The Zhenotdel ( Russian : Женотдел , IPA: [ʐɨnɐdʲˈdʲel] ), the women's department of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) , was the section of the Russian Communist party devoted to women's affairs in the 1920s. It gave women in the Russian Revolution new opportunities until it was dissolved in 1930.
160-625: The Zhenotdel was established by two Russian feminist revolutionaries , Alexandra Kollontai and Inessa Armand , in 1919. It was devoted to improving the conditions of women's lives throughout the Soviet Union, fighting illiteracy, and educating women about the new marriage, education, and working laws put in place by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . In Soviet Central Asia, the Zhenotdel also spearheaded efforts to improve
320-742: A Valkyrie !" Kollontai's final political action as an oppositionist within the Communist Party was her co-signing of the so-called " letter of the Twenty Two ", whereby several former members of the Workers' Opposition and other party members of working class origin appealed to the Communist International against the undemocratic internal practices in use within the Russian party. When 'Kollontai attempted to speak before
480-516: A great power ; and one of the most powerful states in Europe after the victory over Napoleon . Peasant revolts were common, and all were fiercely suppressed. The Emperor Alexander II abolished Russian serfdom in 1861, but the peasants fared poorly and revolutionary pressures grew. In the following decades, reform efforts such as the Stolypin reforms of 1906–1914, the constitution of 1906 , and
640-480: A rave band, has gained popularity in Russia and across Europe. Russian and later Soviet cinema was a hotbed of invention, resulting in world-renowned films such as The Battleship Potemkin . Soviet-era filmmakers, most notably Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky , would go on to become among of the world's most innovative and influential directors. Eisenstein was a student of Lev Kuleshov , who developed
800-580: A class consciousness among the working classes and reach a world social revolution, they had to liberate these ‘backward’ women and transform them into free individuals who will be active political participants. Before 1926, de-veiling was not a priority for the Zhenotdel and even believed it was a distraction from the important work that they were doing to bring economic and political independence to Central Asian women. Most Central Asian women did not de-veil. If they did it would have been in large demonstrations far away from home, and would put on their veil again on
960-656: A coalition of liberals and moderate socialists, but their failed policies led to seizure of power by the communist Bolsheviks on 25 October 1917 (7 November New Style ). In 1922, Soviet Russia, along with Soviet Ukraine , Soviet Belarus , and the Transcaucasian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR , officially merging all four republics to form the Soviet Union as a country. Between 1922 and 1991,
1120-420: A corner of my conscience and I pursue as best I can the policies they dictate to me". Three years earlier, in 1926, when she was requested to write her own autobiography for a series on famous women by Munich publisher Helga Kern, she deemed it necessary to completely revise the first draft of her work she had handed over to the publisher, by deleting practically all references to 'dangerous' topics, as well as
1280-486: A different economic system". She criticized bourgeois feminists for prioritizing political goals, such as women's suffrage , that would provide political equality for bourgeois women but would do little to address the immediate conditions of working-class women, and was further distrustful that bourgeois champions of feminism would continue to support their working class counterparts after succeeding in their struggle for "general women's" rights: Class instinct – whatever
1440-526: A fully realized communist society, industrial mechanization would ultimately replace so-called women's work: All that was formerly produced in the bosom of the family is now being manufactured on a mass scale in workshops and factories. The machine has superseded the wife. What house- keeper would now bother to make candles, spin wool or weave cloth? All these products can be bought in the shop next door. Formerly every girl would learn to knit stockings. Nowa- days, what working woman would think of making her own? In
1600-473: A greater variety of artistic styles in Soviet cinema. The comedies of Eldar Ryazanov and Leonid Gaidai of that time were immensely popular, with many of the catchphrases still in use today. In 1961–68 Sergey Bondarchuk directed an Oscar -winning film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's epic War and Peace , which was the most expensive film made in the Soviet Union. In 1969, Vladimir Motyl 's White Sun of
1760-462: A husband, as was the custom. In 1890 or 1891, Alexandra, aged around 19, met her cousin and future husband, Vladimir Ludvigovich Kollontai (9 July 1867 – July/August 1917), an engineering student of modest means enrolled at a military institute. Alexandra's mother objected bitterly to the potential union since the young man was so poor, to which her daughter replied that she would work as a teacher to help make ends meet. Her mother bitterly scoffed at
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#17327659624651920-564: A key figure in Marxist feminism . Kollontai was outspoken against bureaucratic influences over the Communist Party and its undemocratic internal practices. To that end, she sided with the left-wing Workers' Opposition in 1920, but was eventually defeated and sidelined, narrowly avoiding her own expulsion from the party altogether. From 1922 on, she was appointed to various diplomatic posts abroad, serving in Norway, Mexico and Sweden. In 1943, she
2080-410: A larger effort to rapidly industrialize the country. Stalin wanted all resources to be aimed towards collectivization to get ready for World War II . The party felt that women had achieved liberation under the socialist state and it would be unnecessary to continue to promote women to higher positions because they were now seen as equal to their male comrades. Instead, Stalin called the party to take up
2240-423: A left-wing faction of the party that had its roots in the trade union milieu and was led by Shliapnikov and by Sergei Medvedev , both of working class extraction. Three days earlier, on 25 January, after about a month delay, Pravda finally published the faction's platform for the upcoming Tenth Party Congress : it mainly advocated unionized workers' control over factories and generally over "the management of
2400-561: A library that supported Sunday classes in basic literacy for urban workers, sneaking a few socialist ideas into the lessons. Through this library Kollontai met Elena Stasova , an activist in the budding Marxist movement in St. Petersburg. Stasova began to use Kollontai as a courier, transporting parcels of illegal writings to unknown individuals, which were delivered upon utterance of a password. Years later, she wrote about her marriage, "We separated although we were in love because I felt trapped. I
2560-560: A little chair at night, to wash neatly, to study my lessons on time, to treat the servants with respect. Mama demanded this. Alexandra was a good student growing up, sharing her father's interest in history, and mastering a range of languages. She spoke French with her mother and sisters, English with her nanny, Finnish with the peasants at a family estate inherited from her maternal grandfather in Kuusa (in Muolaa , Grand Duchy of Finland ), and
2720-506: A love affair with another fellow exile, Alexander Gavrilovich Shliapnikov . The couple appeared quite oddly assorted: she was a Menshevik intellectual, of noble origins, thirteen years older than him; he was a self-taught metalworker from provincial Russia and a Bolshevik leading exponent of some prominence. Their romantic relationship came to an end in July 1916, but evolved thereafter into a long-lasting friendship as they wound up sharing many of
2880-417: A mission abroad. Stalin granted her request and, starting from October 1922, she began to be entrusted with diplomatic appointments abroad and was thus prevented from playing any further political role at home. At first she hoped it was just a passing phase in her life and that she would soon return to her political work in the Zhenotdel, but eventually she had to realize that the diplomatic assignment had become
3040-672: A mother bringing up her children and mistress of her home. Alexandra Kollontai died in Moscow on 9 March 1952, less than a month from her 80th birthday, and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery . She was the only member of the Bolsheviks' Central Committee that had led the October Revolution who managed to live into the 1950s, other than Stalin and his devoted supporter Matvei Muranov . She has sometimes been criticized and even held up to contempt for not raising her voice during
