The Tasks of the Working Women's Movement in the Council Republic
#PUBLICATION NOTE
This edition of The Tasks of the Working Women's Movement in the Council Republic 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: The Tasks of the Working Women's Movement in the Soviet Republic, in the Collected Works of Lenin, Fourth English Edition, Vol. 30, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964.
#INTRODUCTION NOTE
This is a speech delivered by Comrade Nikolaj Lenin at the Fourth Moscow City Conference of Non-Party Working Women in Moscow, Russia on the 23rd of September, 1919. It was first published in the Pravda, Vol. 8, No. 213 (25th of September, 1919).
#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!
#THE TASKS OF THE WORKING WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN THE COUNCIL REPUBLIC
#SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE FOURTH MOSCOW CITY CONFERENCE OF NON-PARTY WORKING WOMEN
#Nikolaj Lenin
#23rd of September, 1919
#★
Comrades, it gives me pleasure to greet a conference of working women. I will allow myself to pass over those subjects and questions that, of course, at the moment, are the cause of the greatest concern to every working woman and to every politically conscious individual from among the working people; these are the most urgent questions — that of bread and that of the war situation. I know from the newspaper reports of your meetings that these questions have been dealt with exhaustively by Comrade Trotskij as far as war questions are concerned and by Comrades Jakovleva and Sviderskij as far as the bread question is concerned; please, therefore, allow me to pass over those questions.
I should like to say a few words about the general tasks facing the working women's movement in the Council Republic, those that are, in general, connected with the transition to socialism, and those that are of particular urgency at the present time. Comrades, the question of the status of women was raised by the Council Power from the very beginning. It seems to me that any workers' State, in the course of transition to socialism, is faced with a double task. The first part of that task is relatively simple and easy. It concerns those old laws that kept women in a status of inequality as compared to men.
Participants in all emancipation movements in Western Europe have long since — not for decades, but for centuries — put forward the demand that obsolete laws be annulled and women and men be made equal by law, but none of the democratic European States, none of the most developed republics has succeeded in putting it into effect, because, wherever there is capitalism, wherever there is private ownership of land and factories, wherever the power of capital is preserved, the men retain their privileges. It was possible to put it into effect in Russia only because the power of the workers has been established here since the 7th of November, 1917. From its very inception, the Council Power set out to be the power of the working people, hostile to all forms of exploitation. It set itself the task of doing away with the possibility of the exploitation of the working people by the landowners and capitalists, of doing away with the rule of capital. The Council Power has been trying to make it possible for the working people to organize their lives without private ownership of land, without privately owned factories, without that private property that everywhere, throughout the world, even where there is complete political liberty, even in the most democratic republics, keeps the working people in a state of what is actually poverty and wage-slavery, and women in a state of double slavery.
The Council Power, the power of the working people, in the first months of its existence, effected a very definite revolution in legislation that concerns women. Nothing whatsoever is left in the Council Republic of those laws that put women in a subordinate status. I am speaking specifically of those laws that took advantage of the weaker status of women and put them in a status of inequality and often, even, in a humiliating status, that is, the laws on divorce, on children born out of wedlock, and on the right of a woman to summon the father of a child for maintenance.
In is particularly in this sphere that bourgeois legislation, even, it must be said, in the most developed countries, takes advantage of the weaker status of women to humiliate them and give them a status of inequality. It is particularly in this sphere that the Council Power has left nothing whatsoever of the old, unjust laws that were intolerable for working people. We may now say proudly and without any exaggeration that, apart from Council Russia, there is not a country in the world where women enjoy full equality and where women are not placed in the humiliating status felt particularly in day-to-day family life. This was one of our first and most important tasks.
If you have occasion to come into contact with political parties that are hostile to the Majoritarians, if there should come into your hands newspapers published in Russian in the regions occupied by Kolcak and Denikin, or if you happen to talk to people who share the views of those newspapers, you may often hear from them the accusation that the Council Power has violated democracy.
We, the representatives of the Council Power, Majoritarian Communists, and supporters of the Council Power are often accused of violating democracy, and proof of this is given by citing the fact that the Council Power dispersed the Constituent Assembly. We answer this accusation as follows: that democracy and that Constituent Assembly, which came into being when private property still existed on Earth, when there was no equality between people, when the one who possessed their own capital was the boss and the others worked for them and were their wage-slaves — that was a democracy on which we place no value. Such democracy concealed slavery even in the most developed countries. We Socialists are supporters of democracy only insofar as it eases the position of the working and oppressed people. Throughout the world, Socialism has set itself the task of combating every kind of exploitation of some by others. That democracy has real value for us which serves the exploited, the underprivileged. If those who do not work are disenfranchised, that would be real equality between people. Those who do not work should not eat.
In reply to these accusations, we say that the question must be presented in this way — how is democracy implemented in various countries? We see that equality is proclaimed in all democratic republics, but, in the civil laws and in laws on the rights of women — those that concern their position in the family and divorce — we see inequality and the humiliation of women at every step, and we say that this is a violation of democracy specifically in respect of the oppressed. The Council Power has implemented democracy to a greater degree than any of the other, most developed countries, because it has not left in its laws any trace of the inequality of women. Again, I say that no other State and no other legislation has ever done for women half of what the Council Power did in the first months of its existence.
