The Women’s Movement in Russia: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow By Zoya Khotkina, Ph.D., Moscow Centre for Gender Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia |
1. What does Russian feminism (as the basis for a social movement) look like? The women’s movement in contemporary Russia exists as the social, cultural, and political activity of women’s groups and organisations, aimed at bringing together the interests of various social strata of women and bringing about a change in the system of gender relations. The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation has officially registered over 600 women’s organisations. The women’s movement in Russia is one of the most active parts of the Third Section Movement, encompassing approximately 10% of the most active NGOs. To understand the originality of the contemporary Russian women’s movement, and to distinguish it from Western feminism, it is essential to give at least a brief overview of its historical roots. I shall present only the main theses on this issue and shall state a few historical fact and instances. Thesis one Russian feminism (as a theory) and women’s movement (as practice) were not “imported” to Russia from the West; rather than that, they had a deep historical tradition, dating back to the mid-19th century. This means that Russian feminism is over one hundred and fifty years old, rather than fifteen, as argued by some Russian and Western specialists. Russia has had two great waves of feminism:
The first wave of feminism in Russia (mid-19th century until 1930) The beginnings of feminism in Russia are closely connected with the 19th century liberation and peasants’ rights movement. (Serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861.) It was the struggle for the peasants’ rights that actualised the issues of women’s status and rights in the Russian society. Western researchers are better informed about the Soviet-period feminism in Russia, associated with the name of Alexandra Kollontay, while being insufficiently familiar with the pre-Revolution stage of the first wave of feminism in Russia. But nowadays, owing to the efforts of modern Russian feminist historians, the scientific discourse has included a multitude of documents and theoretical texts of pre-Revolution (up to 1917) Russian feminists. These texts show how strong and efficient the women’s social movement was at the time and that it had a serious theoretical basis. The massive nature of the Russian women’s movement is illustrated, for instance, by the occurrence of the First Pan-Russian Women’s Congress in St. Petersburg in 1908. The Congress was attended by 1000 delegates from all over Russia (while the interest was even higher). They represented various types of women’s organisations from women’s fractions within political parties to charitable and proletarian organisations. The texts of their speeches show that the essential issues and problems discussed at the Congress were women’s social and political status, their economic status and the issue of paid work, participation of women in local government, the fate of democracy, women in Russia, etc. Obviously, the agenda of the Women’s Congress held a hundred years ago is still relevant! The maturity of the first wave of Russian feminism as a theory is evidenced by the following facts. For over ten years (1904-1917), Russia saw the publication of feminist magazines such as Women’s Gazette and Women’s Association containing serious articles (on the problems of women workers, on the participation of women in local government, on marriage, abortion, and prostitution), informative ones (on the work of political, provincial, and foreign women’s organisations), as well as theoretical articles (such as A. Kalymanovich’s “A Few Words on Feminism,” E. Kuskova’s “Women and Equal Rights,” M. Pokrovskaya’s “Prostitution as a Form of Violence against Women,” etc.). Even then, the theory of feminism was elaborated in two basic streams: egalitarian feminism and the feminism of diversity. The egalitarian stream was more popular and stronger, as the struggle for equal rights with men was the most relevant at that moment. However, the positions of the adherents of diversity feminism, with their idea of “equality in differences” were represented both in speeches at the Congress and in publication. Here is a quotation from a speech entitled “Women’s Self-Awareness as a Factor in the Restoration of the Society” presented at the Congress by Olga Sapir: “It is time to stop proving that SHE can be like HE: no! First of all, she must be herself and develop her own individual abilities.” Thesis two In view of the above, my second thesis is that rights of Soviet women were not granted “from above” as argued by some Western and Russian authors. It was an act of realisation of the results of many years of struggling by Russian women for their rights. In 1917, women got all these social and political rights for which they had fought for over 50 years. Bolsheviks, who took power as a result of the October Revolution in 1917, cleverly used the women’s protest movement to win them over by giving them full social and political rights. Aleksandra Kollontay played a significant and tragic role in the process through which the traditions and ideas of the Russian women’s movement and theoretical first-wave feminism were discontinued, forgotten, and even banned in the Soviet era. Before the Revolution, she assured female workers that they have more common social interests with male proletarians than with “bourgeois feminists” (Kollontay, 1909). The protest of “proletarian women” that she lead against “bourgeois feminism” in Russia in the early 20th century bears certain resemblance to the political protest of African-American feminists against “white feminism of middle-class women” that challenged Western feminism in the 1980s. In the early 1920’s, Kollontay also strove to abolish and ban all women’s organisations apart from women’s sections of proletarian organisations. Established at her initiative after the 1917 revolution, trade unionist and territorial Women’s Councils and Women’s Sections were called in to perform the tasks of work (as the country was initiating its industrialisation and needing labouring hands) and political mobilisation (as the Bolsheviks were reinforcing their power). Still, when Women’s Sections tried to widen the scope of their activities and started to gain control over the work of the government bodies and the budget – they were banned. It means that 75 years ago our grandmothers made the first steps towards gender budgeting. Unfortunately, they were prevented; otherwise, we would have found it much easier to work today. Here is an extract from the agenda of the Women’s Section of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party for 1928/29: "Supervise the work of trade unions, co-operatives, Councils for the Improvement of Women Workers’ Lives; supervise the work of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education in improving the lives of peasant women, and also how much the federal and local budgets of the country have reflected the measures for the improvement of living and working conditions of the “Easterners” (women from Central Asian republics)." The document is kept at the RCCHDNI Archives and was published in E. Kostyusheva’s “Women and Feminism” in Women’s Issues in the Context of National Culture (Materials of the International Congress at the Nevsky Language and Cultural Institute, St. Petersburg, 1998, p. 48). The establishment of Stalin’s totalitarian regime lead to the destruction of all forms of civil activities and, in the early 1930s, to closure of Women’s Sections. It was announced that the “women’s issue” in the Soviet Union was resolved and, accordingly, no women’s organisations were required. Over the following 60 years of Soviet rule (from the mid-1930s until the mid-1980s), the women’s movement in Russia was practically non-existent. In 1944, for the purpose of propagating the achievements of Soviet women abroad, the government formed the Soviet Women’s Committee. It, however, did not encompass solving the practical problems of Soviet women. An attempt was made in the late 1970s to publish a dissident women’s magazine Maria for which Tatiana Mamonova and her colleagues were exiled from the USSR. In the mid-1980s, Gorbachev proposed reinstatement of Women’s Councils, which were controlled by the Party and, in most cases, were purely ceremonial in character. The Iron Curtain and Soviet censorship gave practically no opportunity for information on the development of feminism in the West to reach the country. A new era in Russian feminism (late 1980s to the present) The beginning of a new era in Russian feminism is associated with the period of glasnost and perestroika. Women’s NGOs as a phenomenon of social life emerged in the late 1980s. The activities of new feminist organisations in Russia in the 1990s and their critique regarding the “solution of the women’s issue” in the Soviet Union are rather well-known in the West. This information is considerably well-distributed owing to the active work of the Moscow Centre for Gender Studies. They introduced to Russia in 1991 and 1992 the First and Second Independent Women’s Forums in Dubna, and they published in English the book Women in Russia: A New Era in Russian Feminism which I co-authored. Nearly 600 women’s organisations exist in Russia now but only 5-10% of them declare themselves to be feminist organisations. The activities of all other women’s organisations are connected with the following (by rate of occurrence):
There are several women’s organisations in Russia that either form a wide regional network or are networks themselves. They usually work in several directions. For example, the Information Centre of the Independent Women’s Forum connects about 100 organisations; the Consortium of women’s NGOs (1998) connects 85 organisations; the Union of Women of Russia (former Soviet Women’s Committee) registered in 1991 formally comprises 94 regional departments; and the Women’s Movement of Russia (1996) has 59 regional departments. The peak of activity of the second wave of feminism in Russia can be placed in the mid-1990s. In this period (1993-95), the Duma (the Federal Parliament of Russia) included a faction of the “Women of Russia” advocating the interests of women in the country’s highest legislative body. Moreover, 1995 was the time of preparation and occurrence of the 4th World Women’s Conference and NGO Forum in Beijing. At the Beijing Forum, Russia was represented by more than 270 women (delegates and women from NGOs). In comparison, in Nairobi in 1985, the Soviet Union sent only 10 people, mainly men from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Enriched by the experience of active participation in the women’s movement in the late 1990’s, Russian researchers started their active involvement in empirical research, as well as in introducing feminism into university curricula. The Moscow Centre for Gender Studies, together with regional universities of the Russian Summer School on Gender Studies in 1996-98, contributed greatly to unification and consolidation of Russian feminist-oriented research. I was the Director of the first three summer