherednykhzadach," p. 31.
35. Pravda (June 3, 1919), p. 2.

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232 Clements Russian Women

Bolshevik government,however; the party was attemptingto harness

the revolution'sspontaneityby establishingcontrolover such organiza-
tions. Furthermore,women's unions were particularlyobjectionable,be-
cause the Bolshevikshad alwayscondemned femaleseparatism.Women
were told to find equality by participatingwith men in working-class
organizations,not by settingup separate groups to pursue their own
self-interest.Separatism was also undesirable from the party'spoint of
view because it encouraged women to view men as the source of their
oppression. This was seen as wrongheaded and self-defeating,for the
enemyof women was not men, but the class system,whichwould onlybe
overcome by the cooperation of both sexes in the construction of
socialism. Many Bolsheviks, because of their opposition to separate
women's organizations, distrusted the Zhenotdel, even though the
bureau's official purpose was to draw women into the proletarian
movement.The partycertainlyhad no intentionof allowing women to
set up segregated,autonomous unions.36
When the Central Departmentof the Woman's Bureau in Moscow
learned of the women'sunions in 1919, Inessa Armand,thenhead of the
bureau, sent out instructionsthat the groups were to be disbanded.
Exactlywhat happened next is as uncertainas the number and strength
of the unions themselves.The only solid evidence of their existence
presentlyavailable is the series of announcements in Pravda that the
unions had been abolished. The firstsuch announcement appeared in
June of 1919, the second in October of the same year, and the thirdin
June of 1921.37 Apparentlysome women's unions survivedtwo years of
party pressure. They probably did not survive much longer, however,
for by 1921 the Bolsheviks had established controlover the cities,and
had either repressed or brought under party leadership the most in-
dependent proletarian organizations. The response to the women's
unions demonstrates the limitationsof the Bolshevik conception of
female emancipation and, indeed, of the party'semergingvision of the
emancipation of all Russian society.If women wanted to change their
position in Russia, they would have to do so in ways approved and
controlledby the Communist Party.
Thousands of women welcomed that opportunity and became
communists. Most working women who participated in Bolshevik-led
projects probablydid so in hopes of receivingdesperatelyneeded gov-
ernment help. They got very little,primarilybecause the government
had so littleto give them. There were few day-care centers,and those
that were established were badly supplied and run. The public dining
rooms served execrable food, and the employees of the government
36. For a discussion of Bolshevik attitudestoward "female separatism,"see Barbara
Evans Clements,BolshevikFeminist:The LifeofAleksandraKollontai(Bloomington: Indiana
UniversityPress, 1979), pp. 156-58, 210-14.
37. Pravda (June 3, 1919), p. 2; (October 24, 1919), p. 5; (June 5, 1921), p. 2.

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Signs Winter1982 233

laundries stole as much as theycleaned. Thus the privationsof the civil

war could be mitigatedfor workingwomen only by Bolshevikpromises
of a betterfuture.
Many did not findthe promisesappealing. The benefitsof a new life
seemed remote,the risksgreat,and those who vowed to lead women to a
betterworld had yet to prove themselvestrustworthy. Although prole-
tarian women were not as hostile to the Bolsheviksas peasant women,
theywere as burdened by the hardshipsof war. They were also stillloyal
enough to traditionalvalues to be suspiciousof a partythatcriticizedthe
familyand the church. Like peasant women, mostworking-classwomen
survivedthe civilwar by relyingon themselvesand on theirrelativesfor
food and survival,coping largelythrough traditionalmeans. The war
crisistore apart many families,but there is littleevidence that proletar-
ian women took advantage of the unstable situationto asserttheirinde-
pendence or to demand bettertreatmentfromtheirspouses.
The women who profitedfromthe Russian Revolutionwere those
who were willingto rejecttraditionand join the BolshevikParty.Of the
30,000 women who were partymembers in 1923, 19,000 (62 percent)
were fromthe central,Great Russian regionof the empire. Most of these
women (80 percent)were of lower-classorigin,although theywere more
likelythan male Bolsheviks to come from the skilled, better-educated
ranks of the proletariatand from the sluzhashie,or clerical and semi-
professionallower-middleclass. Only 5 percentof female Bolsheviksin
1923 were peasants. Ninety-fivepercenthad joined the partyafterFeb-
ruary 1917.38
Like the other women who attended Bolshevik meetings, com-
munistpartywomen had been exposed to the radicalizinginfluencesof
the urban areas, and theirhigherlevelsof education and statusprobably
made it easier for them than for poorer women to reject convention.
They usuallyentered radical politicsin theirlate teens or earlytwenties,
often supported in their decision by radical teachers, fellow students,
co-workers,or siblings.This radical communityreplaced the traditional
one theyhad left.In some instancesthese women were initiallyattracted
to politicsbecause theyhad received particularlybrutal treatmentfrom
the old regime. Some of them were also rebelling against private
despots-husbands or fathers-while others were following fathers,
husbands, brothers,sisters,or children into the revolutionarymove-
ment.What the communistwomen shared was a deep sense of grievance
againstthe old order and a willingnessto rejectthe taboos againstfemale
participation in politics. Communist ideology then legitimated their
grievances and elucidated the means for rectifyingthem. L. Ded, an
apprenticewho became a Bolshevikin 1917, wrotethataftershe heard a

38. E. Smitten,"Zhenshchinyv R.K.P.," Kommunistka, 1924, no. 4, pp. 8-10. The

women made up 7.8 percent of the partymembership.

