Published just one month before her death during a cholera outbreak while recuperating in the Caucasus, this is one of the few pieces by Inessa Armand to be translated and published in English during her lifettime. Written under the signature ‘Helen Blonina,’ comrade Armand reports on the dramatic changes brought by working class women after the revolution and their relationship to the new Soviet state under construction.

‘Working Women in Soviet Russia’ by Inessa Armand from Soviet Russia (New York). Vol. 3 No. 8. August 21, 1920.

UNDER capitalism the proletarian and peasant womenfolk were completely estranged from social and political life-both by the conditions of bourgeois family tradition and by their political subjection. Thanks to this, when power passed into the hands of the Soviets, when before the working class there arose the complex and difficult task of control and reconstruction, the working woman in the mass proved to be still more inexperienced than the working man. In order successfully to engage the working women in the common task, it was necessary, first and foremost, to help them to learn how to work, and to make clear where and how they could best apply their energies.

It was necessary to work out new methods of propaganda, new methods of approach, adapted to the psychological peculiarities of the working and peasant women and to the new problems awaiting them. And in this connection especial importance has to be attached to propaganda by deed, i.e., to propaganda by means of the direct attraction of the working and peasant women to one form or another of Soviet or similar work.

Women’s Delegate Conferences were organized, which have rendered great services in this sense. These delegate conferences are composed of representatives from all the factories and works of the given ward or town, elected at general meetings of the undertakings. They play the part of institutions by means of which working women learn in practice how to carry on Soviet work, how to apply their forces and revolutionary energy to the common proletarian struggle and work of reconstruction. From another point of view, they constitute an excellent link between the Soviet institution and the masses of working women.

The delegates break up into groups, working in one or another Soviet institution (mainly, hitherto, in the following sections: social welfare, labor, education, and health), and there assist in the creation, investigation, and control of creches, homes, children’s parks, elementary and other schools, public dining halls and kitchens; in the elimination from these organizations of abuses or disorder; in supervising the distribution of boots and clothing in the schools; in collecting evidence for and assisting the inspectors of labor; in insuring the exact fulfilment of the regulations governing female and child labor. They are entrusted with the organization of ambulances and hospitals, the care of the wounded and the sick, the inspection and control of barracks; they participate in the militia (police); they supervise the payment of separation allowances; they assist in the engaging of women workers in all forms of direction and control of production, and so on.

On their part, the sections acquaint the delegates with their activity, and enroll them in schools or courses of instruction in one branch or another of Soviet work opened by them (courses in social welfare, pre-school education, Red Sisters and sanitary workers). At the same time the delegates, continuing to work in their factory or their workshops, make periodical reports to their electors concerning their activity and that of the sections in which They work and organize vigilance committees in the workshops to receive complaints, requests, and suggestions from the women workers.

The delegates take an active part in all the campaigns initiated by the Soviets or the Party (fuel campaign, sanitary detachments, food detachments, help for the wounded, fight with epidemics, expeditions for agitation into the country, etc.) The delegate conferences assemble two to four times a month. Lately, in Moscow and in some other towns, the basis of representation has been lowered, and delegates are now elected one for every twenty working women. In this way, through the medium of the delegate conferences, it becomes possible to reach the widest po88ible masses of women workers, and more and more they begin to constitute reserves, from which the Party and the Soviets can draw new forces. This was strikingly illustrated by the Party “weeks.” In Moscow, for example, where during the Party “week” about 15,000 new members were enrolled, amongst them some thousands of women, a large percentage of the new membership was given by these very delegate conferences.

Great possibilities for agitation are contained in the non-party conferences of women workers, which in separate towns, provinces and counties are convoked approximately every three to four months. Oral and printed propaganda and agitation are also carried on. In almost every party organ there is a “Working Woman’s Page.”

We can say, without exaggeration, that, whatever the faults and deficiencies in our work, the results achieved during the past year have surpassed our expectations.

A year ago there existed only a tiny group of class-conscious women workers, while the mass of the remainder, though revolutionary in temperament, was still lacking in consciousness and in organization. Today there is a strong body of intelligent workers, members of the Communist Party, and all with experience of one form or other of Soviet or Party work, gained during the past year. Not a few brilliant agitators have made their appearance, and now women journalists are also rising from the working-class ranks.

The women workers’ movement already embraces the widest possible masses, and is becoming a considerable political force. Work has gone best in Petrograd, Moscow, the Moscow province, and the province of Ivanovo-Voznessensk. Undoubtedly the women workers are best organized and most class-conscious in Petrograd. Work has also begun in other provinces, and in some places fairly promisingly. At the All-Russian Conference of Party organizers of women workers there were present representatives of twenty-eight provinces; in addition to which comrades from the Ural, from Ufa, Orenburg, Astrakhan, amongst other places, were unable to be present, although work is going on there. The working women’s movement thus covers today the whole of Russia.

The women workers have displayed splendid capacity both for organization and for labor. In spite of unprecedented difficulties, they have already. succeeded in helping the Soviet sections (sub-committees) to organize not a few creches, children’s parks, schools, public dining halls, etc. And, while the working man has to go to the front in the ranks of the Red Army, to defend the Soviet power from the attacks of the Denikins, Yudeniches, Entente imperialists-the working woman in the rear is replacing him, not only in the factory and the workshop, but also in the Soviets, the trade unions, the militia, etc. Many women workers, also, expressed a wish to fight at the front against the White Guards, side by side with the working men.

Soviet Russia began in the summer of 1919, published by the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia and replaced The Weekly Bulletin of the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia. In lieu of an Embassy the Russian Soviet Government Bureau was the official voice of the Soviets in the US. Soviet Russia was published as the official organ of the RSGB until February 1922 when Soviet Russia became to the official organ of The Friends of Soviet Russia, becoming Soviet Russia Pictorial in 1923. There is no better US-published source for information on the Soviet state at this time, and includes official statements, articles by prominent Bolsheviks, data on the Soviet economy, weekly reports on the wars for survival the Soviets were engaged in, as well as efforts to in the US to lift the blockade and begin trade with the emerging Soviet Union.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/srp/v3n08-aug-21-1920-soviet-russia.pdf