schools (Valday-96, Volgga-97, and Azov-98). This initiative was accepted then by universities; and, since 2000, such schools have been operating regularly in various regions of Russia. The end of the 1990s in Russia can be regarded as the institutional phase of gender relations studies as a scientific and educational stream. Not only at certain Russian universities, this was the time when the research of gender relations was introduced as a compulsory university standard for experts in social work and sociology. The results of the development of Russian research of gender relations became more obvious at the beginning of the 21st century. There was a real boom in publications on gender relations; dissertations on this topic are being presented all over the country; and hundreds of qualified university instructors have been educated. At Russian universities, hundreds of students write their graduation papers on and thousands of students attend courses in the history and theory of feminism. This is all contributing to the process of establishing knowledge in this field and wide dissemination of feminist ideas in Russia. 2. How and why is Russian feminism different from Western feminism? The first thing to mention is that feminism is theory and practice that has emerged and developed as a response to women’s social demands. Thus, if real problems faced by women of the East and West, white and non-white, rich and poor, from various countries and cultures are not the same, then their “feminisms” are different as well. According to Russian feminists Anna Temkina and Elena Zdravomyslova, these differences are ontological, political, and gnoseological. In ontological terms (as the experience of the relationship between masculinity and femininity), the Russian system of gender relations is essentially different from the Western one. The experience, practices, and deprivation of the Soviet “working mother” differ significantly from the situation of an economically dependent American “housewife,” and this is why the issues of oppression, conceived in the West through the prism of “patriarchate,” are not quite apparent in Russia. Among the political factors determining the different character of Russian feminism, one must first highlight the change of the political system as a whole and the occurrence of public discourse in the real sense of the word, as the possibility of dealing with a problem whose solution is the interest of the civil society rather than of the government. The second factor is the emergence of the women’s movement. Originally, the Russian women’s movement was diversified into two streams – the post-Soviet women’s movement (Women’s Councils) – and the feminist faction. In accordance with those, two streams of research and education developed as well – feminology (vaguely similar to Women’s Studies) and more radical gender studies of feminists. It must be pointed out that now such a clear-cut distinction no longer exists, neither in the Russian women's movement nor within the groups of researchers and university lecturers. The gnoseological factors also affected the specific character of the formation of feminism in Russia because all other scientific approaches and theories were banned and tabooed during the era of dogmatic Marxism. Analysing barriers to spreading feminist philosophy in Russia, researchers argue that the Soviet scientific discourse saw the discontinuation of the theoretical tradition that had formed a basis for feminist critique and that was characteristic of feminist gnoseology and the Western women’s movement. In connection with the significant differences in the contemporary socio-economic situations of Russia and of Western countries, Russian feminism and women’s movement are naturally targeted toward solving their own or others’ social tasks and cannot imitate the traditional Western institutions and patterns of social relationships. As the philosopher Irina Zherebkina believes, not only Russia but also the entire East European region was definitely, in this context and in the eyes of Western analysts, the cultural “other,” unharmonised with Western-type democracy. This exotic “other” was hardly comprehensible to Western feminists. This is why, for example, they could not hear what East European women wanted to tell them at the NGO Forum in Beijing in 1995 about ethnic wars, the lack of basic human rights, unemployment among women, the rise in violence, control of women’s bodies and reproductive ability, sexism, and the emergence of new forms of social inequality. However, in the documents of the Beijing conference, the transition of former Communist countries to democracy was termed a “completed” and “relatively peaceful” process. The reality of women of the East European region was characterised by the West with terms of categorical imperative: the ideology of democracy must transform your lives for the best; if you claim the opposite, then it is your personal feeling that nobody is interested in (Zherebkina, p. 11). But as the Russian proverb goes, “there is no bad without good.” The disregard shown by the international women’s movement for the problems of women in countries with transitioning economies, on the one hand, and real development of Russian gender studies, on the other, have given impulse to the active study of feminist heritage in Russia, not only that of Western origin but of genuinely Russian origin as well. In various towns and at universities, the 1990s saw the beginning of active study of the historical heritage of the first-wave Russian feminism. Russian feminism of the first wave is currently actively studied and taught at universities, first