Whoever needs convincing that women are just as capable as men of experiencing both citizenship in its highest sense and the noblest of civic virtues would do well to study the history of the liberation struggles that have shaken Russia since the abolition of serfdom. There is not a single newspaper here that doesn’t name in lines of gold specific women who lived and suffered as heroes, with the courage of lions and a martyr’s enthusiastic readiness to sacrifice —all for the cause of freedom and the liberation of the people. In all revolutionary phases, Russian women stood at the frontline of the conflicts and were shining examples of their work in the most responsible and dangerous of positions. During the years of peaceful dissemination of propaganda for the ideas of socialism, women and young girls wandered from village to village, and from factory to factory, to spread the gospel of a free and happy human race. During the period of bloody terrorist struggle against the henchmen of absolutism and the cruelty of the system, they submitted to the demands of the hardest revolutionary duties, including those that were much harder than sacrificing their own life would have been. When those years came in which the movement appeared to be extinguished, they studied and taught in quiet service to their ideals. Now however, that the revolutionary struggle catches fire anew—sometimes here, or sometimes there, in flames shooting up from smoldering coals—we find Russian women again among the freedom fighters’ rank and file.
This movement in recent years is testimony to a tremendous and decisive transition that has taken place in Russia. A modern proletariat is gradually growing up that carries within itself all the lamentation and enslavement with which capitalism burdens the shoulders of the have-nots, and all the suffering and bondage with which tsarist absolutism blesses its subjects. Socialist thought is now recruiting more and more supporters and individuals from within the proletariat. This means that in Russia today it is not only the “intelligentsia”—the students of the well-educated—who are pressing for freedom. The proletariat, waking up to its own class consciousness, stands alongside the “intelligentsia” and announces a fight to the death against oppressive tsardom, in its effort to break the double yoke of absolutism and capitalism.
When we look back at earlier moments of the revolutionary movement, we encounter individual women workers who were freedom fighters alongside those of the intelligentsia—students, doctors, teachers, writers, etc. Yet now the number of female proletarians who want to construct “heaven here on earth” for themselves and their class is growing day by day. A profound and exhilarating desire for education shows itself in the ranks of the women workers as the socialist idea of emancipation is awakened. The revolutionary movement relates to these women as a bearer of culture, in the broadest sense of that word. Not only does it enlighten them socially and politically, not only does it steel their character by enjoining in them the principles of solidarity and self-sacrifice, but it also teaches them the most basic skills of reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. Those who take an interest in the people’s education will encounter grateful and eager female students at the courses on Sundays and weekday evenings, and in conversations [with them and at] their reading groups. The living conditions of the female Russian proletarian sensitize her to the truths of socialist salvation. The number of women workers belonging to secret organizations and willing to make sacrifices for them through person-to-person agitation, such as disseminating texts and collecting money, is rising. More striking than ever is the participation of female workers’ participation in economic conflicts and in the movement’s political manifestations. And what a price they have to pay for participating! If a German factory is quite often a penitentiary, then a Russian factory is almost always hell. If in Germany the factory is the pious nursery, where the crude deeds of a police officer’s nightstick are the ready reward for free speech, then in Russia it is a prison with the gallows standing beside it and Siberia always waiting.
Last year’s May Day celebrations showed that Russian women workers also count among those who understand the slogan, “Workers of all the world, unite!” In almost all large industrial centers where workers carried out May Day celebrations—sometimes together with “intellectuals”—women workers also took part, in larger or smaller measures. They celebrated this festival even though they knew they would be punished with lockouts and wage penalties for doing so. They celebrated and demonstrated in the streets, even though they knew well that orders had been given to use the lash and guns upon them.
Furthermore, we have received two interesting reports about Russian women workers taking part in May Day actions for political freedom and the reform of working conditions. Both of these give us an idea of the difficulties and the dangers under which our Russian sisters united their voices with those of the exploited of all nations on May 1. They also take us into the worlds of thought and sensibility of Russian women revolutionary workers.
