V. I. Lenin

Speech Delivered At The Fourth Moscow City Conference Of Non-Party Working Women

September 23, 1919

Comrades, it gives me pleasure to greet a conference of working women. I will allow myself to pass over
those subjects and questions that, of course, at the moment are
the cause of the greatest concern to every working woman and to
every politically-conscious individual from among the working
people; these are the most urgent questions—that of bread
and that of the war situation. I know from the newspaper reports
of your meetings that these questions have been dealt with
exhaustively by Comrade Trotsky as far as war questions are
concerned and by Comrades Yakovleva and Svidersky as far as the
bread question is concerned; please, therefore, allow me to pass
over those questions.

I should like to say a few words about the general tasks facing
the working women’s movement in the Soviet Republic, those
that are, in general, connected with the transition to socialism,
and those that are of particular urgency at the present
time. Comrades, the question of the position of women was raised
by Soviet power from the very beginning. It seems to me that any
workers’ state in the course of transition to socialism is
laced with a double task. The first part of that task is
relatively simple and easy. It concerns those old laws that kept
women in a position of inequality as compared to men.

Participants in all emancipation movements in Western Europe
have long since, not for decades but for centuries, put forward
the demand that obsolete laws be annulled and women and men be
made equal by law, but none of the democratic European states,
none of the most advanced republics have succeeded in putting it
into effect, because wherever there is capitalism, wherever there
is private property in land and factories, wherever the power of
capital is preserved, the men retain their privileges. It was
possible to put it into effect in Russia only because the power of
the workers has been established here since October 25, 1917. From
its very inception Soviet power set out to be the power of the
working people, hostile to all forms of exploitation. It set
itself the task of doing away with the possibility of the
exploitation of the working people by the landowners and
capitalists, of doing away with the rule of capital. Soviet power
has been trying to make it possible for the working people to
organise their lives without private property in land, without
privately-owned factories, without that private property that
everywhere, throughout the world, even where there is complete
political liberty, even in the most democratic republics, keeps
the working people in a state of what is actually poverty and
wage-slavery, and women in a state of double slavery.

Soviet power, the power of the working people, in the first
months of its existence effected a very definite revolution in
legislation that concerns women. Nothing whatever is left in the
Soviet Republic of those laws that put women in a subordinate
position. I am speaking specifically of those laws that took
advantage of the weaker position of women and put them in a
position of inequality and often, even, in a humiliating position,
i.e., the laws on divorce and on children born out of wedlock and
on the right of a woman to summon the father of a child for
maintenance.

It is particularly in this sphere that bourgeois legislation,
even, it must be said, in the most advanced countries, takes
advantage of the weaker position of women to humiliate them and
give them a status of inequality. It is particularly in this
sphere that Soviet power has left nothing whatever of the old,
unjust laws that were intolerable for working people. We may now
say proudly and without any exaggeration that apart from Soviet
Russia there is not a country in the world where women enjoy full
equality and where women are not placed in the humiliating
position felt particularly in day-to-day family life. This was one
of our first and most important tasks.

If you have occasion to come into contact with parties that are
hostile to the Bolsheviks, if there should come into your hands
newspapers published in Russian in the regions occupied by Koichak
or Denikin, or if you happen to talk to people who share the views
of those newspapers, you may often hear from them the accusation
that Soviet power has violated democracy.

We, the representatives of Soviet power, Bolshevik Communists
and supporters of Soviet power are often accused of violating
democracy and proof of this is given by citing the fact that
Soviet power dispersed the Constituent Assembly. We usually answer
this accusation as follows; that democracy and that Constituent
Assembly which came into being when private property still existed
on earth, when there was no equality between people, when the one
who possessed his own capital was the boss and the others worked
for him and were his wage-slaves-that was a democracy on which we
place no value. Such democracy concealed slavery even in the most
advanced countries. We socialists are supporters of democracy only
insofar as it eases the position of the working and oppressed
people. Throughout the world socialism has set itself the task of
combating every kind of exploitation of man by man. That democracy
has real value for us winch serves the exploited, the underprivileged. If those who do not work are disfranchised that
would be real equality between people. Those who do not work
should not eat.

In reply to these accusations we say that the question must be
presented in this way—how is democracy implemented in various countries? We see that equality is proclaimed in all
democratic republics but in the civil laws and in laws on the
rights of women—those that concern their position in the
family and divorce—we see inequality and the humiliation of
women at every step, and we say that this is a violation of
democracy specifically in respect of the oppressed. Soviet power
has implemented democracy to a greater degree than any of the
other, most advanced countries because it has not left in its laws
any trace of the inequality of women.

Again I say that no other state and no other legislation has
ever done for women a half of what Soviet power did in the first
months of its existence.

Laws alone, of course, are not enough, and we are by no means
content with mere decrees. In the sphere of legislation, however,
we have done everything required of us to put women in a position
of equality and we have every right to be proud of it. The
position of women in Soviet Russia is now ideal as compared with
their position in the most advanced states. We tell ourselves,
however, that this is, of course, only the beginning.

