Hospitalized in Moscow and unable to attend the World Congress of Communist Women, Clara Zetkin sent this greeting. As well, a report from the contingent sent by the Congress to wish her well.

‘Greetings to the Fourth International Conference on Communist Work among Women’ by Clara Zetkin International Press Correspondence. Vol. 7 No. 38. July 6, 1927.

To the International Conference on Communist Work among Large Sections of Working Women.

Dear Comrades! An International Conference on the ways and means of bringing large sections of working women into the fighting ranks of the class conscious proletariat against death and misery-bearing capitalism and for Communism, the bringer of liberation, an international conference to bring maximum clarity, strength elan, extension and success to our work in this sphere! Such a conference is now being held. It is taking place in the days of the heroic struggle of the British miners, the champions of the proletarians of all capitalist countries, whose struggle with the deadly enemy of the working class is one of life or death, a struggle which must make even the dullest elements realise that energetic international solidarity of the exploited and disowned is the most peremptory injunction in the present situation. Such an international conference is held at a time when the history of mankind is again in the melting pot and the luring light issuing from it illuminates our tasks, their importance and their magnitude.

To be unable to be present at such a conference is a deep sorrow to me, which you, my dear comrades, both men and women, will easily understand, just as you will of course know that I am with you in my thoughts and with all my heart in all your deliberations and decisions.

The world bourgeoisie has not yet recovered from the fright which this general revolt of the workers of Great Britain has given it. The influence of the cunning and canting Thomases and MacDonalds over the as yet insufficient class-consciousness and class determination of the workers was certainly strong enough to call off the big struggle and to make the rebelling wage slaves shrink before the repressive measures with which capitalist democracy was threatening them. But the calling off of the general strike is by no means equivalent to the liquidation of the destructive crisis in the coal production and the entire economy of Great Britain.

Moreover, this crisis is of an international character, it is one of the signs of the incurable disintegration at the very root of capitalist world economy, Serious catastrophes of various kinds in the bourgeois States these of the victors and those of the vanquished in the imperialist struggle for supremacy preceded it and accompany it today in France, Germany, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Italy and other places. Destructive crises will follow it, emerging with irrepressive volcanic power from the differences within the capitalist profit-making system. These differences could not be removed through the criminal world slaughter, they were on the contrary rendered more acute, only in the form of new groupings and constellations.

More clearly and unambiguously than all the economic conflicts since the world war, the recent historical event in Great Britain has borne out the fact that the problem and contradictions created by capitalist economy cannot be solved under capitalism, under the bourgeois social order. Moreover this event is showing all proletarians, in an atmosphere of treachery, humiliation and shame, without equal in the history of the labour movement, in a conclusive manner that the old means and methods of a purely trade union struggle have become obsolete for big collisions between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The cleverest and most accustomed to power of all bourgeoisies won the battle at the outset by taking it up as a political struggle for power, whilst the rebellious wage-slaves were kept in leash by their treacherous vacillating and cowardly leaders by means of the regulations, statutes and traditions of a movement based on craft unionism.

Whilst the bourgeois world rouged its face to simulate a healthy condition and attempt to represent brutal force as real full-blooded strength, the trend of economic as well as political events leaves signs of impending death on its features. The Locarno Pact, the collapse of the clumsy hypocritical League of Nations swindle at the Geneva Session, the ridiculous and unworthy farce of the Preliminary Disarmament Conference, the coup d’etat in Poland, the impudent actions of the monarchists. in Germany, the perpetuation of the crimes of French imperialism in Morocco and Syria, the predatory actions of the capitalist states against progressing China, the impudent and malicious incitement campaign directed against the rapidly developing Soviet Union, all this combined and many other things show clearly to the peoples that the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie does not bring peace, liberty and culture, but leads inevitably to terrible exploitation and slavery, to utmost misery without any salvation, to atrocious wholesale murder, to almost unconcealed barbarism.

