[page 15]
An MIR exclusive
Eyewitness in Armenia
the memorial to the 1915 genocide of Armenians. A demonstration, in March of this year,
at
Of all the problems facing the leadership in the Soviet Union, the most acute is the national question. Hardly a week has passed this year when there has not been a massive protest or demonstration in the different republics under the banner of national self determination. On Constitution Day this year, October 7 and the weekend following, a public holiday to commemorate the introduction of the new constitution by Khrushchev in which the rights of national minorities are supposed to be guaranteed, there were demonstrations of 100-150,000 in the Baltic states.
Gorbachev
is facing and failing his
toughest test at present in the southern republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan. His apologists in the West are singing Gorbachev's praises in his attempts to liberalise the regime in the Soviet Union
First hand
reports
but they studiously ignore the repressive measures he is using in an attempt to put down the movements centred on Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. While using troops to put down the strikes, demonstrations and protests which have
been on an unprecedented scale since February, the regime has only recently allowed western reporters to travel to the Armenian capital, Yerevan. They, reporting from a capitalist point of view, only superficially touch on the real situation there and its causes.
But eyewitness reports from Nagorno- Karabakh, from Yerevan and from Sumgait, where in February the regime reported the massacre of 32 Armenians (but local witnesses put the number in hundreds), tragically but brilliantly confirm the analysis of Trotsky and the Militantof the national problemsfaced by the Stalinist regime.
15
[page 16]
The national problem in Nagorno- Karabakh stems back directly to the hamfisted implementation of national policy by Stalin in the twenties. Nagorno- Karabakh, a small enclave of 160,000 people, is predominantly Armenian, a people who have a long history as victims of oppression. In 1915, nearly 2 million Armenians were murdered in the genocide carried out by the Turkish regime. How can a people feel safe after such a massacre? Such problems require the utmost sensitivity, which takes into account the wishes of the people themselves and guaranteed by a democratic workers' state which ensures the right of self determination. Such was the approach adopted in the early stages of the Russian revolution.
The Soviet revolution did not reach the southern republics until 1920. In April, soviet power was established in Azerbaijan, including Nogorno-Karabakh and the two remained united. It was only seven months later that the Armenians established soviet power in their own country. Lenin's policy on the national question was based on the scrupulous recognition of the right of self determination. This was accepted by the workers of Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh was voluntarily transferred to Armenia in 1921
Stalin
However, as Commissar of Nationalities, Stalin approached the national question from the point of view of administrative convenience. He was in the Caucasuses in 1923 to carry out a territorial reorganisation of the region. In the words of the Armenian writer Zori Balayan, (who unfortunately is playing the role of defusing the movement in Armenia) when Stalin arrived, "Nagorno- Karabakh was torn from Armenia and returned to Azerbaijan. The absurdity of such an annexation is obvious even if only because in our country all the autonomous regions, republics and districts are named according to their national identity, Tartars and so on. And yet, Nagorno-Karabakh is simply an autonomous region, because it is near Armenia. And to call the neighbouring region Armenian means to simply underline the absurdity of such a division"
But despite Gorbachev's campaign against Stalinism in Soviet society, he has shown himself to be the inheritor of Stalin's approach. Instead of Lenin'ssensitive approach of negotiations and the guarantee of self determination, Gorbachev has sent in the troops to break the strikes and protests. Young conscripts of 18 and 19 years (for obvious reasons, none of them from Armenia itself) have been pitted against the mass protests but 16
Yerevan airport. Gorbachev has sent in troops to try and break the movement.
jan to forget the horrific events of 1988 or the feelings of power that they experienced in protesting against the oppression of the Soviet regime.
The leadership in Moscow havetried to explain the movement in Armenia as the work of afew 'nationalist extremists' or of hooligan elements. But these reports are as far removed from the truth as Gorbachev's policy on the national question is removed from Lenin's. Their dismissa! as extremists has caused tremendous bitterness amongst the Armenian people. One woman from Yerevan explained:
"The press only reported that the! were 'a group of extremists'. • Half a million extremists? And at the meetings ir. the town, with the people who had arriv ed from the regions, we had more than : million. And we are all united! Maybe the whole nation is extremist? We are ne against the Azerbaijan people, but not ir one interview have they said what we really want. Not once on the TV hav: they said we only want the reunificatic of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.
have been unable to stop the movement. One small battalion of 100 troops returned from Yerevan recently with at least five of its members nursing fractured skulls.
However, the words of one young student from Yerevan explain the real cause of the unrest around Nagorno- Karabakh: "The national question is not the reason for the protests but the excuse. We are against all oppression"
This is backed up by the words of an Azerbaijani pensioner from Sumgait: "We lived in harmony with our neighbours, the Armenians. If we did not have such oppressive police, things would be better. The deputy head of the police, Major Skandaryan, and the chief of the passport office, Captain Vartanyan, are constantly rude to us. When one of us petition them about something, they insult us. When we are leaving, they tell us to get out of here!"