3200-411: A proponent of the "glass of water" theory of sexuality. The quote "...the satisfaction of one's sexual desires should be as simple as getting a glass of water" is often mistakenly attributed to her. This is likely a distortion of the moment in her short story "Three Generations" when a young female Komsomol member argues that sex "is as meaningless as drinking a glass of vodka [or water, depending on
3360-771: A socialist community that was receptive to her ideas. Kollontai stayed primarily in Norway until 1917. She travelled twice to the United States to speak about war and politics, and to renew her relationship with her son Mikhail; in 1916, she had arranged for him to avoid conscription by going to the United States to work on Russian orders from U.S. factories. In 1917, upon hearing of the February Revolution , Kollontai returned from Norway to Russia. When Lenin too got back to Russia in April 1917, Kollontai
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#17327659624653520-405: A solo mission on Vostok 6 . In 1965, Alexei Leonov became the first human to conduct a spacewalk , exiting the space capsule during Voskhod 2 . Until the 18th century, music in Russia consisted mainly of church music and folk songs and dances. In the 19th century, it was defined by the tension between classical composer Mikhail Glinka along with other members of The Mighty Handful , and
3680-572: A sort of exile. Initially, she was sent as an attaché to the Soviet commercial mission in Norway , becoming one of the first women serving in diplomacy in modern times. In early 1924, Kollontai was first promoted to Chargé d'affaires and from August to Minister Plenipotentiary . As such, she later served in Mexico (1926–27), again in Norway (1927–30) and eventually in Sweden (1930–45), where she
3840-417: A state as a result of in-fighting between members of the princely family that ruled it collectively. After the 13th century, Moscow became a political and cultural center. Moscow has become a center for the unification of Russian lands . By the end of the 15th century, Moscow united the northeastern and northwestern Russian principalities, overthrew the "Mongol yoke" in 1480, and would be transformed into
4000-442: A tour of Western Europe in the hope that she would forget Vladimir, but the pair remained committed to one another despite it all and married in 1893. Alexandra became pregnant soon after her marriage and bore a son, Mikhail, in 1894. She devoted her time to reading radical populist and Marxist political literature and writing fiction. While Kollontai was initially drawn to the populist ideas of restructuring society based upon
4160-430: A transformed marriage that would be compatible with many other social relations, such as friendship. Kollontai felt that by liberating women and men from their traditionally hierarchical roles, communism would free marriage from the "conjugal slavery of the past", allowing spouses to thrive in egalitarian marriages grounded in mutual love and trust. As Kollontai wrote in 1920: The workers' state needs new relations between
4320-514: Is россияне ( rossiyane ), derived from Россия ( Rossiya , Russia), which denotes "people of Russia", regardless of ethnicity or religious affiliation. In daily usage, those terms are often mixed up, and since Vladimir Putin became president, the ethnic term русские has supplanted the non-ethnic term. The name of the Russians derives from the early medieval Rus' people , a group of Norse merchants and warriors who relocated from across
4480-548: Is Christianity —It has the world's largest Orthodox population . According to differing sociological surveys on religious adherence, between 41% to over 80% of the total population of Russia adhere to the Russian Orthodox Church . Non-religious Russians may associate themselves with the Orthodox faith for cultural reasons. Some Russian people are Old Believers : a relatively small schismatic group of
4640-544: Is Russian , the most spoken Slavic language . The majority of Russians adhere to Orthodox Christianity , ever since the formation of the Russian identity in the Middle Ages . By total numbers, they are the largest Slavic and European nation . Genetic studies show that Russians are closely related to Poles , Belarusians , Ukrainians , as well as Estonians , Latvians , Lithuanians and Finns . They were formed from East Slavic tribes, and their cultural ancestry
4800-456: Is a well-known fact that the Soviet Union has achieved exceptional successes in drawing women into the active construction of the state. This generally accepted truth is not disputed even by our enemies. The Soviet woman is a full and equal citizen of her country. In opening up to women access to every sphere of creative activity, our state has simultaneously ensured all the conditions necessary for her to fulfil her natural obligation – that of being
4960-550: Is based in Kievan Rus' . The Russian word for the Russians is derived from the people of Rus' and the territory of Rus' . Russians share many historical and cultural traits with other European peoples, and especially with other East Slavic ethnic groups, specifically Belarusians and Ukrainians . The vast majority of Russians live in native Russia, but notable minorities are scattered throughout other post-Soviet states such as Belarus , Kazakhstan , Moldova , Ukraine , and
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5120-508: Is remembered mainly for his novel Oblomov . Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote prose satire, while Nikolai Leskov is best remembered for his shorter fiction. In the second half of the century Anton Chekhov excelled in short stories and became a leading dramatist. Other important 19th-century developments included the fabulist Ivan Krylov , non-fiction writers such as the critic Vissarion Belinsky , and playwrights such as Aleksandr Griboyedov and Aleksandr Ostrovsky . The beginning of
5280-507: Is replaced with a socialist state and capital is redistributed to the masses, every person would automatically be rid of their prejudices and an egalitarian society would flourish. Bolsheviks believed in a centralized economy that would eventually create a communist society. These women, on the other hand, believed that more decentralized and small scale programs would create a communist state. The Zhenotdel wanted to build daycare centers, cafeterias, and laundries in order to liberate women from
5440-445: Is summed up in the popular phrase (sometimes attributed to Emperor Alexander III of Russia ) - Хочешь быть русским - будь им! ( transl. You want to be Russian - be that! ). Russian is the official and the predominantly spoken language in Russia. It is the most-spoken native language in Europe, the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, as well as the world's most widely spoken Slavic language . Russian
5600-694: Is the third-most used language on the Internet after English and Spanish , and is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station , as well as one of the six official languages of the United Nations . Russian literature is considered to be among the world's most influential and developed. It can be traced to the Middle Ages , when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were composed. By
5760-874: The 2021 Russian census , the number of ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation decreased by nearly 5.43 million, from roughly 111 million people in 2010 to approximately 105.5 million in 2021. Among Russians, a number of ethnographic groups stand out, such as: the Northern Russians , the Southern Russians , the Cossacks , the Goryuns , the Kamchadals , the Polekhs , the Pomors ,
5920-533: The Age of Enlightenment , literature had grown in importance, with works from Mikhail Lomonosov , Denis Fonvizin , Gavrila Derzhavin , and Nikolay Karamzin . From the early 1830s, during the Golden Age of Russian Poetry , literature underwent an astounding golden age in poetry, prose and drama. Romanticism permitted a flowering of poetic talent: Vasily Zhukovsky and later his protégé Alexander Pushkin came to
6080-517: The Baltic Sea and played an important part in the foudation of the first East Slavic state that later became the Kievan Rus' . The idea of a single " all-Russian nation " encompassing the East Slavic peoples , or a "triune nation" of three brotherly " Great Russian ", " Little Russian " (i.e. Ukrainian ), and " White Russian " (i.e. Belarusian ) peoples became the official doctrine of
6240-496: The Baltic states . A large Russian diaspora (sometimes including Russian-speaking non-Russians), estimated at 25 million people, has developed all over the world, with notable numbers in the United States , Germany , Brazil , and Canada . There are two Russian words which are commonly translated into English as "Russians". One is русские ( russkiye ), which in modern Russia most often means "ethnic Russians". The other one
6400-617: The Christianization of Kievan Rus' , for several centuries it was influenced predominantly by the Byzantine Empire . Aristotle Fioravanti and other Italian architects brought Renaissance trends into Russia. The 16th century saw the development of the unique tent-like churches ; and the onion dome design, which is a distinctive feature of Russian architecture. In the 17th century, the "fiery style" of ornamentation flourished in Moscow and Yaroslavl , gradually paving
