Authors

Discussion

Following the Russian revolution, which introduced the principle of equality of sexes in Soviet Russia, women united under the banner of the Comintern stepped forward to mobilize women internationally for both revolutionary struggle and their own liberation. The Communist Women's Movement (CWM) fought for a number of specific measures that concerned only women such as free education and medical care for women or introduction of new policies on housework that would transform it into a social industry.

Communist women worked out a new approach to childcare, which they also saw as a shared responsibility between women and society. They cooperated with a number of feminist currents on such issues as universal suffrage and reproductive rights. Thus the emancipation policy devised by Communist women did not target female workers exclusively. It sought to attract wider audience by addressing specific women’s issues.

Based on documents from the early 1920s, this paper will focus on: 1) the transnational character of the movement and Communist Women’s agency; 2) Communist Women’s agenda and their relationship with “bourgeois feminists”; and 3) revolutionary women’s take on questions of motherhood, child care and reproduction rights.