As Trotsky explained: "It is a question therefore, not of the oppression of one nationality over another in the proper sense of the word but of oppression by the centralised police apparatus over the cultural development of all nations"
The whole history of national relations in the Soviet Union since Stalin has been dogged by a bureaucratic, insensitive attitude to the 'friendship of nations' :. Silva Kaputikan, who in the past participated in the official friendship ceremonies (in reality, an excuse for the bureaucracy to organise drinking sessions) and who is now, with Zori Balayan, attempting to moderate the movement, shows what they were like: "How magnificent and profuse our 'friendship meetings' always were! Cognac flowed like rivers. Slogan followed slogan... how they loved to talk about the friendship of nations!'
It will take more than rivers of cognac for the peoples of Armenia and Azerbai-
Mass movement
This feeling is supported by an old mi in Yerevan who told a reporter: "Wr.:: this down! I am a Kurd. Tell Gorbach: what I say. I was in the war. I have works: all my life. I am not an extremist. I am favour of the transfer of Nagor.: Karabakh to Armenia. Why are moth:* not able to return to their children? **. why are her tears called extremist. this down. If you are telling lies, may! hands drop off!"
Such was the scale of the movemen:** Pravda reporter in Armenia was for: to offer his resignation in protest a: ** way his reports had been rewritten inset).
[page 17]
Excerpts from the letter of the Armenlan correspondent of Pravda to Reason' which appeared in an edited form expressed the will of the Central and therefore, out of ignorance, a fatal mistake has been made by the CC who have, in essence, blamed the extremism on the people. From this developed the anti-socialist outlook. This is said about a people who are endlessly devoted to Russia and the cause of socialism. A people who miraculously survived the Turkish genocide of 1915 thanks to the great October revolution and to the commonwealth of fraternal Soviet nations. And today, in the era of perestroika and glasnost and the democratisation of society, we have been forced to witness religious fanaticism, the latent hatred whipped up, not without the knowledge of the leaders of the Azerbaijan state as shown by its attitude to the peaceful Armenian population; and in contrast to that, the peaceful meetings, demonstrations and events in Armenia, allowed by the Soviet constitution and in support of the simple implementation of perestroika, during which the law enforcement agencies reported not the slightest misdemeanour on the part of the populacourse of events in Nagorno-Karabakh but it appeared above three signatures, including mine. As a 'Pravdaist' and with a deep sense of shame, I acknowledge that the 'higher ups' are trying to unravel the complex tangle of inter national relations in an extremely frivolous and simplistic manner. At the very least, this must arrive at a more competent and equitable solution of the national question cruelty of my chosen profession. By putting my signature to material on the apologise to the whole Armenian people and to all the honest people of our country. Unfortunately, by its one sided presentation of the problem, Pravda has made an irredeemable blunder, which may in future have unforseen consecomplicated enough without your aggravation of the situation in Armenia. And since I intend to remain united with my people, my future as a journalist, a communist and a citizen is in your hands and those of the secretariat of the Central The First Secretary of the Yerevan Party Committee described the situation: "The complexity of today's situation is that for decades we have carried on as if we had no nationality problem. I have been among my people these nine days. I have spent the evenings with you, eaten and drunk with you. I have been among thousands of people and I have not seen one anti-Soviet slogan or heard one word against socialism. What is happening is not a blind mass movement devised by An various individual troublemakers. idea has united the people, it has been imbued in the consciousness of all. This is a vast movement of people. Thousands of people come here from the regions. They traveltensofkilometres. The first reports in the press that this was the work of nationalist groups provoked terrible anger and annoyance which could not be expressed in words. This was an insult. And all the same, you notice that our people displayed such tolerance. There were no laws broken in reply to your incomprehension. No disorder. Even after the tragedy in Sumgait, when Yerevan was numb with horror and grief, not one hair was harmed on a single Azerbaijani." Pogrom However, it is the rank and file of the movement who best understand the situation. Gorbachev faces a dilemma. If he makes concessions, he will add fuel to the fire, but unless he does, the protests will continue. One young teacher explains why he can not afford to make concessions:
"They tell us that demands for territorial changes are unprecedented. But the comrades are not good at history! They have apparently forgotten that in 1954, the RSFSR handed over the Ukranian Crimea. Kazakhstan in 1969 handed over several regions to Uzbekistan. Kirgysiya gave up part of its territory to Tadjikistan and White Russia conceded part of its territory to Latvia. If it was possible then, why is it not so now? Only because such changes were led 'from above' but now the petition resounds 'from below'.
Or was it because then no-one protested in the squares?"
Initially Gorbachev adopted a 'sit and wait it out' approach to the mass movement that had developed. But on February 27, he was forced to make an unprecedented personal appeal for calm and for a return to work, promising negotiations about the future Nagorno-Karabakh. Advised by the leadership in Yerevan to accept this appeal, the mass meeting in Yerevan even took the decision to work extra days to make up for the production lost through the strikes.
ФО ПРАВДА КОРРІСПОНДЕНІ ТОВ. КРАШАСЬЕВ Е.:.