Owing to her work in the house, the woman is still in a
difficult position. To effect her complete emancipation and make
her the equal of the man it is necessary for the national economy
to be socialised and for women to participate in common productive
labour. Then women will occupy the same position as men.

Here we are not, of course, speaking of making women the equal
of men as far as productivity of labour, the quantity of labour,
the length of the working day, labour conditions, etc., are
concerned; we mean that the woman should not, unlike the man, be
oppressed because of her position in the family. You all know that
even when women have full rights, they still remain factually
downtrodden because all housework is left to them. In most cases
housework is the most unproductive, the most barbarous and the
most arduous work a woman can do. It is exceptionally petty and
does not include anything that would in any way promote the
development of the woman.

In pursuance of the socialist ideal we want to struggle for the
full implementation of socialism, and here an extensive field of
labour opens up before women. We are now making serious
preparations to clear the ground for the building of socialism,
but the building of socialism will begin only when we have
achieved the complete equality of women and when we undertake the
new work together with women who have been ’emancipated from
that petty, stultifying, unproductive work. This is a job that
will take us many, many years.

This work cannot show any rapid results and will not produce a
scintillating effect.

We are setting up model institutions, dining-rooms and nurseries, that will emancipate women from housework. And the work
of organising all these institutions will fall mainly to women. It
has to be admitted that in Russia today there are very few
institutions that would help woman out of her state of household
slavery. There is an insignificant number of them, and the
conditions now obtaining in the Soviet Republic—the war and
food situation about which comrades have already given you the
details—hinder us in this work. Still, it must be said that
these institutions that liberate women from their position as
household slaves are springing up wherever it is in any way
possible.

We say that the emancipation of the workers must be effected by
the workers themselves, and in exactly the same way the
emancipation of working women is a matter for the working women
themselves. The working women must themselves see to it that such
institutions are developed, and this activity will bring about a
complete change in their position as compared with what it was
under the old, capitalist society.

In order to be active in politics under the old, capitalist
regime special training was required, so that women played an
insignificant part in politics, even in the most advanced and free
capitalist countries. Our task is to make politics available to
every working woman. Ever since private property in laud and
factories has been abolished and the power of the landowners and
capitalists overthrown, the tasks of politics have become simple,
clear and comprehensible to the working people as a whole,
including working women. In capitalist society the woman’s
position is marked by such inequality that the extent of her
participation in politics is only an insignificant fraction of
that of the man. The power of the working people is necessary for
a change to be wrought in this situation, for then the main tasks
of politics will consist of matters directly affecting the fate of
the working people themselves.

Here, too, the participation of working women is essential
—not only of party members and politically-conscious women,
but also of the non-party women and those who are least
politically conscious. Here Soviet power opens up a wide field of
activity to working women.

We have had a difficult time in the struggle against the forces
hostile to Soviet Russia that have attacked her. It was difficult
for us to fight on the battlefield against the forces who went to
war against the power of the working people and in the field of
food supplies against the profiteers, because of the too small
number of people, working people, who came whole-heartedly to our
aid with their own labour. Here, too, there is nothing Soviet
power can appreciate as much as the help given by masses of
non-party working women. They may know that in the old, bourgeois
society, perhaps, a comprehensive training was necessary for
participation in politics and that this was not available to
women. The political activity of the Soviet Republic is mainly the
struggle against the landowners and capitalists, the struggle for
the elimination of exploitation; political activity, therefore, is
made available to the working woman in the Soviet Republic and it
will consist in the working woman using her organisational ability
to help the working man.

What we need is not only organisational work on a scale
involving millions; we need organisational work on the smallest
scale and this makes it possible for women to work as well. Women
can work under war conditions when it is a question of helping the
army or carrying on agitation in the army. Women should take an
active part in all this so that the Red Army sees that it is being
looked after, that solicitude is being displayed. Women can also
work in the sphere of food distribution, on the improvement of
public catering and everywhere opening dining-rooms like those
that are so numerous in Petrograd.

It is in these fields that the activities of working women
acquire the greatest organisational significance. The participation of working women is also essential in the
organisation and running of big experimental farms and should not
take place only in isolated cases. This i5 something that cannot
be carried out without the participation of a large number of
working women. Working women will be very useful in this field in
supervising the distribution of food and in making food products
more easily obtainable. This work can well be done by non-party
working women and its accomplishment will do more than anything
else to strengthen socialist society.

We have abolished private property in land and almost completely abolished the private ownership of factories; Soviet
power is now trying to ensure that all working people, non-party
as well as Party members, women as well as men, should take part
in this economic development. The work that Soviet power has begun
can only make progress when, instead of a few hundreds, millions
and millions of women throughout Russia take part in it. We are
sure that the cause of socialist development will then become
sound. Then the working people will show that they can live and
run their country without the aid of the landowners and
capitalists. Then socialist construction will be so soundly based
in Russia that no external enemies in other countries and none
inside Russia will be any danger to the Soviet Republic.