6560-514: The Civil War created mass famine and poverty in the countryside and severe unemployment among women. The Zhenotdel began to evolve away from working towards specific women’s issues, into a tool the party utilized to forward its policies. Before the revolution, Bolsheviks believed that forming a separate women's organization would promote feminist ideas and spend insufficient resources. This hindered several old Bolshevik women from agreeing with
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6720-535: The Comintern Executive on 26 February 1922 on behalf of the views expressed in the appeal,' Trotsky and Zinoviev had her name removed from the list of orators and insisted that she should not take the floor. When she 'proved recalcitrant, Trotsky forbade her to speak and issued a decree, in the name of the CC , ordering all members of the Russian delegation to "obey the directives of the party".' Predictably,
6880-487: The Don , Terek , and Ural river basins, and played an important role in the historical and cultural development of parts of Russia. In accordance with the 2008 research results of Russian and Estonian geneticists, two groups of Russians are distinguished: the northern and southern populations. Central and Southern Russians, to which the majority of Russian populations belong, according to Y chromosome R1a, are included in
7040-789: The Hunger Plan and the Generalplan Ost , including one million civilian casualties during the Siege of Leningrad . After the victory of the Soviet Union and the Western Allies , the Soviet Union became a superpower opposing Western countries during the Cold War . By the mid-1980s, with Soviet economic and political weaknesses becoming acute, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev embarked on major reforms; these culminated in
7200-777: The July uprising against the Provisional Government , she was arrested along with many other Bolshevik leaders, but was given again her full freedom of movement in September: she was then a member of the party's Central Committee and as such she voted for the policy of armed uprising that led to the October Revolution . At the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets on 26 October, she was elected People's Commissar for Social Welfare in
7360-474: The Mir commune , she soon abandoned this for other revolutionary projects. Marxism, with its emphasis on the class consciousness of factory workers, the revolutionary seizure of power, and the construction of modern industrial society, attracted Kollontai and many of her peers in Russia's radical intelligentsia. Kollontai's first activities were timid and modest, helping out a few hours a week with her sister Zhenia at
7520-776: The Russian Chinese , the Siberians ( Siberiaks ), Starozhily , some groupings of Old Believers ( Kamenschiks , Lipovans , Semeiskie ), and others. The main ones are the Northern and Southern Russian groups. At the same time, the proposal of the ethnographer Dmitry Zelenin in his major work of 1927 Russian (East Slavic) Ethnography to consider them as separate East Slavic peoples did not find support in scientific circles. Russia's Arctic coastline had been explored and settled by Pomors , Russian settlers from Novgorod . Cossacks inhabited sparsely populated areas in
7680-668: The Russian Empire from the beginning of the 19th century onwards. The ancestors of modern Russians are the Slavic tribes , whose original home is thought by some scholars to have been the wooded areas of the Pinsk Marshes , one of the largest wetlands in Europe. The East Slavs gradually settled Western Russia with Moscow included in two waves: one moving from Kiev toward present-day Suzdal and Murom and another from Polotsk toward Novgorod and Rostov . Prior to
7840-817: The Russian Musical Society led by composers Anton and Nikolay Rubinstein . The later tradition of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era , was continued into the 20th century by Sergei Rachmaninoff , one of the last great champions of the Romantic style of European classical music. World-renowned composers of the 20th century include Alexander Scriabin , Alexander Glazunov , Igor Stravinsky , Sergei Prokofiev , Dmitri Shostakovich , Georgy Sviridov and Alfred Schnittke . Soviet and Russian conservatories have turned out generations of world-renowned soloists. Among
8000-489: The Russian Social Democratic Party , to discuss the issues they faced at home and in the workplace. This was met with hostility as most employers viewed female workers as "backward", and were only utilized as cheap labor to be abused at will in the workplace. Kollontai wanted to stray these working women away from the Russian feminist suffrage movements that she felt were superficial and lacked
8160-559: The Soviet Union . In the summer of 1918, the Central Committee agreed to establish the First All Russian Congress of Women where there would be an election to select delegates. Because this was planned during the civil war and transportation was widely unreliable throughout the Soviet Union , only 40 delegates showed up. However, almost immediately the leaders started to receive telegrams from all over
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#17327659624658320-596: The Stalinist purges , when, among countless others, her former husband , her former lover and fighting comrade , and so many friends of hers were executed. And, it has been noted, at the time she "was safe in her sumptuous Stockholm residence". Notwithstanding, it should also be pointed out that, even so, Kollontai did not enjoy a full liberty of action and had to worry about the possible fates of her family. It might not have been pure chance if both her only son and her musician half-nephew (whom she had much supported at
8480-516: The State Duma (1906–1917) attempted to open and liberalize the economy and political system, but the Emperors refused to relinquish autocratic rule and resisted sharing their power. A combination of economic breakdown, war-weariness , and discontent with the autocratic system of government triggered revolution in Russia in 1917 . The overthrow of the monarchy initially brought into office
8640-589: The Trinity as outlined by the Nicene Creed , Orthodox fasts , military service, and practices including water baptism . Other world religions have negligible representation among ethnic Russians. The largest of these groups are Islam with over 100,000 followers from national minorities, and Baptists with over 85,000 Russian adherents. Others are mostly Pentecostals , Evangelicals , Seventh-day Adventists , Lutherans and Jehovah's Witnesses . Since
8800-650: The Tsardom of Russia after Ivan IV was crowned tsar in 1547. In 1721, Tsar Peter the Great renamed his state as the Russian Empire , hoping to associate it with historical and cultural achievements of ancient Rus' – in contrast to his policies oriented towards Western Europe. The state now extended from the eastern borders of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth to the Pacific Ocean , and became
8960-771: The United States . Brighton Beach, Brooklyn and South Beach, Staten Island in New York City are examples of large communities of recent Russian and Russian-Jewish immigrants. Other examples are Sunny Isles Beach , a northern suburb of Miami , and West Hollywood of the Los Angeles area. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, many Russians who were identified with the White army moved to China — most of them settling in Harbin and Shanghai . By
9120-470: The atmosphere of Venus , and founded modern geology . Since the times of Nikolay Lobachevsky , who pioneered the non-Euclidean geometry , and a prominent tutor Pafnuty Chebyshev , Russian mathematicians became among the world's most influential. Dmitry Mendeleev invented the Periodic table , the main framework of modern chemistry . Sofya Kovalevskaya was a pioneer among women in mathematics in
9280-532: The de facto architectural style, and Nicholas I opened the gate of Eclecticism to Russia. The second half of the 19th-century was dominated by the Neo-Byzantine and Russian Revival style. In early 20th-century, Russian neoclassical revival became a trend. Prevalent styles of the late 20th-century were the Art Nouveau , Constructivism , and Socialist Classicism . Russia's largest religion
9440-462: The dissolution of the Soviet Union , leaving Russia again alone and marking the beginning of the post-Soviet Russian period. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic renamed itself the Russian Federation and became one of several successors to the Soviet Union . Ethnic Russians historically migrated within the areas of the former Russian Empire and Soviet Union , though they were sometimes encouraged to re-settle in borderland areas by
9600-578: The mixed economy and diverse society and culture of the 1920s through the command economy and repressions of the Joseph Stalin era to the "era of stagnation" from the 1960s to the 1980s. The actions of the Soviet government caused the death of millions of citizens in the famine of 1930–1933 and the Great Purge . The attack by Nazi Germany and the ensuing war , together with the Holocaust , again claimed millions of lives . Millions of Russian civilians and prisoners of war were killed or starved to death during Nazi Germany's genocidal policies called