Уважаений Виктор Григорьевичі Статья "моши и разум" о собитнях в Нагорию! Карабать и вокрут вего, фактически, язвлась репатимониси статьек, вракакшев додо Центральн ту Контета При овседе: іна г. оселень, что на в Секретериатв; ни в политокр: Lit: не делают глубоко виднатуть в проблему нагорного hp и, по сент, От незнашля, в ревенюв ік нко наралась роковал ошока, паздашал по сута, парол акстресто. Отсола и ношли закину серансаливости, одевние поторых ош и Г. ОВits editor-in-chief:
"Dear Victor Grigorevich, testities to political shortsignteaness. whom all our people have such great hopes. instruction of the CC, you have shamed me before my people. Yuri Arakelyan, Armenian Correspondent of Pravda, March 21, 1988.
нол судаба 1. тнала:?!
прако The article about the events in Nagorno-Karabakh entitled 'Emotion and Committee. Before talking to you, I explained that it appears no-one in the Central Committee wants to understand fully the problems of Nagorno-Karabakh peaceful demonstrations and meetings in defence of justice in Yet today, in Pravda, the Armenian people discover that they have a 'manifestly Sumgait. It is frightening, really frightening, to realise this. It is difficult even to weigh in the political balance the national fervour, the It is clear to me that the essence of the edited article did not objectively reflect the As a communist, journalist and citizen, I consider that the plenum of the CC und bring the guilty their deserved punishment. But, to be honest, the article ur Pravda does a disservice to the CC and personally 10 Mikhail Gorbachev, in For many years, I have been proud to place my signature under articles ir Dravda, but today, for the first time in my life as a journalist, I have realised the My mind is already made up to clear this disgrace. I am duty bound to Evidently, I must pluck up my courage and honestly declare that my job was 17
[page 18]
But it was not that simple. Faced with a threat to their privileges and their spheres of influence, the Azerbaijan Communist leadership was forced to respond. On February 27, the massacre of Armenians started in Sumgait. In scenes reminiscent of the prerevolutionary pogroms against the Jews, notices were stuck on the doors of Armenians:
SPARUNNI
rOX
am Klute
ca.
"Armenian-get out of here. If you have not gone in three days you will be killed like dogs. Your cross-sign of the devil!"
Eyewitnesses tell a horrible tale. A metallurgist: "On February 27, I was returning from work. A crowd came out of the market. There, Armenians from the Martunovskii region were selling potatoes, the crowd had beaten them mercilessly, driven them into a cellar and moved on the square of the Regional Party HQ. It was on my way, my home is near that square. An Azerbaijani friend spoke to me, lets go together, speak Azerbaijani and they won't trouble us. On the way, the crowd smashed up a shoemakers booth and a newspaper kiosk. There were 100 people, maybe 40-45 years old. In the square was a vast crowd, several thousand people. The Secretary of the Town Committee, Muslim-sade was speaking. Refugees from Armenia had spoken. They shouted that there, they had been killed and raped and they sought revenge from us. An actress spoke. She shouted: 'Kill the Armenians! But don't touch state property. I and my family hid in the house of my Azerbaijani neighbour and I warned my relatives. The police were nowhere to be seen"
A worker in a joinery factory described how "from the side of the bus station a crowd of 300 surged down the app- 18
One of the Injured at Yerevan airport.
roach road. They at once dragged three people out onto the asphalt and broke their legs. I watched from the window. From the house opposite, two young Armenians darted and fought with the crowd for a long time, a very long time. And further on, they were driving a girl, stripped naked, she fell and one of them dragged her by the hair along the asphalt. I think she was already dead. They dragged her past the house. I was unable to do anything. I stood as if I was dead, my heart even stopped. Hardly had things died down when we escaped to Baku. To the Azerbaijani who gave me a lift, thank you for not taking a single kopeck. I later discovered that five of my relatives who had decided to sit it out were simply killed in their flat"
The most important question of all was asked by a machine operator and party member: "Everyone is interested to know, who organised this? You know it was organised. To collect such a number of iron rods, sharpened and sawn off to be put on sticks, hatchets with long handles, is not possible in a day. Somewhere, they were made in a factory. But whoever organised this, I am sure that the town's leaders and the police were involved. This band of several thousand, maybe 15,000, was operating with impunity for several days. Even when the group of 100, 150 people on the 27th demanded slaughter, they could have been stopped, but the police only watched. And then, it was as if they had disappeared. For 2 days, furniture was thrown out of windows, it was burnt in the streets, cars were set alight, children were beaten, women
raped and dragged by the hair through the streets. Surely the police were telephoned about this. Why did they disappear? In the papers they wrote it was the work of 'individual hooligan elements'. Is it difficult to catch a few 'extremists' who do not hide but are on the rampage in the streets in front of everybody….? Well, OK, First Secretary Muslim-sade has been punished, expelled from the party, but he was not alone. Where were the rest, the Komsomol, the trade unions?"
