A Bolshevik since 1902, school teacher Zlata Lilina met Lenin and her future husband Gregory Zinoviev while in Swiss exile. There she chaired the Berne party and collaborated with Lenin on various R.S.D.L.P. publications. She accompanied him and her Zinoviev on the sealed train to Russia in 1917. There, she was a leader of Petrograd Soviet, focusing on childcare she became head of the Popular Education department. In 1921 she joined Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai to form the Presidium of the Communist International’s Women’s Department. Lilina followed Zinoviev’s political trajectory, was in the New, and later, United Opposition, and expelled in 1927. Readmitted in 1928, she died of lung cancer in 1929. In this remarkable survey, a rare English translation of her work, of European working women during the immediate post-war period, Lilina also traces the roots of the international Communist women’s movement.

‘A Year of Struggle of the Work-women in Western Europe and America’ by Zlata Lilina from Communist International Vol. 1 No. 11-12. June-July, 1920.  

The year 1919 was for the West European work-women a year of active, obdurate and incessant struggle for political rights. This year was also a year of victory. The women of Germany, Austria, England, Italy, Spain and Holland have obtained equal political rights–in full or in part–with the men, at least in respect to formal written rights.

The women have won a victory, but it is a fictitious one, for political rights are a powerful weapon for the organisation of a free state only when the power is in the hands of the workers and the peasants. And the year of struggle showed to the West European and American woman the obviousness of this truth. It showed them that neither suffrage nor parliamentary institutions, can abolish capitalist exploitation so long as the bourgeoisie is in power. It proved to them that during the period of an obdurate civil war, the question does not consist in the right to elect or be elected, to take part in some bourgeois government, but in the seizure of the whole power by the working masses, in the dictatorship of the workers and peasants. So long as such dictatorship has not been established, all partial improvements in political and economic respects will resemble little houses of cards which will fall down at the first push of the bourgeoisie.

The German Women’s Movement during the period beginning on International Women’s Day, in 1919, up to our time, gives the following picture:

The celebration of the International Day passed in an atmosphere of victory, as the revolutionary struggle had given at last to the German work-women and peasant women the same rights as to the men. But the Communist Women were not blinded by this victory; they did not cease their revolutionary propaganda. It was not to collaboration with the bourgeoisie that they called the working class–men and women–but to a decisive struggle for the whole of the power, for the introduction of the Communist order. “Violence can be overcome only by violence,” said the appeal of the German Women Communists. “Do not lay down your arms; or else, in spite of your victory, hunger, cold, want and illness will rule in the country, as before. The struggle is not ended, it is only beginning, and much more blood must flow before the working class will be able to breathe freely.” And the work-women did not lay down their arms. A whole year they have conducted an incessant bloody warfare with their class foe-the bourgeoisie.

What were they struggling for?

For the right to work for themselves, for the right to give bread to their hungry children. They were struggling against the war and the robbers of the world, against too heavy taxation, embezzlement of public funds, speculation.

Has the ordinary life of the work-women experienced any change since they acquired political rights? No. At a great meeting in June, 1919, where the question of the substitution for the women’s labour of that of the men returning from the front was being discussed, the Berlin work-women drew a most gloomy picture of their situation.

“After having made cannon-fodder of our husbands,” said a work-woman of the Auer factory, “we were forcibly driven to the factories and there made to work for a pittance. Now they are dismissing us, they are driving us into the streets, where hunger and prostitution await us.

“The Socialist government.” said another, “does not trouble itself about our invalids of labour. The highest pension awarded for the loss of 100 per cent of labour capacity is 858 marks a year. Out of this sum 260 marks must be paid for lodging. 75 marks for fuel and 8 marks governmental and communal taxes. For food, clothes, shoes and family, if any, there remains only 515 marks: i.e. 10 marks per week.

The position of a war-cripple in the “Socialist State” of Noske-Scheldemann is no better. He gets only 4 marks 90 pfennigs per day. Whether he has a family or not, whether he needs special medical care or not, the bourgeoisie considers that this wretched pittance is sufficient.

The immeasurably miserable position of the German proletariat is reflected especially strong in the children. The German women Communists, together with the work-women members of the Independent Party, organised a strong campaign in favour of motherhood and infancy.

Comrade Zier, a member of the Independent Party, laid a project before the National Assembly. April 17th, 1920 in which she demands for would-be mothers eight weeks’ rest before the birth of the child and eight weeks after, at the ordinary wages. Besides she demanded medical relief without charge for lying-in women and nursing mothers.

