Wednesday, March 20, 2013
***From The Archives-In The Salad Days Of The Revolution- Leon Trotsky’s History Of The Russian Revolution-Take Two
A Book Review From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution in three volumes is partisan history at its best. One does not, at least in this day in age, ask a historian to be ‘objective’. One simply asks that the historian give his or her analysis and get out of the way. Trotsky meets that criterion. Furthermore, in Trotsky’s case there is nothing like having a central actor in the drama, who can also write brilliantly and wittily, give his interpretation of the important events and undercurrents swirling around Russia
The life of Leon Trotsky is intimately intwined with the history of the Russian Revolution. As a young man he entered the revolutionary struggle against the Czar at the turn of the 20th century. Shortly thereafter he embraced a lifelong devotion to Marxism. Except for the period of the 1905 Revolution when Trotsky was Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and later in 1912 when he tried to unite all the Social Democratic forces in an ill-fated unity conference which goes down in history as the ‘August Bloc’ he was essentially a free lancer in the international social democracy. While politically close to their positions Trotsky saw the Bolsheviks as sectarians. With the coming of World War I he nevertheless drew even closer to Bolshevik positions, especially on the proper attitude to the imperialist war. He, however, did not actually join the party until the summer of 1917 when he entered the Central Committee after the fusion of his organization, the Inter-District Committee, and the Bolsheviks. This represented an important and decisive switch in his understanding of the necessity of a revolutionary party.
As Trotsky noted, although he was a late comer to the concept of a Bolshevik Party that delay only instilled in him a greater understanding about the need for a non-inclusive revolutionary party. This understanding animated his political positions throughout the rest of his career as a Soviet official and leader of the struggle of the Left Opposition against the Stalinist degeneration of the revolution. Trotsky wrote these three volumes in exile in Turkey
Throughout most of the 20th century the Russian Question was the central focus of world politics and the politics of the international labor movement. At the beginning of the 21st century this question has lost its immediate focus. That central question ended practically with the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s. However, there are still lessons- some positive, some negative, to be learned from that experience. Today, understanding those lessons is the task for the natural audience for this book, the young alienated radicals of Western society. This is one of the political textbooks you need to read if you want to change the world. However, even if you are merely a history buff getting the inside details of the struggle for power are invaluable. Below I will try to point out what I think are the key points to be learned from the Russian Question that keep that question very much alive today
The central thrust of Trotsky’s volumes and of his later political career was animated by the concept of the crisis of revolutionary leadership. The plain fact is that since the European Revolutions of 1848 and not excepting the heroic Paris Commune until his day (and unfortunately ours) the only successful working class revolution had been in Russia
Anarchists and other commentators have hailed the February Revolution in Russia Petrograd not exactly an unknown location of revolutionary activities.
It is no longer possible to lead a workers revolution without the capital city of the country being the center of the struggle. That probably has been true in Europe since 1848 and elsewhere for the last one hundred years. It is not only that this is the seat of government but all the vital forces of the government including the arm forces are there as well as civil society. Guerilla warfare and other forms of rebellion may occur but you cannot succeed until you capture the capital city
All revolutions after the first flush of success against the old regime tend to be supported or at least tolerated by the masses. This is a period when divergent class programs are somewhat stifled in the interest of unity. Thus, we see in the English Revolution of the 17th century and later in the great French Revolution of the 18th century a struggle mainly led by the lower classes taken over by other forces who try to brake any further revolutionary developments. The common term used in Marxist terminology for this phase is called the Popular Front period. The Russian Revolution also had its Popular Front phase various combinations and guises from February to October. The key to Bolshevik success in October lies in breaking with the Popular Front politically after the arrival of Lenin from exile in April. History has shown us in Spain in the 1930’s and more recently in Chile France
Most history shows that when the popular masses overthrow a tyrant the need to be all-inclusive and therefore passive looms large as we are all good fellows and true spirit starts out. Nevertheless, the class interests of the various parties do not permit such an amorphous gathering in to continue for long. The dual power situation between the demands of the Provisional Government and the tensions form below that the reformist led Soviet’s permitted shows the tension that must be resolved one way or the other. Except for the Bolshevik Revolution that tension has been resolved in the wrong direction.
The Bolsheviks all along had no illusions in the capacity of the other leftist parties to see the February Revolution to the end and furthermore suffered under the persecution of these so-called leftist parties when they were ascendant. Nevertheless the Bolsheviks accepted and I believe desire a revolutionary coalition government. No this got all balled up later with the role of the Left SR’s in the summer of 1918. Nevertheless the principle of a multi-party Soviet system committed to defense of the gains of the October Revolution would seem no to be precluded.
One of Trotsky’s great skills as a historian is to show that within the general revolutionary flow there are ebbs and flows that is that there are events which occur that either speed up the revolutionary process or slow it down. This is the fate of all revolutions and can determine the outcome for good or bad for generations. The first such occurrence in Russia
We saw in the April days that the vanguard was isolated in its efforts to overthrow the government that wanted to continue the war under Czarist principals. The so-called July Days are another example of the ebb and flow of revolution. Here as a result of the demoralizations on the front the workers and others of
The Bolsheviks were probably the most revolutionary party in the history of revolutions both in terms of their commitment to program and the form of organization and organizational practices that they developed. Nevertheless, before the arrival of Lenin back from exile the forces on the ground were to put it mildly floundering. It was necessary to rearm the party. How to revamp the old theory to the new conditions which placed the socialist program on the immediate agenda much as Trotsky had analyzed in his theory of permanent revolution. This was not done without a struggle in the party. For those who argue that a party is not necessary that is crazy because even with a truly revolutionary party you can have problems as the situation Spain
The peasant based Russian army took a real beating in World War I and was at the point of disintegration when the February Revolution occurred. It was the decisive effort on the part of the peasant soldier along with the worker that overthrew the monarchist system in order that they could end the war and get to the land. From then on the peasant army through coercion or through inertia was no longer a reliable vehicle for any of the combinations of provisional governmental ministries to use. Its final flare-up in defense of placing all power into Soviet hands was as a reserve an important one nevertheless a reserve. Only later when the Whites came to try to take the land did the peasant soldier exhibit a willingness to fight and die.
Not all revolutions exhibit this massive breakdown in the army- the armed organ which defends any state but it played an exception role here. What does always occur is the existing governmental authority can no longer rely on such troops. If this did no occur revolution generally would no be possible as untrained plebeians are no match for trained soldiers. Moreover, this peasant bastion is exception in that it responded to the general democratic demand for land to the tiller that the Bolsheviks were the only party to endorse at the time. In the normal course of events the peasant as peasant on the land cannot lead a modern revolution in an industrial state. It has been the bulwark for reaction witness the Paris Commune, etc. However, World War I put the peasant youth, and this is decisive in uniform and gave it discipline that it would not other wise have
Trotsky is merciless toward the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary leadership which provided the support for the Provisional governments in their various guises against the real interests of their ranks. Part of this is from the perspective that they saw the current revolution was bourgeois and so therefore they could no go further than the decrepit bourgeoisie of Russia
Engels one time suggested that the victory of socialism in Germany Germany you can imagine the necessity of it in Russia
As the above-mentioned April Days showed revolutions have ebb and flow as we know but more than that if the revolutionary forces lose momentum then other forces will inevitably come to the fore as saviors of the situation in the interests of other classes. This is the meaning of the August Days. The Bolsheviks were just coming out of their isolation and not yet ready to take the power and other forces around Kornilov with the complicity of Kerensky were ready to take over a dictatorship. It was only the mobilization of the Bolsheviks leading all the democratic plebian forces that stooped the counterrevolution in its tracks. We have seen this happen the other way when the revolutionary forces do not put up enough of a resistance to such forces.
Something that is much understood by many leftist groups today and in the past is the question of military support to bourgeois democratic forces in the struggle against right wing forces ready to overthrow democracy. That was clearly the case with the Kornilov uprising. Kerensky asked the Bolsheviks for help with troops to defend the government against the approaching counterrevolutionary forces. Lenin stated that we would give military support to the effort but no political support. This would take the form of not supporting war budgets, etc. It is a very subtle maneuver but miles away from giving blanket support both military and political to forces that you will eventually have to overthrow. The Spanish revolutionaries learned this lesson the hard way.
The tragic deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in the aftermath of the suppression of the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 in Germany
The question of the land was a central question for the revolutionary democracy at that time. However, the natural proponents of land redistribution the Social revolutionary Party reneged on its responsibility. Therefore, the second order of business after the Bolshevik seizure of power was to codify the land reform. In its wake it drew in the Left Social Revolutionaries into the government.
As I write this review we are in the third year of the
The Soviets or workers councils which sprang up first in the Revolution of 1905 and then almost automatically were resurrected after the February overturn are merely a convenient and appropriate organization form for the structure of workers power. A Soviet led by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries does not lead to the seizure of power. That is why Lenin was looking to the factory committees to jump-start the revolution. Soviets are the necessary form of government in the post seizure period but may not be adequate for the task of seizing power. Soviet fetishism is a danger.
The question of the Constituent Assembly, which was a slogan, raised by all parties the Bolsheviks included represents a progressive demand in situations where there has been no previous democratic revolution. Nevertheless in the modern era it has been counterpoised to the Soviets. Any disputes between the authority of the two bodies has to be resolved in favor of the Soviets as the class organization of the workers leading the plebian masses.