Bitterness
Clearly, events such as these have left a bitterness that will not easily be overcome. One woman who was ready to pour petrol over herself and set it alight rather than be attacked by the mob pointed out to a party official who tried to get her to return to Sumgait: "Nothing could persuade us to return as I would have to walk on the ground where blood was split, in the flats where my friends were killed and look onte the balcony where one of my pupils was raped and then burnt"
The national question has never beer an easy problem to solve and ir Armenia and Azerbaijan, the 'Com.munist bureaucracies have released a force they will not be able to contre. Only a return to the methods and ides: of Lenin and Trotsky, of the right of se determination of nations and the esta:lishment of a federation of genuine democratic workers' states will cres. the conditions in which mutual ce-fidence and trust can once again = established.
[page 19]
In his book Perestroika: New Thinking for our Country and the World, Gorbachev clalms that women in the Sovlet Union have 'the same right to work as men, equal pay... every opportunity to get an education, to have a career and to participate in social and political activities." The reality, however, is different. Seventy years after the revolution, despite legal equality, the Soviet Union still cannot justifiably claim the liberation Women in the Soviet Union of women. JEN PICKARD examines why. October 1917 was a milestone in the emancipation of women. For the first time the complete economic, political and sexual equality of women was put on the historic agenda. The Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky envisaged that with the development of industry and a planned nationalised economy, women would be given the opportunity to work outside of the home and, with the establishment of political democracy at all levels, would be able to play a full role in all spheres of political and social life. To achieve this goal, women would have to be released from the traditional confines of domestic chores, with childcare becoming the responsibility of society as a whole through the provision of cheap, good quality public dining halls, laundries, sewing centres, creches and nurseries. The Bolsheviks were accused of breaking up families and relationships' but the provision of these facilities, lifting the burden off the shoulders of women, would enable relationships to be formed on an equal and voluntary basis.
Some of the earliest decrees after the revolution were to further the economic independence of women. For example, a woman was no longer obliged to live with her husband or to accompany him if a change of job meant a change of house. As well as the fundamental socialisation of the means of production, property relationships changed to give women equal rights to hold land, be head of a household and to receive equal pay. Attention was paid to women's childbearing role and special maternity laws were introduced forbidding long hours and night work, and establishing paid leave at childbirth, family allowances and childcare centres. Abortion was legalised in 1920, divorce was simplified and civil registration of marriage was introduced.
However, as Lenin wrote on International Women's Day 1921, while 'in Soviet Russia, no trace is left of any inequality between men and women under the law... this is only the first step in the liberation of women". There had to be the practical means to ensure that legal equality could become a reality, as well as a fundamental change in attitudes about the role of women in society. The establishment of the first worker's state was a transitional stage in the building of a new socialist society where attitudes would be determined by the new social relations and material conditions rather than being based on the old ideas prevalent under One of the immediate tasks of the Soviet government was to mobilise millions of women workers and peasants to participate in building the new society. A series of conferences were organised. leading up to the First All Russian Congress of Working Women in November 1918, where Lenin argued that "the experience of all liberation morements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much women take part in it. The Soviet government is doing everything in its power to enable women on independent proletarian socialist work."
Early advances To assist this work commissions for agitation and propaganda among working women were set up, becoming in 1919 the womens department of the Bolshevik Party, the Zhenotdel. with a monthly Kommunistka.
anniversary of October Lenin again used the yardstick of women's emancipation to judge the achievements of the Soviet republic, arguing that in two years, in one of the most backward countries of Europe, "more has been done to emancipate women, to make her the equal of the 'strong' sex. than has been done during the past 130 years by all the enlightened, 'democratic'
republics of the world taken together." But he also added that while the Bolcould be proud of these achievements in clearing out the old laws, the complete end of the degradation of women would only come with the building of the new society, a society hardly begun construction.
The Zhenotde! did not function as a separate organisation but worked under the general direction and programme of the party. Lenin continually reproached comrades for their lack of attention to work among women, arguing that it was the concern of the whole party rather than that of the women comrades alone. He emphasised the need to change attitudes as well as policies and although he sup ported the idea of a women's department he warned against a separate organisation of women: "we derive our organisational ideas from our ideological conceptions, we want no separate organisations of Communist women. She who is a Communist belongs as a member to the party just as he who is a Communist, and has the same rights and duties.
But the party must have organs-working groups, commissions, sections, with the specific purpose of rousing the broad mass of women, bringing them into contact with the party and keeping them under its influence; special methods of agitation and forms of is not bourgeois organisation.
