‘Making Revolutionists of Women, A Visit to the Women’s Section of the Comintern’ by Anise from Workers Monthly. Vol. 4 No. 11. September, 1925.

ON the walls as I stepped into the rooms were two large silken banners, recalling the Third International Congress of Communist Women, presents from the working women of Sokolniki and from the working and mining women of the Southeast. They bore greetings in golden embroidery, the symbol of hammer and sickle, the “Workers of the World, Unite.”

It will be noted that they did not say: “Working Women of the World, Unite,” and in this they were symbolically true to the policy of the Communist International which does not form a separate women’s organization as does, for instance, the British Labor Party, but has merely a special women’s bureau, for devising slogans and special methods of appeal to women. Once the women are in the organization, they are grouped right along with men. But in getting them in, there are various special methods to be thought of.

The charming efficient woman who gave me my information reminded me that Clara Zetkin was still the official secretary of the women’s section, whose name appears signing all official publications. But in practice her place is taken, in the routine work of the office, by several younger women, of various nationalities, speaking various different languages. One especially for the Western women and one for the Eastern, since the politically aroused women of Europe and America can be approached in a different manner from the women of the Orient. Yet even in China, Java, Turkey there is women’s work going on under the Comintern.

“We follow the usual Communist tactics,” said my informant, in describing’ work among the western women.

“We try to penetrate into all proletarian or semi-proletarian organizations of women, especially when they are struggling for some improvement of their conditions. Even if these organizations do not yet make our demands, yet we consider it better for women to be aroused and organized than sitting at home. We enter these groups and encourage them, forming within them our own fractions, and agitating for our own slogans within their ranks.

“For instance in Germany the rents have been steadily going up, and this causes much distress. There is a regular organization of women to protest at this, and we enter it. In addition to their slogans, we have our own housing program and our slogans, and we try to win the women to the more revolutionary program.

“In the same way we enter the womens unions and help fight for the eight-hour day and the protection of women. In England just now there is a big question of mothers’ pensions in which we are interesting ourselves. In Germany there is an attempt to cut down the pension given to newborn babies, and we are helping in the fight against this.

“In other words, our tactics are not to make a complete list of theoretical demands and try to convert women completely; but father to watch the economic struggle and join it, leading in those demands which seem important to the women themselves at a given time, guiding them and at the same time pointing out our own solution. For this reason we are active in different ways in different countries, always taking advantage of any demands that have even the beginning of a revolutionary significance.

“In France, Italy and England, there is a fight just now for political rights, since in France and Italy women have no political rights and in England only women over thirty may vote. Our tactics in France were to put women up for election in places where we had a majority. In a few places, where we had Communist mayors, working women actually went and voted. We elected several women to municipal offices. Naturally the municipalities refuse to seat them. The bourgeois point of view would be that it was a waste of time to elect women who could not serve. But that is not our view. For the fight to get them seated is in itself the important thing since it awakens women to their rights.

“In many central European countries large numbers of civil servants are being dismissed. The women are always the first to go. Here also we Communists champion the women, demanding equal rights for them. But in general the most important demands are economic, wages, hours, protection in factories, motherhood protection, food prices, housing.

“In Czecho-Slovakia the soaring prices of food brought about really serious demonstrations. Women went in great masses to the Stock Exchange, the magistrates, the trade unions and the cooperatives, demanding a lowering of the cost of food. The bourgeois threw down stones and even furniture from the windows in the crowds; the police be demonstrating in the markets and if anyone started to make a speech there would be a special demonstration. In this situation we Communists tried to organize for special slogans: ‘Higher wages and price control.’

“Housing is especially interesting just now in north England and Scotland. Unemployed who could not pay rents are being evicted. But the workers have formed ‘Watch Committees’ who keep guard; when the police draw near to evict a family, they alarm the neighborhood and bring everyone out to prevent the eviction. Sometimes families already evicted have been put back in their homes. On Christmas the Watch Committees took a day’s vacation, not believing that anyone would be evicted on Christmas Day so the police put out several families on that day.

“In the United States there is a Working Women’s Council, which agitates against fire-traps, child labor, deportation of foreign workers; and which raised aid for tornado victims in the west. This also we join and try to influence, though we have not the majority in it.

“Our organization is growing very fast throughout Europe. The International Women’s Day last March was a big event in many countries. This day was started in 1910 by the Second International on suggestions from America and was organized by Clara Zetkin. The war destroyed it as the war destroyed all connections of the Second International. In 1917 the women of Leningrad revived it, demonstrating on the streets with cries of “Bread! Send back our men!” These were among the demonstrations that led up to the fall of the czar. Now the Comintern has taken up the day and made it an international event again.”

I talked with another woman organizer about the work in Eastern lands. This is in two sections: there is a large work carried on among the women in the various Soviet Republics towards the East, where for reasons of the Mohammedan religion, women are very backward. Here women may not appear in public or go to men’s assemblies, so a special type of women’s club is organized for them. There are now 44 of these clubs with over 5,000 members. The clubs maintain schools for illiterates, a cooperative section, a legal aid section, a section of motherhood and baby care, a dramatic section, a singing section. All kinds of productive work are organized through these clubs, book-binding, sewing, shoe-making, rug-weaving. Baby consultation also take place at the clubs, which are attended by thousands of women.

In the far east, outside the Soviet Union, women’s work also goes on, though not so freely as inside the Soviet Republics. In China, Japan, Java, Turkey, there are also small sections of Communist women, taking part in the demands of their sisters for political freedom, for abolishing of social slavery, for all the things which the awakening women of those countries are beginning to demand.

International Women’s Day was celebrated also in Canton, with mass meetings, processions, speeches from motor trucks. Among the slogans used were: Abolish Polygamy; Abolish Girl Slavery; Free China from the Imperialists; Equal Education for Women. The oriental women are the most enslaved individuals left on earth, being four times enslaved, to their men, to their religious prejudices, to the capitalism of their own country and to the imperialism from abroad. Yet even among them stirrings of protests are beginning, and wherever such stirrings appear, the Communist women try to keep it alive and direct it.

After I had heard of a women’s section in Iceland, and in Java, and in Syria, I asked: “Is there any corner of earth left where a capitalist can escape you?” My informant laughed: “Not as long as he remains a capitalist, for he creates us wherever he is.”

The Workers Monthly began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Party publication. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and the Communist Party began publishing The Communist as its theoretical magazine. Editors included Earl Browder and Max Bedacht as the magazine continued the Liberator’s use of graphics and art.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/culture/pubs/wm/1925/v4n11-sep-1925.pdf