The demand for womenâs equality signifies much more than sweeping away received prejudices, customs, and practices; much more than sweeping away male privilege. It becomes a struggle against bourgeois class rule and the bourgeois class state, and merges with the onward drive of the proletariat to win state power.
Clara Zetkin, âThe Tasks of the Second International Communist Womenâs Conferenceâ
The Communist Womenâs Movement, 1920â1922 is the ninth instalment in a series begun in 1983 presenting the documentary record of the Communist International (Comintern) in Leninâs time. The aim of this series of books, begun under the editorship of John Riddell, has been to chronicle the development of this dynamic revolutionary undertaking in its own words and to show it as a living movement.
The series has thus far consisted of two volumes on the Communist Internationalâs preparatory period; four volumes containing the proceedings and resolutions of its first four congresses; and two volumes on other Comintern-organised conferences and plenums.1
With this volume, the project moves to the Communist Internationalâs auxiliary organisations. A number of such organisations were established during the Cominternâs first five years, among them the Red International of Labour Unions, the Communist Womenâs Movement, the Communist Youth International, Red Aid, Red Sport International, and the Peasantsâ International. Inasmuch as the early Comintern represented a broad mass movement with millions of members and supporters around the world, each of these organisations had its own distinct features.
The Communist Womenâs Movement (CWM) was among the most significant of these auxiliary formations.2 Little-known today, the CWM deserves to be restored to its rightful place in the history of the world revolutionary movement.
To make such a restoration possible, the present volume has utilised hundreds of pages of never-before-published archival materials, as well as items previously available only in German or Russian. Between 80 and 90 per cent of the contents of this book appear here in English for the first time.
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The CWMâs immediate origins can be traced back to the Cominternâs March 1919 founding congress, which adopted a short resolution drafted by Alexandra Kollontai. Entitled âResolution on the Need to Draw Women Workers into the Struggle for Socialismâ, the document ended with these words:
[I]t is the urgent task of every member party of the Communist International to work forcefully and energetically to win proletarian women to its ranks. They must use all means possible to educate women workers about the new form of society and the ethics of communist social and family life. The dictatorship of the proletariat can be won and maintained only with the energetic and active participation of working-class women.3
Organised to help implement this perspective, the First International Conference of Communist Women took place 30Â Julyâ2Â August 1920. That meeting coincided with the Cominternâs Second Congress and was largely composed of delegates who were in Moscow to attend the latter event. For that reason, the womenâs conference was relatively small, with just over fifty delegates. Its content was largely confined to raising the banner of the new movement, discussing its scope, presenting area reports, and adopting what became the Guidelines for the Communist Womenâs Movement.4
Projections were made at the CWMâs founding conference to form an international secretariat to guide the new movement. Within days after the conference closing, the Cominternâs Executive Committee confirmed this decision, and on 20Â November 1920 the composition of the International Womenâs Secretariat (IWS) was set. Clara Zetkin was elected general secretary and Alexandra Kollontai was named assistant secretary. (Inessa Armand, the central leader at the First Conference, had died of cholera two months earlier.)
The stated aims of the IWS, as described by Kollontai, were: (1) âto extend the influence of the Comintern to the widest masses of proletarian womenâ; (2) âto aid the Comintern in its task of educating the proletarian and semi-proletarian womenâs masses in the spirit of communism, by adopting special methods of work amongst womenâ; (3) âto awaken the activity and independence of women workers, and draw them into the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariatâ; and (4) âto participate in the work of the Comintern, and put questions before the International, which are bound up with the problem of the emancipation of womenâ.5
To carry out this perspective, it was projected to form womenâs departments in each Communist Party, to establish Communist womenâs newspapers in all countries, and to hold regular international womenâs conferences.
The Second International Conference of Communist Women, held 9â15Â June 1921, undertook to assess the initial steps in building the Communist Womenâs Movement. This conference was larger and more representative than the First Conference, and had an even richer discussion on the new movementâs purpose and direction.