A counterrevolutionary attempt is almost inevitable in a revolutionary situation therefore some kind of Committee of Public Safety has to be established to guard against such an eventually. Thus a purely military organization is needed to insure the adequate preparations for such an eventuality. Here the Military Revolutionary Committee was not only an agency of the Soviets but also the nucleus of the insurrectionary forces
The question of whether to seize power is a practical one that no hard and fast rules can be made of except that it important to have the masses ready to go when the decision is made. In fact, it is probably not a bad idea to have the masses a little overeager to insurrect. There is an assumption that power can be taken at any time in a revolutionary period. This is not true because the failure to have a revolutionary party ready to roll means that there is a fairly short window of opportunity for this to occur
As stated before the Bolsheviks were probably and still remain the most revolutionary urban party in world history. Nevertheless the pressures from other classes and parties are intense especially on the leadership level that is usually composed of intellectuals and semi-intellectuals. One must learn from history that the real revolutionary opportunities are rare and that you had better take power when you can
For obvious tactical reasons it is better to take power in the name of a pan-class organization like the Soviets than in the name of a single party. This brings up an interesting point because Lenin was willing to do so in the name of the party if conditions warranted it. Under the circumstances I believe that the Bolsheviks could have taken it in their own name but that it would have been harder for them to keep it. Moreover, they had the majority in the All Russian Soviet and so it would be inexplicable if they took power solely in their own name.
Many historians and political commentators have declared the Bolshevik seizure of power a coup d’etat. If one wants to do harm to the notion of a coup d’etat in the classic sense of a closed military conspiracy this cannot be true. First of all the Bolsheviks were an urban civilian party with at best tenuous ties to military knowledge and resources. Secondly, and decisively their influence over the garrison in Petrograd and eventually elsewhere precluded such a necessity although conspiracy is an element of any insurrection
With almost a century of hindsight and knowing what we know now it is easy to see that the slender social basis for the establishment of Soviet power absent international working class revolution particularly in Germany in Russia meant of necessity that there were going to be deformations even under a healthy workers regime. Nevertheless this begs the question whether at the time the Bolsheviks should have taken power. You do not get that many opportunities to seize power and try to change world history for the better so you better take advantage of the opportunities when they present themselves. History is replead with failed revolutionary opportunities. No, the hell with it.Take the power when you can because the reaction certainly will.
***In The Salad Days Of The Revolution- Leon Trotsky’s History Of The Russian Revolution
A Book Review From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution is partisan history at its best. One does not and should not, at least in this day in age, ask historians to be ‘objective’. One simply asks that the historian present his or her narrative and analysis and get out of the way. Trotsky meets that criterion. Furthermore, in Trotsky’s case there is nothing like having a central actor in that drama, who can also write brilliantly and wittily, give his interpretation of the important events and undercurrents swirling around Russia in 1917. If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its affect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr’s History of the Russian Revolutionoffers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920’s. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov’s Notes on the Russian Revolution. For a more journalistic account John Reed’s classic Ten Days That Shook the World is invaluable. Trotsky covers some of this material as well. However, if additionally, you want to get a feel for the molecular process of the Russian Revolution in its ebbs and flows down at the base in the masses where the revolution was made Trotsky’s is the book for you.
The life of Leon Trotsky is intimately intertwined with the rise and decline of the Russian Revolution in the first part of the 20th century. As a young man, like an extraordinary number of talented Russian youth, he entered the revolutionary struggle against Czarism in the late 1890’s. Shortly thereafter he embraced what became a lifelong devotion to a Marxist political perspective. However, except for the period of the 1905 Revolution when Trotsky was chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and later in 1912 when he tried to unite all the Russian Social Democratic forces in an ill-fated unity conference, which goes down in history as the ‘August Bloc’, he was essentially a free lancer in the international socialist movement. At that time Trotsky saw the Bolsheviks as“sectarians” as it was not clear to him at that time that for socialist revolution to be successful the reformist and revolutionary wings of the movement had to be organizationally split. With the coming of World War I Trotsky drew closer to Bolshevik positions but did not actually join the party until the summer of 1917 when he entered the Central Committee after the fusion of his organization, the Inter-District Organization, and the Bolsheviks. This act represented an important and decisive switch in his understanding of the necessity of a revolutionary workers party to lead the revolution.
As Trotsky himself noted, although he was a late comer to the concept of a Bolshevik Party that delay only instilled in him a greater understanding of the need for a vanguard revolutionary workers party to lead the revolutionary struggles. This understanding underscored his political analysis throughout the rest of his career as a Soviet official and as the leader of the struggle of the Left Opposition against the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution. After his defeat at the hands of Stalin and his henchmen Trotsky wrote these three volumes in exile in Turkey from 1930 to 1932. At that time Trotsky was not only trying to draw the lessons of the Revolution from an historian’s perspective but to teach new cadre the necessary lessons of that struggle as he tried first reform the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International and then later, after that position became politically untenable , to form a new, revolutionary Fourth International. Trotsky was still fighting from this perspective in defense of the gains of the Russian Revolution when a Stalinist agent cut him down. Thus, without doubt, beyond a keen historian’s eye for detail and antidote, Trotsky’s political insights developed over long experience give his volumes an invaluable added dimension not found in other sources on the Russian Revolution.
As a result of the Bolshevik seizure of power the so-called Russian Question was the central question for world politics throughout most of the 20th century. That central question ended practically with the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s. However, there are still lessons, not all negative, to be learned from the experience of the Russian Revolution. Today, an understanding of this experience is the task for the natural audience for this book, the young alienated radicals of Western society. For the remainder of this review I will try to point out some issues raised by Trotsky which remain relevant today.
The central preoccupation of Trotsky’s volumes reviewed here and of his later political career concerns the problem of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international labor movement and its national components. That problem can be stated as the gap between the already existing objective conditions necessary for beginning socialist construction based on the current level of capitalist development and the immaturity or lack of revolutionary leadership to overthrow the old order. From the European Revolutions of 1848 on, not excepting the heroic Paris Commune, until his time the only successful working class revolution had been in led by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917. Why? Anarchists may look back to the Paris Commune or forward to the Spanish Civil War in 1936 for solace but the plain fact is that absent a revolutionary party those struggles were defeated without establishing the prerequisites for socialism. History has indicated that a revolutionary party that has assimilated the lessons of the past and is rooted in the working class allied with and leading the plebian masses in its wake is the only way to bring the socialist program to fruition. That hard truth shines through Trotsky’s three volumes. Unfortunately, this is still the central problem confronting the international labor movement today.
***In The Time Of The Time Of An Outlaw Country Music Moment- The Belfast Cowboy Rides Again Van Morrison’s “Pay The Devil”
CD Review
Pay The Devil, Van Morrison, Exile Productions, 2006
Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and is funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.
And that brings us to the album under review, Pay The Devil, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented”himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. And hencethe Belfast cowboy.
If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on There Stands The Glass, a classic honky-tonk midnight sorrows tune; the Williams’classic Your Cheatin’ Heart; the pathos of Back Street Affair; the title song Pay The Devil; and, something out of about 1952, and the number one example of his cowboyishness (whee!), Till I Gain Control Again. The Belfast cowboy, indeed, although I always thought that was in the North.
CD Review
Pay The Devil, Van Morrison, Exile Productions, 2006
Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and is funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.
And that brings us to the album under review, Pay The Devil, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented”himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. And hencethe Belfast cowboy.
If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on There Stands The Glass, a classic honky-tonk midnight sorrows tune; the Williams’classic Your Cheatin’ Heart; the pathos of Back Street Affair; the title song Pay The Devil; and, something out of about 1952, and the number one example of his cowboyishness (whee!), Till I Gain Control Again. The Belfast cowboy, indeed, although I always thought that was in the North.
***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Otto Preminger’s “Fallen Angel”- A Film Review
DVD Review
Fallen Angel, starring Dana Andrews, Alice Faye, Linda Darnell, directed by Otto Preminger, 1945
As I have mentioned at the start of other reviews in this genre I am an aficionado of film noir, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammet’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falconand Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. There is nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background (one can tell without watching the beginning of the film, the credits, that a noir is on hand, or noir-influenced and those shadowy fugitive moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh yah, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s) produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good, some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, the film under review, Fallen Angel, is under that former category. This film is an example of what 1940s film noirwas all about, maybe not the best but still more than passable.
Once you have started to get fixated on crime noir films a key question that inevitably comes up is the femme fatale, good or bad, although not every crime noir film had them. Fallen Angel does, although rather unusually this femme fatale (played by sultry big-lipped Linda Darnell) is working in a one-arm joint (come on now you know what that is right? A hash house, a diner, a road house, a dew-drop in and the person serving them off the arm, one arm see, is none other than Darnell as the magnet waitress, Stella). Now all femme fatales, at least the ones I have seen in film (and a few, okay more than a few, that I have been run over by in life), have some kind of shady past and/or have gone wrong by hooking up with a wrong gee. Some of them have put on high class- airs (like Gilda in the movie of the same name and The Lady From Shang-hai both played by sultry, very sultry, let me get my handkerchief out Rita Hayworth) and others, like the Stella role Ms. Darnell plays here, are just hard-boiled gold-diggers from the wrong side of the tracks.