Iskra [Spark]* published the following letter from a woman worker in Petersburg, who as member of a secret organization had contributed to preparing the May Day celebration in recent years. She had orchestrated impressive demonstrations, and was battered down by police and the military in a barbaric fashion:
Do not take this letter as a sign of timidity. I have been treated with extreme brutality and cannot see a way forward … You have already heard that there has been a revolt here and that V. is no longer with us. I haven’t seen him since the twenty-ninth, when he said that workers at his workplace would probably not work on May 1. When I heard that fights had broken out in the Siborskaya district, I downed tools and ran there, but it was impossible to reach the bridge—it was the workers themselves who weren’t letting the women through. I waited for V. at his apartment but he did not come back. I asked after him at the barracks, but no one knew where he was, as was also the case when I asked at the Okhrana*… He was either dead or fatally wounded … Some said that they had seen him at the very front of the crowd, that he had cried, “Long live the revolution!”—and that he then fell to the ground. The police did not withdraw until all workers were gone, carting away those who could not get up by themselves.
You cannot understand how excruciating it was, both for me personally and for all of us, not to be able to get through to the fighting workers. We all wanted to get to the Nevsky† or into the middle of town. It is simply horrible to die like a dog in a corner where no one can see you. It is probably the fate of workers to die in isolation—truly, we will not even be granted a bearable death. And the really embarrassing thing is that they’ve been coming to call on us all winter, and have quarreled on our behalf, and now, of all times, nobody was there; they had gone away.‡ V. always said that we have to make our own decisions, and that that is the most terrible thing—not dying! It seems to me that if one of you had been there then everything would have been different, and V. would still be alive. And this very moment when V. and others were making the passage to death, others were having a cozy time of it; perhaps A.’s wife came to visit him … I know that’s not your fault, it’s just sheer coincidence, but it is still painful, isn’t it?…
I want to tell you something else. Although many of us have been arrested and some may no longer be alive, we will remain stalwart. It makes no difference that people have gone back to work again, because we have reached a point in time where a mere walkout will no longer satisfy anyone. Now everyone aspires for more. People want to go out into the streets … B. (a worker, who remained unharmed) thought it a shame that no one had a flag to march under. Next time we’ll have a flag ready and pistols, too—stones and knives are not much use against bayonets…
At the Russian Navy’s Obukhov Steelworks in the village of Alexandrov near Petersburg, several hundred workers, including women workers, celebrated on May 1. In the cannon factory, for example, only twelve workers were on duty, instead of the usual 180. Plans were made to avenge this “sacrilege” by sacking sixty to seventy of the “rabble-rousers.” Whereupon the workers demonstrated solidarity by demanding not only the reappointment of those affected by this disciplinary action, but also the eight-hour day, the repeal of punitive measures and the sacking of the Deputy Director. The management of the steelworks then called the police and gendarmerie to force these insubordinates into submission. They were met on arrival with the workers’ cries of “We must have freedom!” and “We’re fighting for political freedom and the eight-hour day!” Workers then threw stones to repel the attacks of the armed forces. Ten were left dead and several dozen wounded. The court case against the “ringleaders” opens in Petersburg at the start of October. These include two women workers, Yakovleva and Burchevskaya, who played an outstanding role during the clashes. The indictment reads: “The women workers Yakovleva and Burchevskaya tore up the road surface and carried rocks in their skirts to the fighting workers, during which Yakovleva cried, ‘We stand beside our brothers!’ According to one witness, the aforementioned women worker also took part in ‘certain secret gatherings.’”
These events are signs of an awakening sense of class consciousness among Russian women proletarians. Others throng to join the creators of such events, which is a testament to the maturing knowledge and the crystal-clear willpower of our sisters, their feelings of solidarity, and their readiness for sacrifice. The Russian woman proletarian has become enlisted as a regular member of the fighting international proletariat. And when the Russian revolutionary movement has achieved its immediate goal of toppling absolutism, which will leave the road free for the toughest battle against capitalism, when the morning of political freedom dawns for those millions who are still tamed today by our Little Father’s* lash, then Russian women and Russian women workers will deserve a good deal of credit for the spoils of victory.