4 November, 2013
For You, Comrade Women
In 1917, women took to the streets of Saint Petersburg on International Women’s Day and demanded “Bread and Peace” in what ultimately initiated the February Revolution. After the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin made International Women’s Day an official holiday of the Soviet Union. Lenin wrote On International Women’s Day in 1920 that “the main task [of the working women’s movement] is to draw the women into socially productive labour, extricate them from “domestic slavery”, free them of their stultifying and humiliating resignation to the perpetual and exclusive atmosphere of the kitchen and nursery”. During the early days of the Soviet Union, the Bolsheviks turned the country into the most progressive nation in terms of redefining gender. The idea of equality became curtailed in the days of Stalin. In 1936, legal abortions were abolished mainly due to the declining birthrate and concerns about the future population. Stalin propagandized the importance of giving birth and building a large family. While Soviet women may have been seen as progressive due to their status as workers, the push for them to build these large families led to a double burden for them. Women became responsible not only for their working hours, but they also had the “burden” of maintaining the home and family as well.
Seventeen Moments in Soviet History notes in “What’s a Woman to Think?” that many who sought to continue the cause for the female emancipation that began with the October Revolution would have been confused during the 1950’s as traditional gender roles were reinforced. The idea of “femininity” was stressed throughout Soviet culture and women were given role models such as teachers and housewife. Seventeen Moments points to the consumer economy as one reason for these traditional roles being reinforced because it enabled women to buy new items for their homes and their selves.
A 1954 Poster ad for a vacuum targeted at the Soviet Women reads, “Electric Vacuum Cleaner. Cleans dust from rugs, clothes, furniture and walls quickly and well”
A woman prettying up her feet in a 1956 Soviet salon.
While it seemed as if Soviet culture was moving away from gender equality, events were also occurring that did not reinforce the traditional gender roles. The Party Central Committee sent out a decree on International Women’s Day in 1954 praising the female workers. An except of the decree, which not only praised the Soviet woman but also denounced the capitalist woman reads, “A numerous army of women specialists is working fruitfully, on equal footing with men, in all branches of the socialist economy, science and culture and in the state apparatus. Soviet women have a prominent place in science and art. More than 2,700,000 women are working in scientific, educational and cultural-enlightenment establishments in our country. Women scientists, engineers and technicians, agronomists and zootechnicians are enriching Soviet science by their research, inventions and discoveries. Women writers, artists and workers in the theater and in cinematography have made important contributions to the development of Soviet arts.”. Of course, we know that the degree of the equality being propagandized here is a bit exaggerated, but the way that the party stresses the woman as a worker is a clear contradiction of any kind of traditional gender role (especially that which existed in the United States during this decade). Later, the decree goes on to mention just how important it is for the Soviet woman to be a mother as she has, “an important and honorable task-the upbringing of children, the future builders of communism”. Surely the party had to have realized that the task of being a worker and a mother was a difficult one. A typical Soviet mother would work a full work day and then come home to an almost equal amount of work in her home. Another major contradiction existed with the repeal of the 1936 abortion ban in 1955. The repeal acknowledged that the woman had a right to choose , but it also acknowledged the governments right to choose to reinstate the ban. While it may have been legal to get an abortion, the government spent a great deal of time denouncing the action of actually getting one. In For You, Comrade Men, Soviet men are discouraged from giving their wife the “right” to make the decision to have an abortion and are told to protect her life and their familial happiness.
Poster for L. Aristov’s “For You, Comrade Men”
The 1950’s were not the first or the only time that the “cult of motherhood” and the ideal soviet worker would clash in Soviet history. The Soviet mother would go on to get a stereotype as a self-sacrificing hard worker whose day seemed to have no end. A question that I would like to pose in regard to the conflicting ambitions giving to women is: Was it a flaw in the Soviet system? Did the government fail to provide working mothers with adequate help in raising the children and working their full work week (Lenin had promised cafeterias, nurseries, and daycare whose usefulness is up for debate) ; or is the double burden just a fact of life for a working mother that is present in every society today?