And that little fact is what has all the boys crazy here, and also drives the plot line.
The Great Depression and World War II unhinged a lot of the certainties that earlier American society took for granted. Those mega-events left a lot of loose-end people struggling, struggling hard to find their place in the sun, or at least some dough to help find that place. And that notion goes a long way in explaining why down-at-the-heels Eric (played by Dana Andrews) find himself on the left coast (California before the post- World War II land’s end explosion westward, westward from any east) with no dough and no prospects. But that doesn’t stop him from drawing a bee-line to femme fatale Darnell when he was unceremoniously dropped off in some backwater California ocean town. But brother Eric, take a ticket, get in line, because every other guy on the left coast, including the very unglamorous hash house owner, has big ideas, or wants to have big ideas about setting up house with this two-timing brunette waitress. (Personally I don’t see it but I run to perky blondes and fire-haired red heads although, truth to tell, a few of those femmesI have been run over by, mentioned above, have been brunettes too.) But when a man, as men will do, is smitten well there it is. There are no hoops big enough that he will not roll through and that is where the plot thickens. See Stella, she from the wrong side of the tracks born, wants a home with a picket fence like all the other girls and if you don't have the cash, the cash in hand, then get lost, brother. Or an extra wife. Be a long gone daddy.
Needless to say old Eric is ready to move heaven and earth to get the dough for that white picket-fenced house. And here is his scam. A scam that played right has worked since time immemorial. Go where the money is. In that one-horse town, ocean-fronted or not, the dough resides with two prominent sisters who have some dough left from their father’s estate. So Eric plays up to one sister, June, (the pretty one, of course, played by Alice Faye) and through a convoluted series of events they wind up married. Ms. Darnell was not pleased by this turn of event, as you can imagine.
Although Stella not being pleased was cut short by a little problem, she was murdered on the night of Eric’s honeymoon with June. And all signs lead to him as the stone-cold killer- the frame is on, no question. But also “no question”is that he is not that kind of guy. But just step back a minute and remember that point about having to take a ticket to line up for Stella's affections. Plenty of guys (and at least one woman) had motive. See the film and figure who that was. Like I say this not the best of the 1940s crime noirs for plot line but is interesting enough. And the film was directed by Otto Preminger so you know the black and white cinematography shadows and contrasts will be just fine.
DVD Review
Fallen Angel, starring Dana Andrews, Alice Faye, Linda Darnell, directed by Otto Preminger, 1945
As I have mentioned at the start of other reviews in this genre I am an aficionado of film noir, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammet’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falconand Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. There is nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background (one can tell without watching the beginning of the film, the credits, that a noir is on hand, or noir-influenced and those shadowy fugitive moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh yah, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s) produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good, some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, the film under review, Fallen Angel, is under that former category. This film is an example of what 1940s film noirwas all about, maybe not the best but still more than passable.
Once you have started to get fixated on crime noir films a key question that inevitably comes up is the femme fatale, good or bad, although not every crime noir film had them. Fallen Angel does, although rather unusually this femme fatale (played by sultry big-lipped Linda Darnell) is working in a one-arm joint (come on now you know what that is right? A hash house, a diner, a road house, a dew-drop in and the person serving them off the arm, one arm see, is none other than Darnell as the magnet waitress, Stella). Now all femme fatales, at least the ones I have seen in film (and a few, okay more than a few, that I have been run over by in life), have some kind of shady past and/or have gone wrong by hooking up with a wrong gee. Some of them have put on high class- airs (like Gilda in the movie of the same name and The Lady From Shang-hai both played by sultry, very sultry, let me get my handkerchief out Rita Hayworth) and others, like the Stella role Ms. Darnell plays here, are just hard-boiled gold-diggers from the wrong side of the tracks.
And that little fact is what has all the boys crazy here, and also drives the plot line.
The Great Depression and World War II unhinged a lot of the certainties that earlier American society took for granted. Those mega-events left a lot of loose-end people struggling, struggling hard to find their place in the sun, or at least some dough to help find that place. And that notion goes a long way in explaining why down-at-the-heels Eric (played by Dana Andrews) find himself on the left coast (California before the post- World War II land’s end explosion westward, westward from any east) with no dough and no prospects. But that doesn’t stop him from drawing a bee-line to femme fatale Darnell when he was unceremoniously dropped off in some backwater California ocean town. But brother Eric, take a ticket, get in line, because every other guy on the left coast, including the very unglamorous hash house owner, has big ideas, or wants to have big ideas about setting up house with this two-timing brunette waitress. (Personally I don’t see it but I run to perky blondes and fire-haired red heads although, truth to tell, a few of those femmesI have been run over by, mentioned above, have been brunettes too.) But when a man, as men will do, is smitten well there it is. There are no hoops big enough that he will not roll through and that is where the plot thickens. See Stella, she from the wrong side of the tracks born, wants a home with a picket fence like all the other girls and if you don't have the cash, the cash in hand, then get lost, brother. Or an extra wife. Be a long gone daddy.
Needless to say old Eric is ready to move heaven and earth to get the dough for that white picket-fenced house. And here is his scam. A scam that played right has worked since time immemorial. Go where the money is. In that one-horse town, ocean-fronted or not, the dough resides with two prominent sisters who have some dough left from their father’s estate. So Eric plays up to one sister, June, (the pretty one, of course, played by Alice Faye) and through a convoluted series of events they wind up married. Ms. Darnell was not pleased by this turn of event, as you can imagine.
Although Stella not being pleased was cut short by a little problem, she was murdered on the night of Eric’s honeymoon with June. And all signs lead to him as the stone-cold killer- the frame is on, no question. But also “no question”is that he is not that kind of guy. But just step back a minute and remember that point about having to take a ticket to line up for Stella's affections. Plenty of guys (and at least one woman) had motive. See the film and figure who that was. Like I say this not the best of the 1940s crime noirs for plot line but is interesting enough. And the film was directed by Otto Preminger so you know the black and white cinematography shadows and contrasts will be just fine.
Out Of The 1940s Film Noir Night-With Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake’s This Gun For Hire In Mind –Take Two
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
The Raven was a piece of work a piece of work alright tough and mean, damn mean, if he had to be and gentle as a lamb when he wanted to be. Tough and mean on those guys who needed wasting, or who somebody thought needed to be wasted and had the dough to back that thought up. Big dough, now that the Raven was at the top of his class, a top “hit man” who guys sent airplane fare for just to talk to him about some proposition, and air fare back too whether he took the job or not, which he usually took since guys who had loose change for air fare had enough dough for what they wanted done. See too Raven had developed what he called a “code” and that code entailed the hard fact that in this wicked old world some guys, some guys with maybe more brains than smarts, or more hunger that what was good for them, deserved to be wasted for gumming up the works, the right order of things and if the guy in charge had the dough he was all ears. So he took a certain professional pride in his work, that and working as a loner, except when he needed a little frail company but that was just short stuff, a night pillow thing and move on, and that sense of style had seen him through some rough patches since he started out several years back as nothing but a back alley jack-roller. That possible fate got him thinking about the old days.
Yah, it was a tough break, a big bad tough break that Raven’s father had died in the Great War (World War I, the war to end all wars if anybody was asking, although he usually forgot to mention that his father’s death was by hanging by his own side since he had deserted his unit under fire) and his mother had died when he was young so he was nothing but an orphan. It was tough too that the aunt who took him in was nothing but a bitch, a devilish bitch that beat him mercilessly for the slightest infraction. Like once grabbing an off-hand piece of candy without permission from the candy dish on her dining room table. Of course she got hers, got hers good after he graduated from jack-roller school to the “bigs.”That was the only job he ever did for free, gratis, for nothing. He found that he liked that setting up the kill and then executing the plan, that he liked to waste people that needed wasting.
After that one though he got wise to the fact that if he was to survive and go to the head of the class, make the big hits and not wind up in stir for some crummy two-bit back alley jack-roll, it had to become impersonal and that was how he developed and honed his code. So it was easy to see where the Raven (he refused all the way, under all conditions, to give any other name and nobody, nobody who wanted to stay alive, bothered with the formalities of name once he settled that issue in his mind) was kind of destined to fall off the tracks from early on, to turn himself, his lonely self into nothing but a stone- cold killer, a professional hit man, a hired gun if you don’t want to put it so delicately. He wasn’t saying, in those very few reflective moments that he endured, that the dice were fixed but close enough and so he was what he was, and good at it too, very good for a long while without a hitch as such things go.
Very good that is until he hitched up with Willie James, a high-roller (self-advertised as such anyway). Raven thought he had a little too much woman in him all soft and fleshy, hiring guys, and maybe girls too, to get his kicks, including an off-hand hit or two. Always looking for the main chance, and the main chance just then was selling high- grade chemical formulas to the highest bidder regardless of nationality. He had a source, a two-bit chemist who worked for Associated Industries, the big chemical firm over in Long Beach, who wanted to live the high life with some honey and needed dough. Not an uncommon story. That Willie James predilection for high bidder might have meant nothing to anybody most times except for a funny little event, Pearl Harbor, where the slant-eyes, the Nips, the crazy yellow men bombed the hell out of the United States and thought nothing of it. See though Willie James thought nothing of it either and they, the Japanese, were willing to pay a very high price for a nice little formula, a poison gas formula if you want to know, to get it and use it during the current war, World War II for those who forgot.
