Russian Revolution and women

[goalkeeper]

Trotskyists often talk of the rise of Stalinism seeing a reversal of the gains of women in the Russian Revolution with divorce being harder to achieve and abortion being restricted further then banned. What else happened? Was there a retreat concerning the question of women in the revolution by 1930?

What do Marxist-Leninists say of this? Did the rise of Stalin and his power etc see gains of women in other areas? Increasingly integrated in the workforce? Or were they used for already feminised jobs?

After Kollontai was sent of to Norway in 1922 and attacked, did anyone really try to change relations between men and women anymore the way she had? (with the advocation of communal creche's, kitchens etc)

[1848]

With the rise of Stalin, the position of women politically and socially improved appreciably. In fact, The Earth and Its Peoples, A Global History, Third Edition states that with the deaths of many men being sent to the gulags, women were actually able to work in offices and other jobs previously exclusive to the male gender.

On International Women's Day, Stalin wrote:
"Ardent greetings to working women and women toilers throughout the world who are uniting in one common family of labour around the socialist proletariat.

I wish them every success:

1) in strengthening the international ties of the workers of all countries and achieving the victory of the proletarian revolution;

2) in emancipating the backward sections of women toilers from intellectual and economic bondage to the bourgeoisie;

3) in uniting the peasant women around the proletariat—the leader of the revolution and of socialist construction;

4) in making the two sections of the oppressed masses, which are still unequal in status, a single army of fighters for the abolition of all inequality and of all oppression, for the victory of the proletariat, and for the building of a new, socialist society in our country.

Long live International Communist Women’s Day!

J. Stalin"
(Credits to Marxist Internet Archives).

I would conclude that he was an advocate of women's rights.

[DasFapital]

I would conclude that he was an advocate of women's rights.

I think the women who were raped by the Red Army in Eastern Europe would disagree with that.

[Kalinin's Facial Hair]

I think the women who were raped by the Red Army in Eastern Europe would disagree with that.

Come on, man. How is this even Stalin's fault?

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Come on, man. How is this even Stalin's fault?

http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalin-rape-apologist-t176594/index.html

T. Snyder, Bloodlands, pg. 316:
Yugoslav communists complained to Stalin about the behavior of Soviet soldiers, who gave them a little lecture about soldiers and “fun.”

Sounds like a condoning sexist wanker to me.

[Kalinin's Facial Hair]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/stalin-rape-apologist-t176594/index.html

T. Snyder, Bloodlands, pg. 316:
Yugoslav communists complained to Stalin about the behavior of Soviet soldiers, who gave them a little lecture about soldiers and “fun.”

Sounds like a condoning sexist wanker to me.

I agree that, if Stalin did say that, it was disgusting and truly horrific.

But the rapes already occurred before this talk, right? So Stalin should be blamed for not taking action, for not punishing and/or forbidding the rapes (though some MLs said soldiers were punished).

Anyway, let's not derail the thread.

[rednordman]

I think the women who were raped by the Red Army in Eastern Europe would disagree with that.thing that really pisses me off about this is that i swear the Nazis did just the same in eastern Europe and Scandinavia, but no-one says a thing about that do they?

[Fourth Internationalist]

thing that really pisses me off about this is that i swear the Nazis did just the same in eastern Europe and Scandinavia, but no-one says a thing about that do they?

Because they're talking about Stalin, who supposedly supports women's rights.

[Lither]

thing that really pisses me off about this is that i swear the Nazis did just the same in eastern Europe and Scandinavia, but no-one says a thing about that do they?

No, but should the Red Army just let themselves be reduced to the level of the fascist and National Socialist puppets that tore a bloody, twisted path through the USSR?

[rednordman]

@lither: What bothers me is that the USSR's crimes have in recent years got way way more exposure than that of the nazi regime. You'd almost think that the Russians are the only nation in the world guilty of this.

@user name: Well in honesty both sides of that argument are correct. He both failed to deal with the rapists in the army and at the same time women did pay a pivotal role in their society too. More so than in the west at the time.

[Le Socialiste]

Anyway, let's not derail the thread.

This thread is about women and the Russian revolution - how's the subject of rape in the Red Army 'derailing' anything?

As for those claiming Stalin made great inroads in the struggle for women's liberation, they're hardly commendable in light of the initial gains won by women at the onset of the revolutionary period. Indeed, Stalin held a deeply reactionary attitude towards the role of women in society. He was very much a traditionalist. Women had made significant gains in the initial years of the revolution; divorces were easier to obtain, abortion more accessible, and women enjoyed a generally freer status of life. Domestic duties typically relegated to women were communalized - community kitchens, laundries, and childcare were set up. These would later suffer stunning reversals as Stalin and other conservative traditionalist tendencies entrenched themselves in the party. Stalin would eventually place strong emphasis on the importance of the family unit as the foundation of Soviet society. Stalin's statement on International Women's Day in 1949 sums this viewpoint up quite nicely:


The education of the children is the honourable social duty of mothers. Motherhood and the rearing of children in the U.S.S.R. are honoured and respected. The Soviet State assigns enormous funds to aid mothers with large families and unmarried mothers: 2,500,000 mothers have been awarded the Order "Motherhood Glory" and the "Motherhood Medal". The title "Mother Heroine" has been conferred on 28,500 women.

