Sturm speaks to the recent conference held in Moscow. A central figure in the proletarian women’s movement both before and after the creation of the Third International, Hertha Sturm’s contributions were enormous, and deserving of much greater recognition and understanding. Born in 1883 as Edith Fischer, she became a schoolteacher at 19. After several years of teaching, she left for Leipzig University in 1911, the same year she joined the Social Democratic Party, to pursue higher education. A rarity, Sturm received her doctorate in Social Economy in 1914. Taking a leading role in the Party’s women’s work, she worked closely with Clara Zetkin and others. On the internationalist left, Sturm was an original member German C.P. 1919 and was imprisoned for activities with the Bavarian workers’ republic. A German delegate to the 2nd Comintern Congress in 1920, she became a leading force in the emerging Communist Women’s movement. Strurm organized its first international gatherings as member of the Comintern’s International Women’s Secretariat. She led the Western European Bureau based in Berlin from 1921-24. Though he would lose her positions in the German Communist Party as a ‘rightist’ in 1924, she would relocate to Moscow and continue here work under Clara Zetkin in the International Women’s Secretariat, organizing and leading its conference and work. In this article, she announces the circumstances and aims of Fourth Communist Women’s Congress in June, 1926, the final genuine one to be held. By October, 1928 changes in the Comintern made Sturm’s ‘rightist’ associations incompatible with the new Third Period and she returned to Germany, where she lost Party positions but remained a member. Sturm (also known by her married name Edith Schumann) was arrested immediately on the Nazi’s taking power in March, 1933. After her release she began work with the anti-fascist left Socialists in the Neu Beginnen underground group. Arrested against September, 1935, she was tortured and reportedly attempted suicide. March, 1936 she was sentenced to five-year prison, after which the historical record of this pioneering and leading Communist who helped define a proletarian women’s politics and led antifascist resistance, ends. Undoubtedly to perish in jail or in the war’s mass bombings.

‘Results of the International Conference on Work among Women’ by Hertha Sturm from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 6 No. 61. September 9, 1926.

On 30. July the Org. Bureau of the E.C.C.I. discussed the results of the Fourth International Conference on Work among Women, and confirmed the theses and resolutions drawn up and passed by the Conference.

The Conference, which was held in Moscow from 29 May till 10 June, was the first opportunity since the Fifth Congress for a comprehensive and thorough survey of the work which has been done, and enabled the first tasks now to be accomplished by the Communist International among women to begin now definitely and purposefully. The Conference, as befitted the present stage of the work and its demands, was almost business-like in this strict adaptedness to the matter hand.

The composition of the Conference contributed to the concentration on definite subjects. The participators were a small circle of leading women comrades from the most important Sections of the West and East, and a number of experienced working women from the bases of the Parties, intermediaries Connecting the Parties with the masses in the factories and trade unions. Other participators were the representatives of the Secretariat and of the departments of the E.C.C.I., of the Communist Youth International, of the International Red Aid, and of the International Peasants Council. The ensured for the most vital questions the guidance and control of the highest political authorities, and at the same time the actual cooperation of those most interested in every secondary branch of work. This well adapted composition of the Conference gave it a great advantage over former similar conferences.

The Conference, in accordance with the international decisions and working plan issued by the Women’s Department of the E.C.C.I. concentrated its attention on three fundamental tasks of the present period.

The first of these leading ideas is the imperative necessity of inducing women to take part in politics; this is the incontestable duty of the Communist Parties in their totality, and an inseparable part of the workers’ struggle for emancipation. Every subject discussed by the Conference, whether dealing with the political or the economic problems characteristic of the world’s present position, mirrored this fundamental idea. The great movement for the expropriation of the princes in Germany, the crisis in Poland, the war in Morocco, Fascism, the rising of the Eastern peoples, etc. were taken by the Conference as criteria of the work accomplished during the last two years, and the experience thus gained taken as signpost for future work. The general strike and the lockout of the miners in England, the most striking world historical event of our times, formed one of the chief points for discussion, and roused an initiative for the organisation of an international relief action, among the broadest masses of working women, in aid of the wives and children of the locked out miners.

The political background of the Conference, and the tasks involved for the Comintern, were outlined with both breadth and depth of conception in a letter from Clara Zetkin.

In this fundamental question the intensified combination of political work among women with the great general tasks–the Conference exposed the fact that there are still many great faults, as also remnants of petty bourgeois ideology, to be found even within the Communist Parties. At the same time the Conference demonstrated the existence of a united determination to overcome these weaknesses by means of real enlightenment.

