What Role Did Women Play In Russian Revolution Essay

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« The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it »1 said Lenin in a speech at the first Congress of Working Women on November 19th 1918, showing the central role of women in the Russian Revolution. Indeed, women took actively part in the class struggle in Russia since the beginning of the 20th century and in the success of the 1917 Revolution. On the other side, the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime led to very progressive measures empowering women in Soviet Russia. Thus, I will attempt in this paper to answer the following question: What role did women play in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and how did the latter impact the women’s …show more content…

The Tsarist regime replied by a violent repression which resulted in the death of tens of demonstrators and led to a huge turnout of protests in the following days with the mass mobilization of workers, both men and women. A significant amount of soldiers then began to sympathize with the demonstrators and turned their back to the regime, what resulted into the abdication of the Tsar Nicholas II and the beginning of the Revolution. Thus, women have played a decisive role in the collapse of the regime, and would continue to play a a key role in the revolutionary cause. Indeed, from 1917, women’s political and economic involvement became more and more important. A bureau to promote revolutionary work among women workers and a Congress for all women workers were created in March 1917, with the support of Lenin. Many women were actively taking part in the political process of the conquest of power by the Bolshevik but also in the management of production.7 They were also exercising Bolshevik propaganda through their organ « Rabotnitsa », calling for the rallying of working-class women to the revolutionary cause, with key figures of women’s liberation such as Nadya Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, and the Franco-Russian Inessa Fyodorovna Armand. 8 Thus, we have seen how women’s emancipation movement developed in Russia since the beginning of the 20th century within the working-class struggle, and the crucial role women played in the February Revolution, which led to a political and economic empowerment. We will know see the main political, economic and social achievements for women’s emancipation in the first years of the Bolshevik regime, and finally show the difficulties these progresses