Women in the Soviet Union

Women in the Soviet Dictatorship How were the lives of Soviet women affected by the policies of the Stalin era? archive 1 get-go Izvestiia, Old Way of Life, present 8, 1930. Document 2 Source Pravda, On the Path to a consider up to(p) Emancipation, abut 8, 1929. To sidereal day is international communist womens day, the international day for fermenting women. Today is a holiday in honor of one- half(prenominal) of the international proletarian army and in honor of the women workers of the go forth Soviet marrow.In our country, governed by the power of the proletariat, the day of the muliebrity worker has been consciously designated as a political and ethnical great day. And extinctside the Soviet borders, in places where capitalist bond long time has non been overthr consume, we atomic progeny 18 certain that conscientious, advanced women workers forget today demonstrate their dedication to the cause of the international revolution and their long-lasting solidarity with the work women and men of the Soviet Union. Our fair sex worker in the old . . during the barbaric, savage, and blood stained tsarist regime. The heavy and hopeless fate of the cleaning womanhood workeras mother, wife, and girl. All of the striving of the woman worker toward the light, toward liberty, and to a human existence were snuffed out by the criminal arm of the autocracy. The ontogeny and debasement were trip direct in politics, in mill labor, and in daily life. work women in capitalist countries. Capitalist democracy has non and can non give freedom to working and laboring women.Working women in on the whole bourgeois countries argon economically and politically enslaved. Middle class conventionality has a tenacious vice-grip on daily life. Advanced women workers and revolutionary women proletarians atomic number 18 persecuted. The most brutal blows of capitalist rationalization, unemployment, and hunger in the midst of plenty descend upon the female half of the proletariat. Fascism, Catholicism, and reformism with increasingly thoroughness exploit the historical backwardness of women orkers in order to sort out apart the proletarian ranks and strengthen the position of imperialism. The temples of national governmentwhat a thing to talk about are protected by pit walls which prevent the participation of working women. Only we in the Soviet Union shake off at hand all of the preconditions and foundations for the complete emancipation of working women. These preconditions were created and acqui flushed in a severe make out with enemies, at a age when world history passed over the heights of the great October summit.Only our women have been turn in practice, acting as conscious builders of a new parliamentary law and a new governing commune, and speaking out as quick citizens with fully equal rights in the socialist family. For more than eleven days, our woman worker has made her way along the path set by the proletarian dict atorship. together with all the proletariat she fought for power in October. Together with her working brothers she passed by dint of the crucible of sacrifice and suffering during the civil war. She stands in the most advanced ranks of our working corporate in the present-day superb and productive period of socialist construction.In the factory shop class and at the controls of the put up ships, in the co-ops and at the shooting range, in the maintainry shallow and at the thundering machinery, everywhere the tractors of our increasingly strong state farms and bodied farms are plowing the virgin soil of our Soviet land, in the workers faculties and in courses for the red sisterhood where the proletariat struggles relentlessly to chieftain science, and everywhere that life is in full swing and the anthills of labor are hummingin no(prenominal) of these places have the working women of the Soviet Union been guided into last place.Everywhere the agile stream of activism o f our women workers is flowing. With ever more firm and certain steps they are advancing on the path to complete emancipation under the tested leadership of our troupe. Needless to say, without the conscious and active participation of the working woman we leave behind not fulfill the tasks defined by Lenin and by the inherent ontogeny of the October revolution. We will not achieve the rapid tempo of socialist industrialization if the woman worker turns out to be passive.We will not achieve the complete cultural revolution if the woman worker trunk on the side, or is somehow pushed off toward the second rate plan. For the happy completion of all these tasks we must mobilize the entire womens active. enlisting of the best women into the company and the courageous and steadfast advancement into the soviets, management and cooperative duties, and the governing apparatusthese measures will ensure the actual emancipation of women who hold on backward in comparison with our genera l levels of economic and cultural development.The upper limit activism of all women proletarians and conscientious working peasant women is one of the indispensable guarantees of our push successes and our victorious socialist growth. The greatest possible and most inexhaustible activism, the interminably creative work of the woman proletarian on all voluminous and small fronts of our life, their rigid and total solidarity with the Partythese are the obligatory conditions for our creativity.The struggle for a new cultured lifeis this possible without the creative porta of the woman worker? The struggle with alcoholism and disgusting drunken splurge and the struggle to expel the green hydra from the Soviet homeare these conceivable without the will and determination, without the intensive and constant force of the working woman? Could the struggle with such social ulcers as prostitution proceed successfully without arousing and involving hundreds of thousands of working women?An d the struggle to overcome difficulties, the struggle with our some(prenominal)-faceted class enemies, the struggle with anti-Semitism, with the priesthood, and with phantasmal stupeficationare these goals attainable if the campaign against these barbarisms does not include the millions of working women and if they are not advanced into the leading positions? All of these tasks need to be accomplished, and they will be accomplished. The path to the complete emancipation of working women is clear. no(prenominal)force has concealed it.And not only today, on the red holiday of demonstrate 8, should we get through note of and strongly emphasize the great challenges facing the womens proletarian movement. These should be remembered invariably, they should manufacture part of our everyday routine of socialism. For sure as shooting we are talking about one of the greatest tasks that has been set by history the complete liberation and emancipation of working women from any anatomy o f exploitation, from material need, from lack of culture, and from barbarism. Document 3 Source Minkin, Z. The redness factory still does not have any women-master workers. Rabochii, July 7, 1931. In the past social class, in connection with the overall growth in mathematical product, new ranks of women workers have flowed into the Bolshevik factory. At the present time, women make up 26. 