Women were once again relegated to the status of mothers and caretakers. Access to divorce and abortion were restricted (the latter being eventually banned). Despite the entry of women into the workplace, the party at this point undertook the task of creating a specific 'image' of the ideal Soviet woman. In art and propaganda women modeled the ideal attitudes of love, honor, and obedience. In this light, the reemergence of conservative, patriarchal hierarchies ran parallel to the restoration of traditional gender roles throughout Soviet society. Susan E. Reid makes the point that, in order to fully understand how these representations emerged and impacted the USSR, "it is essential to establish as precisely as possible the conditions in which they were produced and made public." Stalin was hardly an advocate of women's struggles and liberation. He may have given nominal support to these efforts in his speeches (and even these reflected his own traditionalist orientations), but such support meant very little in practice.

[Ismail]

T. Snyder, Bloodlands, pg. 316:
Yugoslav communists complained to Stalin about the behavior of Soviet soldiers, who gave them a little lecture about soldiers and “fun.”

Sounds like a condoning sexist wanker to me.Snyder's omit another account, such as Stalin's words to a Czechoslovak delegation which discussed the subject. (see Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's Wars, pp. 263-264.)

Rapes carried out by individual Red Army soldiers do not negate the fact that not only was the Red Army playing a liberating role throughout Eastern Europe, it was assisting the communists of those countries in removing bourgeois and feudal regimes which restricted the role of women to begin with.

On the issue of women's rights under Stalin some other words are in order.

The public debate on abortion carried out before its restriction was characterized by an almost total absence of any "moral" arguments. (Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia) At the time abortion was still seen as something incurring great health risks, something emphasized to all women seeking abortions from doctors in the 20's-early 30's. The Soviet decree legalizing abortion to begin with characterized it as an "evil" that would disappear in time under socialism. Kollontai, who backed the law back then, stated in 1936 that conditions had existed in the USSR which supposedly made abortion unnecessary in light of the fact that provisions for childcare had greatly improved since the revolution.

When discussing a biography of himself to be published for Soviet readers (which included general developments within the USSR), he commented that the role of women in society should have been included, and so it was. ("Stalin as symbol," in Stalin: A New History, pp. 266-267.)

It was also under Stalin that the Soviet leadership engaged in a "de-veiling" campaign in Central Asia.

The Soviet revisionists presided over the legalization of abortion in 1955 and yet undermined the continued struggle for women's progress and promoted the reinforcement of conservative attitudes towards women in the ensuing decades. Clearly making the issue of abortion the touchstone of the subject is not accurate, otherwise one would need to explain why the revisionists carried out this act, which clearly was not for "revolutionary" motives.

[Questionable]

Women were once again relegated to the status of mothers and caretakers.

Was this accompanied with any real physical effort to make women take on caretaker roles? Did women who sought alternate paths face any kind of discrimination? Are the actual gender distributions of jobs in the USSR available?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

[link removed due to new user restrictions - S.]

T. Snyder, Bloodlands, pg. 316:
Yugoslav communists complained to Stalin about the behavior of Soviet soldiers, who gave them a little lecture about soldiers and “fun.”

Sounds like a condoning sexist wanker to me.

The claim is due to, I think, Milovan Đilas, and his neutrality is questionable, at best. This is, after all, the same Đilas that insinuated that Stalin was a Slavic chauvinist.

That said, do any of the comrades on this forum have access to the relevant records - speeches, army orders, disciplinary decisions etc., or reliable citations about the same? I am aware of several speeches in which Stalin had warned against anti-German sentiment, but none that address the specific issue of rape. Even more importantly, had there been a concerned effort to prevent these occurrences, and were the guilty parties punished?


The public debate on abortion carried out before its restriction was characterized by an almost total absence of any "moral" arguments. (Sarah Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia) At the time abortion was still seen as something incurring great health risks, something emphasized to all women seeking abortions from doctors in the 20's-early 30's. The Soviet decree legalizing abortion to begin with characterized it as an "evil" that would disappear in time under socialism. Kollontai, who backed the law back then, stated in 1936 that conditions had existed in the USSR which supposedly made abortion unnecessary in light of the fact that provisions for childcare had greatly improved since the revolution.