Our Women’s Conference would not be worthy of sitting in session in Red Moscow if it were not to draw the necessary conclusions from this situation, if it were not to hand over with the utmost energy, and devotion its lesson to the toiling female masses, in order to rally them to the proletarian cause as fully conscious and active elements. The enemies of the proletariat have quite recently once more confirmed in Great Britain the fact that the social struggles of our times are of such magnitude and intensity that they cannot be fought out without women. Already months ago those who profit by capitalist exploitation and are its obedient servants brought into the arena thousands of organised bourgeois ladies against the pending miners’ strike. These gentry mobilise against the general strike the Conservative and Liberal ladies of the upper ten thousands, the one-time militant suffragettes and the inevitable Mrs. Snowden, the incarnation of labour-disrupting reformism and the most common snobbism. Let us learn from our enemies, but let us outstrip them in order to overcome them.

Fact after fact calls on us peremptorily to use all our energies to organise a national and international united front of working women for the protection of their interests, for the conquest of power, right and freedom. A united front which must never mean separation, isolation from the general red united front of the proletariat, which, on the contrary must mean firm indissoluble merging into it. A united front whose life and activity must not be a resigned, modest and inadequate revolution-substitute, but rather a clear and energetic preparation, a continuous getting ready for revolution.

Nearer to the masses, right into the masses! Our activity in the factories must be made more effective and must be increased ten-fold. It is not enough to imbue every working woman with sacred hatred for capitalism, with sacred and passionate love for Communism. We must also, using the factory as our most effective basis, get at the wives of working men whose members are much greater than those of women working in the factories. For after all, he who is master in the capitalist enterprise is also master in the proletarian home. He takes the meat out of the saucepan of even the most experienced housewife and tears the babe from the breast of the most loving mother if this but increase his profits.

Let us improve and increase tenfold our work in every kind of proletarian mass organisation and among those sections of society gradually becoming alienated from capitalism economy and bourgeois class domination. There must be energetic, un- ceasing and clever work especially in the trade unions. No longer must large numbers of unorganised working women be relentlessly exploited victims of the capitalist greed of gold, no longer must they be humble and willing reserves played off by the employers against the struggling proletarians who dare bring forward their demands. Every working woman must be organised in a trade union, must meet the exploiters well-equipped. But she must also be animated by revolutionary spirit and be ready to fight against the timid petty-reformism of bureaucracy. Do not let us rest content with bringing women into co-operatives as paying members and at the utmost as occasional grumbling members, let us see that they rank among the most energetic elements fully aware of the importance of the idea of co-operation as a world-renewing idea, namely, as an organising and active principle of an all-embracing solidarity.

The International Workers’ Relief, the International Red Aid, the War Victims Associations, Tenants’ Leagues and other organisations offer a fruitful field for our systematic activity in the direction of mobilising and revolutionising women for the class struggle of the proletariat. Let us also not neglect the professional and other organisations of teachers, civil servants, office workers and intellectuals of every kind. There are thousands of those who starving and discontented, do Pioneer work with their brain for capitalism and its state. It is of the utmost practical importance to cause ferment among the mental servants and defence corps of the bourgeoisie, to recruit among them allies for the proletariat in its revolutionary progress.

There is one more point on which our Conference is sure to lay stress: the necessity of close systematic collaboration with Young Communist organisations, the Red Pioneers, the Communist Children’s Groups, not only to give an impetus to these movements but also to get inspiration from them. Yes, certainly, for the Communist mother brings up the child, the budding youth for the revolution. But the fully convinced Young Communist is also well able to win over his parents, brothers and sisters for the revolutionary struggle, not to mention that full use should be made of Youth activity so important to the future and that through our activity the influence of working women in the extensive and important sphere of training and education in the opponent Youth organisations be given its proper place.

The field of our activity is world-wide. Millions of women bear with history as with a merciless body and soul destructive fate. They must help to make history which raises and emancipates them. It must be our business to bring them as revolutionary fighters into the public life. What have we done towards this, and what have we achieved? What about the work and success of the national Sections and their special organs for Communist work among women? The Conference will sit in judgement over efforts and results. It has carefully to examine the ways and means of the work done and also the forms and methods of this work, the energy and ability with which they were applied–relentlessly critical, without bias for the beloved yesterday, the traditional, the usual. The conference must study carefully the possibility of new ways and means, methods, forms and organs, without prejudice and without fear of opportunist, feminist digressions.