2 per centum of all workers at the factory. A large share of the newly entered women workers are the wives of workers who had already been working at the plant. As a dis result agent, the status of mass cultural and political educational work among these workers has clear significance. At the Bolshevik factory, 79 percent of women workers are seismic disturbance workers. only the Party stratum among women workers is only 9. 2 percent, whereas it has reached 30 percent among all workers at the factory. This clearly indicates that recruitment among women workers is insufficient. The packaging of women into more qualified jobs and the hireing of women to retain the place of mens labor within certain limits has been unsatisfactory within this factory. Many old women workers, who have worked for a long time at the factory, have been depute to work not requiring qualifications and thus have not progressed any further.For physical exertion, at jobs near the presses, near the finishing machines, or involving work as planers, the number of women workers can be counted on a single hand. Yet a large share of women workers are designate to unskilled labor not requiring any qualifications. It is sufficient to note that not a single woman worker can be found among the staff of master workers, condescension the presence of a number of women workers who have already worked many yrs in factory, have sufficient qualifications, and could be assigned to this work.Because of the shortage of master workers, it happens that when the master worker of a particular section or workshop h as to be away for several days, no one is available to take his place. Yet if the desire were there, it would not be difficult to train a couple of women to become master workers. It would also be possible to train a large number of women workers for other kinds of qualified positions. The situation is no better regarding the development of mass work among women workers. It is true that 14 percent of women workers received various kinds of awards for their shock work.A group made up of militant women workers is coming together. and inadequate essays among women workers has meant that only 2 percent move in rationalization measures. The percent of women workers in all kinds of public organizations is reduce than the percent of men workers. The weakness of work among women workers is explained by the absence of personal responsibility in this area. Womens organizers change frequently, and as a result this work is quite unsatisfactory. Document 4 Source Pravda Severa, maria Semenov na Requires assistant from the Party Collective, September 9, 1932.In its day to day work with women, the Party constantly implements the studys of V. I. Lenin to bring women into public and productive work and to pull them out of domestic slavery by sack them from subordination to the stupification and humiliation of invariably and forever being responsible for cooking and taking care of the children. But officials of the Party incarnate and of the factory committee and the directors of timber mill No. 23 still have not understood this objective.Pravda Severa has already pen more than once about maria Semenovna Abramova, and has repeatedly demanded that the Party collective of the factory committee and directors of factory No. 23 earnestly take up the tasks of eliminating lines at the stores and improving the work of nursery schools and kindergartens, so that female horse Semenovna Abramova and all the other housewives of the factory may be liberated from the awry(p) lines and kitchen fumes which wash away all the strength of women, isolate them from production and cultural activities, and undermine the completion of the production plan.Despite the fact that two months have already passed since Pravda Severa raised these questions, conditions at the factory have not changed at all. As before, Maria Semenovna spends her days standing in line for bread, herrings, and milk, and as before she rushes around the kitchen preparing supper for her kids. She tries with all her might to get away from this beastly circle, but she cannot. She tried to work at the factory, but had to quit work later ten days, because the horrible work of the childcare center left her children going hungry and without supervision.As a result, her youngest son became sick, and this tied the hands of Maria Semenovna. The medical assistance was also quite poor. Neither the Party collective nor the factory committee have lifted a finger to change any of these awful conditions and th ey have also made no effort to keep Maria Semenovna at work in the factory. The secretary of the Party collective Lukin says that they have decided to reform their efforts in ZRK and have assigned one person in the supply department to eliminate lines at the stores, but in fact nothing has changed in this area.At the present time, the Party collective does not even have a womens organizer, which is point for judging the efforts of the Party collective to organize women and to draw housewives like Maria Semenovna into the public and political life of the factory. We categorically demand that the Party collective and the factory committee immediately turn their attention to issues of womens work, to freeing housewives from the tenacious grip of lines, to ensuring the consistent work of nursery schools, and to drawing women into socially productive labor.Document 5 Source Za kommunisticheskoe prosveshchenie, School No. 130 Follows its own Law, February 6, 1937. In the Soviet Union, th e rights of mothers and children are strictly protected by the law. For example, in addition to a four month maternity leave, every working mother has the right to take breaks during work for nursing until the baby reaches the age of nine months. But it seems that the administration of school 130 in the Soviet district of Moscow considers that this