feminism but a practical revolutionary The specific task of the women's department was to bring the broad mass of women into politics by visiting factories and villages, selling the monthly 30,000), organising literacy classes and discussion circles. In the countryside in particular, it was important to raise the sightsof the peasant women from the problems of their own individual lives and to enable them to see issues such as childcare as the responsibility of society as a whole. Again, in the rural areas, one of the main obstacles to the involvement of women in the party itselt (by 1922 still only 8 per cent were women) was the high level of illiteracy. However, through the makeshift schools and study groups which were set up, hundreds of thousands began to educate themselves and to take up delegate positions in the soviets. In the ten years of its existence the Zhenotdel played a crucial role in the political mobilisation of women. By 1927 there were eighteen women's journals with a circulation of nearly 400,000: by 1928 there were two and a half million women attending conferences organised to assist with political education, training and recruitment of women. Of course the dangers of a special women's department were recognised. Leading Bolshevik, Nadezhda Krupskaya, at one point warned that the women comrades were too involved in issues of social welfare, health and nurseries rather than playing a full 19
[page 20]
MIR Autumn 1988: Women in the USSR
role in all fields of economic and social reconstruction. A campaign had to be waged within the party itself to change attitudes to women. These changes did not occur overnight and required a conscious campaign; Lenin himself took to task the party activists who paid lip service to the emancipation of women yet refused their own wives the opportunity to participate in the work of the Zhenotdel.
Material advances were also made to facilitate the full involvement of women in all spheres of social, economic and political life: the provision of free school meals, milk for all children, special food and clothes allowances for children in need, pregnancy consultation centres, maternity homes, creches and other facilities. Between 1919 and 1920, ninety per cent of Petrograd was fed communally.
But by 1921 the economy was in ruins following three years of savage civil war. Industrial production was only 10 per cent of the 1913 level. Agricultural production had fallen by 16 per cent between 1917 and 1921. The working class in the cities was drastically weakened and exhausted, many of the best elements having been killed in the civil war. Starvation reigned in the countryside and the peasants, with the immediate threat of the restoration of the landlord removed with the end of the civil war, began to resist the emergency restrictions of 'war communism' , the forced requisitioning of grain, the militarisation of labour, etc.
The Bolsheviks under Lenin had always envisaged that the revolution in backward Russia would be followed by socialist revolution in the more advanced capitalist countries like Germany. Fraternal socialist co-operation would then lead to the integration of these industrially advanced economies with backward Russia. However, the revolutionary wave unleashed at the end of the first world war, because of the role of the workers leaders, did not lead to victory and the Russian revolution remained isolated. The Bolsheviks were forced to retreat and give concessions to the peasants, small businessmen and foreign
investors. This New Economic Policy, NEP, introduced as a temporary measure to revive production, had serious consequences for women workers. A rise in unemployment hit unskilled women hardest. In 1923, 58 per cent of the unemployed in Petrograd were women; in the textile industry between 80 and 90 percent of the unemployed were women. Now that divorce had been simplified, the problems for women workers were compounded. Without economic independence and a job, divorce only addedto the insecurity and hardship of many women, rather than giving them freedom of choice.
The New Economic Policy, along with Russia's isolation and economic backwardness, laid the basis for inequality and privilege in Soviet Russia. Starting as a tiny minority of the population, the working class was decimated by the world war, the civil war and famine. Exhausted, working long hours, workers participation in the soviets-the organs of their democratic rule-began to fall away. Successive defeats of the international revolution in Germany, Bulgaria and China, added to the demoralisation. The interests of the Kulaks, rich peasants, and the speculators who fed on the shortages, began to be reflected within the Communist Party, the government and the state. Policies both within Russia and internationally began to reflect the interests of these privileged layers. The developing bureaucracy personified in Stalin consolidated its grip with the theory of 'socialism in one country' and the purging of opposition, including Trotsky, from the Communist Party. This bureaucratisation within the party and the Communist International was accompanied by parallel changes in the position of women in Russia.
There always had been economic constraints placed on the Bolsheviks in the early days after the revolution, limiting the practical measures which could be undertaken to transform the role of women and realise in full the legal changes of 1918. The extent of the resources necessary to free women from domestic drudgery was summed up in a study at the time showing that over seven
The bureaucracy, Stalin and Gorbachev alike,
see the family as an Important element of
social control. Trotsky wrote in 1936 that "the most compelling motive of the present cult of the family Is undoubtedly the need of the bureaucracy for a stable hierarchy of relations, and for the disciplining of youth by means of forty million points of support for authority and power."
20
million domestic workers would be needed to do the shopping, cleaning, cooking and childcare for every 20 million of the population. Initially there had been a short period of uncertainty about creches and kindergartens, but very quickly women workers and peasants recognised the advantages of collective childcare. Nevertheless, the resources did not match up to the plans and hopes of the Communist Party or to the needs of the workers and peasants. If workers can not afford to buy meals in the social dining room or the quality of food is poor, then families will go back to eating at home with the position of women as cook and cleaner reinforced. But while the party of Lenin fought these economic constraints to raise the social position of women, the party of Stalin began more and more to use the constraints to reverse the gains made in the past. There was a rundown in communal creches, and kitchens were cut back.