9760-399: The 1890s and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1899. During the RSDLP ideological split, she sided with Julius Martov 's Mensheviks against Lenin's Bolsheviks. Exiled from Russia in 1908, Kollontai toured Western Europe and the United States and campaigned against participation in the First World War . In 1915, she broke with the Mensheviks and became a member of
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#17327659624659920-479: The 1930s, Harbin had 100,000 Russians. Many of these Russians moved back to the Soviet Union after World War II . Today, a large group in northern China still speak Russian as a second language. Russians ( eluosizu ) are one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China (as the Russ ); there are approximately 15,600 Russian Chinese living mostly in northern Xinjiang , and also in Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang . According to
10080-421: The 19th century. Grigori Perelman was offered the first ever Clay Millennium Prize Problems Award for his final proof of the Poincaré conjecture in 2002, as well as the Fields Medal in 2006, both of which he declined. Alexander Popov was among the inventors of radio , while Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov were co-inventors of laser and maser . Zhores Alferov contributed significantly to
10240-450: The 20th century ranks as the Silver Age of Russian Poetry . This era had poets such as Alexander Blok , Anna Akhmatova , Boris Pasternak , Konstantin Balmont , Marina Tsvetaeva , Vladimir Mayakovsky , and Osip Mandelstam . It also produced some first-rate novelists and short-story writers, such as Aleksandr Kuprin , Nobel Prize winner Ivan Bunin , Leonid Andreyev , Yevgeny Zamyatin , Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Andrei Bely . After
10400-461: The Bolshevik's founded a journal called Rabotnitsa , which detailed issues regarding women. The journal was edited by Inessa Armand and Lenin’s sister, Anna Elizarova. The editors were all arrested as czarist Russia continued to reign. The introduction of World War I brought women workers and soldiers wives together to actively strike against the war and the food pogroms in 1915 and 1916. The harsh living conditions and famines that erupted during
10560-405: The Bolsheviks. Following the 1917 February Revolution which ousted the tsar , Kollontai returned to Russia. She supported Lenin's radical proposals and, as a member of the party's Central Committee, voted for the policy of armed uprising which led to the October Revolution and the fall of Alexander Kerensky 's Provisional Government . She was appointed People's Commissar for Social Welfare in
10720-440: The Desert was released, a very popular film in a genre of ostern ; the film is traditionally watched by cosmonauts before any trip into space. In 2002, Russian Ark was the first feature film ever to be shot in a single take. Today, the Russian cinema industry continues to expand. The history of Russian architecture begins with early woodcraft buildings of ancient Slavs, and the architecture of Kievan Rus' . Following
10880-559: The Eleventh Congress, Kollontai became a political outcast. She was badly shaken by having teetered dangerously close to expulsion, and regarded the idea of being excluded from the 'revolutionary community of the elect' as a dreadful "nightmare". She even speculated she might be arrested. Italian writer and former communist leader Ignazio Silone later recounted that, on his departure from Moscow in 1922, Kollontai jokingly warned him not to believe any news of her being arrested for stealing Kremlin silverware, for such news could only mean that she
11040-407: The Gulag camps. Russian philosophy has been greatly influential. Alexander Herzen is known as one of the fathers of agrarian populism . Mikhail Bakunin is referred to as the father of anarchism . Peter Kropotkin was the most important theorist of anarcho-communism . Mikhail Bakhtin 's writings have significantly inspired scholars. Helena Blavatsky gained international following as
11200-458: The Mensheviks and officially joined the Bolsheviks, "those who most consistently fought social-patriotism ". After leaving Germany, Kollontai traveled to Denmark, only to discover that the Danish social democrats also supported the war. The next place where Kollontai tried to speak and write against the war was Sweden, but the Swedish government imprisoned her for her activities. After her release, Kollontai traveled to Norway, where she at last found
11360-498: The Mensheviks. She went into exile, to Germany, in 1908 after publishing "Finland and Socialism", which called on the Finnish people to rise up against oppression within the Russian Empire. She traveled across western Europe and became acquainted with Karl Kautsky , Clara Zetkin , Rosa Luxemburg , and Karl Liebknecht , among others. In 1911, while abruptly breaking off her long-term relationship with her faction comrade Peter Maslov (1867–1946), an agrarian scientist, she started
11520-660: The Russian Orthodoxy that rejected the liturgical reforms introduced in the 17th century. Other schisms from Orthodoxy include Doukhobors which in the 18th century rejected secular government, the Russian Orthodox priests, icons, all church ritual, the Bible as the supreme source of divine revelation and the divinity of Jesus, and later emigrated into Canada. An even earlier sect were Molokans which formed in 1550 and rejected Czar's divine right to rule , icons,
11680-765: The Russian Revolution of 1917, Russian literature split into Soviet and white émigré parts. In the 1930s, Socialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia. Its leading figure was Maxim Gorky , who laid the foundations of this style. Mikhail Bulgakov was one of the leading writers of the Soviet era. Nikolay Ostrovsky 's novel How the Steel Was Tempered has been among the most successful works of Russian literature. Influential émigré writers include Vladimir Nabokov . Some writers dared to oppose Soviet ideology, such as Nobel Prize-winning novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn , who wrote about life in
11840-483: The Russian ethnicity - and as a historic great power with imperial expansionist tendencies the Russian state has sometimes encouraged Russian-centred monoculturalism. Steppe peoples, Tatars, Baltic Germans, Lithuanians and native Siberians in Rus' , Muscovy or the Russian Empire could in theory become "Russians" ( Russian : русские ) simply by accepting Russian Orthodoxy as their faith. The attitude of ready inclusivity
12000-809: The Slavic migration in the 6-7th centuries, the Suzdal-Murom and Novgorod-Rostov areas were populated by Finnic peoples , including the Merya , the Muromians , and the Meshchera . From the 7th century onwards, the East Slavs slowly assimilated the native Finnic peoples, so that by year 1100, the majority of the population in Western Russia was Slavic-speaking. Recent genetic studies confirm
12160-517: The Soviet Union had been "solved" by the eradication of private property and the nationalization of the means of production. After the Zhenotdel was disbanded many of the gendered social rules that had been fought against returned. Zhenotdel had five leaders during its 11 years of existence: Russians Russians ( Russian : русские , romanized : russkiye [ˈruskʲɪje] ) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe . Their mother tongue
12320-538: The Soviet Union. This would give women a chance to be promoted into government positions and grow into conscious political activists. The creation of the NEP in the early 1920s created a shift in party concern towards industrialization and to create highly skilled workers that were loyal to the Soviet Union . They made women’s issues a secondary priority because the male leadership felt domestic work did not benefit industry. The party made drastic cuts on social spending because
12480-474: The Stalinist regime, whether it was spontaneous or not, may be gauged from the opening of an article she wrote in 1946 for a Russian magazine. It bore the title The Soviet Woman — a Full and Equal Citizen of Her Country , and praised the Soviet Union's advances of women's rights, while simultaneously emphasizing a view of the role of women in society at odds with her previous writings on women's liberation. It
12640-1122: The Tsarist and later Soviet government. Sometimes ethnic Russian communities, such as the Lipovans who settled in the Danube delta or the Doukhobors in Canada , emigrated as religious dissidents fleeing the central authority. There are also small Russian communities in the Balkans — including Lipovans in the Danube delta — Central European nations such as Germany and Poland , as well as Russians settled in China , Japan , South Korea , Mexico , Brazil , Argentina and Australia . These communities identify themselves to varying degrees as Russians, citizens of these countries, or both. Significant numbers of Russians emigrated to Canada , Australia and
