International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Women played a number of significant roles in the Soviet Union. They participated politically, fought in the revolution itself, and pushed for their own rights in areas such as reproduction and sexual liberation. They also took part in resisting the counterrevolution. Shortly after the October Revolution , the Conference of Working Women of the Petrograd Region was organized to mobilize women's support for the elections to the Constituent Assembly. Planned by Aleksandra Kollontai and Konkordiya Samoilova, two Bolshevik women, the conference brought together 500 delegates representing 80,000 Petrograd women workers, as well as a few people from Moscow, IvanovoVozhenesnsk, Tula, and Kaluga. This meeting also heard a non-Bolshevik, Dr. Doroshevskaya, of the separatist feminist League for Women's Equality. The conference passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a fund administered by soviets with substantial democratic participation by proletarian women, so that women would play a guiding role in the institutions that emancipated them. Yakov Sverdlov, head of the Party Secretariat, chairperson of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets, and husband of a politically active communist, K. T. Novgorodtseva-Sverdlova, was sensitive to women's subordinate status. So he became a strong ally of the communist women involved in organizing women. Lenin , too, felt that the ... log in or subscribe to read full text