The proceedings and resolutions of the 1920 and 1921 conferences make up the bulk of the present volume. Also contained here are reports and resolutions from other international gatherings organised by the Communist Womenâs Movement in 1921 and 1922, as well as a section on the work of the CWM around the world.
These pages thus tell the story of the early Communist Womenâs Movement in its own words. Through them the remarkable accomplishments of the CWM in its first three years stand out:
1. Its central organ, the journal Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale (The Communist Womenâs International), published in Berlin under the editorship of Clara Zetkin beginning in April 1921, was one of the most well-written, lively, independent-minded, and far-reaching publications of the world Communist movement. Although few people today are aware of its existence, Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale bears study by those interested in the early Communist movement, as well as by those examining the history of the international movement for womenâs emancipation. In addition to this central publication, a number of national and local Communist womenâs papers were founded that chronicle aspects of this history.
2. Womenâs sections, committees, or departments (sometimes referred to as âagitation commissionsâ) were organised within each Communist Party. These sections were not projected as independent bodies separate and apart from the party, but were meant to be vehicles to advance this area of work, in recognition of its special needs and requirements. âWe welcome it when the womenâs committees include menâ, Zetkin told the Third Comintern Congress.6
Along these lines, the womenâs sections generally functioned with a high degree of autonomy. In the words of Kollontai, âThe womenâs sections are to enjoy the right of a certain initiative. [â¦] We are leading our womenâs sections to a state of things under which they will not only carry out agitational and educational tasks, but should also become creative and develop initiatives, thus making themselves most usefulâ.7 Describing the International Womenâs Secretariat, Zetkin explained that âits work is regulated by the [Comintern] Executive Committee decisions and statutes. But within that framework, this organ enjoys freedom of action, which it is entitled to make use ofâ.8
3. The Communist Womenâs Movement provided a vehicle for mutual collaboration by female Communist activists around the world. The main location of the International Womenâs Secretariat was moved from Moscow to Berlin in early 1922 to facilitate this collaboration. The CWM was one of the few major Comintern auxiliary organisations not centrally based in Moscow during this time.9
A network of Communist Womenâs âcorrespondentsâ was formed, with international meetings projected every six months. Through such collaboration and the holding of regular international conferences, the beginnings of a genuine international womenâs movement was coming into view. Moreover, the movement built an effective international leadership team â perhaps the strongest collaborative team of any Comintern auxiliary organisation.
4. The Communist Womenâs Movement sought to drive forward the appreciation by the entire Communist movement of the importance of the fight for womenâs emancipation, as well as to advance womenâs participation as both members and leaders. It promoted the perspective of what today would be called âaffirmative actionâ measures to develop womenâs leadership abilities and self-confidence. A development of female cadres was beginning to occur within the various parties, albeit with considerable unevenness, through special education and training programmes that the CWM helped plan and organise.
5. The Communist Womenâs Movement initiated important internationally coordinated campaigns, such as raising relief for the victims of the famine in Soviet Russia as well as reviving International Womenâs Day as a vehicle for mobilising working women around the world. In several countries the CWM also initiated struggles and campaigns on issues such as abortion rights, childcare, equal pay for equal work, against discriminatory layoffs, and for womenâs suffrage. In the course of these efforts, methods and approaches were worked out for involving ordinary working women in the struggle â both in the more advanced capitalist countries of Europe and North America, as well as in the countries of the Near East and Asia.
The above-listed accomplishments of the Communist Womenâs Movement did not come easily or without resistance. Within Communist parties, women had to fight prevailing backward attitudes of men regarding womenâs role and place, leading to a tendency to underestimate or belittle the importance of the womenâs movement, as well as of the individual women themselves. These attitudes were prevalent not just among the ranks of male Communists, but within the leaderships too. CWM conferences are full of references to such attitudes.