Not everybody was happy to know that selling to the highest bidder was what Willie was about once they found out, and that chemist with the high life tastes was willing to sell him out to the feds no question without a big bonus to keep his trap shut. Willie however had other ideas, Raven ideas, and so he was gainfully employed by Willie to waste that errant associate and he did, did it very professionally if somewhat messily. Actually for a moment it was a classic job of the profession- the target fell easily but he happened to have his honey secretary with him although that was not part of the deal. She wasn’t supposed to be there. Bang. Sorry honey. Sweet. Willie however playing for high stakes and wary of an off-hand witness to his nefarious deeds paid the Raven off in counterfeit money to set him up for the frame, the big frame. Touché. Needless to say when Raven scoped to that hard fact, hard jail fact, he was ready to move heaven and earth once again to avenge his hurt, his long ago embedded hurt. His code be damned on this one, this was personal, maybe too personal, but the guy needed wasting, serious wasting.
Of course a woman goes with it, murder or not, a dame out of some old-time Hollywood film, Elena, a dame who looked like some angel if angels had their blonde hair pushed just a little over that right eye that year, could sing, do magic tricks, and be, well fetching. The Raven took to her right away right from the first moment he eyed her at the Neptune Club, Willie’s hangout where he was waiting to have a word or two with him as part of his plan. So he took a little time out from Willie to dig into her, to find out whether her tastes ran to hard guys, hard guys with chips on their shoulders, but just then looking for some pillow talk. He never had trouble with women, girls, all the way back to elementary school and he expected none now. Funny all the talk he had heard about women wanting a little home and hubby there by five and all civilized. Raven found out early that some women, and not all plain janes either, wanted to walk on the wild side as much as men, as much as him. This Elena had adventure and pillows written all over her. So he didn’t get any resistance, or any turn down, when he sent a drink over to her table at intermission. She thereafter waved him over.
After a few words, some in the air banter really, a couple of sly double- ententes and some dreamy pillow talk by her once she sized him up as a hard guy but maybe good for a fling they agreed to meet after the show. They did so, grabbed a cab, and went to her place. The next morning Raven shook off the night’s sweats and slumbers and after a shave and shower headed out before she awoke. He headed over to Willie’s place out on Sunset Boulevard and placed two beauties, two 38s, right between poor Willie Boy’s eyes. And had done his work very impersonally after the night’s exertions had settled him down, done it by the book just like he should have. He knew he would now have to be on the lam for a while so he called that last night beautiful and told her to meet him in Frisco town, yes, Frisco town. He hung up and had just the slightest smile on his face, a smile for such a good day’s work. Yes, he was a pro, a pro no question…
On The 10th Anniversary Of The Iraq War-U.S./Allied Troops Out Of Afghanistan Now!
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
[No this writer is not lost in a time warp, nor is he suffering from a senior moment in noting the 10th Anniversary of the ill-fated, ill-advised, ill, well, let’s just keep it as the previous two, start of the now seemingly completed fiasco in Iraq. However although American troops have mainly been withdrawn many thousand American bought and paid for “contract” soldiers are still operating in that theater. Moreover the wreckage from the huge American footprint (boot print, really) is still wreaking havoc on that benighted land from lack of electrical power to unexploded bombs to speak nothing of the current constant political turmoil between the myriad factions struggling for power. Then there is the question of those tens of thousands of soldiers switched over within a heartbeat from benighted Iraq to benighted Afghanistan. The call for immediate troop withdrawal from Afghanistan if not drawing much support in these back- burner concern days is still a necessary call. Finally, if there is a modern example of the follies of war, of a needless imperial adventure, of flat-out American imperial hubris to do something explosive (in more ways than one) then the ill-famed Iraq invasion started on March 19, 2003 should be etched in every leftist militant, hell, every thoughtful citizen’s brain.]
*******After listening to the evening news that May1st 2003 Tim Reid was deeply satisfied that he had stuck to his guns and defended President Bush’s decision in March to go into Iraq and get rid of that mad man and vicious killer Saddam Hussein before he unleashed holy hell on the United States and the world with those dreaded weapons of mass destruction that Tim was sure would be discovered very soon. That evil bastard had had plenty of time to hide them in some out of the way place not easily accessible especially with military operations proceeding apace. That evening President Bush had announced that major operations had been suspended against the porous melting Iraqi army and that the road to democratic nation-building in Iraq could now go forward, full-steam ahead. Some lives, sadly some American lives, had been lost, but not many not as against what might have happened had Saddam not been toppled. The military operation had been in the words of one correspondent who quoted an anonymous military source “a slam dunk.”
Tim thought back to his younger days, days when he had opposed the President’s father, George H.W., in the first Iraq war back in 1991 and was able to draw a very big distinction between that opposition which to his mind was basically being drawn into a squabble between dictators and sheiks and not really any of our business and this. Times had changed (and he would take into the mix that he had changed too now being the father of two young ones and, as any father would do, trying to protect them from a dangerous world any way he could), 9/11 happened, happened right here in New York City , and happened to people he knew and cared about, and no further reference was needed that there were bad guys in the world, bad guys aiming their arrows in our direction, and they needed to be stamped out like cockroaches. And Saddam was the numero uno state actor on that list especially with atomic bombs and biological bombs and other stuff the CIA and other national security agencies knew he had hidden somewhere. Now that the dust of battle had settled they would be able to go in and destroy all those damn things and while it might still be a dangerous world at least it was a smidgeon less so.
Later that night, that May Day night, after the kids had gone to bed, and Sheila was doing something in the study, some homey thing like she did after the kid wars of the day were done he sat on the sofa, television now off, a book in hand to finish the night off, a snooze off probably, Tim flashed back for just a minute to those 1991 days. Days when he was ready to raise infinite amounts of hell to stop that first Iraq war, had even joined an ad hoc anti-imperialist committee here in the city made of old time progressives, pacifists, and socialists in order to combine with others in his fury against the big bad American military machine wreaking havoc on the world . He had that year, ironically, even marched in the small May Day parade down at Union Square, the place where today’s anti-war activists had launch their latter-day marches. How times had changed, how he had changed. And just for one second he wished he could still be that old Tim Reid. But just for a second… Tuesday, March 19, 2013
A RADICAL LIFE, VERA BUCH WEISBORD
BOOK REVIEW
A RADICAL LIFE, VERA BUCH WEISBORD, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
1977
MARCH IS WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH
The history of labor struggles in the United States in the 1920's, which forms the most informative part of the book under review, looked a lot like the state of labor struggles today-not much, although there was then, as now a crying need to fight back against the decades old capitalist onslaught against labor. Nevertheless during the 1920’s period of labor's ebb there were a couple of important labor strikes that, as usual, involved radicals, especially members of the American Communist Party (hereafter, CP) that had emerged from the underground after the Palmer Raids and deportations of the post World War I period. Those struggles, the great Passaic, New Jersey strike of 1926 and the heroic Gastonia, North Carolina strike of 1929 detailed here by one of the key leaders, Vera Buch Weisbord, centrally involved women workers in the textile trades, then as now, some of the most hazardous, low paying and stupefying work around. Thus an added impetus for trade union militants to read this book today is to better understand the arduous task of organizing international struggles where women form the backbone of the factory labor force such as in East Asia and Mexico
As in many such memoirs the author here has her own ax to grind, and she unfailingly names names of those who did not measure up to the eclectic political wisdom that she and her husband and political partner Albert put forth over the years when they were politically active. Thus the early part of the book concerning early Communist trade union policy is where the value of the book lies. Three critical points can be gleaned from her work; the narrowness of the early Communist trade union policy of exclusively ‘boring from within’ the established and organized labor movement; the fatally-flawed ‘dual union’fetishism of the Stalinist ‘third period’ where Communist trade union policy was essentially to go it alone and create ‘red’ dual unions and eschew united front work; and, the question that presses on every militant today concerning the ability and advisability of doing so-called 'mass' work by small left-wing propaganda groups.
James P. Cannon, an early leader of the CP and its 'trade unionist' wing along with William Z. Foster and others, acknowledged that Albert Weisbord was an exceptional mass trade union organizer. That is high praise indeed coming from an old Wobblie who knew his trade union leaders. He was then, and later as a leader of the American Trotskyist movement, in a position to also know the limits of the Weisbords as political leaders. And there is the rub. Much of Weisbord’s achievement came as a result of his excellent work in the 1926 Passaic
That a communist organization would sacrifice its own while caving in to reactionary trade unionists is only understandable because in this period the CP trade union policy, under William Z. Foster's influence, was one of ‘boring from within’ the organized trade union movement. Thus, its sell-out of its leader, and there are no other words for it, was the steep price that it paid to keep in step with the central labor bureaucracy. The factthat important and decisive sections of the American work force in the 1920's were unorganized or poorly organized and needed to be organized independently did not enter the CP’s political horizon at that time.
Another critical, if more bloody, strike occurred in Gastonia , North Carolina
As part of the internal turmoil inside the CP during the late 1920’s the Weisbords were part of an international right-wing Bukharin-led faction that during the process of the Stalinization of the American CP was purged by the Communist International in Moscow America
Early Communist Work Among Women: The Bolsheviks
From Women and Revolution issues Nos. 10 and 11, Winter 1975-76 and Spring 1976.