Laws alone, of course, are not enough, and we are by no means content with mere decrees. In the sphere of legislation, however, we have done everything required of us to put women in a position of equality, and we have every right to be proud of it. The position of women in Council Russia is now ideal as compared with their position in the most developed States. We tell ourselves, however, that this is, of course, only the beginning.
Owing to her work in the house, the woman is still in a difficult position. To effect her complete emancipation and make her the equal of the man, it is necessary for the national economy to be socialized and for women to participate in common productive labour. Then, women will occupy the same position as men.
Here, we are not, of course, speaking of making women the equal of men as far as productivity of labour, the quantity of labour, the length of the workday, labour conditions, and so on, are concerned; we mean that the woman should not, unlike the man, be oppressed because of her position in the family. You all know that, even when women have full rights, they still remain factually downtrodden, because all housework is left to them. In most cases, housework is the most unproductive, barbarous, and arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally small-scale and does not include anything that would in any way promote the development of the woman.
In pursuance of the Socialist ideal, we want to fight for the full implementation of socialism, and here, an extensive field of labour opens up for women. We are now making serious preparations to clear the ground for socialist construction, but socialist construction will begin only when we have achieved the complete equality of women and when we undertake the new work together with women who have been emancipated from that small-scale, stultifying, and unproductive work. This is a job that will take us many, many years.
This work cannot show any rapid results and will not produce a scintillating effect.
We are setting up model institutions — dining rooms and nurseries — that will emancipate women from housework. And the work of organizing all these institutions will fall mainly to women. It has to be admitted that, in Russia today, there are very few institutions that would help woman out of her state of household slavery. There is an insignificant number of them, and the conditions now existing in the Council Republic — the war and food situation, about which comrades have already given you the details — hinder us in this work. Still, it must be said that these institutions, which liberate women from their position as household slaves, are springing up wherever it is in any way possible.
We say that the emancipation of the workers must be effected by the workers themselves, and, in exactly the same way, the emancipation of working women is a matter for the working women themselves. The working women must themselves see to it that such institutions are developed, and this activity will bring about a complete change in their position as compared with what it was under the old, capitalist society.
In order to be active in politics under the old, capitalist regime, special training was required, so that women played an insignificant part in politics, even in the most developed and free capitalist countries. Our task is to make politics available to every working woman. Ever since private ownership of land and factories has been abolished, and the power of the landowners and capitalists overthrown, the tasks of politics have become simple, clear, and comprehensible to the working people as a whole, including working women. In capitalist society, the woman's position is marked by such inequality that the extent of her participation is only an insignificant fraction of that of the man. The power of the working people is necessary for a change to be brought about in this situation, for, then, the main tasks of politics will consist of matters directly affecting the fate of the working people themselves.
Here, too, the participation of working women is essential — not only of Party members and politically conscious women, but also of non-Party women and those who are least politically conscious. Here, the Council Power opens up a wide field of activity to working women.
We have had a difficult time in the struggle against the forces hostile to Council Russia that have attacked it. It was difficult for us to fight on the battlefield against the forces who went to war against the power of the working people and in the field of food supplies against the profiteers, because of the too small number of people, working people, who came wholeheartedly to our aid with their own labour. Here, too, there is nothing that the Council Power can appreciate as much as the help given by the masses of non-Party working women. They may know that, in the old, bourgeois society, perhaps, a comprehensive training was necessary for participation in politics, and that this was not available to women. The political activity of the Council Republic is mainly the struggle against the landowners and the capitalists, the struggle for the elimination of exploitation; political activity, therefore, is made available to the working woman in the Council Republic, and it will consist in the working woman using her organizational ability to help the working man.
What we need is not only organizational work on a scale involving millions; we need organizational work on the smallest scale, and this makes it possible for women to work as well. Women can work under war conditions when it is a question of helping the army or carrying out agitation in the army. Women should take an active part in all this, so that the Red Army sees that it is being looked after, that solicitude is being displayed. Women can also work in the sphere of food distribution, on the improvement of public catering and everywhere opening dining rooms, like those that are so numerous in Petrograd.
It is in these fields that the activities of working women acquire the greatest organizational significance. The participation of working women is also essential in the organization and running of big experimental farms and should not take place only in isolated cases. This is something that cannot be carried out without the participation of a large number of working women. Working women will be very useful in this field in supervising the distribution of food and in making food products more easily obtainable. This work can well be done by non-Party working women, and its accomplishment will do more than anything else to strengthen socialist society.
We have abolished private ownership of land and almost completely abolished the private ownership of factories; the Council Power is now trying to ensure that all working people, non-Party as well as Party members, women as well as men, should take part in this economic development. The work that the Council Power has begun can only make progress when, instead of a few hundreds, millions and millions of women throughout Russia take part in it. We are sure that the cause of socialist development will then become sound. Then, the working people will show that they can live and run their country without the aid of the landowners and capitalists. Then, socialist construction will be so soundly based in Russia that no external enemies in other countries and none inside Russia will be any danger to the Council Republic.