Cult of the family
By 1928 the Kulaks had enriched themselves to the point where they represented a real threat of capitalist restoration, hoarding grain, gold and even guns. The bureaucracy panicked and, in a complete about turn, switched to a programme of rapid industrialisation and forced collectivisation. This, coupled with the consolidation of a monstrous totalitarian state, represented a turning point in the position of women. Millions were quickly mobilised into the workforce, but whereas the involvement of women in work outside of the home would generally be a progressive step, this mobilisation was based on coercion rather than opportunity and choice. In 1922 women were 22 per cent of the workforce but within ten years this figure had grown to 32 per cent. Between 1922 and 1937 out of 4 million new workers 82 per cent were women. Employment represents the potential for women's liberation but, in itselt, having a job outside of the home does not constitute liberation. In fact, under the emerging bureaucracy, it meant increased oppression because of other changes in legislation regarding the family. It was at this time, in 1930, that the women's department was formally abolished.
The bureaucracy found the traditional conservatism and discipline of individual family units useful in reinforcing its own social and economic policies. In 1936 new legislation to reinforce the traditional role of the family was introduced, restricting women's rights to independence and mobility. Divorce became more difficult
[page 21]
ramr Although women are a vital element in the Soviet workforce, their wage rates are still only three-quarters that of men.
to obtain. Legal abortions were abolished except on health grounds and women were instructed that they had no right to deny the 'joys of motherhood.' Abortion became the privilege of those who could afford it. Ordinary women, out of necessity, were forced to procure illegal abortions without adequate sanitation and facilities. Many women suffered mutilation and medical problems. The benefits of life under a socialist system as envisaged by Lenin, where women would have a full and equal life with proper childcare, would have removed the insecurity and fear which the birth of another child often brought, thus eliminating the need for many abortions. This approach contrasted with the coercive instruction of the Stalinists to 'enjoy motherhood'.
Behind these legal changes and coercive methods lay the economic requirements of the bureaucracy. With millions of workers killed in the war and civil war, rapid industrialisation resulted in a desperate shortage of labour. Hence the necessity for such methods to ensure an increase in the population.
In 1934 homosexuality and prostitution were declared crimes with penalties of up to 8 years imprisonment. In 1936 there were over 1,000 women arrested for prostitution in Moscow alone. The fact that out of economic necessity thousands of women, many born after 1917, were resorting to prostitution-which represents the extreme degradation of women-was a crushing refutation of the myth of the bureaucracy that 'socialism had been achieved'
These changes with re position of women and thi not the result of economic
spect to the e family were problems and
the difficulties of "building socialism', as the Stalinists argue. The Bolsheviks had faced even greater problems but they recognised that, within the bounds of what was possible, the degree of emancipation of women was a measure of the success of the revolution. The changes made under the bureaucracy were in fact a reflection of the political degeneration taking place. This degeneration was a contradictory process: women were becoming involved in production, yet for women the political gains of the revolution were clawed back concurrently with the crushing of political democracy for the working class as a whole. Policies to bring women into production, or to expand the population, were consciously decided upon by the bureaucracy only from the point of view of consolidating its privileges, prestige and caste interests.
Gains reversed
The new cult of the family was a natural progression of Stalinism, necessary to ensure stable social relations within the newly- bureaucratised Soviet Union. Marital stability was considered essential for the proper upbringing of children and the responsibility for childcare was once again shifted back to the individual family, ie women. In The Revolution Betrayed Trotsky sums up the changes taking place: "The triumphal rehabilitation of the family is caused by the material and cultural bankruptcy of the state. Instead of openly saying 'we have proven still too poor and ignorant for the creation of socialist relations among men, our children and grandchildren will realise this aim' ', the leaders are forcing people to glue
together again the shell of the broken family, and not only that, but to consider it, under threat of extreme penalties, the sacred nucleus of triumphal socialism.
The family was a means of disciplining youth. The Bolsheviks had always recognised the importance of its support among youth, with its new ideas and fresh approach. But the Stalinists imprisoned or exiled those who adhered to Bolshevism and dared to question the leadership. At the Tenth Congress of the Communist Youth in April 1936 the General Secretary called on the youth to "end the chatter about industrial and financial planning and other important state problems as though we are going to decide them" . Yet the age of maturity was still 18! The rehabilitation of the family in the 1930s was a conscious plan of the bureaucracy to clamp down, through the discipline of individual families, on the questions youth would raise about changes taking place.
Housework was considered socially useful labour, yet there were enormous differences in the lives of ordinary women workers and the wives of the bureacrats, who had cooks, telephones with which to order the shopping, and cars. Ordinary working women had to fit in running to the shops, cooking dinner, carrying children to the kindergarten (if they were fortunate enough to have a place) with a full time job. The return of women to family responsibilities was further reinforced with the decline in standards of creches and nurseries. Some were no better than bad orphan asylums, rather than being a place where women could leave their children confident that they were being well looked after and receiving more attention than they would in the in-
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MIR Autumn 1988: Women in the USSR dividual home. The better kindergartens were, of course, restricted for the use of the bureaucracy. Even the increase in kindergarten places to one million by 1935 was a drop in the In addition, the standards and costs of the social dining halls and laundries made them unacceptable to the majority of ordinary workers. With the continuing responsibility for children and the home, divorce represented, not the door to freedom, but to destitution. But divorce itself became more difficult to obtain and by 1944 was virtually restricted to the privileged layers in society. There were massive increases in the payment required to register a divorce and the more times a person divorced the greater was the payment. Even in law the equality introduced in 1917 was being taken away. Only the affluent afford divorce and unregistered marriages were no longer recognised. For ordinary working class families this meant that for the first time since the there was a distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children. Stalinism engulfed every aspect of daily life.