After long debates this proposition was accepted under the following form:

1. An insured work-woman receives a lump sum of 50 marks at the time of confinement.

2. Four weeks before confinement and six weeks afterward a work-woman receives 1 mark 50 pfennigs per day.

3. The sum of 25 marks is paid her for medical treatment.

4. A nursing mother receives 75 pfennigs per day during twelve weeks.

Such is the protection of motherhood in a country where a bottle of milk costs 2 marks!

Still worse is the position of a mother with a baby born “out of wedlock.” From so-called “moral” considerations almost no relief is accorded to her. A woman bearing a child eight weeks after the return of her husband from the army is also deprived of the customary relief.

Such a protection of motherhood cannot solve the question, and the work women are compelled to have recourse to revolutionary methods of struggle. They have to fight also for the same pay as the men get, and against the infringement by the employers of the eight-hour workday, which the revolution had obtained for them.

After a year of struggle the economic situation of the work-woman has not improved. The bourgeois government has not proved itself capable of overcoming the crisis and the famine, and the German work-women are demanding with ever-increasing insistency that the power be transferred into the hands of the peasants and workers.

The situation of the Austrian work-woman is not better than in Germany.

There as well as here they have to carry on an energetic struggle, and this is the picture of their movement that Schlesinger draws in The Woman Socialist, April 6th, 1919:

“The revolution gave complete equality of rights to all the nationalities of Austria. It gave to the women the same rights as to the men, and the former took a most active part in the elections to the National Assembly.

“The Social Democrats feared that thanks to the women’s votes the reactionary and clerical candidate would be elected, but the contrary took place. These candidates were defeated and the Social Democrats received the majority of votes. A tenth of the Social Democratic faction in the Parliament consists of women.”

To relieve the miserable fate of the famishing women and children-such is the first task which fell to the share of the women elected to Parliament.

A difficult work, because in this branch as well as in all others, it is only the dictatorship of the proletariat and Communism which can create human conditions of life for the work-women.

The revolution, which gave suffrage to the women. awakened in the work-woman an interest in politics and the revolutionary struggle. The number of women members in the regional party organisations of Vienna increased in July, 1919, to 2,000. In June of the same year in all the Austrian organisations hot debates were carried on in regard to the question whether it is necessary to have separate women’s organisations.

The whole mass of the work-women were unanimously against it. The same organisations ought to unite men and women, as they are all fighting against the same foe and marching towards the same object. But the propaganda and the campaign among the women is carried out by a special group of women elected by the general Party organisation.

On August 2d, 1919 a conference of work-women was held in Vienna, in which the representatives of Tyrol, Styria and Corinthia, Salzburg, Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia took part. The conference discussed the question of the methods of carrying on the work among the women workers, and of their mutual relations with the Party. All the delegates, with one exception only, decided in favour of a collaboration of the workmen and work-women in one and the same organisation, but for a special group to carry on the propaganda among the work women.

On August 30th, 1919, a parteitag of Tcheko-Slovakia, which together with Bohemia and Moravia, had become separated from Austria, was held at Töplitz-Schehau. At this meeting a special group was appointed from the general Party organisation to serve the interests of the work-women of this part of Austria. This conference, in which sixty-five women delegates took part, ended with the following words pronounced by Adelheid Kopp: “We are convinced that the hour will come when the world organisation of the workers will abolish all frontiers, and in spite of all and everything we shall all be brothers and sisters.

The Tcheko-Slovak women, like all others in Austria, obtained the same rights as the men. On June 15th the Tcheko-Slovak women-peasants and work women took part for the first time in the municipal elections: Their participation in the elections did not justify the apprehension that (in Moravia especially, where the clergy is very powerful) the women would give their votes to reactionary candidates. On the contrary, thanks to the women’s votes (60 per cent of the votes), the Social Democratic Party won the day.

It was interesting to note the extraordinary activity of the peasant women during the elections. In some of the villages they all went in groups to the polls and voted unanimously for the Social Democrats. The latter obtained 1,000,000 votes at these elections, out of which 600,000 were those of the women. The Tcheko-Slovak work-women passed their first political examination brilliantly, and it is to be hoped that at the moment of the final and decisive battle with world imperialism they will not be the last in the ranks of the revolutionary fighters. The work-women and peasant women of Hungary did not remain inactive during the period of the more obdurate struggle of the Hungarian proletariat for its liberation. They were out in the streets in great numbers in the ranks of the workers, helping them by word and deed, dying with them for the freedom of the workers. The number of work-women members of the Hungarian Party is very great. The present women are especially active in the Party organisations, whose task is no small one. Out of 4,000,000 women in Hungary with the right of suffrage 1,000,000 are quite illiterate. A great number of the work-women and peasant women are wholly under the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy.