âOur work is especially affected by the attitude of many comrades who recognise theoretically the value of our organisationâ, stated Gerda Linderot from Sweden, âbut in practice remain quite indifferent to usâ. Kollontai, in a report on Forms and Methods of Communist Work among Women given to the Second Conference, pointed out: âGo to the Communist International Executive Committee. Last time I counted, there were four women there. This is abnormal, and at the same time points to the fact that we are still living through a period when women are not willingly taken for executive work and not elected to responsible positionsâ. And referring to the challenges of women in the French CP, who were often forced to miss party meetings due to their double workload, one woman Communist suggested that âthe man could occasionally do a little housework, so as to give the woman time to engage in public lifeâ.
Despite these obstacles, progress was being made. It was facilitated by the enthusiastic support for the Communist Womenâs Movement on the part of the central Comintern leadership.
Lenin in particular was a key advocate for the Communist Womenâs Movement and its work. In discussions with Clara Zetkin, Lenin stressed the movementâs importance:
The first proletarian dictatorship is a real pioneer in establishing social equality for women. It is clearing away more prejudices than could volumes of feminist literature. But even with all that we still have no international Communist womenâs movement, and that we must have. We must start at once to create it. Without that the work of our International and of its Parties is not complete work, can never be complete. [â¦]
[W]e must not close our eyes to the fact that the Party must have bodies, working groups, commissions, committees, bureaus or whatever you like, whose particular duty it is to arouse the masses of women workers, to bring them into contact with the Party, and to keep them under its influence.
Agitation and propaganda work among women, their awakening and revolutionisation, is regarded as an incidental matter, as an affair which only concerns women comrades. They alone are reproached because work in that direction does not proceed more quickly and more vigorously. That is wrong, quite wrong!10
Through the CWMâs work, and with the backing of Lenin and other Comintern leaders, real progress was being made by the end of 1922. Given that these gains occurred in face of resistance and obstacles, the CWMâs progress stands out among the positive achievements of the Comintern under Lenin.
In contrast to the prevailing view in many circles today of the Communist International being marked by âMoscow dominationâ, early Comintern documents paint a different picture: a large number of the major initiatives came from parties other than the Russian CP, which itself was not above criticism. Through reading the documents in this volume and others in the series, the Russian party appears largely as an equal, although clearly with heightened authority based on its role in leading a revolution.
The Communist Womenâs Movement, during its early years, was a vibrant, living movement, with immense creative potential and independent initiative. Its conferences were lively exchanges, where delegates were not reticent about presenting sharply dissenting views, with much give-and-take. The movement showed itself able to recognise weaknesses and make adjustments to its work.
A close examination of the Communist Womenâs Movement therefore provides important insights into the Communist International itself under Lenin.
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A study of the Communist Womenâs Movement also provides insights on another level: into the 150-year history of the Marxist movement with regard to the fight for womenâs emancipation.
The first major Marxist analysis of womenâs oppression, August Bebelâs Woman and Socialism, appeared in 1879. Five years later, Frederick Engelsâs The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State was published. These two works guided generations of socialist activists, rooting the oppression of women squarely in capitalism and class society, and pointing out that the road to womenâs emancipation lay through the proletarian struggle for socialism.
Based on this perspective, the socialist movement took a firm position opposed to womenâs oppression, in particular the denial of full citizenship rights, such as the right to vote.
The Second International â which from 1889 to 1914 was the body encompassing the main forces of the worldâs socialist and working-class movement â adopted a number of resolutions on this issue.11
In 1907 the First International Conference of Socialist Women was held in conjunction with a congress of the Second International. Out of this meeting came the formation of an international movement of socialist women. One of the major accomplishments of that movement was the establishment, at its 1910 conference, of International Womenâs Day, celebrated around the world today on 8Â March.
The initiator and leader of the international socialist womenâs movement was Clara Zetkin, who had helped organise the German socialist womenâs movement. She also was editor of the socialist womenâs magazine Die Gleichheit [Equality], which came to be seen as the journal of the international movement as a whole.
