Progression of Women’s Rights and Roles in Russia

When most people think of the Russian Revolution, they think of the revolution in 1917 when Bolsheviks stepped into power, creating a new communist government. Although this did happen, it wasn’t the only thing that took place at that time in Russia, or at that time the Soviet Union. During this time, Russian women received equal rights and roles that they didn’t have before. Although women’s rights and roles didn’t progress until the Russian Revolution of 1917, movements by Russian women for their right to vote and for higher education began and carried on through the Russian Revolution of 1905. [1] Also, despite the fact that all of the women in Russia received equal rights after the revolution of 1917, the support and the focus of the Bolsheviks were the working women of the Soviet Union.

In the Russian Revolution of 1905, when the women began to push for the right to vote and to get a higher level of education, they began to speak out. They would write articles and letters in newspapers and magazines in support of the women’s movement. [2] Over time, more women began writing articles and letters. Despite their efforts, though, they didn’t achieve suffrage or access to higher education until after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

The 1923 cover of Rabotnitsa.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, a group called the Bolsheviks stepped into power and their leader, Vladimir Lenin, became the head of the new Soviet state. [3] Lenin and the rest of the Bolsheviks supported women, and created an organization of women called the Zhenotdel, who created and used propaganda for the feminist movements. [4] After the creation of this organization, the Bolsheviks had Soviet newspapers and magazines created. Two examples would be Pravda and Rabotnitsa. [5] In these newspapers and magazines were propaganda illustrations and letters. Even Vladimir Lenin himself wrote letters in these newspapers in support of the working women of the Soviet Union. Lenin, as the head of the Soviet state, gave women the equal rights they had been wanting and altered the roles of the Soviet “working woman”. While he was in power more women joined the labor force and he allowed women to work in political positions. [6]

Vladimir Ilich Lenin, 1918. Tass/Sovfoto.

Alexandria Kollontai

Although all the rights given from the Bolsheviks in the government applied to every woman in the Soviet Union, the focus was actually on the proletariat women and not the bourgeois women. The Bolsheviks followed the idea of Marxism, meaning that they would want to fix the struggle of the proletariat and that they saw the bourgeois as unfair and that they already enough since they were wealthier and owned the businesses. Marxism was an idea that came from Karl Marx in regard to capitalism and stated that their were two social classes, the proletariat and the bourgeois. [7] This Marxist view was also held by one of the Bolshevik women in the Zhenotdel, Alexandria Kollontai and was portrayed in the introduction of her book called, “The Social Basis of The Women’s Question”. [8] Also, in Lenin’s letter, “To the Working Women”, he only mentions the “working women” referring to the proletariat women. [9]

The Russian Revolution of 1917 led to the achievement of rights that the women of Russia originally wanted and more. Although the rights given to them were centered on the proletariat women, all of them got to experience “full citizenship” once they were granted equal rights to that of the rights of men. The 1917 revolution was time of considerable progression for the women of Russia.

Sources:

1. Linda Edmonson, ed, Women and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union (Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
2. Edmondson.
3. Albert Resis, “Vladimir Lenin: Prime Minister of Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed March 8, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vladimir-Lenin.
4. Richard Stites, “Zhenotdel: Bolshevism and Russian Women, 1917–1930,” Russian History 3, no. 2 (1976): 174–93.
5. Stites.
6. Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society.
7. “Marxism | History, Ideology, & Examples,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed March 25, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Marxism.
8. Alexandra Kollontai, “Introduction to the Book The Social Basis of the Women’s Question.,” Introduction to the Book The Social Basis of the Women’s Question, 1908, https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1908/social-basis.htm.
9. Lenin, “To the Working Women.,” Pravda, February 22, 1920, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/feb/21.htm.