The Soviet Union provides the classic illustration of Fourier's observation that the progress of any society can be gauged by the social position of the women within it. To the extent that the Bolshevik Revolution was victorious, Soviet women were liberated from their traditional, subservient social positions; to the extent that the Revolution degenerated, the position of the women degenerated. The fact that this degeneration has been incomplete—that Soviet women continue to enjoy advantages and opportunities unknown in the West—is precisely because the degeneration of the Soviet workers state has also been incomplete, i.e., capitalism has not been restored.
The Old Order: "I Thought I Saw Two People Coming, But It Was Only a Man and His Wife"
Russian folklore testifies to the fact that women in pre-revolutionary Russian society were commonly considered generically defective to the point of being subhuman. But such attitudes had not prevailed in Russia
But the centuries which witnessed the growth of the patriarchal family, the rise of Byzantine Christianity with its doctrine of the debased nature of women, the brutal Tatar invasion and the consolidation of dynastic power, also witnessed the obliteration of these ancient privileges.
During these centuries Russian women were progressively excluded from politics, education and social life in general. Those of the lower classes became beasts of burden who might be driven with a stick if it pleased their husbands. Those of the upper classes were physically removed from society and imprisoned in the terem or "tower room"—an upper chamber of the house built expressly for the lifelong seclusion of women. Peter the Great (1672-1725), in his determination to transform Russia into a modern commercial and industrial state, holds the distinction of releasing women from the teremand compelling them to mingle with men at public social functions, as they did in the West.
The Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine the Great (1729-1796) continued to encourage more progressive attitudes toward women, and they constructed academies for their education. On the eve of the Russian Revolution, women constituted 30,000, or almost one quarter, of the 125,000 students enrolled in Russian universities.
Despite these reform measures, however, women continued to be severely oppressed in pre-revolutionary Russia
Peasant women grew old early from overwork and maltreatment. Even when elementary education was available to girls, it remained customary for them to stay at home to care for the younger children until they were old enough to work in the fields. Husbands were generally chosen by the fathers, who sold their daughters to the highest bidder. Tradition decreed that the father of the bride present the bridegroom with a whip, the symbol of the groom's authority over his new wife.
Those peasant women who sought to escape to the cities found that they were paid lower wages than their male co-workers and that all skilled trades were closed to them. Outside of domestic service and the textile industry, marriage constituted grounds for immediate discharge.
Life was somewhat more comfortable, of course, for women of the middle and upper classes, but not much more fulfilling. While educational opportunities were more accessible to them, the kind of education deemed appropriate for women was limited. Husbands, as among the lower classes, were chosen by the fathers, and the law bound women to obey their husbands in all things.
Equal Rights for Women
The radical notion of equal rights for women was originally introduced into Russia by army officers who had been stationed in France after the defeat of Napoleon and who brought back to Russia many of the new liberal, republican and democratic ideas to which they had been exposed.
Male intellectuals continued to participate in this movement for the next hundred years. They championed higher education for women and entered into fictitious marriages with them in order to provide them with the passports they needed to study abroad. Well-known authors such as Belinsky, Herzen, Dobroliubov and Chernyshevsky encouraged women in their struggle for equal rights.
The active participation of men in the struggle for women's liberation and the fact that prior to 1906 the masses of Russian men and women did possess equal political rights—that is, no rights at all—meant that at a time when women's suffrage organizations were on the rise in the West, Russian women and men continued to engage in united political struggle.
Equality of political oppression broke down only after the Revolution of 1905. On 17 October of that year Tsar Nicholas II issued a manifesto which provided for the summoning of a state duma based on male suffrage only. A group of the newly-enfranchised men immediately appealed to the author of the manifesto, Count Witte, for female suffrage, but this was refused. Out of this defeat arose the first feminist organizations in Russia
Like all feminist organizations, these groups sought to achieve their goals through reforming the social system. At the first meeting of the League of Equal Rights for Women, which was held in St. Petersburg (later renamed Petrograd and presently Leningrad) in 1905, a number of working women put forward a resolution demanding measures to meet their needs and the needs of peasant women, such as equal pay for equal work and welfare for mothers and children, but the bourgeois women who constituted the majority of the membership rejected this proposal in favor of one which called only for the unity of all women in the struggle for a republican form of government and for universal suffrage.
One of the League's first actions was the presentation to the First State Duma of a petition for female suffrage signed by 5,000 women. This petition was presented three times between 1906 and 1912 but was never accepted. Minister of Justice Shcheglovitov commented:
"Careful observation of reality shows that there is a danger of women being attracted by the ideals of the revolutionaries, and this circumstance, in my opinion, obliges us to regard with extreme care the question of encouraging women to take up political activity.
— Vera Bilshai, The Status of Women in the Soviet Union Feminism or Bolshevism?
Side by side with the burgeoning feminist movement, the pre-revolutionary years witnessed the development of work among women by the Bolsheviks and other avowed socialists—work which was greatly accelerated by the entrance of masses of women into industrial production.
The programs and strategies of feminism and Bolshevism were counterposed from the outset. The feminists declared that women's most pressing need was political equality with men, including participation at every level of government. Only when women were in a position to influence all governmental policies, they said, would cultural and economic equality be possible. To achieve their political goal, the feminists created multi-class organizations of women united around the struggle for equal rights.
Socialist organizations also struggled for equal rights for all women. "We hate and want to obliterate," said V. I. Lenin, "everything that oppresses and harasses the working woman, the wife of the working man, the peasant woman, the wife of the little man, and even in many respects the women from the wealthy classes." But socialist organizations from the beginning rejected the feminist reform strategy and insisted that full sexual equality could not be achieved short of a socialist society. Far from leading them to abandon special work among women under capitalism, however, this position encouraged them to pursue it more ardently in the knowledge that "the success of the revolution depends upon how many women take part in it" (Lenin).
As early as 1899 Lenin insisted that Clause 9 of the first draft program of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) contain the words: "establishment of complete equality of rights between men and women." The program adopted by the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903 included this demand as well as the following special provisions:
"With a view to safeguarding the working class from physical and moral degeneration, and also with the view to promoting its capacity for waging a struggle for liberation, women should not be employed in industries harmful to the female organism, they should receive four weeks' paid pre-natal and six weeks' post-natal leave; all enterprises employing women should have nurseries for babies and small children, nursing mothers should be allowed to leave their work for at least half an hour at intervals of not longer than three hours, and male factory inspectors should be replaced by women in industries with a female labor force."
— VKP(b) v rezoliutsiiakh, quoted in William M. Mandel, "Soviet Women and Their Self-Image"
Throughout the entire pre-revolutionary period the Bolsheviks pressed their demands for complete sexual equality as they carried out educational and organizational work among women through every possible vehicle—cultural and educational organizations, evening schools, trade unions. Centers of Bolshevik agitation and propaganda also took the form of women's clubs. In 1907, such a club was opened in St. Petersburg under the name "The Working Women's Mutual Aid Society," while in Moscow
Through this special work the Bolsheviks were able to recruit many working women to communist politics. One of these recruits, Alexandra Artiukhina, later recalled:
"When we began to attend the Sunday and evening schools, we began to make use of books from the library and we learned of the great Russian democrat, Chernyshevsky. Secretly, we read his book, What Is to Be Done? and we found the image of the woman of the future, Vera Pavlovna, very attractive.
"The foremost democratic intelligentsia of our time played a considerable role in our enlightenment, in the growth of revolutionary attitudes and in women's realization of their human dignity and their role in public. They acquainted us with the names of Russian revolutionary women, like Sofia Perovskaya and Vera Figner.
"Later, in underground political circles, we read the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin. We understood that the enslavement of women occurred together with the establishment of private ownership of the means of production and the beginning of exploitation of man by man and that real equality and real freedom for women would be found only in socialism, where there would be no exploitation of man by man. Therefore, the most reliable path for the liberation of women was the path of political struggle against capitalism in the ranks of the proletariat."
— A. Artiukhina, "Proidennyi put," in A. Artiukhina et al. (eds.), Zhenshchina v revoliutsii Women and the War
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 precipitated a dramatic transformation in the lives of Russian women, ripping them away from their private family roles and throwing them into entirely new social roles in factories, hospitals, at the front and in the streets.
During the very first months of the war, military mobilizations took approximately 40 percent of Russian working men out of industrial jobs, many of which had to be filled by women. Between 1913 and 1917 the percentage of women working in the metal trades in Petrograd rose from 3.2 percent to 20.3 percent. In the woodworking industries, the number of women increased sevenfold. In papermaking, printing and the preparation of animal products and foodstuffs their number doubled.
This entrance of large numbers of Russian women into industrial production was a profoundly progressive step because it laid the basis for their economic and political organization. By the time of the October Revolution, women constituted about ten percent of the membership of the Bolshevik Party and were represented at every level of the party organization.
While many female comrades took a special interest in party work among women, it was always clear that this important arena of work was the responsibility of the party as a whole and not solely of the women within it. This Bolshevik refusal to differentiate political functioning on the basis of sex is also illustrated by the fact that neither in the party nor in its youth section did women ever constitute a male exclusionist faction or caucus. There were, at times, women's commissions and departments to oversee special work among women, but these always remained under the control of higher party bodies composed of comrades of both sexes.