Zetkin and the international socialist womenâs movement played a key role during World War I, when the Second International collapsed as its main parties each gave support to their own governmentsâ prosecution of the war. In 1915 the socialist womenâs movement held the first international conference of socialists opposed to the conflict. That conference helped spark the Zimmerwald movement, out of whose left wing the Communist International eventually emerged.12
Yet, while the Marxist movement has a proud history of consistent support for womenâs rights and emancipation, there were weaknesses too.
Socialists often failed to fully see the centrality of the fight for womenâs emancipation within the overall proletarian struggle for socialism. As a result of this deficiency, a tendency existed among many Marxists to stand aside from concrete struggles for womenâs rights, seeing them as diversions from the broader working-class movement and viewing womenâs emancipation as simply a by-product of socialism.
âWomenâs activity was regarded more or less as that of a servant to the party or union, and its true significance as a meaningful factor in the proletarian struggle for liberation was not recognisedâ, Zetkin later recalled.13 In the words of the main resolution coming out of the First CWM Conference, âBy and large, where the interests and rights of women were concerned, the [Second] Internationalâs decisions were carried out only to the degree that organised socialist women were able to force the proletarian organisations in each country to do soâ.14
The international socialist womenâs movement itself was largely marginalised in the years before World War I, and it functioned without meaningful help from the Second Internationalâs leadership. âThe International Association of Socialist Womenâ, a resolution of the CWMâs Second International Conference in 1921 stated, âto the extent that it took shape at all, was formed outside the framework of the Second International on the independent initiative of working womenâ.15
One factor that aggravated the weaknesses within the socialist and communist movement was the emphasis placed by many proletarian militants at the time on the need for the working-class movement to distinguish itself from âbourgeois feminismâ.
In modern usage, the term feminism has generally come to be seen â in the words of Wikipedia â as âa range of social movements, political movements, and ideologies that aim to define, establish, and achieve the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexesâ. To contemporary readers, the frequent references by leaders of the Communist Womenâs Movement to âbourgeois feminismâ may therefore seem jarring. Itâs important to recognise, however, that the word bourgeois here was not meant as an insult, but as a descriptive adjective. And it was an accurate description of many â although certainly not all â feminists of the day. Feminists and womenâs rights fighters with a different orientation, such as Sylvia Pankhurst or Ida B. Wells, were at times marginalised within the movement.
In the era before womenâs massive and generalised entry into the workforce, most early spokespersons for womenâs rights came from privileged, upper-class backgrounds. These were women legitimately appalled by societyâs refusal to grant them the rights and status of personhood. The class background of these early feminists does not in any way belittle the importance of their struggle. But many early feminists from upper- and middle-class backgrounds were conscious opponents of the working-class movement, with the overriding objective of reforming the capitalist social order and integrating women into it.
But these references to âbourgeois feminismâ also spotlight one of the weaknesses of the early Marxist movement. Those like Clara Zetkin, Alexandra Kollontai, and Inessa Armand who sought to advance the fight for womenâs emancipation were frequently accused by men in the movement of the crime of âfeminismâ. At the Second International Conference of Communist Women, Kollontai illustrated this point by referring to âall the assertions made in certain quarters to the effect that this kind of activity can be labelled as âfeminismââ¯â.16 As French delegate Lucie Colliard told the conference, many leaders of the French CP met âevery suggestion to organise the women with the taunt of âfeminists!ââ¯â.17 Such accusations reflected an underestimation by these men of the significance of the issue of womenâs rights.
In an unsigned report appearing in this book on the Communist Womenâs Movement in France, the author speaks of two problems to be avoided: âthe âfeminismâ of many revolutionary-minded women, and on the other hand the âanti-feminismâ of many comrades, who are still full of petty-bourgeois prejudices when it comes to womenâs rights, who lack any understanding of the significance of womenâs cooperation in the struggle, and who would much prefer to close the doors of the party and public life to themâ.18 Of the two perceived dangers â adapting to bourgeois feminism versus abstaining from the fight for womenâs rights â itâs clear that most leading Communist women believed the latter problem to be the far more serious one.
