Women and the Russian Revolution: How Bolshevik women organized for socialism (original) (raw)

One hundred years ago, on February 23rd 1917, 50,000 women poured out of factories and onto the streets, sparking the first revolution in Russia that eventually led to the downfall of the Tsar. It was on International Women’s Day that textile workers organized a labour strike with a strong anti-war message to condemn the exploitative and oppressive conditions most people were subjected to during the Tsar era. Essentially, this movement not only brought women together, but also masses of people who simply called for bread and peace. It became the catalyst for one of biggest revolutions that historically changed the world. Contrary to opinions that pin the women’s movement and the protest of February 23rd as ‘minor’ or ‘almost accidental,’ women workers were in fact crucial to the Revolution. They were organizing themselves, creating unions and getting ready to fight militantly to alleviate their hardships years before the 1917 Revolution. Furthermore, after the revolution, the role Bolshevik women took in shaping the Soviet Union is often overshadowed by the role men played. Revolutionary women, such as Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand and Nadezhda Krupskaya were only some of the many influential women that both shaped the revolution and the Soviet Union in the years following. As such, women not only played an integral role in the Russian Revolution, but their fight for emancipation and social change became yet another revolutionary development in the Soviet Union. Bolshevik women fought hard within the Party to put women’s emancipation on the Soviet Union’s socialist agenda. This article will assess how Revolutionary women in Russia, particularly those in the Bolshevik Party, began organizing the working class for a historic revolution that both improved their own conditions and changed the course of the world.