Women and Work in Russia, 1880-1930 by Jane Mcdermid Anna Hillyar

Author:Jane Mcdermid, Anna Hillyar [Jane Mcdermid, Anna Hillyar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Modern, 19th Century, 20th Century, General, Political Science
ISBN: 9781317888987
Google: 11KPBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-09-19T16:07:06+00:00

Women and the 1905 revolution

Not everyone was prepared to wait, and while the efforts of revolutionary intellectuals were now focused on theoretical debates and building an organisation, events of 1904–5 revealed that some at least continued to work with and educate women workers. Once again, Vera Karelina played a crucial role in drawing women into political activity. Both she and her husband, Aleksei Karelin, a lithographer who had also been active in the Brusnev movement, dedicated themselves to working with those whom the intelligentsia in the social democratic movement considered virtually unreachable: the unskilled workers. They retained the Brusnev emphasis on the workers taking the initiative, rather than simply waiting on the intelligentsia to organise them. Both were prepared to co-operate with the priest, Father Gapon, whom many suspected was a secret police agent, in his Assembly of Russian Factory and Mill Workers. Both Vera and Aleksei were seen by the workers as people of unquestioned integrity, devoted to their cause.44

At the same time, Vera Karelina was realistic about the uphill struggle which she faced. She wrote that the mass of male workers felt that social (that is, public) activity was not a woman’s affair; that her sphere for action was the machine in the factory and the stove at home; and that her task was to bring up the children. Yet in 1905, female workers insisted that they too were human beings, and not inferior to male workers. They pointed out that they suffered a double oppression, exploited as workers and as women in countless ways, but above all both economically and sexually. Moreover, they realised that the male workers did not understand or appreciate their specific needs. Karelina observed that the male comrades tended to dismiss women’s demands as relating to the home and not the factory. Indeed, she claimed that even in industries exclusively staffed by women, they were treated as if they did not count as workers.45 She persisted in trying to raise the political consciousness of women workers, and encourage their active participation in the struggle for a better life for all workers. Father Gapon supported her efforts to organise women within his assembly, despite his apparent acceptance of peasant notions concerning women’s inferiority. Gapon was convinced of the need to draw women into the assembly, believing, as the social democrats did, that the women’s lack of education, their ‘illiterate nature’, distracted their husbands from politics. Yet still Gapon believed that ‘more use will come of the women’s meetings than of the men’s’.46 By the beginning of 1905, Karelina had involved almost 1,000 women on a regular basis.47

As in the early 1890s, Karelina’s aims were the enlightenment of women workers, and the wives of workers. She hoped to develop their understanding by beginning with a focus on their specific situation and showing them how it fitted into the wider social, economic and political position. Ultimately, she wanted to involve them in the labour movement, which would be strengthened by unity between the sexes.48 However, the

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