In any case, these weaknesses of the Marxist movement at the time need to be kept in mind when assessing the Communist Womenâs Movementâs record and legacy. With Zetkin as a living link to the period of Bebel, Engels, and the international socialist womenâs movement, the CWM sought to base itself on the best of this legacy while working to overcome its weaker points.
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How is the Communist Womenâs Movement relevant today?
Looking back at the CWM a century later, one can see that the Communist Womenâs Movement and the issues it championed foreshadow the rise of a mass movement for womenâs liberation throughout the world in the latter part of the twentieth century.
Clearly there have been changes in the situation facing women from what it was a century ago. Some contemporary issues, such as sexual harassment, violence against women, and others, were not addressed in a substantial way by feminists and womenâs rights supporters at the time.
At the same time, prospects for mass struggles for womenâs liberation are greater at present than they were during the time of the Communist Womenâs Movement. This potential is largely the result of the massive influx of women throughout the world into the workforce and into the working class.
These social changes have led to broad public debate over many specific societal and cultural norms, such as sexuality, dress, gender roles, and acceptable behaviour and language. There is greater public acceptance today of womenâs equality, at least formally.
Despite these gains, however, womenâs second-class status remains a fact, and many specific gains â such as the right to abortion â have come under attack today in a number of countries. Such attacks have led to political and ideological battles around a number of issues. Opponents of womenâs rights have been emboldened, occasionally resorting to violent and even murderous acts.
For this reason, many of the specific issues raised by Communist women a century ago remain as unrealised demands and are still issues of struggle today: abortion and reproductive rights, childcare, maternal health and facilities, equal pay for equal work, access to education and social services, womenâs burden in housework, the sexual double standard, and of course the continuing fight for political and social equality. The continued urgency of such issues gives added contemporary relevancy to the early Communist Womenâs Movement.
What the Communist Womenâs Movement offers today, in addition to its historic example, is above all its strategic insights on the fight for womenâs emancipation and its relationship to the revolutionary struggle. Among these:
* Working-class women have the biggest stake in the fight for womenâs emancipation, and must be its foundation. Activists in the Communist Womenâs Movement understood the âdouble oppressionâ of toiling women that Lenin spoke of:
[U]nder 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 â and this is the main thing â they remain in household bondage, they continue to be âhousehold slavesâ, for they are overburdened with the drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking, and stultifying toil in the kitchen and the family household.19
* While working-class women will be key to the struggle, the oppression of women nevertheless affects women in all layers of society to one degree or another. The movement therefore needs to find avenues of approach to these layers, and seek to involve them in the struggle. Zetkin in particular stressed the importance of relating to housewives, peasant women, and women of the intelligentsia.20
* The struggle for womenâs emancipation in itself has a deeply revolutionary dynamic. As Zetkin expressed it:
We must lead the struggle of the politically oppressed and unfree female sex into the broad course of proletarian liberation, just as we do that of oppressed peoples and nationalities. The demand for women to enjoy complete political equality before the law and in daily life will become a point of departure and a pillar of strength for the proletarian struggle to win political power. [â¦] This demand [for womenâs equality] signifies much more than sweeping away received prejudices, customs, and practices; much more than sweeping away male privilege. It becomes a struggle against bourgeois class rule and the bourgeois class state, and merges with the onward drive of the proletariat to win state power.21
* Womenâs emancipation can be accomplished only through the revolutionary transformation of society. The fight for womenâs liberation is therefore an integral part of the working-class struggle for revolutionary change. As stated in the Guidelines for the Communist Womenâs Movement:
[P]rivate property is the ultimate and fundamental cause of the dominant and privileged position of men over women. [â¦] For women to achieve full social equality with men in reality ⦠private property of the means of production must be replaced by social property.22
* The struggle for womenâs emancipation must not stop even after capitalist rule is done away with. On the contrary, a revolutionary transformation merely opens the door for women, and will require an even more determined and conscious effort. As the manifesto issued by the First International Conference of Communist Women in 1920 stated:
Do not rest even when a soviet republic emerges in your country, for it will only become a living, liberating force when women receive a chance at equal participation in the work of these soviets.23
Some of the most inspiring parts of this book are the numerous reports of the work by women in Russia and throughout the Soviet Republic to advance the status of women and draw them into social and political life. Led by Zhenotdel â an abbreviation for the Womenâs Department of the Russian Communist Partyâs Central Committee Secretariat â female cadres had a remarkable record of initial accomplishments. While they sometimes faced resistance and lack of comprehension by male comrades, they had the full support of Lenin and other revolutionary leaders.
