Feminism in Russia

Russian feminism originated in the 18th century, influenced by the Western European Enlightenment and the prominent role of women as a symbol for democracy and freedom in the French Revolution.[3] Notable Russian intellectual figures of the following, 19th century, such as Alexander Pushkin and Alexander Herzen wrote positively about the increased power and independence of women in their society and supported the growing concern for gender equality. In his influential novel What is to be Done?, the writer Nikolai Chernyshevski embodied the new feminist ideas in the novel's heroine, Vera Pavlovna, who dreams of a future utopian society with perfect equality among the sexes.[4]

Portrait of Princess Natalia Sheremeteva, first female Russian autobiographer and one of the Decembrist women

In aristocratic Russian society, the greater freedoms allowed to women led to the rise of the powerful, socially-connected woman, including such iconic figures as Catherine the Great, Maria Naryshkina, and Countess Maria Razumovskaya. Women also began to compete with men in the literary sphere, with Russian women authors, poets, and memoirists increasing in popularity.[3]

The loosening of restrictions on women's education and personal freedom that were enacted by Peter the Great in the 18th century created a new class of educated women, such as Princess Natalia Sheremeteva, whose 1767 Notes was the first autobiography by a woman in Russia.[5] In the 19th century, Sheremeteva was one of the "Decembrist women," the female relatives of the Decembrists. The male Decembrists were a group of aristocratic revolutionaries who in 1825 were convicted of plotting to overthrow Emperor Nicholas I, and many of whom were sentenced to serve in labor camps in Siberia. Though the wives, sisters, and mothers of the Decembrist men shared the same liberal democratic political views as their male relatives, they were not charged with treason because they were women; however, 11 of them, including Sheremeteva and Princess Mariya Volkonskaya, still chose to accompany their husbands, brothers, and sons to the labor camps. Though they were portrayed as heroes in popular culture, the Decembrist women insisted that they were simply doing their duty to their family. While in Siberia, some of them cared not only for their own relatives, but also for the other prisoners. They also set up important institutions like libraries and clinics, as well as arranging lectures and concerts.[6]

Anna Filosofova, co-founder of the Russian Women's Mutual Philanthropic Society

In the historical writing of the time, the humble devotion of the Decembrist women was contrasted with the intrigues and hedonism of female aristocrats of the 18th century, like Catherine the Great, whose excesses were seen as the danger of too-sudden liberation for women.[7] Although they did not explicitly espouse a feminist agenda, the Decembrist women were used as an example by later generations of Russian feminists, whose concern for gender equality was also tied to revolutionary political agendas.[8]

In the late 19th century, other aristocratic women began to turn away from refined society life and focused on feminist reform. Among them was Anna Pavlovna Filosofova, a woman from an aristocratic Moscow family married to a high-ranking bureaucrat, who devoted her energy to various societies and projects to benefit the poor and underprivileged in Russian society, including women. Together with Maria Trubnikova, Nadezhda Stasova and Evgenia Konradi, she lobbied the Emperor to create and fund higher education courses for women. She was also a founding member of the Russian Women's Mutual Philanthropic Society and responsible for helping to organize the All-Women's Congress of 1908.[9]

At the end of the century, some of the most widely read Russian literary figures focused on feminist motifs in their works. In his later years, Leo Tolstoy argued against the traditional institution of marriage, comparing it to forced prostitution and slavery, a theme that he also touched on in his novel Anna Karenina.[10] In his plays and short stories, Anton Chekhov portrayed a variety of working female protagonists, from actresses to governesses, who sacrificed social esteem and affluence for the sake of financial and personal independence; in spite of this sacrifice, these women are among the few Chekhovian characters who are truly satisfied with their lives.[11]

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the focus of Russian feminism shifted from the aristocracy to the peasants and working class. Imbued with socialist ideology, young women began to organize all-women unions among female factory workers, who tended to be ignored or marginalized by male socialists.[12]

Between 1907 and 1917, the League for Women's Equal Rights was the most important feminist organization in Russia. Like the Russian Women's Mutual Philanthropic Society, it was focused on education and social welfare, but it also pushed for equal rights for women, including suffrage, equal inheritance, and an end to passport restrictions. The 1917 Revolution, catalyzed in part by women workers' demonstrations, generated a surge of membership in the organization. In the same year, because of the society's continued lobbying, Russia became the first major world power to grant women the right to vote.[13]

Stamp depicting the iconic Soviet statue that symbolized union of a male worker and a kolkhoz woman, which represented the ideal of equality under Communism.

Vladimir Lenin, who led the Bolsheviks to power in the October Revolution, recognized the importance of women's equality in the Soviet Union (USSR) they established. "To effect [woman's] emancipation and make her the equal of man," he wrote in 1919, two years after the Revolution, following the Marxist theories that underlaid Soviet communism, "it is necessary to be socialized and for women to participate in common productive labor. Then woman will be the equal of man."[14]

In practice, Russian women saw massive gains in their rights under Communism. Women's suffrage was granted. Abortion was legalized in 1920, making the Soviet Union the first country to do so; however, it was banned again between 1936 and 1955. In 1922, marital rape was made illegal in the Soviet Union.[15] Generous maternity leave was legally required, and a national network of child-care centers was established. The country's first constitution recognized the equal rights of women.[16]

Though the prevailing Soviet ideology stressed total gender equality, and many Soviet women held jobs and advanced degrees, they did not participate in core political roles and institutions.[17] Above the middle levels, political and economic leaders were overwhelmingly male. While propaganda claimed, accurately, that more women sat in the Supreme Soviet than in most democratic countries' legislative bodies combined, only two women, Yekaterina Furtseva and (in its last year of existence) Galina Semyonova, were ever members of the party's Politburo, arguably the most important component of country's government.

By the 1970s, while women's liberation was a mainstream term in American public discourse, no comparable movement existed in the Soviet Union, despite gender-based income inequality and a rate of additional work in the household greater than that experienced by American women.[18] There were also double standards in social norms and expectations. "A man can fool around with other women, drink, even be lackadaisical toward his job, and this is generally forgiven," wrote Hedrick Smith, former Russian correspondent for The New York Times, but "if a woman does the same things, she is criticized for taking a light-hearted approach toward her marriage and her work."[19] In an open letter to the country's leadership shortly before he was expelled from it in 1974, the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn talked about an alleged heavy burden placed on women to do the menial work in Soviet society: "How can one fail to feel shame and compassion at the sight of our women carrying heavy barrows of stones for paving the street?"[16]

Smith wrote that many women he talked to complained that their emancipation had in fact been exploitation, since economic circumstances effectively compelled them to work while they retained their domestic responsibilities at home, and they were often tired; and that in contrast to Western women, Soviet women regularly saw their idea of liberation as working less and having more opportunity to stay at home.[20] He recounted a popular joke:

Under capitalism, women are not liberated because they have no opportunity to work. They have to stay at home, go shopping, do the cooking, keep house and take care of the children. But under socialism, women are liberated. They have the opportunity to work all day and then go home, go shopping, do the cooking, keep house and take care of the children.[21]

Sexist attitudes still prevailed across Soviet society. Men in the leadership often did not take women or their ideas seriously, and excluded them from many discussions. Domestic violence and sexual harassment continued to exist, although to a much lesser extent than in the West. Yet, sociological studies at the time found that Soviet women tended not to see their inequality as a problem.[22]