12800-438: The Workers' Opposition, condemned 'Anarcho-syndicalist deviation' within the party; the other ('On party unity') simply banned all factions. Thus, the Workers' Opposition was forcibly dissolved, and Kollontai was practically sidelined. Nevertheless, despite subsequent misunderstandings with the former leaders of the Workers' Opposition and Kollontai's own resentment at their having renounced the pamphlet she had written to support
12960-404: The Zhenotdel to take a more active role in getting peasant women to support collectivization. Fearing the peasant women were supporting kulaks the party sent out a decree that emphasized The Zhenotdel to continue their work in the countryside by educating these peasant women on leadership and administrative skills. On January 5, 1930 the Central Committee disbanded the Zhenotdel. This was part of
13120-546: The aforementioned 1922 meeting of the Comintern, when he had tamed her last remnants of recalcitrance, forcing her into bowing to party discipline. Kollontai had, as it were, countered in advance, in her 1927 article through which she finally aligned herself, once and for all, with the Stalinists: The masses do not believe in the opposition. They greet every statement of the opposition with smiles. Is it possible that
13280-558: The appeal of the 22 was unsuccessful. At the Eleventh Party Congress (March–April 1922), Kollontai, Shlyapnikov and Medvedev were charged with having insisted on factional work and a three-man commission, Stalin , Zinoviev and Dzerzhinsky , recommended the "unrepentant" three be purged from the party. In her defensive speech before the Congress, Kollontai emphasized her loyalty to the party and her devotion to giving
13440-591: The beginning of his career) also came unscathed through the persecution of the Stalinist regime, to the establishment of which she had, however, significantly contributed. The resurgence of radicalism in the 1960s and the growth of the feminist movement in the 1970s spurred a new interest in the life and writings of Alexandra Kollontai all around the world. A spate of books and pamphlets by and about Kollontai were subsequently published, including full-length biographies by historians Cathy Porter, Beatrice Farnsworth, and Barbara Evans Clements. In 1982 Rosa von Praunheim made
13600-503: The best known are violinists David Oistrakh and Gidon Kremer , cellist Mstislav Rostropovich , pianists Vladimir Horowitz , Sviatoslav Richter , and Emil Gilels , and vocalist Galina Vishnevskaya . During the Soviet times, popular music also produced a number of renowned figures, such as the two balladeers — Vladimir Vysotsky and Bulat Okudzhava , and performers such as Alla Pugacheva . Jazz , even with sanctions from Soviet authorities, flourished and evolved into one of
13760-425: The center of Soviet propaganda for years to come. The Soviets wanted a quick and sudden transformation through party policy. The Zhenotdel now spoke of de-veiling as an urgent issue and increasingly spent their efforts organizing large demonstrations where they would hold speeches proclaiming female liberation and end the meetings with these women ridding themselves of their paranjis . They believed that by transforming
13920-607: The communal housing and socialized childcare they had been fighting for. Although the party officially supported the work of the Zhenotdel they could not settle on how exactly they should organize since hostile tensions between these women and local party members strained the organization’s existence. Former Zhenotdel workers ended up being the strongest advocates for the collapse of the Zhenotdel. Local party members began to assume that women should take responsibility for areas associated with social services. Several women wanted, instead to be involved in general party work and felt that this
14080-585: The conditions of women's lives in the Soviet Union , fighting illiteracy and educating women about the new marriage, education, and work laws put in place by the Revolution. It was eventually closed in 1930. In political life, Kollontai increasingly became an internal critic of the Communist Party and, with an article published in Pravda on 28 January 1921, she publicly sided with the Workers' Opposition ,
14240-635: The contemporary Northern Russians also are genetically close of all Slavic peoples only to the Poles and similar to the Balts. However, this does not mean the northern Russians origin from the Balts or the Poles, more likely, that all the peoples of the Nordic gene pool are descendants of Paleo-European population, which has remained around Baltic Sea . Russians have sometimes found it useful to emphasize their self-perceived ability to assimilate other people to
14400-412: The country telling them that they were delayed but were going to make it. 1,200 women managed to get to Moscow . They developed a plan to create a separate women's organization based upon local delegates. This program would include: ending domestic slavery, communalize households to free women from domestic work, end prostitution, protect women's labor and maternity, and bring about a class consciousness to
14560-480: The country's most popular musical forms. The Ganelin Trio have been described by critics as the greatest ensemble of free-jazz in continental Europe . By the 1980s, rock music became popular across Russia, and produced bands such as Aria , Aquarium , DDT , and Kino . Pop music in Russia has continued to flourish since the 1960s, with globally famous acts such as t.A.T.u. In the recent times, Little Big ,
14720-560: The creation of modern heterostructure physics and electronics . Oleg Losev made crucial contributions in the field of semiconductor junctions , and discovered light-emitting diodes . Vladimir Vernadsky is considered one of the founders of geochemistry , biogeochemistry , and radiogeology . Élie Metchnikoff is known for his groundbreaking research in immunology . Ivan Pavlov is known chiefly for his work in classical conditioning . Lev Landau made fundamental contributions to many areas of theoretical physics . Nikolai Vavilov
14880-507: The double burden of domestic and industrial work. In order to reeducate the population, these women in the Zhenotdel believed that it was up to them to change their circumstances or else it would never happen. In order to eliminate the capitalist state and the exploitation of the proletariat , the Zhenotdel felt that it was essential for women to be liberated and equal to their male comrades. The Civil War brought no clarity to how exactly their society would be organized. The party believed that
15040-449: The essence of revolution. She began to teach factory women in St. Petersburg that only through socialism and joining their husbands and brothers in the proletariat revolution, would bring about their liberation. Because of her radical beliefs at the time, she was forced to flee and the beginning of a women's movement she was attempting to create, dissolved. In 1913, the movement reappeared when
15200-581: The faction among the delegates, however, remained quite few and proved to be declining during the proceedings, when Lenin did not even hesitate to draw snickers from delegates by hinting at the amatory past of the Kollontai-Shliapnikov couple. Although Kollontai and her comrades had promptly and unconditionally sided against the Kronstadt rebels , on the last day the congress passed, among others, two secret resolutions: one, specially aimed at
15360-592: The faction, on 5 July 1921 she tried again "to help [them] by speaking on their behalf to the Third Congress of the Comintern ". In her speech, she bitterly attacked the New Economic Policy proposed by Lenin, warning that it 'threatened to disillusion workers, to strengthen the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie, and to facilitate the rebirth of capitalism'. Trotsky retorted by even likening her to "an Amazon", and Karl Radek loudly corrected: "Like
15520-418: The fall of the Soviet Union various new religious movements have sprung up and gathered a following among ethnic Russians. The most prominent of these are Rodnovery , the revival of the Slavic native religion also common to other Slavic nations . Football is the most popular sport in Russia. The Soviet Union national football team became the first European champions by winning Euro 1960 , and reached
15680-416: The feminists say – always shows itself to be more powerful than the noble enthusiasms of "above-class" politics. So long as the bourgeois women and their [proletarian] "younger sisters" are equal in their inequality, the former can, with complete sincerity, make great efforts to defend the general interests of women. But once the barrier is down and the bourgeois women have received access to political activity,
15840-492: The film Red Love based on the novella with the same title by Kollontai. For example, the film was shown in the Museum of Modern Art . Kollontai was the subject of the 1994 TV film, A Wave of Passion: The Life of Alexandra Kollontai, with Glenda Jackson as the voice of Kollontai. A female Soviet diplomat in the 1930s with unconventional views on sexuality, probably inspired by Kollontai, had been played by Greta Garbo in
