Role of women

1. Role of women

2. Life before the Revolution • “Russian women suffered meekly under an oppression imposed by class and family” • Feminist ideology was present amongst the bourgeoisie classes, and the divide between peasant and aristocratic women was very stark.

3. The Revolution • Dissolution of the ‘bourgeois’ family • Marriage reforms • Abortion law reforms • Equal pay for equal work

4. Zhenotdel – Women’s Bureau • Bolshevik women were allowed to run the organization. • Not an indication of gender equality, but rather because it was not considered to be very important.

5. Marriage Law Reform (1926) • Reinstated the concept of ‘alimony’ • Recognised common-law marriages

6. 1930s • Women’s roles had changed (or the idea of them anyway) • Revolutionary Hero, still an equal citizen and loyal worker, but also a devoted wife and mother. • Divorce became more difficult to obtain under Stalin. • 1936 abortion outlawed.

7. Activity: • In groups, answer the following questions about your source: • What is the source? (Describe) • Who created it? (include any bias) • When was it created? (what was happening?) • Why was it created? • What questions do you have?

8. Source A: In 1929 the Communist Party was still calling for the withering away of the family. By 1936-37, when the Russian CP’s degeneration was complete, Stalinist doctrine pronounced this a “crude mistake” and called for a “reconstruction of the family on a new socialist basis.” The third Family Code, which became law in 1936, also made divorce more difficult, requiring an appearance in court, increased fees and the registration of the divorce on the divorcees’ internal passports, to prevent “a criminally irresponsible use of this right, which disorganizes socialist community life” (Schlesinger, The Family in the U.S.S.R.).

9. Source B: The official glorification of family life and the retreat from Bolshevik policies on divorce and abortion were an integral part of the political counterrevolution that usurped political power from the working class. Trotsky addressed this at length: “The triumphal rehabilitation of the family, taking place simultaneously—what a providential coincidence!—with the rehabilitation of the ruble, is caused by the material and cultural bankruptcy of the state. Instead of openly saying, ‘We have proven still too poor and ignorant for the creation of socialist relations among men, our children and grandchildren will realize this aim,’ the leaders are forcing people to glue together again the shell of the broken family, and not only that, but to consider it, under threat of extreme penalties, the sacred nucleus of triumphant socialism. It is hard to measure with the eye the scope of this retreat.” —The Revolution Betrayed

10. Source C: Trotsky denounced opposition to the recognition of de facto marriage in a 7 December 1925 speech to the Third All-Union Conference on Protection of Mothers and Children: “Comrades, this [opposition] is so monstrous that it makes you wonder: Are we really in a society transforming itself in a socialist manner…? Here the attitude to woman is not only not communist, but reactionary and philistine in the worst sense of the word. Who could think that the rights of woman, who has to bear the consequences of every marital union, however transitory, could be too zealously guarded in our country?... It is symptomatic and bears witness to the fact that, in our traditional views, concepts and customs, there is much that is truly thick-headed and that needs to be smashed with a battering ram.” —Trotsky, “The Protection of Motherhood and the Struggle for Culture,” Women and the Family

11. Source D:

12. Source E:

13. Homework • Read pages 109-114 (first paragraph of page 114)