The absence of women's caucuses was not, of course, an indication that the party was entirely free of sexist attitudes; only that the struggle against such attitudes was carried out by the party as a whole on the basis of communist consciousness, which was expected to transcend sexual distinctions.
One of the foremost Bolshevik leaders in the struggle against reactionary attitudes toward women within the party was V.I. Lenin. In an interview with Clara Zetkin of the German Social Democratic Party, he said: "...Unfortunately it is still true to say of many of our comrades 'scratch a Communist and find a Philistine.' Of course you must scratch the sensitive spot, their mentality as regards women. Could there be a more damning proof of this than the calm acquiescence of men who see how women grow worn out in petty, monotonous household work, their strength and time dissipated and wasted, their minds growing narrow and stale, their hearts beating slowly, their will weakened? Of course, I am not speaking of the ladies of the bourgeoisie who shove onto servants the responsibilities for all household work, including the care of children. What I am saying applies to the overwhelming majority of women, to the wives of workers and to those who stand all day in a factory.
"So few men—even among the proletariat—realize how much effort and trouble they could save women, even quite do away with, if they were to lend a hand in 'women's work.' But no, that is contrary to the 'right and dignity of a man.' They want their peace and comfort. The home life of the woman is a daily sacrifice to a thousand unimportant trivialities. The old master-right of the man still lives in secret. His slave takes her revenge, also secretly. The backwardness of women, their lack of understanding for the revolutionary ideals of the man, decrease his joy and determination in fighting. They are like little worms which, unseen, slowly but surely rot and corrode. I know the life of the worker and not only from books. Our Communist work among the women, our political work, embraces a great deal of educational work among men. We must root out the old 'master' idea to its last and smallest trace. In the Party and among the masses. That is one of our political tasks, just as it is the urgently necessary task of forming a staff of men and women well trained in theory and practice, to carry on Party activity among working women."
— Klara Zetkin, Reminiscences of Lenin International Women's Day
A great deal of radical agitation and propaganda among working women centered around the observance of International Women's Day, a proletarian women's holiday which had originated in 1908 among the female needle trades workers in Manhattan's Lower East Side and which was later officially adopted by the Second International.
The holiday was first celebrated in Russia
The first International Women's Day in Russia drew tremendous attention in St. Petersburg and Moscow
Bolshevik work among women was so successful in fact that by the winter of 1913 Pravda was receiving more correspondence than it could handle on the special problems facing working women. The solution, Lenin urged, was another journal aimed specifically at proletarian women. It was entitled Rabotnitsa(The Working Woman). Rabotnitsa played a crucial role in organizing women and rallying them to the Bolshevik Party. (For a detailed account of its development, see "How the Bolsheviks Organized Working Women: History of the Journal Rabotnitsa," Women and Revolution No. 4, Fall 1973.)
The Bolsheviks' major political competitors, the Mensheviks, attempted to counter the influence of Rabotnitsa with a women's journal of their own called Golos Rabotnitsi (Voice of the Working Woman), but it appeared only twice and failed to win much support.
Menshevik attempts to organize women through mass meetings seem to have fared badly also. Klavdia Nikolaevna, who later became an editor of Rabotnitsa, described one such meeting as follows:
"At the meeting there were many women and frontline soldiers. Suddenly, a group of Bolshevik working women burst into the hall and pushed their way to the speakers' platform. The first and second to reach the platform collided with it, but the third was able to gain a foothold on it, and she made such a fiery speech about the aims of the revolution, that all the women and soldiers left the meeting singing the 'International' and only one Menshevik was left in the auditorium."
— K. Nikolaevna, "Slovo k molodim rabotnitsam," A. Artiukhina et al. (eds.), Zhenshchina v revoliutsii "The First Day of the Revolution—That Is the Women's Day"
As the war dragged on, the daily life of the Russian working class grew steadily worse. By 1916, bread lines in Petrograd were often over a mile long with the women, who constituted the great majority of them, standing four abreast. In this situation of massive social unrest, the intervention of the Bolsheviks, who placed the blame for the war and the high cost of living squarely on the shoulders of the autocracy, evoked a deep response from the war-weary masses. The Bolshevik slogan, "Bring back our men!" was frequently found scrawled across factory walls, and Bolshevik proclamations, such as the following, appeared in underground newspapers and were posted on walls:
"The black scourge of war has destroyed... our workers' organizations.... The government has dealt treacherously with our deputies—class-conscious working women and working men—and our sons, husbands and brothers are bleeding profusely on foreign fields, paying with their lives to procure new markets, new lands for triumphant capital....
"Thus is it possible not to raise our voices in protest, the voices of hundreds of thousands of unfortunate mothers, wives and sisters, is it possible that we will shed only inaudible tears, sigh only secret sighs for the pain of the men? This cannot be, comrade working women. In all countries workers are rising up against their oppression by capital; we rise up and our voices demonstrate that we are also able to defend our children, husbands and brothers....
"Enough bloodshed! Down with the war! A people's court for the criminal autocratic government."
— Bolshevik International Women's Day proclamation (23 February 1915), quoted in A. P. Konstantinov and E. P. Serebrovskaia (eds.), Zhenshchiny Goroda Lenina
Pitirim Sorokin, who was an eyewitness to the February Revolution, has written:
"If future historians look for the group that began the Russian Revolution, let him [sic] not create any involved theory. The Russian Revolution was begun by hungry women and children demanding bread and herrings."
—Pitirim Sorokin, Leaves from a Russian Diary
Sorokin is correct in pointing out the importance of the women in the streets in the series of events which led to the downfall of the autocracy, but this is only half the story.
Street demonstrations by women had been occurring in the major cities for several months, but they had generally been no more than local disturbances leading at most to the looting of one or two shops. The demonstrations of 23 February—International Women's Day—1917 were of another order. These were massive city-wide actions involving thousands of people who struck their factories, raised political banners, turned over railroad cars and attacked the police who attempted to restrain them.
All radical parties had intended to celebrate International Women's Day in the customary manner—that is, with rallies, speeches and the distribution of leaflets. Not a single organization had called for labor strikes. When on the eve of the holiday a group of working women met with a representative of the Bolshevik Party, V. Kayurov, to discuss the next day's activities, he specifically cautioned them to refrain from isolated actions and to follow the instructions of the party.
Despite his advice, however, a few hundred women textile workers assembled in their factories early on the morning of the 23rd and resolved to call a one-day political strike. They elected delegates and sent them around to neighboring factories with appeals for support. Kayurov happened to be engaged in an emergency conference with four workers in the corridor of the Erikson Works when the women delegates came through that plant. It was only by this chance encounter that the Bolshevik representative learned of the forthcoming strike action. He was furious:
"I was extremely indignant about the behavior of the strikers, both because they had blatantly ignored the decision of the District Committee of the Party, and also because they had gone on strike after I had appealed to them only the night before to keep cool and disciplined. There appeared to be no reason for their action, if one discounted the ever-increasing bread queues, which had indeed touched off the strike."
— V. Kayurov, Proletarskaia Revoliutsia No. 1, 1923, quoted in George Katkov, Russia 1917: The February Revolution
The strike was thus unauthorized by any political group. It was, as Trotsky said, "a revolution begun from below, overcoming the resistance of its own revolutionary organizations, the initiative being taken of their own accord by the most oppressed and downtrodden part of the proletariat—the women textile workers, among them no doubt, many soldiers' wives."
By noon of the 23rd an estimated 90,000 workers had followed the working women out on strike. "With reluctance," writes Kayurov, "the Bolsheviks agreed to this."
As the striking workers, who came mostly from the Viborg District on the north side of the city, began their march into the center, they were joined by thousands of women who had been standing all morning in the bread lines, only to be informed that there was to be no bread in the shops on that day. Together they made their way to the Municipal Duma to demand bread.
For the remainder of the day the streets swarmed with people. Spontaneous meetings were held everywhere, and here and there hastily improvised red banners rose above the crowd, demanding bread, peace and higher wages. Other demands were scrawled on the sides of streetcars: "Give us bread!" and "No bread, no work!" One woman streetcar conductor later recalled: "...When we conductors turned in our money for the night, we saw soldiers with rifles standing to one side of the gate, and on the following day they were still in the conductors' room and walking about the yard. Leonov [a Bolshevik who had been one of the leaders of a successful streetcar conductors' strike the previous year] quietly said to us: 'This is all for us; you see today in Petrograd 200,000 workers are on strike!'
"We began to leave the yard to embark in the municipal streetcars when suddenly we saw a crowd of workers coming at us, snouting: 'Open the gate to the yard!' There were 700 people. They stood on the rails and on the steps of the Gornyi Museum
"The strikers swept over the city. A demonstration of workers from the Putilov Factory marched to the center of the city and into it, like a flood, merged again and again the crowds of workers...."
— K. lakovlevoi in Vsegda s Vami: Sbornikposviashchennyi 50-letiiu zhurnala "Rabotnitsa "
All in all, the day passed with relatively little violence. A few troops were called out to assist the police, but it was determined that they were unnecessary, and they were returned to their barracks. In the evening the audience at the long-awaited premiere of Meyerhold's production of "Lermontov's Masquerade" heard some gunshots through the red and gold drapes of the Alexandrinskii Theater, but there were no casualties and no one suspected that anything especially out of the ordinary was taking place.