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234 Clements RussianWomen

Bolshevikspeech, "Everythingbecame clear and understandableto me."

An unnamed hospital employee echoed these sentimentsin a letterto
Pravda in 1919. "I am a worker,"she wrote,"and only now do I see who
buries our rightsdeep and does not want us to be free."39
The civilwar yearswere difficultforfemale Bolsheviks,as theywere
for all Russian women. Communistpartywomen foughtat the frontas
politicalofficers,nurses,and, rarely,as combat soldiers,or theyworked
behind the lines for the governmentor the party. Most of them held
lower-echelon,essentiallyclerical,jobs or served as administratorsin the
government'shealth, education, or journalism departments.Only the
women of the Woman's Bureau ever reached partyleadership positions,
because the partymade no genuine effortto promote women withinits
ranks and because the women themselvesshrank frompoliticalleader-
ship. Nonetheless,afterthe civil war Bolshevik women were betteroff
than the masses of Russian women. They enjoyed materialbenefits-the
best food, clothes, housing, and transportationavailable. Ambitious
women also now had the opportunityto make careers forthemselves,an
opportunitywhichmanyof themeagerlyseized. Afterattendingsecond-
ary school and universityat governmentexpense, they became physi-
cians, scientists,engineers, academicians, and industrial managers.
Their lives were hardly glamorous, but they had the best that Soviet
Russia could provide, and theyhad the veryreal satisfactionof partici-
pating in a movementtheybelieved in.4?
Thus the women who benefitedmostimmediatelyfromthe Russian
Revolutionwere those withthe daring and the opportunityto move into
the new elite. Most Russian women had littleof either. Instead, they
coped with revolutionby relying,when they could, on old, protective
institutions,a sensiblestrategygiven the regime's inabilityto help them
survive the chaos. But in turningto the only defenses they trusted-
marriage, the family,the commune-women acted directlyand in-
directlyto preserve the institutionsthat were the source of their sub-
ordinate position in Russian society.
Of course, women's conservatismalone does not explain the persis-
tence of patriarchalvalues in the Soviet Union. Russian men were de-
fendersof the traditionalrelationshipbetweenwomen and men, and so
was the Bolshevikgovernment,althoughin a subtlecircumspectmanner
and only after the civil war. An analysis of the progress of women's
emancipation during the rebuildingof societyin the postrevolutionary
period lies beyond the scope of this article.Sufficeit to say that in the
39. Pravda (October 9, 1919), p. 3; (July 17, 1919), p. 4.
40. These generalizationsare drawn froma studyof eighty-fourBolshevikwomen,
sketches of whose lives appear in Lelingradki;Vospomianliia,ocherki,dokument,; Slavnye
(Moscow: Politizdat, 1958); Pravda, stavshaialegetndoi
bol'shevichki (Moscow: Voenno, izd.
Ministerstvaoborny SSSR, 1964); Zhenshchiny russkoirevoliutsii
gorodaLetnilta;Zhenshchiny
(Moscow: Politizdat,1968). See also A. Merezhin,"RabotnitsaX upravleniigosudarstvom,"
Kommutnistka,1922, no. 3-5, pp. 45-46; and E. Smitten,"Zhenshchinyv R.K.P.," pp. 8-10.

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Signs Winter1982 235

1920s, the Bolshevikshad the opportunityto provide women withedu-

cation and withservicesthatwould have enabled them to revolutionize
theirfamilyroles. Yet in thatdecade the partybegan to retreatfromits
commitmentto abolish patriarchalinstitutions.The leadership came to
believe that the familycould contributeto the preservationof social
stabilityin a timeof rapid modernization.Nor are the Russians alone in
thiscompromise:the Chinese Communistsalso abandoned theirearliest,
most radical attemptsto revolutionizethe family.
This preliminaryexamination of the Russian experience suggests
that the patriarchalfamilysurvivedthe buffetingsof change because it
served the needs of the people and of the elite during a time of crisis.
The leaders, who shared to some extentthe conservatismof the masses
but who also advocated a true emancipation of women, at firstre-
luctantlycompromised withthe masses. Later, as the establishedgover-
nors of a postrevolutionarysociety,theytoo found patriarchalstructures
an attractivedefense against social instability.Thus througha complex
interactionbetweenthe values and needs of the masses and those of the
leadership, the urban, nuclear, but still patriarchal familybecame the
foundationof Russia's modernized autocracy.

DepartmentofHistory
ofAkron
University

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