of all by Svetlana Aivazova and Natalia Pushkareva (the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow), Irina Yukina (Nevsky Institute in St. Petersburg), Valentina Uspenskaya (the University of Tversk), Olga Hazbulatova and Olga Shnirova (Ivanovsky Institute), etc. Owing to their publications and lectures on these subjects, modern researchers and activists of the women’s movement, as well as students, have not only found a lot of new information on the history of feminism in Russia, but also have gotten an opportunity to read texts by Russian feminists of the first wave. 3. What barriers in Russian society and politics have prevented feminism from developing as a movement? The barriers in the Russian society and politics that have prevented feminism from developing as a movement are similar to those in other countries – gender stereotypes; sexism; and the absence among women of the material, governmental, and institutional resources necessary to build a more humane, gender symmetrical, and just society; however, additional barriers exist in Russia. Concentrated ideological pressure through SMIs (mass media), religion, and literature pertaining to the propagation of the traditional wife-and-mother role for women, does not allow Russian women to realise the true status of work and the importance of their own roles in the contemporary society. The process of democratisation and market “quasi-reforms” in Russia and other East European countries is a men’s project. It has targeted appropriating former state property rather than improving the quality of life. The dramatic situation of Russian women is reflected in the fact that now they are forced to protect the rights and guarantees that they already had under the Communist regime but that were lost for them in the process of liberalising state policy: the rights to free medical services and free education, financial assistance for mothers and cheap kindergartens, reproductive rights (e.g., free abortion), and the right to work. Even more today, the Russian women’s movement has been forced to fight for what already had been acquired ten years ago. For instance, the national mechanism of gender equality was formed before the Beijing Conference, in the form of: 1. The Committee for the Issues of Women’s Rights in the Russian Federation, headed by the Deputy Prime Minister, whose decisions were mandatory and executive (dissolved by Decree no. 215 of the Government of the Russian Federation, dated 16 April, 2004); 2. The Committee for the Issues of Family, Women, and Demography, within the Ministry of Labour and Social Development of the Russian Federation (but the Ministry of Labour has not existed since 2004 so there is no Committee either); and 3. The Committee for the Issues of Family, Women, and Demography, working with the President of the country since 1994 (which disappeared in 2000 with the election of President Putin). This endless “Sisyphean task” of continued endeavour to achieve what already had been achieved and then was wasted is by all means a clearly visible feature of the modern Russian women’s movement. Barriers preventing the development of the women’s movement in Russia can be divided, conditionally, into three types. These are barriers of society, of state policies, and of women themselves, as outlined below. 1. The most significant barriers at the level of society are:
2. Barriers created by state policy include:
3. Barriers at the level of women themselves and within the women’s movement:
In comparison with the mid-1990s, nowadays Russia is obviously experiencing a decline in the women’s movement. In view of this, I would argue that the situation in the Russian women’s movement needs to be considered not only as something separate, but also in the context of overall processes occurring today in the global women’s movement. As Seyla Benhabib wrote 10 years ago, “We do not know, in fact, what this general feminist ‘we’ means, but it is sure that today we should not feel a nostalgia for expired integrity in the women’s movement, because it is the healthy pluralism of viewpoints and practical strategies that expresses the various aspects of the modern women’s movement” (Seyla Benhabib, ‘From Identity Politics to Social Feminism’, p.29. In: David Trend, ed., Radical Democracy: Identity, Citizenship and the State. NY: Routledge, 1996). 4. Are there any strategies that would help a feminist movement to develop? Despite the above mentioned problems and barriers, in the past 15 years, the Russian feminism of the second wave has accomplished a lot! The main achievement is that basic ideas and notions of feminist and gender theories have become part and parcel of the life of modern Russian society. They have transformed considerably public discourse and public awareness of the population and decision makers. Such notions as gender, reproductive rights, and sexual harassment have been brought into scientific usage and have become known not only to specialists. In discussions about the status of Russian women, the discourse about women’s “rights” is used actively now alongside the discourse about women’s “problems.” The taboo has been lifted on public discussion of such topics as discrimination of women in the sphere of politics, labour, and family violence. Now many Russians and decision makers understand that these are not personal problems of separate women but are social and political problems of the society. Thousands of militia and local administrative officers, judges, and journalists have had training in Russia and abroad in the issues of prevention of violence against women. Gender expertise of legislation