They were mistaken. During the days which followed, the general agitation not only continued but assumed an ever more violent character until the hollow shell of the once-powerful Romanov dynasty crumbled.
One week after the strike which had setoff this chain of events Pravda editorialized:
"The first day of the revolution—that is the women's day, the day of the Women Workers' International. All honour to the International! The women were the fist to tread the streets of Petrograd on their day."
— Fanina W. Halle, Women in Soviet Russia
"The Tasks of the Proletariat In Our Revolution: Draft Program for the Proletarian Party," written immediately upon Lenin's return to Russia
"Unless women are brought to take an independent part not only in political life generally, but also in daily and universal public service, it is no use talking about full and stable democracy; let alone socialism. And such 'police' functions as care of the sick and of homeless children, food inspection, etc., will never be satisfactorily discharged until women are on an equal footing with men, not merely nominally but in reality."
— V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 24
Throughout the spring and summer of 1917 the Bolsheviks intensified their work among women. The first working women's conference, which took place at Lenin's suggestion and which was attended by Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries and feminists as well as Bolsheviks, demonstrated the influence which the Bolsheviks had gained among working women.
In her address to the conference, Konkordiia Samoilova, a leading member of the Bolshevik Party, proposed that all political work among women in industry be carried out henceforth under the guidance of Bolshevik organizations. Naturally, this proposal met with the fierce resistance of the representatives of other radical organizations. A Menshevik, Bakasheva, argued that the women's movement was independent and must not be subordinated to the influence of any political party. But although three or four women expressed solidarity with the Menshevik resolution affirming the non-partisan character of the women's movement, it was defeated, while Samoilova's proposal for Bolshevik leadership was accepted.
Under the mounting pressure of events in the months preceding October, animosities on the left became more intense than ever. In July an abortive uprising took place. Although the Bolsheviks had counseled against such a move at this time, when the class lines were drawn they took their places in the front ranks of the proletariat. A Russian working woman recalls:
"I remember how we went to the July demonstration. Our organized working men and working women arose under the Bolshevik signs. Loudly and mightily our voices resounded: 'We who were nothing and have become everything shall construct a new and better world.'
"As the demonstration approached the corner of Nevsky and Sadova, machine-gun fire was heard. People ran to the sidewalks, but, since the doormen all along the Nevsky had closed the gates, there was nowhere to escape, and the shooting continued. The Nevsky was strewn with the bodies of the demonstrators. At a corner of the Nevsky, a store was located on the basement level. When the machine-gun fire began, we descended a short flight of stairs to the door of the shop, which was closed. Working women disassembled the window pane and, helping each other, got into the shop and ran out through a dark passage into a yard and from there through an alley back a gain to the Nevsky.
"The streets of Petrograd were running with the blood of workers and soldiers....we buried them in a communal grave.
"When on the morning of July 5, 1917 we returned to our plant, 'Novi Promet,' it was as if we did not know our coworkers. During the course of our two-day absence, the Mensheviks and SRs had spread the foul slander that the Bolsheviks were fully responsible for the shooting down of the workers. The atmosphere was tense. When we entered the shop, many working women jumped up and began to throw aluminum nuts with very sharp edges at us. I was taken by surprise and covered my face with my hands, and my attackers kept repeating:
'"Take that, Bolshevik spy!'
'"What are you doing? The Bolsheviks gave their lives for the working class and you listen to the Mensheviks and SRS, the murderers of the working class....'
"The working women, seeing my face running with blood, became frightened. Someone brought water, iodine, a towel. The girls from my brigade were in a flood of tears. They told me how the Menshevik Bakasheva and others had set them against the Bolsheviks.
"The wavering of working women became apparent not only in our plant but also in other Petrograd enterprises during the July Days, when counterrevolutionary scum together with the Mensheviks and SRs carried on their filthy persecution of the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks and SRs had started down the path of open counterrevolution."
— E. Tarasova, "Pod znamenem Bolshevikov," in A. Artiukhina et al. (eds.), Zhenshchiny v revoliutsii
In the final weeks before October, the Bolshevik Party made an all-out effort to consolidate the support of the working women and enlist them in the imminent struggle. Party committees held working women's conferences at which they explained the problems of the party, dispelled the wild rumors which abounded, attacked counterrevolutionary positions and generally tried to raise class-consciousness among the women and draw them into revolutionary activity.
Coinciding with the October Revolution itself was the First All-City Conference of Petrograd Working Women, which was organized by Rabotnitsa and attended by 500 delegates elected by 80,000 working women. A major goal of the conference was to prepare non-party women for the coming uprising and to acquaint them with the program which the new Soviet government would pursue after victory. The women discussed various questions of government and worked out plans for the welfare of mothers.
The conference was temporarily interrupted by the outbreak of the armed uprising which had been under discussion. The delegates recessed in order to participate in the revolutionary struggle along with many other women who bore arms, dug entrenchments, stood guard and nursed the wounded. Afterward Lenin was to say of them:
"In Petrograd, here in Moscow
— V. I. Lenin, quoted in Fanina W. Halle, Women in Soviet Russia
Few people today, even among those who take a special interest in the history of women, have ever heard of the Russian League of Equal Rights for Women. Yet in the days following the February revolution it was this organization, a branch of Carrie Chapman Catt's International Suffrage Alliance, to which feminists in Russia
From its headquarters at 20 Znamenskaia Street Petrograd the League waged an ardent struggle for women's rights—principally suffrage—through rallies, leaflets, newspaper articles and earnest petitions such as the following:
"Defending the interests of women and maintaining that the realization of peace among the people will be incomplete without the full equality of women and men, the Russian League of Equal Rights for Women appeals to all women of all professions and calls upon them to join the League in order to quickly realize in practice the great idea of complete equality of the sexes before the law.
"In Unity there is Strength."
—Den', 9 March 1917
On 15 April 1917 the League witnessed the realization of its long-sought goal as the Provisional Government granted all women over the age of 20 the right to participate in Duma elections. Over the next four months additional legislation enabled women to practice law, elect delegates to the forthcoming Constituent Assembly, run for election themselves, hold government posts and vote in all provincial and municipal elections. Social Revolutionary leader Catherine Breshkovskaia (later to be dubbed by Trotsky the "Godmother of the Russian Counterrevolution") wrote in exultation to the National American Woman Suffrage Association:
"I am happy to say that the 'Women's Journal' can be sure we Russian women have already the rights (over all our country) belonging to all citizens, and the elections which are taking place now, over all our provinces, are performed together by men and women. Neither our government nor our people have a word to say against the woman suffrage."
— Catherine Breshkovskaia, letter to the National American Woman Suffrage Association, 20 May 1917
It is notable, then, that the victorious Russian League has been relegated to historical near-oblivion, while the Bolshevik Party is universally acknowledged—even by staunch anti-communists—as the instrument by means of which Russian women achieved an unparalleled degree of social equality. And this is as it should be, for in fact the League's paper victory had virtually no practical significance for the masses of Russian women. Not only did the new equal rights statutes leave untouched the most urgent problems of daily life—such as widespread starvation—but such reforms as were guaranteed were implemented, as in the West, in a purely tokenistic fashion. American newspaper reporter Bessie Beatty, who attended a Provisional Government political convention in Petrograd during this period, noted that of the 1,600 delegates in attendance only 23 were women. Not that women were absent from the proceedings; far from it. Numerous women served tea, caviar and sandwiches, ushered men to their seats, took stenographic notes and counted ballots. "It was so natural," said Beatty, "that it almost made me homesick."
Bolshevik Pledge: Full Social Equality for Women
Lenin had pledged that "the first dictatorship of the proletariat will be the pioneer in full social equality for women. It will radically destroy more prejudices than volumes of women's rights." With the Soviet seizure of state power and in the very teeth of the bitter struggle against counterrevolution and imperialist intervention the Bolsheviks proved their determination to honor this pledge.
The very first pieces of legislation enacted by the new Soviet government were directed at the emancipation of women in a way which far exceeded the reformist demands of the suffragists. The aim of this legislation was the replacement of the nuclear family as a social/economic unit through the socialization of household labor and the equalization of educational and vocational opportunities. These two goals were key to the undermining of the capitalist social order and to the construction of the new society.
In December 1917 illegitimacy was abolished in law, making fathers, whether married or not, coresponsible for their children and freeing mothers from the burden of a double standard which had punished them for the consequences of shared "mistakes." Subsequent legislation declared marriage to be a contract between free and equal individuals which could be dissolved at the request of either partner, established hundreds of institutions devoted to the care of mothers and children, legalized abortions, assured equal pay for equal work and opened up unheard of opportunities for women in industry, the professions, the party and government. And this legislation was backed by government action. Thus when Soviet working women, like working women in other countries, began to lose their jobs to soldiers returning from the front, the Petrograd Council of Trade Unions addressed the following appeal to all workers and factory committees:
"The question of how to combat unemployment has come sharply before the unions. In many factories and shops the question is being solved very simply...fire the women and put men in their places. With the transfer of power to the Soviets, the working class is given a chance to reorganize our national economy on a new basis. Does such action correspond with this new basis?... The only effective measure against unemployment is the restoration of the productive powers of the country, reorganization on a socialist basis. During the time of crisis, with the cutting down of workers in factories and shops, we must approach the question of dismissal with the greatest care. We must decide each case individually. There can be no question of whether the worker is a man or a woman, but simply of the degree of need.... Only such an attitude will make it possible for us to retain women in our organization, and prevent a split in the army of workers...."