* Such a revolutionary struggle cannot be successful without drawing in women in their masses. In the words of the Guidelines:
It is impossible for the proletariat to win through revolutionary mass actions and in civil war without the decisive participation of women of the toiling people. [â¦] Without the active and conscious participation of the broadest masses of Communist-minded women, such a deep-going, massive transformation of society, its economic base, and all its institutions is impossible.24
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In the years after 1923, the Communist Womenâs Movement internationally went into decline. While the CWM held its Third and Fourth international conferences in 1924 and 1926, these lacked the breadth and vitality displayed at its first two conferences that are chronicled in this volume. And the movement internationally lost the autonomy and independent initiative it had possessed in its early years.
The International Womenâs Secretariat, the CWMâs leading body, which had been moved to Berlin in early 1922, was transferred back to Moscow in early 1924. The loss of the autonomous status of the IWS was registered in April 1926, when its name was changed to âWomenâs Section (or Department) of the ECCI [Executive Committee of the Communist International]â. Additionally, Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale, the CWMâs international journal edited by Zetkin, ended publication in early 1925.
Simultaneously, the stated purpose of the movement, as spelled out by Alexandra Kollontai at the Second Conference, was narrowed. As indicated earlier, Kollontai had set the movementâs main tasks to be participating in struggles for womenâs emancipation, seeking ways to involve women in social life and political struggle; recruiting and integrating women into the Communist movement, and advocating measures to advance women inside it. After 1923, the stated purpose of the International Womenâs Secretariat and its conferences was narrowed down to simply winning women to the Communist movement. And whereas the first three international conferences were each titled âInternational Conference of Communist Womenâ, by the time of the Fourth Conference in 1926, this had been changed to âInternational Conference of the ECCI on Work among Womenâ.
Despite the declining international profile of the Communist Womenâs Movement, however, the situation in the various countries was more uneven. In a number of countries organised Communist womenâs formations maintained an active existence and remained involved in struggles for womenâs rights.
The situation of the Communist Womenâs Movement internationally paralleled developments within the Communist International as a whole in the post-Lenin period, as the Comintern began to reflect more and more the shifting needs and priorities of Soviet foreign policy under Stalin. That evolution is beyond the scope of the present volume, but readers can refer to this bookâs Chronology for a record of how the CWM was impacted.25
Nevertheless, this decline cannot erase the legacy the CWM left behind.
The early Communist Womenâs Movement was a vital and dynamic force that was able to create a genuine leadership team unique among Comintern auxiliary organisations. Despite occasional differences and vigorous debates, this team successfully worked together to forge something new in history: an international revolutionary womenâs movement, inextricably linked to the world revolutionary movement as a whole.
Clara Zetkin, Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand, Nadezhda Krupskaia, Hertha Sturm, Klavdiia Nikolaeva, Bertha Braunthal, Polina Vinogradskaia, Zinaida Lilina, Lucie Colliard, Edda Tennenbaum, Liudmila Stalâ, Sofia Smidovich, Konkordia Samoilova, Henriette Roland-Holst, Anna Maimunkova, Hilde Wertheim, Lucie Leiciague, Hanna Malm, Rosi Wolfstein, Rosa Bloch, Marjory Newbold, Norah Smythe, Tina Kirkova, Herta Geffke, Marie-Sophie Nielsen, Gerda Linderot, Anna KÅenová, Ella Reeve Bloor, Hanna Ströhmer â these and many other largely unknown figures of the early Communist Womenâs Movement deserve to receive recognition for what they in fact were: a key component of the world Communist movement under Lenin, as well as pioneers in the centuries-long history of the struggle for womenâs emancipation.