at all levels, programs of political parties, statistics, media, textbooks, and now also budgets, have become practiced widely in Russia. Methods and results of gender expertise are published in books, web sites of women’s organizations, and a women’s portal (http://www.owl.ru). These are available to everyone. The process of reproduction of gender knowledge and specialists is making good progress through development and implementation of university programs on women’s and gender studies, as well as through publication of books and articles plus defence of dissertations and students’ diplomas on gender issues. We witness a real boom of publications on gender issues. In the directory Gender Studies in Russia and NIS: Who is Who, prepared by me in 2000, there were about 2000 titles of books and articles, but by now the number of publications on gender issues has tripled. The women’s movement is making a substantial contribution to development of the civil society in Russia when the Government is pursuing the policy of monetization of children’s and pensioners’ privileges. Women’s organizations have established public consulting offices that provide free consultations with lawyers and psychologists. These services are used widely by women in regions. They express a high opinion of the work of women’s organizations (Saratov, Smolensk, Syktyvkar, Murmansk, etc.). A network of crisis centres and hot lines for women has been established across the country and is successfully operating now. A professional expert community of highly skilled specialists has been created in the field of gender studies, whose reputation is recognized both in Russia and abroad in international organizations. For example, my colleagues from Moscow Center of Gender Studies, Olga Voronina, Marina Malysheva, Elena Ballayeva, and Marina Baskskova, are experts of UNDP, ILO, UNIFEM, World Bank, and other international organizations. I, myself, am an expert of UNDP and a consultant to ILO in gender and related areas. Regional women’s movements are successfully preparing and promoting women to oblast, city, and municipal legislative bodies. For example, in such regions as Yekaterinburg, Murmansk, and Snezhinsk, 30-40% of local authorities are women. Over ten years, Russian women’s information networks have been working successfully to disseminate information about the women’s movement in Russia and worldwide, about workshops and conferences, as well as about new publications, calls for grant proposals, and experiences and achievements of organizations and women in Russian regions. During all 15 years, the Russian women’s movement of the second wave has been working in hard conditions, when the advanced ideas of gender equality were moved forward despite the traditionalist policy and ideology imposed on women and society. Therefore, we are deeply grateful to the international women’s community for the great moral and material support rendered to us. Financial support from the West made it possible to carry over 60% of our projects and programs conducted by the Russian women’s movement in these years. At present the activity centres of the women’s movement are moving more and more from the centre to regions and from large-scale mass events and actions to intricate everyday work at the local level. While in Moscow the low-skill government is pursuing anti-popular and anti-gender policy (for example, monetization of privileges, liquidation of the National mechanism on women’s affairs), at the local level women are making efforts to ensure successful and fruitful work to solve many social and political problems of women, including by promoting women to power. For example, in Syktyvkar there is a Women’s Chamber successfully working, and in Yekaterinburg and Veliky Novgorod are Women’s Parliaments; and no serious political and economic decision can be taken without their participation. Regretfully, these local women’s activities have not been investigated and conceptualized by Russian feminist science. This is partly due to domination of the liberal-democratic egalitarian orientation of the Russian feminist discourse; it is more sensitive to examining drawbacks and to being critically minded, but is not quite fit for analyzing and summarizing the policies of “small actions” and positive practices. Yet, the results of the local activities are mostly appreciable and effective at the level of women’s everyday lives. This strategy of “small actions” of women and women’s organizations that show themselves in everyday practices, rather than in large-scale events, was called “constructive feminism” by a researcher from Syktyvkar, Svetlana Yaroshenko. The main work on changing the society and women’s consciences has been started by the women’s movement, and no “barriers” can stop it. Therefore, today we have not to “struggle” but to act and create constructive feminism – every day, everyone in her own place – and we shall change the world for the better! Translation from Russian: Women’s Center for Democracy and Human Rights, Subotica, Serbia and Montenegro REFERENCES: Alexandra Kollontay, The Social Basis of the Women’s Questions, 1909. See at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/works/1909/social-basis.htm E. Kostyusheva, ‘Women and Feminism’, in Women’s Issues in the Context of National Culture,Materials of the International Congress at the Nevsky Language and Cultural Institute, St. Petersburg, 1998, p.48 Seyla Benhabib, ‘From Identity Politics to Social Feminism’, p.29. In: David Trend, ed., Radical Democracy: Identity, Citizenship and the State. NY: Routledge, 1996
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