Communist Feminism: Who Would Have Thought?!

I really liked the piece on Communist Feminism in chapter 21. Who would have ever thought that “communist countries in fact pioneered forms of women’s liberation that only later were adopted in the West.” (Strayer & Nelson, 940). For a short period of time, women in Russia had legal and political equality: “marriage became a civil procedure among freely consenting adults; divorce was legalized and made easier, as was abortion; illegitimacy was abolished; women no longer had to take their husbands’ surname; pregnancy leave for employed women was mandated; and women were actively mobilized as workers in the country’s drive to industrialization.” Lenin believed that men and women should rule the state. Women organized themselves by forming a special organization called Zhenotdel and taught each other how to run day-care centers and medical clinics, publish newspapers and magazines aimed at female audiences, and provide literacy and prenatal classes. These women seemed to have been ahead of the curve! I love what Alexandra Rodionova said about herself, “This former illiterate working girl had been transformed into a person, powerful with the knowledge of her own rights, a consciousness of responsibility for everything happening in the country.” (Strayer & Nelson, 941). It is unfortunate that men fear women’s strength and intelligence. I wondered how women must have felt when Stalin came into power and abolished that special organization of Zhenotdel. Reading and writing about these women in Russia in the 1930s made me think of the class exercise Professor Andrews had us do last week. The lesson of this exercise bothered me. I could not imagine having the rights that I have as a woman be taken away from me. I would go into a deep depression, one from which I am not sure I could ever recover.