In connection with this, special importance will attach to the discussions about delegate meetings and non-Party sympathising women’s organisations, such as the Red Women’s and Girls’ League in Germany, the Mothers’ Unions in Norway, etc. In this respect the conference must urge progress in order that the new and more helpful ideas be put into practice with energy, not with thoughtless, high faluting enthusiasm, but rather on a sound basis of careful investigation and utilisation of existing opportunities.

The Communist International is in truth and practice a world-embracing organisation of the exploited and enslaved. It knows that capitalism in Europe and America cannot be finally crushed unless it is also overcome in Asia and Africa, unless private ownership is also uprooted there. As a step towards this aim the Communist International utilises to the full the national-revolutionary risings of the peoples there.

Our Conference will be fully cognisant of the historical importance of the awakening of the women of the East. It will examine very carefully all the avenues and possibilities to this awakening. There it is not only a matter of recruiting greater number of women pioneers, it is rather a matter of organising them more effectively and preparing them for the struggle. The women of the East who are demanding their emancipation must not only have the same rights, but also the same value as their sisters of the West when they join the revolutionary united front.

Rallying working women for the united front should be tantamount to transforming their social and political passivity into the maximum conscious activity. Each one of the awakened women must become a champion of the working class movement and must be given duties to fulfil accordingly. Our activity among female masses must mean education through work and struggle. Extension of our field of activity also means its intensification. One of our most important immediate tasks is the training and education of a staff of women and men leaders fully able to cope practically and on principle with the demands of every revolutionary emergency. A thorough knowledge of the conditions of life among working women, of their economic position, of the social and political conditions in every individual country, nay, in every separate district is an indispensable premise for an adequate defence of the interests of these female masses. Thorough practical knowledge must be accompanied by profound and clear theoretical education. There must also be inflexible characterisation in our activity and struggle.

My hearty greetings to the Conference and my best wishes for successful work which, I am convinced, will further ideologically and practically the fulfilment of our tasks. My greetings and wishes are accompanied by the conviction that the Conference has but one slogan for our work and struggle, for teachers and learners. Be Up and Doing. I am looking forward to the results of your work and your decisions in the conviction that they are imbued with the lessons of the Russian Revolution and of the constructive work of the Soviet Union, that under the guidance of the Communist International they will revolutionise millions of women and will bring them into the struggle of the world proletariat. Where there is a will there is a way. The will of millions of women guarantees victory in the revolution.

I greet the conference with the full conviction that this victory is not far distant.

Moscow, May 28th, 1926. Clara Zetkin.

Report on the Delegation to Comrade Clara Zetkin.

Comrade KOVANIOVA (Soviet Union): During the first days of this conference it was decided to send a delegation to Comrade Clara Zetkin. Today the Presidium sent me, together with two comrades from Great Britain and one each from France and Germany to the hospital in which Comrade Clara Zetkin is staying at present. Comrade Zetkin was delighted with our visit.

When I mentioned that at the festive gathering of Moscow women workers the mention of the name of Clara Zetkin caused the hall to shake with applause, Comrade Zetkin was greatly agitated, and her eyes filled with tears. She bade us to bring her greetings to our conference and deeply regretted her inability to attend. She was with our conference in spirit however and was observing its work attentively.

She expressed the wish that the Moscow organisation should arrange several large meetings in which the women comrades who have arrived from Great Britain could report on the events there.  These comrades are the first living witnesses who are able to give us the truth about Great Britain, since they were actual participants in the strike.

She emphasised that it was necessary for our women’s press to popularise the British strike among the masses of toiling women since this strike has an international significance. She suggested that the speeches of our British comrades be published in a small pamphlet in a large edition so that every working man and woman can read what happened and what is now happening in Great Britain.

When we presented her with the carpet offered in the meeting in the Hall of the Columns, she expressed the wish that the Uzbekian women comrades visit her in the hospital and likewise the two Chinese women comrades who are participating in our delegation.

Comrade Clara Zetkin sends the whole conference her warmest greetings. (Enthusiastic applause.)

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly. A major contributor to the Communist press in the U.S., Inprecorr is 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/inprecor/1927/v07n38-jul-06-1927-inprecor-op.pdf