The main module that I used for this blog post was 1954’s “Whats a Woman to Think?” found at http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1954women&Year=1954 . The modules, “The Double Burden” and “Repealing the Ban on Abortion”, provided a lot of complementary material and can be found at http://www.soviethistory.org/index.phppage=subject&SubjectID=1968burden&Year=1968 and http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1956repeal&Year=1956 .
I used a primary source with the Current Digest of Post-Soviet Press called, “CONCERNING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY, MARCH 8.-Decree of Party Central Committee” which can be found at http://dlib.eastview.com/searchresults/article.jsp?art=35&id=13843939 .
Some other primary sources that I used were Lenin’s “On International Womens Day” (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/mar/04.htm), and L. Aristov’s “For You, Comrade Men” (http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=article&ArticleID=1956men1&SubjectID=1956repeal&Year=1956)
The images that I used are from these websites and are in the order in which they appear:
http://kcmeesha.com/2012/03/07/old-photos-women-of-the-ussr/
http://kcmeesha.com/2010/01/24/old-photosfeeling-pretty/
15 November, 2013
The Unbearable Lightness of Prague Spring
The year 1968 provided for a considerable amount of cultural and historical material all around the world. In Czechoslovakia, 1968 represents the year of the Prague Spring and the attempted liberalization of the Eastern Bloc country. During the 1960’s, De-Stalinization had begun under the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Antonín Novotný. By late 1967, Novotný was losing support and even Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev began to oppose him. A major source of the opposition came from members of the Czech writers union and other intellectuals. Many citizens supported the opposition because of the struggling economy that the almost-Western country faced under the Soviet model of industrialization. Novotný was eventually ousted, and on January 5, 1968 reformer and career party politician, Alexander Dubček took over as First Secretary. Soon after, on the anniversary of “Victorious February” (the communist takeover celebration), Dubček delivered a speech advocating change. He wanted socialism to fit the historical context of Czechoslovakia. The avenue that he used for his reforms was called the Action Program which would allow for freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, availability of more consumer goods, limited power to the secret police, and the possibility of an eventual multiparty government. For us these reforms are cornerstones built into American history, but to an Eastern Bloc country, these had the possibility to be viewed as extremely dangerous measures (Perestroika and Glasnost, anyone?). Dubček’s slogan for his new agenda was “Socialism with a Human Face” and sounds a bit hostile to the Marx-Leninists in the motherland.
Dubček in Czechoslovakia
After Dubček took over, scholar Eduard Goldstucker became editor in chief of the formally strictly communist controlled paper Literarni listy (renamed from Literarni noviny) and head of the writers union. He tested Dubček’s loyalty to reform by criticizing Novotný’s leadership and the lack of Czechoslovakian economic progress and Dubček passed and earned the writer’s trust. Everything seemed to be optimistic and peaceful in Czechoslovakia during the Dubček reforms, which came to be known as Prague Spring (the predecessor to Beijing Spring, Croatian Spring, and most relevant to us: Arab Spring).. that is until members of the Warsaw Pact, (Brezhnev) began to grow concerned. Negotiations between the “Warsaw Five” and Dubček began to take place almost immediately after the launch of the Action Program. Dubček did his best to defend his reforms despite some opposition in his own party, and attempted to compromise. In the end, even if Dubček had really wanted to, he likely could not have reeled in the fervor that had resulted from the liberalizations attained during the Prague Spring. The Soviet Union was not happy with this and in The Warsaw Letter it is clear that Czechoslovakia’s communist deviance would soon be met with force as it reads,
Throughout the rest of the summer of 1968, negotiations between the Warsaw Pact and Czechoslovakia were not satisfactory to the Soviet Union. By the end of August, it was clear that the only way to put down the Prague Spring, was through force- This would become known as the Brezhnev Doctrine. This doctrine was to be the means through which the Soviet Union would get socialist governments to subordinate to their national interests and the interests of socialism, and if force was necessary it was to be used.