16000-716: The finals of Euro 1988 . In 1956 and 1988, the Soviet Union won gold at the Olympic football tournament . Russian clubs CSKA Moscow and Zenit Saint Petersburg won the UEFA Cup in 2005 and 2008. The Russian national football team reached the semi-finals of Euro 2008 . Russia was the host nation for the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup , and the 2018 FIFA World Cup . Alexandra Kollontai Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai ( Russian : Александра Михайловна Коллонтай ; née Domontovich , Домонтович ; 31 March [ O.S. 19 March] 1872 – 9 March 1952)
16160-570: The first Soviet government , but she soon resigned in opposition to the Brest-Litovsk Peace . During the revolutionary period, at the age of 45, she married 28-year-old revolutionary sailor Pavel Dybenko , while keeping her surname from her first marriage. She was the most prominent woman in the Soviet administration and was best known for founding the Zhenotdel or "Women's Department" in 1919 . This organization worked to improve
16320-561: The first Soviet government, but soon resigned due to her opposition to the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk in the ranks of the Left Communists . In 1919, Kollontai was a leading figure in the foundation of the Zhenotdel , the then-new women's department of the Central Committee that was aimed at improving the status of women in the Soviet Union. She was a champion of women's liberation, and later came to be recognized as
16480-491: The first place she doesn't have the time. Time is money, and no one wants to waste time in an unproductive and useless manner. Few working women would start to pickle cucumbers or make other preserves when all these things can be bought in the shop. – Alexandra Kollontai (1920), Communism and the Family In this regard, Kollontai's critique of women's societal position under capitalism is both reminiscent of and distinct from
16640-423: The fore. Following Pushkin's footsteps, a new generation of poets were born, including Mikhail Lermontov , Nikolay Nekrasov , Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy , Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet . The first great Russian novelist was Nikolai Gogol . Then came Ivan Turgenev , who mastered both short stories and novels. Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy soon became internationally renowned. Ivan Goncharov
16800-442: The formation of the Zhenotdel because they thought it would prevent a unified proletariat Revolution. The main idea in a Utopian society for Zhenotdel women is the creation of a liberated and independent woman—a woman that is free and equal to men in every aspect of life. Both men and women believed in freeing women and transforming the family, but their ideas on how to achieve it differed. Male leadership believed that once capitalism
16960-471: The gains they had achieved after the February and October Revolutions ". The following words she allegedly pronounced in a private conversation with her friend Marcel Body [ fr ] in 1929 give a suggestion of her attitude towards advancing Stalinism : "Everything's changed so much. What can I do about this? One cannot go against the 'apparatus'. For my part, I have put my principles aside in
17120-571: The general "East European" gene cluster with the rest East and West Slavs (Poles, Czechs and Slovaks), as well as the non-Slavic Hungarians and Aromanians . Genetically, East Slavs are quite similar to West Slavs; such genetic similarity is somewhat unusual for genetics with such a wide settlement of the Slavs, especially Russians. The high unity of the autosomal markers of the East Slavic populations and their significant differences from
17280-503: The groundbreaking Soviet montage theory of film editing at the world's first film school , the All-Union Institute of Cinematography . Dziga Vertov 's " Kino-Eye " theory had a huge impact on the development of documentary filmmaking and cinema realism. Many Soviet socialist realism films were artistically successful, including Chapaev , The Cranes Are Flying , and Ballad of a Soldier . The 1960s and 1970s saw
17440-713: The history of Russia became essentially the history of the Soviet Union , effectively an ideologically based state roughly conterminous with the Russian Empire before the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk . From its first years, government in the Soviet Union based itself on the one-party rule of the Communists, as the Bolsheviks called themselves, beginning in March 1918. The approach to the building of socialism, however, varied over different periods in Soviet history: from
17600-722: The history of working movements in Zürich, under Herkner, later described by her as a Marxist Revisionist . She became a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1899 at the age of 27. In 1905, Kollontai was a witness to the series of events in Saint Petersburg, known as Bloody Sunday , where tsarist soldiers opened fire on unarmed demonstrators in front of the Winter Palace causing hundreds of deaths and injuries. At
17760-426: The inequality between men and women that persisted under socialism, such encounters would lead to women being exploited, and being left to raise children alone. Instead she believed that true socialism could not be achieved without a radical change in attitudes to sexuality , so that it might be freed from the oppressive norms that she saw as a continuation of bourgeois ideas about property. A common myth describes her as
17920-524: The leading role in the party and outside it to the working class, she proclaimed her full observance of the previous year's decree on party unity, and concluded: "If there is no place for this in our party, then exclude me. But even outside the ranks of our party, I will live, work and fight for the Communist party." Eventually, a resolution was passed allowing the three to remain in the party unless they committed further violations of its discipline. After
18080-491: The leading theoretician of Theosophy , and co-founded the Theosophical Society . Vladimir Lenin , a major revolutionary, developed a variant of communism known as Leninism . Leon Trotsky , on the other hand, founded Trotskyism . Alexander Zinoviev was a prominent philosopher in the second half of the 20th century. Mikhail Lomonosov proposed the conservation of mass in chemical reactions , discovered
18240-465: The lives of Muslim women through literacy and educational campaigns, and through "de-veiling" campaigns. The Zhenotdel persuaded the Bolsheviks to legalise abortion in Russia, the first country to do so, in November 1920. This was the first time in history that women had the right to free abortions in state hospitals. In 1906, Kollontai attempted to organize women into a separate organization within
18400-399: The movie Ninotchka (1939). Kollontai is regarded as a key figure in Marxist feminism for her commitment both to women's liberation and Marxist ideals. She opposed the ideology of liberal feminism , which she saw as bourgeois. At the same time, Kollontai was a champion of women's liberation, believing that it "could take place only as the result of the victory of a new social order and
18560-458: The national economy", on the grounds that the construction of a communist society could only be carried out by the industrial proletariat through its class work in history and through the intelligence it would acquire in concrete economic experience. In the run-up to the congress, scheduled for 8–16 March, at Shliapnikov's urgent request, Kollontai had a pamphlet printed with the title of The Workers' Opposition : it expounded her personal views on
18720-408: The negotiations in 1940-44." Being sent abroad in a sort of de facto exile for over twenty years, Kollontai gave up "her fight for reform and for women, retreating into relative obscurity" and bowing to the new political climate. She discarded her feminist concerns and "offered no objection to the patriarchal legislation of 1926 and the constitution of 1936 , which deprived Soviet women of many of
18880-586: The neighboring Finnic, Turkic and Caucasian peoples were revealed. Northern Russians , according to mtDNA , Y chromosome and autosomal marker CCR5de132, are included in the "North European" gene cluster (the Poles , the Balts , Germanic and Baltic Finnic peoples ). Consequently, the already existing biologo-genetic studies have made all hypotheses about the mixing of the Russians with non-Slavic ethnic groups or their "non-Slavism" obsolete or pseudoscientific. At
19040-490: The neighboring Russian towns. Kollontai also organized a strike of laundresses in Petrograd for better working conditions. The journal was instrumental in instructing women to organize themselves and arrange meetings to spread knowledge and "agitation". Before the October Revolution , this organization already had every aspect of mobilization necessary. All that was left was to legitimize a separate women’s department within
19200-403: The notion: You work! You, who can't even make up your own bed to look neat and tidy! You, who never picked up a needle! You, who go marching through the house like a princess and never help the servants with their work! You, who are just like your father, going around dreaming and leaving your books on every chair and table in the house! Her parents forbade the relationship and sent Alexandra on
