User:King Canine/Women in the Russian Revolution
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Women played integral roles in the Russian Revolutions of 1917, by acting as social and civil agitators for mass participation in the Revolutions, contributing to both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary causes. The Revolutions of 1917 ultimately precipitated the end of Tsarist rule and the beginning of Bolshevik rule in the February and October Revolutions respectively.
The "Woman Question" was a central theme to the participants of the Revolutions; while some of the aristocracy under the Tsarist time and leaders of the succeeding Provisional Government drew heavy influence from Western European thinkers in viewing women emancipation as coming through liberal reforms and gradual, reformist enfranchisement, the Marxist radicals rejected the Western liberal position.[1] The Bolsheviks instead saw the subjugation of women at the time as a result of bourgeoisie capitalism, which was defended through moderate and liberal reforms rather than destroyed. As a result, whereas Russian feminists believed the Revolutions as a liberal uprising where women will gain suffrage in a similar fashion to their Western European contemporaries, the Bolsheviks contended that women emancipation comes as a subtext within a broader worker's emancipation, which would eventually be achieved by a socialist revolution[2].
Following the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, they liberalized laws on divorce and abortion, decriminalized homosexuality, and proclaimed a new higher status for women. Inessa Armand (1874-1920), Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952), Nadezhda Krupskaya (1869-1939) and Aleksandra Artyukhina (1889–1969) were prominent women Bolsheviks. A decade later, General Secretary Stalin reversed many of the Bolshevik wartime reforms, though some women Bolsheviks still remained highly visible.[3]