Fair enough. And certain sections of the bourgeois liberal movement advocated abortion due to their bigotry against the lower classes, which seems to have coloured Lenin's perception of the issue at the very least. However, I think that attending to the concrete needs of actual proletarian women would have dispelled such notions. As I recall it, there had been petitions by urban, proletarian women against the criminalisation of abortion.

I am not trying to imply that the centrist regime had never done anything for women. Obviously, major advances were made in the period, particularly concerning economic rights for women. But at the same time, the criminalisation of abortion and the ideological support for an idealised notion of motherhood are surely serious faults, along with the criminalisation of homosexuality etc.


The Soviet revisionists presided over the legalization of abortion in 1955 and yet undermined the continued struggle for women's progress and promoted the reinforcement of conservative attitudes towards women in the ensuing decades. Clearly making the issue of abortion the touchstone of the subject is not accurate, otherwise one would need to explain why the revisionists carried out this act, which clearly was not for "revolutionary" motives.This does not seem to follow - revisionists can enact progressive legislation from time to time, but their overall tendency is reactionary. I mean, the revisionist regime also stressed antireligious propaganda after a period of relative inaction on that front; does this mean that decision was not progressive?

And surely, we can both agree that "abortion rights" - really the right of a woman to dispose of her body as she sees fit - are an important part of women's liberation? I think we can, which is why I find the statement that "making the issue of abortion the touchstone of the subject is not accurate" confusing. I mean, obviously progress on the issue can occur without the legalisation of abortion (and the Soviet Union was more accepting of women than any bourgeois "democracy", even those that had abortion rights for the wealthy), but the criminalisation of abortion is a step back.

[Ismail]

This does not seem to follow - revisionists can enact progressive legislation from time to time, but their overall tendency is reactionary. I mean, the revisionist regime also stressed antireligious propaganda after a period of relative inaction on that front; does this mean that decision was not progressive?I'm not saying that the legalization abortion was wrong and a sign of revisionism, but I am saying that the line that there was a "Stalinist bureaucracy" that was conservative and banned abortion (and existed after Stalin's death) doesn't really work when this same "bureaucracy" relegalized abortion two years after Stalin died, and was followed by the "deformed workers' states" and their own "Stalinist bureaucracies" across almost all of Eastern Europe.

It also doesn't work when you have the GDR decriminalizing homosexuality in the late 60's and by the 80's having medical officials trying not to offend homosexuals in regards to blood donations (in-re AIDS), whereas in the USSR homosexuals were sent to mental hospitals and in Albania they were sent to labor camps. Evidently the "Stalinist bureaucracies" had different approaches to abortion, homosexuality and other issues which were related in no small part to their contacts with the West and the conditions of their own countries.


but the criminalisation of abortion is a step back.Yes.

[Le Socialiste]

Was this accompanied with any real physical effort to make women take on caretaker roles? Did women who sought alternate paths face any kind of discrimination? Are the actual gender distributions of jobs in the USSR available?

You could easily make that very argument for any society that ostensibly promotes 'equality' amongst the sexes. American women can work outside the home, seek alternative paths to that of mere caretaker and other such things, but equality is far from assured; indeed, they must still contend with the predominance of conservative patriarchal hierarchies in the workplace and wider society. Everything from media portrayal to societal expectations reinforces the woman's role within the capitalist mode of production - and historical class society - as that of a reproducer of labor. Women are reduced, through sexism and other such manifestations that permeate class hierarchies, to having to shoulder the burden of housework, childcare, laundry - on top of her labor outside the home.

I've outlined in my first post how this parallels the development of women's roles following the initial revolutionary period in Soviet society, and their subsequent reversal in light of the rise of traditional conservatism in the party. Whereas the Bolsheviks in the early years of the revolution sought to promote women's liberation through active education from below - or, as the Zhenotdel's motto went, "agitation by deed" - the party bureaucracy under Stalin's watchful management undertook to do so lacking any support or experience in terms of praxis on the ground (i.e. from above). During Stalin's ultra-left "third period" the party promoted campaigns against the veiling of women that, at its height, resulted in the slaughter of women by their husbands or male relatives (1927-29). In one quarter of 1929 alone, 300 women were murdered in Central Asia for engaging in this practice, called for by a leadership utterly divorced from realities on the ground.

Stalin's and other's approaches during this period marked a distinctive break with prior policies or efforts that sought to organize women through their own collective self-activity and education, often in tandem with Bolshevik members in their own locales. The Zhenotdel, before it was disbanded by Stalin in 1930, was responsible for organizing communal kitchens, laundries, and nurseries in order to free working and peasant women from the burdens of housework. Zhenotdel agitators organized "delegates’ assemblies," in which women were elected from factories and villages to work in apprenticeships running factories, hospitals, to serve in the soviets or unions, even to function as administrators or judges! In the bureau's second year it organized and held 853 conferences of peasant and working women throughout the country, and by the mid-1920s over 500,000 women had served as conference delegates. These processes and others encouraged the organic growth of women's liberation through women's active involvement and participation in their own struggle, coupled with the ongoing political and economic development of Russian society.