In his introduction to the first volume of the Comintern series, John Riddell wrote: âThis series aims to make more accessible the example and lessons of the international communist movement that grew out of and was led by the Bolshevik Partyâ.26
Along these lines, it is our hope that the present volume helps restore this little-known movement to its legitimate place in history.
Mike Taber
August 2020
The volumes containing congress proceedings are: Founding the Communist International: Proceedings and Documents of the First Congress, March 1919; Workers of the World and Oppressed Peoples, Unite! Proceedings and Documents of the Second Congress, 1920 (divided into two parts); To the Masses: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the Communist International, 1921; and Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922. Additional volumes include Leninâs Struggle for a Revolutionary International: Documents 1907â1916, The Preparatory Years; The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents 1918â1919, Preparing the Founding Congress; To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920Â â First Congress of the Peoples of the East; and The Communist Movement at a Crossroads: Plenums of the Communist Internationalâs Executive Committee, 1922â1923. All volumes were edited by John Riddell with the exception of the last one, which was edited by Mike Taber. See the bibliography for publication details.
Although âCommunist Womenâs Movementâ was not a formal name, the movement led by the Cominternâs International Womenâs Secretariat and organised in Communist parties around the world was generally known as such. While the CWM was not formally independent from the Comintern â as were some other auxiliary organisations such as the Red International of Labour Unions and the Communist Youth International â its bodies nevertheless possessed a high degree of autonomy and independent initiative prior to 1924.
For this resolution, see page 80.
The Guidelines for the Communist Womenâs Movement can be found on pages 152â71.
From Kollontaiâs written âReport of the International Secretariatâ, published in Moscow, 3, 4, and 7 June 1921. The same aims are formulated by Kollontai in her oral report to the Second CWM Conference (see pages 209â10).
See Riddell (ed.) 2015, 3WC, p. 785.
See page 257.
See page 221.
The International Womenâs Secretariat was moved from Moscow to Berlin in mid-1921. It was moved back to Moscow in mid-1924.
Zetkinâs account of her discussions with Lenin on this subject were published in English as Lenin on the Womenâs Question. It can be found online at Marxists Internet Archive.
The resolutions adopted by congresses of the Second International were âWomenâs Equalityâ (1891), âProtective Legislation for Working Womenâ (1893), âUniversal Womenâs Suffrageâ (1904); and âWomenâs Suffrageâ (1907). For the texts of these resolutions, see Taber (ed.) 2021.
The First International â the International Workingmenâs Association â adopted no separate resolutions on this question during its existence (1864â76).
The International Conference of Socialist Women in Bern, Switzerland, was held 26â28Â March 1915. The Zimmerwald Left was formed by Lenin and left-wing forces at the socialist conference in Zimmerwald, Switzerland, on 5â8Â September 1915.
See Riddell (ed.) 2015, 3WC, p. 780.
See page 159.
From âTheses on Methods and Forms of Work of Communist Parties among Womenâ. See page 409.
See page 258.
See page 234.
See page 508.
From âInternational Working Womenâs Dayâ, dated 4 March 1921, in Lenin 1960â71, LCW, vol. 32, p. 161.
See, for example, page 284.
Zetkin, âZu den Aufgaben der Zweiten Internationalen Kommunistischen Frauenkonferenzâ [The Tasks of the Second International Communist Womenâs Conference], in Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale, no. 2/3 in 1921 (May/June), pp. 46â76.
See page 153.
See page 98.
See page 155.
See pages 531â4.
Riddell (ed.) 1984, p. ix.