Gender and State Socialism: The USSR

1. Gender and State Socialism: The USSR International Perspectives on Gender Lecture 6

2. Structure of Lecture • Introduction to Marxism • Marxism and the ‘Woman Question’ • Engel’s Thesis • Lenin, Trotsky and Kollontai • 1917 Bolshevik Revolution • Legal Equality for Women • Limited Socialization of Reproduction • Women in Paid Work and Politics • Sexuality and Reproduction • Conclusions

3. What is Marxism? • Economic, social and political theory and practice of Karl Marx (1818-1883) & his followers • Understands social divisions to be neither natural nor biological but based on class divisions • Capitalism: Bourgeoisie own and control means of production, proletariat (working class) dispossessed from means of production and forced to sell labour power • Surplus value extracted from the proletariat by the bourgeoisie • Class struggle to be followed by revolution – replacing capitalism and private property with communism and collective ownership

4. ‘Death to capital(ism), or death under the heel of Capital(ism)!’

5. Summary of Marxism • Explanation and critique of present and past societies centred on economic factors • Shift from feudal mode of production to capitalist mode • Imagining an alternative society with common ownership of means of production • Socialism first – state remains large • Then Communism: state ‘withers away’ and ‘from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs’ • Prediction that class conflict in advanced capitalist societies makes revolution inevitable • Agenda to speed revolution along

6. ‘The teaching of Marx is all-powerful because it is true!’

7. Marxism and the ‘Woman Question’ • Marx had little to say about women or gender • His close friend Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) did • Engels: The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844) • Co-wrote The Communist Manifesto with Marx (1848) • Engels: The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) • Women’s oppression is a form of class oppression • Private property is culprit Statues of Marx (left) & Engels in Berlin

8. EngelianThesis: Concepts Production = creation of tools, food, commodities Reproduction = production of humans ‘According to the materialist conception, the determining factor in history is… the production and reproduction of immediate life. This…is of a twofold character: on the one side, the production of the means of existence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools necessary of that production; on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species’ (Engels, Friedrich, 1986, first published 1884, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State London: Penguin, pp.35-6)

9. Engelian Thesis: Gender and Class • In ‘primitive’ societies male production and female reproduction were equally valued • Then production became more important than reproduction, so men’s status increased and male control over women intensified ‘The first class opposition that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism between men and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male’ (ibid., p.96) Friedrich Engels 1820-1895

10. Engelian Thesis: Origins • Emergence of surplus goods is key catalyst: cattle • Cattle surpluses built up by men → importance of inheritance → control over women’s sexuality and fertility • Under capitalism, unequal sexual divisions of labour into ‘public’ male production and ‘private’ female reproduction have been exacerbated • ‘The husband is obliged to earn a living and support his family, and that in itself gives him a position of supremacy without any need for special legal titles and privileges. Within the family he is the bourgeois, and the wife represents the proletariat’ (ibid., p.105) • Identifies the source of women’s oppression in the development of class society

11. Engelian Thesis: Remedies • ‘The first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry and… this in turn demands that the characteristic of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society be abolished’ (ibid:105) • With the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair; society looks after all children alike…’ (ibid: 107) • To achieve women’s equality must: - abolish private property - incorporate women into the paid work-force - socialize reproductive work - seek women's full participation in revolutionary politics

12. Engelian Thesis: Pros and Cons • Historical dimension • Allows for transformation • Puts family and procreation in political realm • Relies on idea of universal stages for every society • Relies on single cause of women’s subordination • Assumes sexual division of labour • Why did men control the new surplus of cattle? • Why the concern to pass surpluses to legitimate heirs only? • Can’t explain male power in working class marriages • How exactly will family and gender relations be transformed? • Voronina: Is the subordination of women a condition for not an outcome of men accumulating property?