On August 20, the Warsaw Pact countries sent in their tanks and invaded Czechoslovakia with troops in the hundreds of thousands and with the backing of the Politbiuro . The invasion killed a little over one hundred citizens and barely took a day to take control of the country.
The Soviet Press printed a “Letter to Brezhnev” (which it turned out had not come from the Czechoslovakian leadership) in which the KSČ government had invited the invasion. A line from the “letter” reads (in Russian, not Czech or Slovak, by the way),
To the credit of Dubček, he asked his citizens not to respond violently. The public relations disaster that followed this was bad enough for the Soviet Union. In addition to much Western criticism, Albania withdrew from the Warsaw Pact, and countries like Romania and Finland saw it as a scandal as many saw this invasion as an act of imperialism. In Red Square, eight demonstrators were arrested for protesting against the invasion and for supporting Czechoslovakia.
Red Square protester banner:
“FOR YOUR FREEDOM AND OURS”
The Current Digest of the Russian press provides us with the voice to the Soviet about the situation in their satellite country a few months after the invasion. The author writes,
The article continues to denounce the anti-socialist aims of Czechoslovakia, and expresses a genuine need for Czechoslovakia to put their media under communist control (so that articles like this can be mass read in Czechoslovakia). So at first glance you may ask, ‘What is the significance of this?’. After all, we just finished discussing a similar situation in Hungary that had to be put down a little over a decade earlier. In my opinion, this act of rebellion was different. It was not different in that it produced a result that was not a communist victory, but it was different in that it produced a concrete idea that would have lasting effects for the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and the rest of the world two decades later. Future Soviet Premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, would later admit that he saw the need for Perestroika and Glasnost (Socialism with a Human Face) from the events of the Prague Spring. In fact, Gorbachev and Dubček were both students at the Moscow State University in the 1950s and had mutual associates. Gorbachev told a Slovak newspaper in 1998 that he “found courage and strength to start fundamental changes” in the 1980s because of the events of the Prague Spring. I took the idea for the title of this entry from the Czechoslovakian novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera which was set during the Prague Spring. Kundera took the title from an idea furthered by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that essentially says that the events of the earth have already occurred and will continue to occur forever, and sought to challenge the idea in the novel. In 1989, when a similar situation occurred in East Germany that would have normally been met with the force under the Brezhnev Doctrine, Gorbachev did not repeat history’s precedent; He let change happen- Change that Brezhnev was not ready to allow in 1968.
I used the module 1968: Crisis in Czechoslovakia for the topic of my post this week. The module can be found at:
http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1968czechoslovakia&Year=1968
Some primary sources that I used in this post can be found at the following sites:
Warsaw Letter: http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=article&ArticleID=1968spring1&SubjectID=1968czechoslovakia&Year=1968
Letter to Brezhnev: http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=article&ArticleID=1968bilak1&SubjectID=1968czechoslovakia&Year=1968
Current Digest of the Russian Press: http://dlib.eastview.com/searchresults/article.jsp?art=12&id=13759124
I also used the Wikipedia article Prague Spring to frame a lot of my background information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring
And finally this article for some interesting points: http://www.aworldtowin.net/resources/PragueSpring.html
The photos are found at theses sites in the order in which they appear:
http://prague-stay.com/lifestyle/review/128-the-20th-century/, https://wikiwillows2011.wikispaces.com/Cold+War+Era, http://www.walesartsreview.org/two-thousand-words-on-two-thousand-words-by-ludvik-vaculik/, http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2008/08/page/2/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Za_vashu_i_nashu_svobodu.jpg, and http://all-that-is-interesting.com/iconic-photograph-1968-prague-spring
By Kelsey Shober Uncategorized 8 Comments