VI Lenin

Comrades, the elections to the Moscow Soviet show that the
Party of the Communists is gaining strength among the working
class.

It is essential that women workers take a greater part in the
elections. The Soviet government was the first and only government
in the world to abolish completely all the old, bourgeois,
infamous laws which placed women in an inferior position compared
with men and which granted privileges to men, as, for instance, in
the sphere of marriage laws or in the sphere of the legal attitude
to children. The Soviet government was the first and only
government in the world which, as a government of the toilers,
abolished all the privileges connected with property, which men
retained in the family laws of all bourgeois republics, even the
most democratic.

Where there are landlords, capitalists and merchants, there can be
no equality between women and men even in law.

Where there are no landlords, capitalists and merchants, where
the government of the toilers is building a new life without these
exploiters, there equality between women and men exists in
law.

But that is not enough.

It is a far cry from equality in law to equality in life.

We want women workers to achieve equality with men workers not
only in law, but in life as well. For this, it is essential that
women workers take an ever increasing part in the administration
of public enterprises and in the administration of the state.

By engaging in the work of administration women will learn
quickly and they will catch up with the men.

Therefore, elect more women workers, both Communist and
non-Party, to the Soviet. If she is only an honest woman worker
who is capable of managing work sensibly and conscientiously, it
makes no difference if she is not a member of the Party--elect her
to the Moscow
Soviet.

Let there be more women workers in the Moscow Soviet! Let the
Moscow proletariat show that it is prepared to do and is doing
everything for the fight to victory, for the fight against
the old inequality, against the old, bourgeois, humiliation of women!

The proletariat cannot achieve complete freedom, unless it
achieves complete freedom for women.

N. Lenin

February 21, 1920