Chasing Dreams and Breaking Promises

The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 represents one of the most drastic shifts toward gender equality in history. Russia went from being an oppressive monarchy to having some of the most socially progressive goals of the time period. In Tsarist Russia, women suffered from the exploitation of capitalist employers and patriarchal husbands while government reformers ignored the injustice being done to them. Socialist groups preached gender equality for years before the revolution, causing women to get excited about the movement and become more involved in the party’s activities as well as the revolution itself.

However, when the Bolsheviks finally came to power in October of 1917, party leaders did not seem willing to place a high priority on promoting equality and ingrained societal norms made women’s liberation difficult and slow. The progressive rhetoric focused on utilizing women as a productive part of the workforce and completely ignored the artistic and intellectual aspirations of women. Women joined men in the workforce, but men never became involved in helping with the housework. The government viewed women as a tool that needed to be put to work, rather than as a person with goals and ambitions.

Because women of the house no longer had the entire day to spend at home, their daughters were subjected to dated household responsibilities. While the woman of the house worked a full time job, many daughters of peasant families took over household chores traditionally reserved for women, such as child-raising, cooking, cleaning, and sewing, while young men took on few, if any new responsibilities. Young women would often times see themselves as inferior because of the chauvinistic rhetoric that was common in society. Even when some became politically active in groups such as the youth wing of the Communist party, called the Komsomol, it did “little to alter these young women’s opinions of themselves as unprepared and unable; indeed, in many cases, it only contributed to it.” The Komsomol would place the blame for this not on the sexist tendencies of the organization, but rather the inability of women to do productive work or understand politics.

To many party members, including socialist feminist Aleksandra Kollontai, equality for women meant that they were to act like men, undervaluing the position that women held before. This belief created a dichotomy in how women reacted to their newly found independence. Some women took their extra income and spent it on luxury goods, embracing the flapper culture of the 1920s and emulating a bourgeois lifestyle. In contrast, some women completely rejected their feminine identity by neglecting their family responsibilities, sometimes leaving their children with their parents, wearing masculine clothing, and becoming critical of women who only read romantic novels and wore makeup. This “defeminization” of some female factory workers caused much of the criticism against educating and employing women. Despite the progressive aims of the new Bolshevik government, women were far from being viewed as equals in the opinion of the general public. Double standards and sexist practices prevalent in Tsarist society persisted for many years after the revolution.