“A great deal of work lies before us, active, fruitful work. The seeds sown by the revolution will bring in excellent sprouts,” wrote Sirena Buchinger in The Woman Socialist on Work-women’s Day in 1919.

All the Austrian proletariat and especially the peasant women and the work-women were flushed out with victory. All expected miracles from universal suffrage. But in Austria as well as in Germany came the dreary awakening after the beautiful dream. Elfrida Friedleuder wrote on the subject on Work-women’s Day in 1920:

“As strong as was the interest of the peasant women and work-women in politics, as active as was their participation in the elections to the National Assembly, at present they have become indifferent to the movement. They have lost all hopes for the possibility of improving their lives by means of the National Assembly, they do not believe any longer that a political equality of rights in a bourgeois order of government can abolish famine, want, prostitution, and at the same time they are growing more conscious of the necessity of a transfer of the whole known power into the hands of the working class.

“That is why lately and especially in the provinces the peasant women and work women are more and more joining the ranks of the Communist Party.”

We have said that the West-European work-women and peasant women may celebrate the year 1919, as one of victory. But that does not relate to France. Nowhere has women’s labour been so much exploited as in France, and nowhere has the struggle for women’s political equality been so weak as in that country.

On May 21st, 1919, they obtained some insignificant political rights, although every attempt at a revolutionary struggle is as severely punished as formerly. As in past years the 1st of May, 1920, was the day for the massacre of the workmen and work-women; the pavements of Paris were dyed with their blood.

An active member of the French women’s movement, Louise Saumauneau, with a tendency towards the right parties, writes in her appeal to all workers:

“In all countries where capitalism rules the day, the position of the work-women is the same. Exploitation and slavery reign everywhere; and although on all our barracks, prisons and ministerial palaces the words “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” are inscribed, these words have nothing in common with the cruel action of the bourgeoisie.

“Life itself,” continues Comrade Saumauneau, “is calling us–peasant women and workwomen–to the revolutionary struggle. Let us close our ranks; let us unite into economic and political organisations. Let us put an end to the exploitation of workmen and work-women. It is time to change private property into national property. But the liberation of the working class is impossible so long as the bourgeoisie has the power. We must consequently take all the power into our hands, it is necessary that the workmen and work-women, peasant men and women should be able to publish their own laws and put them into execution. Up to now the work-women of France have been in the vanguard of the Labour movement; we must remain there till the world proletariat will conquer the world bourgeoisie, till the final triumph of the Communist order.”

In all countries the women received more or less extensive rights, but the interesting fact is that they were the more extensive the weaker the position of the bourgeoisie is in the given country.

In Austria, for instance, the women acquire rights beginning from the age of twenty-one, in France, twenty- four years, and in England only from thirty years. The victorious French bourgeoisie considered it possible to give the women their rights at the age when they have small children, when they are most taken up with the care of their families. The English bourgeoisie feared to give the right of voting to the revolutionary younger people, because it knew beforehand that their votes would not be for the bourgeoisie but against it.

The age of the women electors prevented the women from taking part in the elections, and although in such places where they did take part their votes were in the majority for the Socialist, only one woman, Mrs. Arthur, a member of the Independent Labour Party, was elected to Parliament.

Notwithstanding such ill success the English work-women do not despair, but continue to conduct a serious struggle against the bourgeoisie, taking a most active part in the movement in the capital.

On June 24th, during a Party day at Southport, 154 delegates from all parts of England were present at the conference. The reports of the chairman of the meeting, Susan Laurence, showed that throughout the whole country there are work-women’s organisations in close adherence to the Labour Party, that the work is going on with animation and the number of members increasing. Besides participation in the general struggle, the work-women demanded protection of motherhood and infancy, improvement of the dwelling conditions, protection of women’s night work, etc. Their campaign was especially strong against unemployment, which had arisen in consequence of demobilisation.

The conference elaborated a series of political and economic demands, which it laid before the government. In economic respects the work women demanded the regulation of prices of food products, the organisation of public dinners and the feeding of the destitute without charge.

Besides, the conference demanded from the government employment for the women who had been turned off from the factories.

In political respects it demanded the cessation of England ́s intervention in the affairs of Soviet Russia, and a demobilisation ot the troops.

The conference hoped that its modest demands would he complied with, but it soon became convinced that the bourgeoisie in no wise desired to trouble itself with the improvement of the conditions of the exploited class. The care of the unemployed women was undertaken by the Central Committee of the English work-women, which organised various professional courses for them and took upon itself to find work for those who had passed them.