— Petrograd Council of Trade Unions, April 1918, quoted in Jessica Smith, Women in Soviet Russia
This petition was supported by other unions and government organizations, and mass dismissals of women from Soviet industry were in fact checked. Three years later, during another period of widespread layoffs, the government issued a decree providing that in cases where male and female workers were equally qualified they were to be given equal consideration in retaining their jobs, with the exception that single women with children under one year of age were to be given preference. In the event that such women had to be laid off, their children had the right to continue to attend the factory nursery or kindergarten. It was further stipulated that neither pregnancy nor the fact that a woman was nursing a baby could serve as cause for dismissal, nor was it permitted to dismiss a woman worker during a leave of absence for childbirth.
Surveying the Soviet government's work among women during its first two years Lenin was able to conclude that:
"A complete Revolution in the legislation affecting women was brought about by the government of the workers in the first months of its existence. The Soviet government has not left a stone unturned of those laws which held women in complete subjection. I speak particularly of the laws which took advantage of the weaker position of woman, leaving her in an unequal and often even degrading position—that is, the laws on divorce and children born out of wedlock, and the right of women to sue the father for the support of the child.... And we may now say with pride and without any exaggeration that outside of Soviet Russia there is not a country in the world where women have been given full equal rights, where women are not in a humiliating position which is felt especially in everyday family life. This was one of our first and most important tasks....
"Certainly laws alone are not enough, and we will not for a minute be satisfied just with decrees. But in the legal field we have done everything required to put women on an equal basis with men, and we have a right to be proud of that. The legal position of women in Soviet Russia is ideal from the point of view of the foremost countries. But we tell ourselves plainly that this is only the beginning."
— V. I. Lenin, quoted in Jessica Smith, Women in Soviet Russia Zhenotdel
The transition was not an easy one for women (or for men), particularly in rural areas and in the Muslim East. Appreciating the difficulties which women had to overcome in breaking from reactionary traditions, the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, although it was caught up in the turmoil of civil war, gave additional impetus to its work among women by calling for an Ail-Russian Conference of Working Women and Peasant Women to take place in Moscow in November 1918. This conference was preceded by the establishment of a bureau of convocation which sent agitators throughout the country, including frontline regions, to inform women about the forthcoming conference and to facilitate the election of delegates. Given the desperate conditions which prevailed, it was estimated that approximately 300 delegates would attend, but at the opening of the first session on November 16, 1,147 women delegates were seated.
Conference discussions addressed a variety of questions, including the problems of working women in Soviet Russia, the family, welfare, the role of women in the international revolution, organizational problems, the struggle against prostitution in Soviet Russia, the struggle against child labor and thehousing question.
While affirming in principle that the struggle for communism and women's emancipation could succeed only through the united struggle of all sections of the working class and peasantry, and not through the building of an autonomous women's movement, the delegates also noted that women were often the least conscious elements in these sections and the most in need of special attention. In the light of this approach to special work among women, which had been developed by the German Social Democratic Party and carried forward by the Bolsheviks in the prerevolutionary period, delegates to the conference affirmed the proposal by Bolshevik leaders Inessa Armand and Konkordiia Samoilova that the conference appeal to the party "to organize from among the most active working women of the party special groups for propaganda and agitation among women in order to put the idea of communism into practice." The Bolsheviks' response was the creation of a Central Committee commission headed by Armand for work among women. It was succeeded the following year by the Department of Working Women and Peasant Women—Zhenotdel.
Zhenotdel was to become a major vehicle for the recruitment of women to the Bolshevik Party; but its primary purpose was not recruitment but the instruction of non-party women in the utilization of their newly-won rights, the deepening of their political awareness and the winning of their cooperation for the construction of the proletarian state.
While special work among women was carried out by many agencies, Zhenotdel was unique in that it offered women practical political experience. In annual elections women chose their delegates—one for every ten working women or for every hundred peasant women or housewives. These delegates attended classes in reading and writing, government, women's rights and social welfare, and they took part in the organization of conferences, meetings and interviews designed to arouse the interest of their constituents and draw them into political activity. They were entitled to representation on the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, and those who were elected to represent Zhenotdel pursued a special program of political education which included reviewing the reports of district committees, co-ops, trade unions and factory directors. Some Zhenotdel delegates became full-time paid functionaries in government institutions or trade unions where they participated directly in the administration of the government.
Zhenotdel carried out extensive propaganda campaigns through its publications. By 1921, it was publishing a special page devoted to women in 74 weekly newspapers. In addition, it published its own weekly bulletin and the monthly journal Kommunistka (The Communist Woman), which had a circulation of 30,000. In addition, Zhenotdel's literary commission supervised the publication of leaflets and pamphlets dealing with party work among women—over 400,000 pieces of literature during the first six months of 1921 alone.
Finding themselves confronted at every step by the enormous barrier of illiteracy among women, Zhenotdel delegates threw themselves into the work of organizing over 25,000 literacy schools in which they themselves were often the majority of the students. They also set up co-operative workshops for women, organized women who had been laid off from factories and established orphanages and colonies for homeless children.
Within a few years Zhenotdel had succeeded in creating out of the most backward sector of the working class and peasantry an organized, active, politically conscious stratum of women citizens devoted to the Soviet republic. Of these astonishing women delegates the Russian poet Mayakovsky wrote:
"They come
From the machines
From the land and washtubs
Under red kerchiefs
Tucking in the strands,
Hundreds of thousands
Of women-delegates
To build and govern."
— Quoted in V. Lebedeva, "Zabota o materiakh i detiakh," in A. Artiukhina et al. (eds. Zhenshchina v revoliutsii)
Women Rally to Soviet State
While the Soviet regime had its detractors, even among working women in the major cities, all evidence indicates that the great majority of working women, for whom there could be no going back to the life they had known under the old regime, remained loyal to the government through famine, epidemic and Civil War. Wearing red head bands, women marched through the streets of Petrograd , during its darkest days, singing that although typhus and counterrevolution were everywhere, the world revolution was bound to save them. One woman who spoke for many wrote:
"I am the wife of a Petrograd worker. Earlier I was in no way useful to the working class. I could not work.
"I sat at home, suffocating in the cellar and preparing dinner from garbage which the bourgeoisie had not found fit to eat.
"When working class rule began, 1 heard the call for us ourselves to rule and build our lives. Well, I thought, how can the generals and their daughters have yielded their places to us? I began to listen....
"They chose me for a Kalachinska District conference. I learned a great deal there. A literacy instructor was assigned to me....
"If life is difficult for us now, all of us will bear it and not one will give the bourgeoisie reason to celebrate that they can again keep all the people in chains. We may suffer for a while, but to our children we will leave an inheritance which neither moth will eat nor rust will corrode. And we shall all support strong soviet rule and the Communist Party."
—V. Tsurik, Bednota
But the clearest indication of support for the Soviet government was the enthusiasm with which women took up arms against the counterrevolution. Soviet women were members of Red Guard units from the first days of the October Revolution, and they fought side by side with men on every front during the Civil War. Like women in bourgeois countries, they initially volunteered as nurses, with the difference—as Alexandra Kollontai points out—that they regarded the soldiers not merely as "our poor soldier boys," but as comrades in struggle. Soon, however, they became scouts, engineers of armored trains, cavalry soldiers, communications specialists, machine-gunners and guerrillas. They also took the initiative in forming "stopping detachments," which captured deserters and persuaded them, whenever possible, to return to their positions. Lenin praised these detachments, saying: "Smash the traitors ruthlessly and put them to shame: Eighty thousand women—this is no trifling military force. Be steadfast in the revolutionary struggle."
When the fighting ended, an estimated 1,854 women soldiers had been killed or wounded and many more taken prisoner. Sixty-three women were awarded the Order of the Red Banner for military heroism.
The Work Goes Forward
By 1921 it appeared as if a wholly new type of woman was about to make her appearance in Soviet Russia. According to Alexandra Kollontai's personal ideal, this woman would be self-supporting and would live alone; she would take part in social and political work and would engage freely in sexual love; her meals would be eaten in a communal restaurant; her children would be happy in a state nursery and her home would be cleaned, her laundry done and her clothes mended by state workers. Other communists cherished other visions of the fully emancipated socialist woman, but for all of them the future was full of promise—so much had been accomplished already.
It was too early to know that just ahead lay bitter defeats for Soviet women, for the Soviet working class as a whole and for the international proletarian revolution. The bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet state, which arose in the first instance out of the backwardness, isolation and poverty of post-revolutionary Russia and out of the failure of proletarian revolutions in the technologically advanced countries of Western Europe , constitutes another chapter. The privileged, conservative bureaucratic caste which emerged out of these conditions reversed at will many of the gains which women had achieved through the Revolution: abortion was illegalized; the women's section of the party was liquidated; coeducation was abolished; divorce was made less accessible; and women were once again encouraged to assume their "natural" tasks of domestic labor and child rearing within the confines of the oppressive family:
But despite these defeats, the lessons of Bolshevik work among women have not been lost to succeeding generations of revolutionists, and the work goes forward. Just as Kollontai pointed out to Bessie Beatty during the first flush of the Soviet victory: "Even if we are conquered, we have done great things. We are breaking the way...."
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