Russia today The position ot women in today stems from the policies laid down in the period where the bureaucracy consolidated its power and privileges. Women are involved in production but without being freed from their domestic responsibilities. In fact under Stalin it was argued that for real 'fulfillment' a role in both production and the home were necessary. Motherhood was declared a patriotic duty with the tantalising carrot of a 'Glory of Motherhood' medal for those women with nine or reflected in the education system with any semblance of equal opportunity and freedom of choice being swept aside. Girls were taught needlework, domestic science and childcare while boys studied electrical repairs and map reading. Coeducation was abolished in 1943 although it has been reintroduced positive developments for women as a result of the planned economy. Despite the devastating destruction of second world war, the Soviet economy was rapidly reconstructed, increasing five times since 1945. In the 1950s and early 1960s the economy grew by 10-11 per cent a year, two or three times faster than most capitalist countries. This allowed steady improvements in living standards for women, including retirement at 55 (60 for men), no discrimination against working mothers in terms of employment or rates of pay, right of pregnant women to and the transfer to lighter work with fully paid maternity leave for 56 days before and 56 days after the birth of a child. New laws in 1970 abolished night work and underground work for women.
The number of women in higher education as a percentage of the total has risen from 28% in 1927, to 43% in 1960, to 49% in 1970. The only other countries where women are over 40 per cent of the total in higher education are Finland, the USA and France. There have been improvements in pre-school care for children-in 1960 there were 500,000 places but by 1971 this had risen five million, even though parents still have to pay 20 per cent of the cost of the upkeep of children at preschool institutions. The transformation of Russia from a semi-feudal country where 99 per cent of agricultural power was animals, to one of the two most powerful industrialised nations in the world, has seen a doubling of the life expectancy for women from 30 to 74 years and a reduction in child mortality of 90 per cent.
However improvements such as the increase in childcare facilities merely reflects the attempts by the bureacracy to manipulate the female workforce according to the needs of the economy. The vast shortage of men in the Soviet Union arising from the first world war and the civil war years was compounded by the second world war, leaving only 59 men between the ages of 35-59 for every 100 women. Women again had to be mobilised into industry.
But in the 1970s, the growth rate fell to a mere 3 per cent as the bureaucracy, now presiding over an advanced, modern economy, became an absolute fetter on production, incapable of producing better results than the capitalist economies. At the same time, there was a new trend in the demographic crisis with women in the European republics rarely having more than one child. So the bureaucracy launched an assault on the alleged detrimental effects of institutional childcare in an attempt to persuade mothers that it was better for them to stay at home with the children. This 'back to the home' policy reflected on the one hand the shortage of adequate childcare facilities but was also part of a scheme to increase the birthrate. Pressures are brought to bear such as stressing the dangers of abortion (still the main method of birth control) and the greater risk of cancer in an The issue of women's wages in the Soviet Union is assuming more and more importance, as especially since by 1959 almost one third of households were headed by women. But women still occupy jobs at scale. In the lower end of the wages 1975 in Russia women's wages were still between 67-73 per cent of men's. The issue of low wages is further reinforced by the sex segregation that exists in employment opportunities. Some occupations have an almost exclusively female workforce, and in fact this segregation has increased. In 1940 women working in education were 59 per cent of the workforce, but by 1975 this figure had risen to 73 per cent. In 1959 one third of women were occupations where 70 per cent of the workforce were women, but by 1970 this figure had risen to 55 per cent. 98 per cent of nurses are women, as are 75 per cent of teachers, 95 per cent of librarians and 75 per cent of doctors. In agriculture too, men occupy the better paid skilled jobs and women do much of the heavy manual labour. In all these areas of work the proportion of women decreases the further up the scale. Although there has been a rapid growth in the number of women scientists (in 1950 there were 600 female doctors of science, in 1984 there were 5,600), in the top Academy ot sciences only one fifth are women. At the June 'extraordinary' conference of the 'Communist' Party Zoya Pukhova, chair of the Soviet Women's Committee, conceded that there was "a gap between the official policy of equality for women, and the reality, in which few keep pace with men in the working world", Guardian, 4 July 1988.
Double burden Clearly, it is women's position in the family that has had far reaching consequences for women's involvement in all other areas of life. The family has had to absorb the additional burdens of female employment. It has not meant a time spent on household chores. Women still spend two to two and a half times as much time on housework as men. Added to the emphasis on heavy industry, combined with the bungling and mismanagement of without the check of workers management and control, has meant fewer and inferior consumer goods such washing machines, vacuum cleaners, or The growth in employment has not been matched by the expansion of services such as cheap good quality dining halls. This, couplec with a housing crisis which in 19! meant that 23 per cent of households were made up of three generation: living in the same house, has added ti the strains within family life.