19360-415: The opposition thinks the masses' memory is so short? If they come across defects in the party, in the political line, who, if not the famous members of the opposition, established them and built them? It seems that the policy of the party and the structure of the apparatus become unfit only from the day that a group of oppositionists breaks with the party. The degree of her adherence to the prevailing ideas of
19520-594: The oppressive conditions under which these women lived, it would completely change the social and cultural order that prevented a Soviet revolution from happening. These women would then become the face of propaganda as the Soviet Union spread their de-veiled faces to showcase the world the promise of the Socialist state. When Stalin came into power and facilitated the Five-Year Plan , Zhenotdel workers were at first hopeful that collectivization would lead to
19680-443: The parts mentioning or just hinting at her former critical positions and those having a personal nature that might be regarded as forms of self-celebration. On asking the publisher to make the changes requested, Kollontai apologized with obvious embarrassment, inviting repeatedly to debit her all expenses and writing twice that, under current circumstances, it was not absolutely possible "to do otherwise". In his memoirs, Leon Trotsky
19840-519: The party and CC than did Shlyapnikov's language" in the official faction platform. Lenin was very upset about Kollontai joining the Workers' Opposition and, when he was given a copy of her pamphlet, he just 'leafed through' it and immediately castigated Kollontai. He stated she had written 'the platform of a new party', threatened to submit her pamphlet to the court of the Communist International , and said clearly to her face: "For this you should not only be excluded, but shot as well." The followers of
20000-518: The presence of a Finnic substrate in modern Russian population. Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD, when the Primary Chronicle starts its records. By 600 AD, the Slavs are believed to have split linguistically into southern , western , and eastern branches. The Rus' state was established in northern Russia in
20160-409: The rapid industrialization taking place. In 1929, The work of the Zhenotdel was redirected towards the peasant rebellions as a result of organizing the collective farms . Peasant women were joining farm organizers refusing to give up their grain as the party began doubling down on requisitions of food crops to feed the industrial workers. Smidovich , a former Zhenotdel leader, plead the party to allow
20320-516: The recent defenders of the "rights of all women" become enthusiastic defenders of the privileges of their class, content to leave the younger sisters with no rights at all. Thus, when the feminists talk to working women about the need for a common struggle to realise some "general women's" principle, women of the working class are naturally distrustful. Kollontai is known for her advocacy of free love . However, this does not mean that she advocated casual sexual encounters; indeed, she believed that due to
20480-522: The revolution would destroy anything resembling czarist Russia. Before Stalin came into power and the idea that socialism could exist in only one state became mainstream, the Soviets believed that it would be easier to convince the working classes of the developed Western nations if they created a successful socialist revolution in the East. In order for the Soviet Union to reach its dream of instilling
20640-526: The role. In 1927, the Politburo assumed the Zhenotdel was merely copying the work of the rest of the party and wasting valuable resources. In order to combat this, the party established rationalization committees and they advised local party organizations to take down local Zhenotdels. The Politburo deflected opposition to these committees and ignored demands to reinstate a separate women's organization by promoting women to higher positions. This did not solve
20800-545: The same general political views. They were still in contact in the early 1930s when Kollontai lived abroad in a sort of diplomatic exile, and Shliapnikov was going to be executed during the Soviet purges . With Russian entry into World War I in 1914, Kollontai left Germany due to the German social democrats' support of the war. Kollontai was strongly opposed to the war and very outspoken against it, and in June 1915 she broke with
20960-567: The same time, the long-standing identification of the Northern Russian and Southern Russian ethnographic groups by ethnologists was confirmed. The previous conclusions of physical anthropologists, historians and linguists (see, in particular, the works of the academician Valentin Yanin ) about the proximity of the ancient Novgorod Slavs and their language not to the East, but to west Baltic Slavs . As can be seen from genetic resources ,
21120-454: The sexes, just as the narrow and exclusive affection of the mother for her own children must expand until it extends to all the children of the great, proletarian family, the indissoluble marriage based on the servitude of women is replaced by a free union of two equal members of the workers' state who are united by love and mutual respect. In place of the individual and egoistic family, a great universal family of workers will develop, in which all
21280-456: The subjects under discussion, was intended to be distributed only to the delegates and has since remained probably her most famous work. "Kollontai's propositions for reform mostly repeated those enumerated by the Workers' Opposition, but she placed a greater emphasis on reducing 'bureaucratisation'," and denouncing petty-bourgeois or non-proletarian influences on Soviet institutions and on the party. Her language "conveyed much harsher criticism of
21440-411: The tensions between Zhenotdel workers and local party members as women still only comprised 5 percent of overall party membership. The VIII Trade Union Congress met in 1928 voted to transfer women Zhenotdel workers to join the work of unions. There were now no women to support and address workplace discrimination as the hundreds of thousands of women workers are now infiltrating the workforce because of
21600-637: The time of the split in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party between the Mensheviks under Julius Martov and the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin in 1903, Kollontai did not side with either faction at first, and "offered her services to both factions". In 1906, however, disapproving of "the hostile position taken by the Bolsheviks towards the Duma " and despite her being generally a left-winger, she decided to join
21760-621: The traditional family structure has already drastically changed and it is up to us to acknowledge this reality and embrace communalized changes that will bring about liberation for all working women. In September 1919 the Central Committee approved of the plan and created a separate women’s department, the Zhenotdel. The party then instructed local party committees to establish elections for female delegates. These women would be called, zhenskii activ , and would have two to three month terms where they would develop into independent women that would be committed to educating and liberating women throughout
21920-466: The translation] to quench one's thirst." In number 18 of her Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Relations, Kollontai argued that "...sexuality is a human instinct as natural as hunger or thirst." Though Kollontai believed in the eventual obsolescence of the traditional family , she held that institution marriage could survive if it underwent a radical transformation. She advocated for
22080-408: The war made the second stage of the women’s movement impossible to maintain. In 1917, when Kollontai , Armand , and Krupskaia returned to Russia after World War I , they went to work on re-establishing the movement that lost momentum during the war. They republished the journal Rabotnitsa , and used it to organize and start a campaign of women workers in the cities and female textile workers in
22240-777: The war, he was appointed Provisional Governor of the Bulgarian city of Tarnovo , and later Military Consul in Sofia . In May 1879, he was called back to St. Petersburg. He entertained liberal political views, favouring a constitutional monarchy like that of United Kingdom . In the 1880s he wrote a study of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. This study was confiscated by the Tsarist censors, presumably for showing insufficient Russian nationalist zeal. Alexandra's mother, Alexandra Alexandrovna Masalina (Massalina) (1848–1899),
22400-514: The way for the Naryshkin baroque of the 1690s. After the reforms of Peter the Great, Russia's architecture became influenced by Western European styles. The 18th-century taste for Rococo architecture led to the splendid works of Bartolomeo Rastrelli and his followers. During the reign of Catherine the Great, Saint Petersburg was transformed into an outdoor museum of Neoclassical architecture . During Alexander I 's rule, Empire style became