13. Lenin and Trotsky • a ‘woman continues to be a domestic slave, because petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her, chains her to the kitchen and to the nursery, and wastes her labour on barbariously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery’ (Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, (1919) Collected Works, Vol. 29) • ‘... unless there is actual equality of husband and wife in the family… we cannot speak seriously of their equality in social work or even in politics. As long as woman is chained to her housework, the care of the family, the cooking and sewing, all her chances of participation in social and political life are cut down in the extreme’ (Trotsky, Leon (1923) ‘From the old family to the new’ reprinted in Women and the family (1970) Pathfinder Press, p.21)

14. Leon Trotsky (1879 -1940) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870 -1924)

15. Kollontai • Advocated ‘free love’ • Made famous distinction between wingless eros (sex without love) and winged eros (sex with love) • Reproduction is not a private matter but a state one • Women have no absolute right to control their reproduction Alexandra Kollontai (1873-1952)

16. 1917 Bolshevik Revolution • WW1; failure of Provisional Government - Bolsheviks seize power and promise ‘land, bread and freedom’ • Sweeping reform immediate – land redistributed; armistice; Red Army & Chekafounded • Civil war 1918 – 1921 against ‘Whites’ • The USSR: Union of Socialist Soviet Republics practised socialism for over 70 years • Arguably communism was never achieved ‘With red wedge, fight whites’

17. Legal Equality for Women • Family Code of 1918 • Land Code of 1922 • Opposition from male dominated peasantry – had relied on women’s unpaid family labour • Opposition from some women • 1925 Marriage Law established family as basic unit of society ‘Peasant woman, strengthen the union of workers and peasants’

18. Socialization of Reproduction • Early push to socialize reproductive work through state provision • Insufficient resources went into collective services • Shortage of domestic appliances to lighten women's load Pictures from a Soviet Poster ‘Women liberate yourselves’, showing women running communal dining rooms and setting up nurseries

19. Women in Paid Work • Women identified as important labour source for collectivization of agriculture and industrialization • 5 year plan of 1928 sought greater productivity in agriculture to feed the workers required • By 1945 women were 56% of the Soviet work-force (26-28 million killed in WW2) • Waged work both a right and a duty for Soviet women • But labour market segregation by gender – women concentrated in catering, health, education, manufacturing, clerical work • Women’s wages less than one third of men’s, and still only two-thirds in 1991 • ‘Double burden’ for women

20. ‘Women! Fight obsolete traditions, build new socialist life!’

21. ‘Everything for the Victory! Women of USSR for the front’

22. Women Pioneers • Female doctors increased 20 times over between 1917 and 1933 • Much made by state of women entering new fields of work Lt. Valeria Khomyakova (2nd from right):the first woman to shoot down a Luftwaffe plane Valentina Tereshkova The first woman in space

23. Women in Politics • Zhenotdelestablished (women’s departments) • Reserved seats for women • Kollontai: first woman minister in modern history as Minister for Social Welfare, side-lined in 1922 • Women’s entry into paid work taken as evidence of full gender equality • 1930 – Zhenotdelabolished • 1931 – Zhensektory (women’s sections) established • Autonomous women’s organisations not allowed • Seen as bourgeois, anti-communist

24. ‘Hail to the equality of opportunities for the women of the CCCP!’

25. Sexuality and Reproduction • Only heterosexual relations were acceptable • Clear normative boundaries within heterosexuality • Stalin pursued a kind of 'back to basics' family policy Divorce law tightened Abortion prohibited Emphasis on paternal responsibility Pro-nataliststate – prolific mothers were rewarded with medals • Single motherhood was encouraged to raise birth rate • Non-married fathers had no financial responsibilities • Abortion was re-legalized after Stalin’s death and was common

26. Anti-abortion poster: Woman given abortofacient to drink; woman dies in hospital; woman’s funeral, 1925 (?)

27. Medals for Prolific Motherhood 1st Class Est. July 1944 4 million awarded For mothers who bore and raised 6 children (or adopted) Awarded when last child reached 1 year if all others were alive (unless died serving State) [2nd Class was for 5 children 8 million awarded]

28. Conclusions • Marxism understands differences between people in terms of antagonistic class relations under capitalism • Class conflict will lead to revolution and nationalisation of means of production • Engels: Women’s oppression arises from private property and is form of class oppression • Women’s oppression can only be ended by Communism • Marxist blueprint was not fully implemented in Soviet Union • All Soviet women had paid work but this wasn’t equality – lower wages; ‘double-day’ • Family unit persisted • Women weren’t allowed to organise separately from party control and lacked full sexual and reproductive rights