V. I. Lenin

The gist of Bolshevism and the Russian October Revolution is
getting into politics the very people who were most oppressed
tinder capitalism. They were downtrodden, cheated and robbed by
the capitalists, both under the monarchy and in the bourgeois-democratic republics. So long as the land and the
factories were privately owned this oppression and deceit and
the plunder of the people’s labour by the capitalists were
inevitable.

The essence of Bolshevism and the Soviet power is to expose the
falsehood and mummery of bourgeois democracy, to abolish the
private ownership of land and the factories and concentrate all
state power in the hands of the working and exploited masses. They, these masses, get hold of politics, that is, of
the business of building the new society. This is no easy task:
the masses are downtrodden and oppressed by capitalism, but
there is no other way—and there can be no other way—out of the wage-slavery and bondage of capitalism.

But you cannot draw the masses into politics without drawing in
the women as well. For under capitalism the female half of the
human race is doubly oppressed. The working woman and the
peasant woman are oppressed by capital, but over and above that,
even in the most democratic of the bourgeois republics, they
remain, firstly, deprived of some rights because the law does
not give them equality with men; and secondly—and this is
the main thing—they remain in household bondage", they continue to be “household slaves", for they are
overburdened with the drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking
and stultifying toil in the kitchen and the family household.

No party or revolution in the world has ever dreamed of striking
so deep at the roots of the oppression and inequality of women
as the Soviet, Bolshevik revolution is doing. Over here, in
Soviet Russia, no trace is left of any inequality between men
and women under the law. The Soviet power has eliminated all
there was of the especially disgusting, base and hypocritical
inequality in the laws on marriage and the family and inequality
in respect of children.

This is only the first step in the liberation of woman. But none
of the bourgeois republics, including the most democratic, has
dared to take oven this first step. The reason is awe of
“sacrosanct private property.

The second and most important step is the abolition of the
private ownership of land and the factories. This and this alone
opens up the way towards a complete and actual emancipation of
woman, her liberation from “household bondage” through transition from petty individual housekeeping to
large-scale socialised domestic services.

This transition is a difficult one, because it involves the
remoulding of the most deep-rooted, inveterate, hidebound and
rigid “order” (indecency and barbarity would be nearer the truth). But the transition has been started, the
thing has been set in motion, we have taken the new path.

And so on this international working women’s day countless
meetings of working women in all countries of the world will
send greetings to Soviet Russia, which has been the first to
tackle this unparalleled and incredibly hard but great task, a
task that is universally great and truly liberatory. ‘[here will be bracing calls not to lose heart
in face of the fierce and frequently savage bourgeois reaction. The “freer” or “more
democratic” a bourgeois country is, the wilder the rampage
of its gang of capitalists against the workers’ revolution, an example of this being the democratic republic of
the United Slates of North America. But the mass of workers have
already awakened. The dormant, somnolent and inert masses in
America, Europe and even in backward Asia were finally roused by
the imperialist war.

The ice has been broken in every corner of the world.

Nothing can stop the tide of the peoples’ liberation from
the imperialist yoke and the liberation of working men and women
from the yoke of capital. This cause is being carried forward by
tens and hundreds of millions of working men and women in town
and countryside. That is why this cause of labour’s freedom from the yoke, of capital will triumph all over the
world.

March 4, 1921