The second leading idea discussed by the Conference was the even greater emphasis laid upon the slogan proclaimed two years ago: that the Communist Parties should devote their concentrated attention to winning over the women in the factories and trade unions. The inadequate success of this work during the period which has since elapsed, was subjected to criticism, the extent to which works nuclei have been formed and developed, was accurately ascertained, an instructive report was heard from a Moscow working woman on work in a nucleus in a large factory employing a great many women, and a practical programme was discussed for the nature and methods of the work to be done in the trade unions.

The third of the main themes discussed by the Conference was the organisation of the Meetings of Women’s Delegates, a question closely bound up with that of the mobilisation of the women workers.

This question is somewhat novel in comparison to the others, it has been little discussed in the broader circles of the Communist Parties, and reports on experience won have been scanty with the exception of course of the Soviet Union. At this stage of the work it is no longer a matter of the theoretical acknowledgement of the importance of this form of work, but of the most practical way of carrying it out, and on this subject there were some lively and even heated debates. Two views were expressed deviating from the lines laid down by the Women’s Department of the E.C.C.I.

At the beginning of the discussion the French delegation maintained that in France the special conditions obtaining there prevented the carrying out of the idea of the Meetings of Women’s Delegates, and that the other proletarian organs and organisations already existing rendered these Delegate Meetings superfluous. This extremely pessimistic and passive view contrasted strikingly with the attitude of the delegate from Finland who urged the immediate and unreserved organisation of Meetings of Women’s Delegates, without earnest inquiry into their prerequisites or possibilities of success. This delegate threw doubts upon the capacity of firmly established organisatory bodies, especially of the works nuclei, to afford a guarantee for the control of the Meetings of Women’s Delegates, and thus converted these Delegations from a means towards a particular political object into a fetish.

The detailed debate ensuring refuted both of these opposing standpoints as deviations from the right political path. The debate afforded a survey of the amount of preparation which has been accomplished, and of the prospects of the work in the various Sections; it enabled an excellent idea to be gained of the different stages of development, the successes, and the errors of the work, so that the Sections have now actual experience to go upon when estimating the value of the work already done and the next steps to be taken.

In all these main questions, embodying the political line pursued by the Women’s Department of the E.C.C.I., the Conference proved to be unanimously and decidedly in agreement with the theses submitted. The whole of the particulars and new factors discussed in the extremely practical debates of the Plenum, and in the numerous Commissions, confirm and emphasise the correctness of this line.

In individual questions, relating chiefly to the organisatory forms of the work, points were raised at the Conference which were not entirely clear, and agreement was not always reached on these.

When discussing the trade unions, the Conference left one question open, that raised in the theses with respect to the formation of trade unionist women’s auxiliary organisations on the Anglo-American pattern for influencing the wives of the workmen organised in trade unions. This question is to be studied more exactly.

In the question of co-operative guilds among the women, the Conference accorded very careful discussion to a novel idea included in the theses, the idea that under certain conditions the initiative of the Communist Parties may be employed for the formation of new co-operative guilds among women. After thorough consideration the Conference expressed its very cautiously formulated agreement.

The formation of extra-Party women’s organisations was the sole question laid before the Conference in which unanimous agreement was not attained. The lines laid down by the Women’s Department of the E.C.C.I maintain the standpoint that in certain situations the founding of sympathising proletarian women’s organisations by the Communists may serve as suitable auxiliary for inducing broad masses of women to join the class struggle and the general class organisations of the proletariat. The opposition, represented by the woman comrade Kasparova from the Women’s Department of the E.C.C.I., and by the Finnish woman delegate, rejected this standpoint on principle, and declared that the question involved the fundamental principles of the Women’s Department. The Women’s Department theses were accepted in principle against the two oppositional votes. The Org. Bureau, on the other hand, passed the following amendment on the motion of comrade Kuusinen:

“The formation of new general women’s organisations is not recommended, but the formation of proletarian women’s organisations may very well be approved of where these are to serve for some definite purpose, some action involved in the economic and political events of the moment.” Special emphasis must be laid on the utility of the direct exchange of experience between the Sections and the Women’s Department of the E.C.C.I., and between the Sections themselves.

Another point of paramount is the close co-operation and exchange of ideas between the Russian women comrades and the delegates from the West and East made possible by the Conference, and widening the horizon of all in the discussion of the most various questions. The report of the women leader of the Central Women’s Department of the Soviet Union dealing with the fundamental problems and tasks of the C.P.S.U. among the masses of the women, enabled a clear idea to be obtained of the essential differences in the work to be done in the Soviet state and in the capitalist countries, whilst the supplementary reports given by Russian working women, on the secondary questions of practical work, afforded many hints on methods which may be followed in any country, whatever the national differences.

The Conference has accomplished the tasks set it, and has met the expectations of those taking part in it. It now lies with the Sections to utilise the results of the Conference.

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.

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