Among the Irish work-women a great interest in political life is to be noticed. The Union of Irish Work-women drew up a project for a series of measures, which were passed unanimously at populous meetings.

These measures were as follows:

1. Workers’ control of production.

2. Improved labour conditions for youths and old people (in England young people of fourteen to fifteen years of age work from eight to nine hours a day).

3. The permission for work women of fourteen to fifteen years of age to have five hours a week for visiting schools, sewing classes, and so on.

On April 21st, 1920, a National Conference of Work-women was held in London, at which were present 400 delegates from 180 organisations.

The debates at the conference tended to show that from the time of the preceding conference, i.e., June 24th, 1919, the government had not taken any steps for the protection of motherhood and infancy. The English work-women are only dreaming yet of a six weeks’ rest before confinement and a similar period of time after it. They do not even venture to think of the possibility of receiving full pay during that time. The English work-women notice with sorrow that their wealthy and extensive country is more backward in the protection of motherhood and infancy than even small and poor Norway. The conference demands the obligatory instruction for young people up to eighteen years of age, and the prohibition of all exhausting labour, over-hours and night work for women.

The question of equal pay for equal work called forth animated debates. “This question,” said one of the delegates,” is of importance not only to us but to the whole working class, as owing to the smaller rate of pay we become the competitors of our comrades, the workmen. For the struggle against the exploitation of women’s labour it is necessary for us to enter into a union with the work-men.

A proposition made by Marion Philipp regarding the obligatory joining of the Party, by the women working at the mills and factories, called forth an animated discussion.

The conference ended with a resolution demanding the recall of the coloured troops from Europe and independence for Ireland.

As regards the Italian women, although Parliament had decided in favour of an equality of rights in principle, so many important amendments have been introduced into the project that it will not obtain force of law before the month of August. But the Italian work-women are not remaining passive while waiting for the acknowledgment of their rights, and are taking part in the revolutionary movement. All the organisations of the Italian peasant women and work-women have joined the Third International, conjointly with the Socialist Party, with which they are united.

Notwithstanding the greatest difficulties and govern- mental repression the Italian work-women have been carrying on a wide-spreading propaganda of Communist ideas among their sisters.

Their work has been crowned with success. The Women’s Socialist Group in Rome addressed the following resolution at the end of 1919 to the whole International of Work-women:

“The Women’s Socialist Group in Rome is convinced that the treaty of Versailles will only lead to the strengthening of the power of world imperialism. It will enslave still more of the proletarian masses and increase their misery, hunger and the death rate of the children. The actions of the Entente against Russia and Hungary are in strong contradiction to the right of self-determination of nations.

“The Women’s Socialist Group in Rome regards such actions as an attempt to crush Communist society, which is just beginning to be formed in Soviet Russia, and which alone will bring liberation to the whole world of workers. “It protests most energetically against such violence, which can only lead to new wars and new victims.

“In consequence of this the Women’s Socialist Group calls upon the workers of all countries to organise a World International of Workers.”

From the very beginning of the war the Swiss Socialist Party was divided into two parts. The majority adopted bourgeois views, but the minority progressed undeviatingly from Zimmerwald to the Third International. The Young People and the Work-women joined this minority of the Socialist Party.

The Swiss work-women pronounced themselves against the war, and at the Women’s Conference at Berne in 1915, their watchword was: “Down with war; long live the world proletariat. Although Switzerland has kept its neutrality, the consequences of the war–high prices and unemployment–have been felt in this country also. The work-women have had to struggle against the ever-increasing difficulties of life, and Rosa Block, the leader of the work-women, was compelled to become acquainted with the prisons of “free Switzerland.”

On April 5th, 1919, a very large protest meeting was held in Zürich against the high prices which placed the proletariat in the most difficult position. The movement begun in Zürich spread over the whole country, and in some towns it took the form of strikes.

In summer the work-women of Zürich and Bâle took part in a strike of protest against the excessive exploitation of the workmen and work women in the dyeing industry, and the women showed a maximum of activity and organisation during this strike. Through their Party organisations they organised a regular relief for the comrades on strike, and also the dispatch of the children of such families into the country to the peasant members of the Party.

In September, 1919, an extraordinary congress of the Swiss Party took place. The principal question before this congress was that of the Party’s joining the Third International. While the men’s votes of the congress were divided equally, the twenty women delegates all voted in favour of joining the Third International. If at present the Swiss Party belongs to the family of the Third International, it is owing in no small degree to the women’s part of the Swiss proletariat.