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The limits of Gorbachev's 'reform' programme women back into the confines of the home. Since the revolution, educational and professional opportunities have been opened up for women, but for most ordinary women these economic obligations, on top of the traditional responsibilities, have made life increasingly hard. The programme of the Bolsheviks to free women from domestic drudgery has been buried as more and more are compelled to combine their roles as workers and mothers. 85 per cent of women between the ages of 20-55 work full-time with the responsibility for childcare often falling on the shoulders bureaucracy is attempting to solve the fall in the rate of economic growth since the 1970s on the backs of women, by looking for cheaper ways to provide childcare and domestic services in the form of individual family units. The programme of the Bolsheviks relating to women is clearly incompatible with bureaucratic control, and with the interests of the privileged bureaucracy. Lenin emphasised that the oppression of women would not be automatically eliminated by the socialist revolution but that further measures would be needed to remove the sexual division of labour that keeps women tied to the home. Under Stalinism. the employment of women represents only the potential for the emancipation of women and in fact has clearly revealed the double burden that working class The contradictory position of women in the USSR with their involvement in industry on a mass scale without any reduction in family responsibilities, is part of the general contradictions that are developing in Soviet society. There is a basic conflict of interests between the bureaucracy and the working class as a whole. Gorbachev's 'reform' ramme is an indication of these contradictions. The slowing down of the Soviet economy threatens the position of the bureaucracy. As living standards are affected, the discontent of the workers will develop. To prevent a political revolution from below Gorbachev wants to carry out reforms from the top. But it will prove impossible to transform Soviet society, to end waste and corruption without eliminating the bureaucratic system itself.
The limits of Gorbachev's 'reform' programme are revealed by its application to the position of women. The reforms are being introduced alongside a campaign to push women back to the confines of the home. A new course, 'The Ethics and Pyschology of Family Life' has been introduced into the school curriculum and is shown on television. This course is designed to are revealed by its application to the position of women. The reforms are being introduced alongside a campaign to push reinforce the traditional role of women in the family. Teachers are urged to 'train and train again, girls to be girls and boys to be boys on the different roles of girls and boys is diets-from the age of 14 or earlier, boys Faced with low growth and, according to one of Gorbachev's economists, the prospect of unemployment arising out of the closure of uneconomic factories, the bureaucracy has effectively abandoned any prospect of providing universal childcare facilities. Instead, shifting the responsibility firmly onto the family, Gorbachev announced at the 27th Congress of the 'Communist Party, a plan "to extend the practise of letting women work a shorter day or week, (ie part-time working-JP) or to work at home". But this is not just a question of material problems in providing childcare facilities. As Trotsky explained in The Revolution Betrayed, the restoration of the family went "infinitely farther than iron economic causes producing this return... there is added the social interest of the ruling stratum in the deepening of bourgeois law. The most compelling motive of the present cult of the family is undoubtedly the need of the bureaucracy for a stable hierarchy of relations, and for the disciplining of youth by means of forty million points of support for authority and power." Gorbachev, like Stalin before him, clearly sees the family as an important element of social control. Gorbachev This is confirmed by Gorbachev himself inhis book, Perestroika: New Thinking for our Country and the World, when he argues that "women no longer have enough time to pertorm their everyday duties at home-housework, the upbringing of children and the creation of a good family atmosphere. We have discovered that many of our problems-in children's and young people's behaviour, in our morals, culture and in production-are partially caused by the weakening of family ties and slack attitudes to family responsibilities... we should... make it possible for women to return to their purely womenly mission."
Fundamentally, the attempts of the bureaucracy to manipulate women to suit the needs of the system will only be overcome by the involvement of the mass of men and women in the political revolution. The political revolution has the same role to play in the emancipation of women as for society generally: working class men and women have exactly the same interests in overthrowing the bureacracy and instituting workers democracy.
Marxists can be confident that the demands and aspirations of women workers in the Soviet Union will not be to turn the clock back and return to the confines of the home but will be to extend their rights and conditions. They will demand the full implementation of the ideas and laws made immediately after the 1917 revolution so that the emancipation of women can become a reality and the promises of the revolution can be fulfilled. Despite the gains of October, the level of women's emancipation in Russia has to be measured not on the basis of a backward economy, but on the basis of a modern industrialised nation.
In the early days of the revolution, Lenin used the same yardstick of success that Marx and Engels took: "No nation can be free when half the population is enslaved in the kitchen. conclusion to be drawn must be that there is, as yet, still no society internationally where children, women and men have been liberated. Fifty years after The Revolution Betrayed was written by Trotsky, his words have as much significance today as in 1936: man enslaved woman, how exploiter subjected them both, how toilers have attempted at the price of blood to free themselves from slavery and have only another-history tells us much about all this. In essence it tells us nothing else. But how in reality to free the child, the woman and the human being? For that we have as yet no reliable models. All historical past experience, wholly negative, demands of the toilers at least and first of all an implacable distrust of all privileged and uncontrollable guardians."
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