Speech Delivered at the First National Congress of Working Women
#PUBLICATION NOTE
This edition of Speech Delivered at the First National Congress of Working Women has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following edition: Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women, in the Collected Works of Lenin, Fourth English Edition, Vol. 28 Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964.
#INTRODUCTION NOTE
This is a speech delivered by Comrade Nikolaj Lenin at the First National Congress of Working Women in Moscow, Russia on the 19th of November, 1918. It was first published in Izvestia, No. 253 (20th of November, 1918).
The First National Congress of Working Women, convened by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Russia (Majority), met in the Trade Union House between the 16th and 21st of November, 1928. There were 1'147 delegates from workers and poor peasants. Comrade Lenin spoke on the fourth day of the proceedings. Following his speech, the Congress passed a resolution to the effect that female workers and peasants would justify the hopes placed on them by the Council Government and the people in building up a new, communist way of life. Among the speakers at the Congress and its commissions were A.I. Uljanova-Elizarova, V.P. Nogin, J.M. Jaroslavskij, I.F. Armand, A.M. Kollontaj, K.N. Samoilova, L.N. Stal, and others. The Congress addressed an appeal to all working women to defend the Council Republic and adopted decisions on easing women's conditions by developing social services, on the drawing of women into social activities, on child upbringing, protection of child labour, and so on. The Congress made a start in the organization of female workers and peasants. It established commissions for work among women, subordinated to Party committees. Their main task was to educate women politically and to draw them into social activity.
#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!
#SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE FIRST NATIONAL CONGRESS OF WORKING WOMEN
#Nikolaj Lenin
#18th of November, 1918
#★
[Comrade Lenin is greeted by the delegates with stormy applause.]
Comrades, in a certain sense, this Congress of the women's section of the workers' army has a special significance, because one of the hardest things in every country has been to stir the women into action. There can be no socialist revolution unless very many working women take a big part in it.
In all developed countries, even the most progressive, women are actually no more than domestic slaves. Women do not even enjoy full equality in any capitalist State, not even in the freest of republics.
One of the primary tasks of the Council Republic is to abolish all restrictions on women's rights. The Council Government has completely abolished divorce proceedings, that source of bourgeois degradation, repression, and humiliation.
It will soon be a year now since complete freedom of divorce was legislated. We have passed a decree annulling all distinction between children born inside and outside of wedlock and removing political restrictions. Nowhere else in the world have equality and freedom for working women been so fully established.
We know that it is the working-class woman who has to bear the full brunt of antiquated codes.
For the first time in history, our aw has removed everything that denied women rights. But the important thing is not the law. In the cities and industrial areas, this law on complete freedom of marriage is doing all right, but in the countryside, it all too frequently remains a dead letter. There, the religious marriage still predominates. This is due to the influence of the priests, an evil that is harder to combat than the old legislation.
We must be extremely careful in fighting religious prejudices — some people cause a lot of harm in this struggle by offending religious feelings. We must use propaganda and education. By lending too sharp an edge to the struggle, we may only awaken popular resentment; such methods of struggle tend to perpetuate the division of the people along religious lines, whereas our strength lies in unity. The deepest source of religious prejudice is poverty and ignorance; and that is the evil we have to combat.
The status of women up to now has been compared to that of a slave; women have been tied to the home, and only socialism can save them from this. They will only be completely emancipated when we change from small-scale individual farming to collective farming and collective working of the land. That is a difficult task. But, now that poor peasants' committees are being formed, the time has come when the socialist revolution is being consolidated.
The poorest part of the rural population is only now beginning to organize, and socialism is acquiring a firm foundation in these organizations of poor peasants.
Before, often the cities became revolutionary and then the countryside.
But the present revolution relies on the countryside, and therein lie its significance and strength. The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it. The Council Government is doing everything in its power to enable women to carry out independent proletarian Socialist work.
The Council Government is in a difficult position, because the imperialists of all countries hate Council Russia and are preparing to go to war with it for kindling the fire of revolution in a number of countries and for taking determined steps toward socialism.
Now that they are out to destroy revolutionary Russia, the ground is beginning to burn under their own feet. You know how the revolutionary movement is spreading in Germany. In Denmark, the workers are fighting their government. In Switzerland and the Netherlands, the revolutionary movement is getting stronger. The revolutionary movement in these small countries has no importance in itself, but it is particularly significant, because there was no war in these countries and they had the most «constitutional», democratic system. If countries like these are stirring into action, it makes us sure that the revolutionary movement is gaining ground all over the world.
No other republic has so far been able to emancipate women. The Council Government is helping them. Our cause is invincible, because the invincible working class is rising up in all countries. This movement signifies the spread of the invincible socialist revolution.
[Prolonged applause. All sing The Internationale.]