The Work-women’s Day in Switzerland in 1919 as well as in 1920 was celebrated under the watchwords: “Struggle against high prices, and a demand of political rights for women.”’ Up to now the “democratic republic” of Switzerland is hesitating about according political rights to the women. But what is not accorded by the government the Swiss work-woman will take by her own untiring revolutionary struggle. Political rights won by the working class itself will prove to be fuller and more solid than those which the capitalist throws to it as a charity. This is why the work-women are not despairing, although they are without rights. They know that the day is near when in the course of the world revolution they will take their rightful place in the country. Until then the work women’s organisations, as well as the paper, Dit Vorkāmferin, are carrying on an energetic Socialist propaganda.

Even in Spain the women have acquired equal rights with the men under the pressure of the world revolution. We say even in Spain, because Spain is one of the countries where the clergy plays a very important part. The equality is not complete, because the clergy and the bourgeoisie of Spain have as yet only accorded the women a passive suffrage, and that only in the Communal Councils. Spanish work-women, beginning from twenty-three years of age, may, consequently, be elected as members of the commercial institutions, but they have no right to take part in the elections themselves.

The women of the proletariat in Holland are also struggling for their liberation, and the Dutch bourgeoisie has had to make concessions to the spirit of the times. The Dutch women have acquired as yet a passive suffrage in the Communal Councils. At the elections, which took place May 22d, 1919, the Dutch Socialists elected to their communal institutions fifty women–almost all Socialists. But these women delegates, like the other work-women of Holland, being deprived of the right to active suffrage, were unable to elect the delegates desired by the working class. The bourgeois press, it is true, is holding out hopes to the women that in two or three years they will be given not only a passive but an active suffrage. The Lower Chamber has already agreed to this, and if the Upper Chamber will pass the project, then in 1922 the women of Holland will take part in the parliamentary elections, and in 1925 in those of the communal councils. But will they wait so long! As far as we know they are striving most decisively to step over the bourgeois parliament straight into the proletarian Soviets, and their cry is: “The whole power to the Soviets of Workers’, Red Army and Peasant Deputies. Through the Soviets, through the dictatorship of the proletariat, to Communism.”

From America we have unfortunately very little information regarding the course of the revolutionary struggle of the work-women, but the very small amount that we have shows us that all is not quiet in America. We have heard that Comrade Kate Richards O’Hare has been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for her propaganda of Socialism, for demanding the end of the murderous war, for demanding the freedom of the workers. We know also that O Hare’s imprisonment has not stopped the propaganda. New fighters have taken her place, who are carrying on with equal zeal the great work of the Communist organisation commenced by her.

The movement of the work-women and peasant women in West Europe and America is carried on not only within the limits of their own countries but also with a consistent national character. In 1915, during the greatest flare up of chauvinism, the work-women of the whole world at the International Women’s Conference tended a friendly hand one to the other. Since then the international bond between the work-women has not become weaker, but it has even grown stronger. The International Women’s Bureau, whose secretary is Comrade Clara Zetkin, has not for one moment discontinued its functions.

On February 9th, 1919, the work women of England sent a friendly greeting to their comrades in Austria. Comrade A. Hopp (Austria) received from Comrade Isabella Ford (England) the following greeting to be transmitted to the Austrian work-women:

“We, work-women of England, send greetings on the day of your elections to the National Assembly. Our bourgeoisie is striving by all means to inspire us with hatred towards you–our sisters and brothers, Austrian proletarians. But know that we are not moving on the road of hatred and vengeance, but on the road of universal brotherhood and the universal solidarity of the workers.”

In answer to this greeting Comrade Zetkin addressed an appeal to the work-women of all the world calling them to unity, to fraternity, to a vigorous, unanimous onslaught upon foes of the world proletariat.

“It is difficult for us to enter into a mental close bond. The war does not allow us to establish regular relations, but we understand each other without superfluous words, because our object is the same and our way is the same through world revolution to world Communism. Forward to the work. Long live the international movement of the work-women!

So says the appeal of Comrade Zetkin and this watchword found its glowing echo. Work women of all the world, build the house of Communism.

The ECCI published the magazine ‘Communist International’ edited by Zinoviev and Karl Radek from 1919 until 1926 irregularly in German, French, Russian, and English. Restarting in 1927 until 1934. Unlike, Inprecorr, CI contained long-form articles by the leading figures of the International as well as proceedings, statements, and notices of the Comintern. No complete run of Communist International is available in English. Both were largely published outside of Soviet territory, with Communist International printed in London, to facilitate distribution and both were major contributors to the Communist press in the U.S. Communist International and Inprecorr are an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/ci/old_series/v01-n11-n12-1920-CI-grn-goog-r3.pdf