22560-647: The way home. The Hujum began in 1926, the veil acting as a stark contrast between the ‘primitive’ and traditional East with the new promise of socialist progress. The Zhenotdel became the mechanism through which the Soviet Union was able to consolidate its power over its neighboring regions. These Bolshevik women viewed the paranja , as a symbol of their seclusion from society. The use of Soviet propaganda showcased these Muslim women covered head to toe and prohibited from engaging with men outside of their family. The Zhenotdel mainly focused their de-veiling efforts throughout Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan , and they would become
22720-496: The women of the Soviet Union . This was the first time these women were involved in anything resembling a political space. Although most of these women wanted to be liberated from the double burden all working women experience, they were also afraid that the revolution would strip away traditional family life. Kollontai gave a speech in response, later entitled "The Family and the Communist State", going in detail about how
22880-435: The work of the Zhenotdel. The leaders of the Zhenotdel were committed communists, and worked as part of the Soviet state apparatus. Historian Elizabeth Wood has argued that the organization took an active interest in women's problems, and initially served as a conduit for women's issues from the people to the state. The Zhenotdel was shut down by Stalin as he was establishing his power in 1930, he believed that women's issues in
23040-472: The workers, men and women, will above all be comrades. – Alexandra Kollontai (1920), Communism and the Family Kollontai's saw domestic labour as an impediment to her ideal of the "universal family". Rather than viewing the tasks that were traditionally reserved for women as productive labour, Kollontai believed that housework stood in the way of industrialization and modernization and that under
23200-550: The year 862, which was ruled by the Varangians . Staraya Ladoga and Novgorod became the first major cities of the new union of immigrants from Scandinavia with the Slavs and Finns . In 882, the prince Oleg seized Kiev , thereby uniting the northern and southern lands of the East Slavs under one authority. The state adopted Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as
23360-455: Was "not entirely in agreement with [Lenin] about some little problem of agricultural or industrial policy." During this time, Kollontai was also in the process of a painful divorce from her second husband, Pavel Dybenko, which made her want a change of scenery. In the latter half of 1922 she wrote a "personal letter" to the newly appointed General Secretary of the Central Committee and her recent inquisitor, Joseph Stalin , asking to be sent on
23520-607: Was Kollontai's half-sister via her mother. The celebrated Soviet-Russian conductor Yevgeny Mravinsky , music director of the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra for fifty years (1938–1988), was the only son of Mravina's brother Alexander Kostantinovich and thus Kollontai's half nephew. The saga of her parents' long and difficult struggle to be together in spite of the norms of society would color and inform Alexandra Kollontai's own views of relationships, sex, and marriage. Alexandra Mikhailovna Domontovich
23680-583: Was a Russian revolutionary, politician, diplomat and Marxist theoretician . Serving as the People's Commissar for Welfare in Vladimir Lenin 's government in 1917–1918, she was a highly prominent woman within the Bolshevik party . She was the first woman to be a cabinet minister, and the first woman ambassador. The daughter of an Imperial Russian Army general, Kollontai embraced radical politics in
23840-420: Was a student of German. Alexandra sought to continue her schooling at a university, but her mother refused her permission, arguing that women had no real need for higher education , and that impressionable youngsters encountered too many dangerous radical ideas at universities. Instead, Alexandra was to be allowed to take an exam to gain certification as a school teacher before making her way into society to find
24000-433: Was best known for having identified the centers of origin of cultivated plants. Many famous Russian scientists and inventors were émigrés . Igor Sikorsky was an aviation pioneer . Vladimir Zworykin was the inventor of the iconoscope and kinescope television systems. Theodosius Dobzhansky was the central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the modern synthesis . George Gamow
24160-521: Was born on 31 March [ O.S. 19 March] 1872 in St. Petersburg . "Shura", as she was called growing up, was close to her father, with whom she shared an analytical bent and an interest in history and politics. Her relationship with her mother, for whom she was named, was more complex. She later recalled: My mother and the English nanny who reared me were demanding. There was order in everything: to tidy up toys myself, to lay my underwear on
24320-531: Was cared for by her friend, Swedish doctor Ada Nilsson as her health began to fail and retired in 1945. In 1946 and 1947 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Scandinavian political circles, including the Finnish president and erstwhile Envoy to Moscow, Juho Kusti Paasikivi , on the grounds of "her diplomatic efforts to end war and hostilities between the Soviet Union and Finland during
24480-465: Was contemptuously critical of Kollontai's political attitude, writing that 'In Russia, Kolontay took from the very first an ultra-left stand, not only toward me but toward Lenin as well. She waged many a battle against the "Lenin-Trotsky" regime, only to bow most movingly later on to the Stalin regime.' Yet, it could also be argued that she had just internalized for good the lesson Trotsky had taught her at
24640-691: Was detached, [from Vladimir], because of the revolutionary upsettings rooted in Russia." In 1898 she left little Mikhail with her parents to study economics in Zürich , Switzerland, with Professor Heinrich Herkner . She then paid a visit to England, where she met members of the British socialist movement, including Sidney and Beatrice Webb . She returned to Russia in 1899, at which time she met Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov, better known today as Vladimir Lenin . Kollontai became interested in Marxist ideas while studying
24800-520: Was finally promoted to Ambassador in 1943. She was also a member of the Soviet delegation to the League of Nations . When Kollontai was in Stockholm , the Winter War between Russia and Finland broke out; it has been said that it was largely due to her influence that Sweden remained neutral. After the war, she received Vyacheslav Molotov 's praises. During late April 1943, Kollontai may have been involved in abortive peace negotiations with Hans Thomsen , her German counterpart in Stockholm. Kollontai
24960-498: Was merely the same division of labor that was practiced in the home. In May 1926 the Party created a decree that transferred the work of organizing women from the Zhenotdel to the local factory unions. The unions did nothing to educate women or move them up to higher positions. 33 percent of women workers in textile factories were illiterate much less actively participating in unions. Most local party officials interpreted this decree as an end to all work among women instead of taking on
25120-419: Was one of the foremost advocates of the Big Bang theory. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is called the father of theoretical astronautics , whose works had inspired leading Soviet rocket engineers, such as Valentin Glushko , and many others. In 1961, the first human trip into space was successfully made by Yuri Gagarin . In 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first and youngest woman in space , having flown
25280-425: Was promoted to the title of ambassador to Sweden. Kollontai retired from diplomatic service in 1945 and died in Moscow in 1952. Kollontai's father, General Mikhail Alekseyevich Domontovich (1830–1902), descended from a Ukrainian family that traced its ancestry back to the 13th century and Daumantas of Pskov . Her father served as a cavalry officer in the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) . After his participation in
25440-589: Was the daughter of Alexander Feodorovich Masalin (Massalin) (1809–1859), a Finnish peasant who had made a fortune selling wood. Alexandra Alexandrovna Masalina became known as Alexandra Alexandrovna Masalina-Mravinskaya after her marriage to her first husband, Konstantin Iosipovich Mravinsky (originally spelled Mrovinsky) (1829–1921). Her marriage to Mravinsky was an arranged marriage which turned out to be unhappy, and eventually she divorced Mravinsky in order to marry Mikhail Domontovich, with whom she had fallen in love. Russian opera singer Yevgeniya Mravina (stage name)
25600-425: Was the only major leader of the Petrograd Bolsheviks who immediately voiced her full support for his radical and nonconformist new proposals (the so-called " April theses "). She was a member of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet , and "for the rest of 1917, [she] was a constant agitator for revolution in Russia as a speaker, leaflet writer and worker on the Bolshevik women's paper Rabotnitsa ". Following
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