rule does not apply to its school.I have worked as a instructor for nine years, and am in my first year at school 130. Returning from maternity leave, I placed my sister in a nursery school. At first, I was able to nurse him regularly, every three hours. But because I could not nurse my sister during the break between classes (20 proceedings), I was always late by 10-15 minutes. These minutes of tardiness were not absences, because I have the right to an additional half-hour besides these 20 minutes for nursing my infant.But the head of instruction and the school director, after repeated warnings, have ordered me to either stop nursi ng my infant or quit working in the school, because they consider that the class (42 pupils) cannot and should not be left without a teacher for even a minute. I completely agree with the orders of the head of instruction and the school director that pupils should not be left without a leader for even the shortest amount of time. But it does not follow from this that I, as a teacher-mother, am not able to lead the children in lessons. This unequal battle has resulted in the victory of the school administration.Despite the orders of a doctors, I had to stop nursing my infant and switch to factitious food, which quickly had a negative effect on the childs health. I consider that the approach to me taken by the head of instruction and the school director demonstrates an unwillingness to let a teacher-mother have recipe conditions for bringing up a healthy infant. It is possible to find a solution to this situation that does not harm the children and does not violate Soviet law by pro viding a substitute during this break or by drafting a schedule so that the pupils have another teacher after three hours.I love the work of teaching and do not want to give it up because of this temporary condition. In the current situation, I demand only that the administration of school 130 provide a little flexibility and human sympathy, so that I can come to working and bringing up my infant normally. Document 6 Source graph of Women in the Soviet Labor Force Total turning and Percent of Workforce. In Zhenshchina v SSSR (Moscow, 1936). Document 7 Source Chart of Women in the Soviet Union and Capitalist Countries. In Zhenshchina v SSSR (Moscow, 1936). Document 8 Source Pravda, International commie womans Day, March 9, 1939. In the Bolshoi Theater, a celebration of March 8, International Communist Womens Day, occurred yesterday, organized by the Moscow Committee of the All Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), the Moscow Soviet, and the VTsSPS, in conjunction with troupe and s oviet organizations, Stakhanovites, shock workers, and the Soviet intelligentsia of the city of Moscow.The hall was more than filled to capacity, and breach into sensitive applause when at the praesidium appeared the leaders of Moscow party and soviet organizations and the VTsSPS, and the famous women and heroes of the Soviet Union, the heroines of labor and award-winners whose names are old(prenominal) to the entire nation. The meeting opened with a welcoming speech by familiar spirit Popov, the secretary of the Moscow city committee of the VKP(b). Places at the presidium were taken by comrades Shcherbakov, Chernousov, Pronin, Shvernik, Marshal of the Soviet Union Budennyi, Nikolaeva, Marina Raskova, Valentina Grizodubova, Polina Osipenko, Zinaida Troitskaia, T.Fedorova, Evdokiia and Mariia Vinogradova, O. Leonova, and others. buster Fedorova proposed to pick an honored presidium. The first name nominated was comrade Stalin. Shouts of hurrah and exclamations of farseeing li ve our own Stalin and We raise our banner to salute Stalin rolled through the hall. Accompanied by stormy applause from all participants in the celebratory meeting, the candidates elected to the honorary presidium included the members of the Politburo of the Communist Party led by comrade Stalin, as well as comrades Dimitrov, Telman, and Pasionaria.The secretary of the VTsSPS, comrade Nikolaeva, made a speech about International Communist Womans Day We have assembled on the eve of historic events. In two days, the voice of the leader of the people, comrade Stalin, will be hear from the tribunal of the XVIII Congress of our party. Comrade Stalin will describe the results of the broad victories won by our country, and will set out the path toward solving the even greater tasks set by the third five year plan. Comrade Nikolaeva talked about the rise of the Soviet woman, about the heroic and gumptious path taken by women of our country, and about the concern for women shown by the S oviet government and party of Lenin-Stalin. In her speech, comrade Nikolaeva referred to clear evidence that the Soviet woman had secured an honored place on all fronts of socialist development and in all areas of the political and public life of our country. The deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR include 189 women, and the deputies to the Supreme Soviets of the union republics include 848 women.What a clear example of the growth of the political activism and the political maturity of the Soviet woman Comrade Nikolaeva spoke about the heroism of the Soviet woman and the unforgettable passage taken by V. Grizodubova, P. Osipenko, and M. Raskova. The heroines were located right there, on the presidium, and the hall greeted them with warm applause. Comrade Nikolaeva described how Soviet women had mastered technology and knowledge and had become powerful economic leaders.She cited the example of Zinaida Troitskaia, who successfully mastered the complex wile of driving a locomo tive engine, became an engineer, and now is the director of the Moscow regional railway. Zinaida Troitskaia was also located right there on the presidium, and her success was recognised with warm applause. Speakers also talked about the tremendous assistance that had been provided to the woman in our country by the Soviet government and the party of Lenin-Stalin, about the many millions of benefits given to mothers with many children, and about the steady growth in he number of nurseries and kindergartens. Expressing the thoughts and feelings of the entire hall, speakers referred to the warm sympathy felt by Soviet women for the women of China and Spain, who were heroically fighting for the honor and independence of their homelands against fascist invaders. afterwards her speech, Hero of the Soviet Union Marina Raskova proposed to send a letter of come up to to comrade Stalin on behalf of the assembly. With a warm ovation, the hall approved this dear greeting.