The rise of Stalinism and its subsequent entrenchment in the functions and apparatuses of the party overturned these foundations. As I mentioned before, the 1930s witnessed a dramatic reversal in these gains; abortion was outlawed, divorce made more difficult, and Stalin's proclamation of the "New Soviet Family" were little more than a return to older bourgeois and oppressive forms of the family unit. Women may have had jobs, but they were not equal in terms of the amount of labor they had to do both in the workplace and home. Soviet propaganda modeled the 'ideal woman' as softer, less hardened by work. Women were expected to bear the qualities of love and obedience, and to take pride in their roles as 'reproducers of labor', mothers. In this way, their expected function was - and is - little different than that of women in other societies.

[Ismail]

I've outlined in my first post how this parallels the development of women's roles following the initial revolutionary period in Soviet society, and their subsequent reversal in light of the rise of traditional conservatism in the party. Whereas the Bolsheviks in the early years of the revolution sought to promote women's liberation through active education from below - or, as the Zhenotdel's motto went, "agitation by deed" - the party bureaucracy under Stalin's watchful management undertook to do so lacking any support or experience in terms of praxis on the ground (i.e. from above). During Stalin's ultra-left "third period" the party promoted campaigns against the veiling of women that, at its height, resulted in the slaughter of women by their husbands or male relatives (1927-29). In one quarter of 1929 alone, 300 women were murdered in Central Asia for engaging in this practice, called for by a leadership utterly divorced from realities on the ground.It's quite schizophrenic to denounce the "Stalinist bureaucracy" for its "conservatism" and supposedly "top-down" nature and yet admit it engaged in an "ultra-left" policy of unveiling women against the resistance engendered by reactionary customs, as if this policy did not involve the active agitation of thousands of Communists across Central Asia. Had this same "bureaucracy" attacked such a policy it would be condemned for "conservatism" by Trotskyists decades later as showing that it wanted to stay "safe," to restrain the voice and activity of the mass of cadres.

It is also amusing that you speak of it being "utterly divorced from realities on the ground," something that apparently doesn't apply to general attitudes towards women in the rest of the USSR when Stalin is engaging in supposedly "conservative" acts.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I'm not saying that the legalization abortion was wrong and a sign of revisionism, but I am saying that the line that there was a "Stalinist bureaucracy" that was conservative and banned abortion (and existed after Stalin's death) doesn't really work when this same "bureaucracy" relegalized abortion two years after Stalin died, and was followed by the "deformed workers' states" and their own "Stalinist bureaucracies" across almost all of Eastern Europe.

Again, what is important is the overall trend, not this or that policy. The revisionist bureaucracy legalised abortion, but in general it continued the conservative policies of the earlier centrist (the term "Stalinist", I feel, ignores the nuances of the period, and it has become a term of abuse in any case) bureaucracy.


It also doesn't work when you have the GDR decriminalizing homosexuality in the late 60's and by the 80's having medical officials trying not to offend homosexuals in regards to blood donations (in-re AIDS), whereas in the USSR homosexuals were sent to mental hospitals and in Albania they were sent to labor camps. Evidently the "Stalinist bureaucracies" had different approaches to abortion, homosexuality and other issues which were related in no small part to their contacts with the West and the conditions of their own countries.

Chiefly the latter, I think. And yes, not every centrist bureaucracy behaved in a socially conservative manner (though as I recall, Democratic Germany was still conservative when it comes to the economy). But I am not familiar with many Bolshevik-Leninists that would claim that they did.

And I realise that most Marxist-Leninists would not support such policies. Even so, I think these developments need to be criticised, chiefly because they demonstrate an inability to correctly apply materialist principles (as do certain statements by Trotsky in the period; I am not trying to score factional points). But also because that attitude influenced Marxist-Leninist movements outside the Soviet Union; consider the unfortunate attitude of most Maoists to homosexuality during the "party-building" period, or the events in Cuba etc.


It's quite schizophrenic to denounce the "Stalinist bureaucracy" for its "conservatism" and supposedly "top-down" nature and yet admit it engaged in an "ultra-left" policy of unveiling women against the resistance engendered by reactionary customs, as if this policy did not involve the active agitation of thousands of Communists across Central Asia. Had this same "bureaucracy" attacked such a policy it would be condemned for "conservatism" by Trotskyists decades later as showing that it wanted to stay "safe," to restrain the voice and activity of the mass of cadres.

That does seem schizophrenic, with apologies to comrade Le Socialiste, but this is not an attitude that all Bolshevik-Leninists take. I think it is important to recognise the progressive accomplishments of the centrists, and this policy seems to be such an accomplishment, even though there seem to have been mistakes in the implementation, concerning the women killed etc.