FRAGMENTI:
-SEPTEMBER 23, 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 women 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 Trotsky as far as war
questions are concerned and by Comrades Yakovleva and Svidersky 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 Soviet 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 position
of women was raised by Soviet 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 position 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 advanced republics
have succeeded in putting it into effect, because wherever there is capitalism,
wherever there is private property in 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 October 25, 1917. From its very inception Soviet 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. Soviet power has been trying to make it possible
for the working people to organise their lives without private property in
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. Soviet 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 whatever is left in the Soviet Republic of those laws
that put women in a subordinate position. i am speaking specifically of those
laws that took advantage of the weaker position of women and put them in a
position of inequality and often, even, in a humiliating position, i.e., the
laws on divorce and on children born out of wedlock and on the right of a woman
to summon the father of a child for maintenance. It is particularly in this sphere that bourgeois
legislation, even, it must be said, in the most advanced countries, takes
advantage of the weaker position of women to humiliate them and give them a
status of inequality. It is particularly in this sphere that Soviet power has
left nothing whatever of the old, unjust laws that were intolerable for working
people. We may now say proudly and without any exaggeration that apart from
Soviet Russia there is not a country in the world where women enjoy full
equality and where women are not placed in the humiliating position 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 parties that
are hostile to the Bolsheviks, if there should come into your hands newspapers
published in Russian in the regions occupied by Kolchak or 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 Soviet power has violated democracy. We, the representatives of Soviet power, Bolshevik
Communists and supporters of Soviet power are often accused of violating
democracy and proof of this is given by citing the fact that Soviet power
dispersed the Constituent Assembly. We usually 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 his own capital was the boss and the
others worked for him and were his wage-slaves--that was a democracy on which
we place no value. Such democracy concealed slavery even in the most advanced
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
man by man. That democracy has real value for us which serves the exploited,
the underprivileged. If those who do not work are disfranchised 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. Soviet power has implemented democracy to a greater degree
than any of the other, most advanced 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 a half of what Soviet 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 Soviet Russia is
now ideal as compared with their position in the most advanced 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 socialised 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 working day, labour conditions, etc., 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, the most barbarous and the most
arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty 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 struggle for
the full implementation of socialism, and here an extensive field of labour
opens up before women. We are now making serious preparations to clear the
ground for the building of socialism, but the building of socialism 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 petty,
stultifying, 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
organising 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 obtaining in the Soviet 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
that 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 advanced and free capitalist countries. Our
task is to make politics available to every working woman. Ever since private
property in 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 in politics is only an
insignificant fraction of that of the man. The power of the working people is
necessary for a change to be wrought 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 the
non-party women and those who are least politically conscious. Here Soviet
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 Soviet Russia that have attacked her. 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
whole-heartedly to our aid with their own labour. Here, too, there is nothing
Soviet power can appreciate as much as the help given by 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 Soviet Republic
is mainly the struggle against the landowners and capitalists, the struggle for
the elimination of exploitation; political activity, therefore, is made
available to the working woman in the Soviet Republic and it will consist in
the working woman using her organisational ability to help the working man. What we need is not only organisational work on a scale
involving millions; we need organisational 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 on 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 organisational significance. The participation of working
women is also essential in the organisation 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 property in land and almost
completely abolished the private ownership of factories; Soviet 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 Soviet 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 Soviet Republic. Pravda No. 213,
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Vladimir I. Lenjin
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SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE FOURTH MOSCOW CITY CONFERENCE OF NON-PARTY
WORKING WOMEN
September 25, 1919