Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  1725

  ZHENOTDEL

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Figner, Vera. (1927). Memoirs of a Revolutionist. New York: International Publishers. Footman, David. (1968). Red Prelude: A Life of A. I. Zhelyabov. London: Barrie The Cresset Press. Venturi, Franco. (1983). Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  OLEG BUDNITSKII

  ZHENOTDEL

  The Women’s Section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (1919-1930).

  In November 1918 Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Konkordia Samoil-ova, Klavdia Nikolayeva, and Zlata Lilina organized the First National Congress of Women Workers and Peasants. This was not actually the first national women’s congress, as Russian feminists had held a huge conference in St. Petersburg in December 1908. Kollontai and her comrades, however, explicitly rejected any parallels to the earlier conference, arguing that they sought not to separate women’s issues from men’s but rather to weld and forge women and men into the larger socialist liberation movement. Despite serious ambivalence over whether to create a separate women’s organization, the Congress passed a resolution requesting the party Central Committee to organize “a special commission for propaganda and agitation among women.” The organizers limited their designs for this commission, however, initially claiming that it would serve “merely as a technical apparatus” for implementing Central Committee decrees. This was not, they insisted, a feminist organization.

  The Central Committee now sanctioned the formal creation of women’s commissions at the local and central levels. In September 1919 the Central Committee passed a decree upgrading the commissions to the status of sections (otdely) within the party committees, thus creating the zhenotdel, or women’s section.

  Several factors played into the creation of the women’s sections. The top leadership of the party, including Vladimir Ilich Lenin, were well aware of the German Women’s Bureau and International Women’s Secretariat created by Clara Zetkin and the German Social Democratic Party. Many of the

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  top women Bolsheviks (especially Kollontai and Armand) had begun their social activism by working among women, while others (including Krupskaya, Samoilova, Nikolayeva, and Lilina) had worked on the party’s journal The Woman Worker (Rabotnitsa) in 1913 and 1914.

  One reason motivating Kollontai in particular as early as the spring of 1917 was a fear that if the Bolshevik Party did not organize an effective women’s movement, Russian women living under conditions of war and privation might well be drawn into the remnants of the prerevolutionary feminist or Menshevik movements. Related to that was a persistent anxiety among Bolsheviks of all outlooks that if they did not recruit women into the official party, their (i.e., women’s) backwardness would make them easy targets for all manner of counterrevolutionary forces. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the early party-state desperately needed to mobilize every woman and man to support the Red Army in the Civil War.

  Nonetheless, the ambivalence of the 1918 Congress dogged the women’s section for the whole of its existence. The leaders themselves expressed ambivalence about the project on which they were embarking. Were they creating special sections and special conferences so that, in the long run, they could eliminate the need for such sections and conferences? Many female activists, moreover, had personally chosen socialist organizing and activism because they sought an escape from gender stereotyping; they did not want to be thought of as women, let alone as professionally responsible for women’s advancement.

  From the outset the top leadership of the zhenotdel faced a wide range of organizational problems. These included constant turnover of their personnel as their best members were siphoned off for other projects; communication difficulties between Moscow and the regions; resistance of rural and urban women to outside organizers; and resistance of male party members who thought this work completely unnecessary.

  Despite all these difficulties the zhenotdel made significant gains in the area of organization-building during the period from 1919 to 1923. Often working in special interdepartmental commissions, they established relations with the Maternity and Infant Section (OMM) of the Commissariat of Health, as well as with the Commissariats of Education, Labor, Social Welfare, and Internal Affairs. They addressed issues of abortion and motherhood, prostitution, child care, labor conscription, female unemployENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  ZHENOTDEL

  ment, labor regulation, and famine relief. They argued vehemently with the trade unions that there should be special attention to female workers. They published special “women’s pages” (stranichki rabotnitsy) in the major newspapers, two popular journals (Rabotnitsa and Krestyanka), and Kommu-nistka, which was geared toward organizers and instructors working among women.

  With the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, zhenotdel activists faced a whole host of new problems: rising and disproportionately female unemployment; cutbacks in budgeting for local party committees which prompted them to try to liquidate their women’s sections altogether; cutbacks in the social services (child care, communal kitchens, etc.) that zhenotdel activists had hoped would assist in the emancipation of women from the drudgery of private child care and food preparation. Kollontai and her colleagues now began insisting, in Kollontai’s words, on not eliminating but strengthening the women’s sections. They wanted the women’s sections to have more representatives on the factory committees and Labor Exchanges (which handled job placements for unemployed workers), in trade unions, and in the Commissariats.

  The party responded to this increased insistence with charges of feminist deviation. In February 1922 Kollontai (now tainted as well by her involvement in the Workers’ Opposition) was replaced as head of the zhenotdel by Sofia Smidovich. Smidovich, a contemporary of Kollontai, was much more socially conservative and less adamant about all the injustices to women. Kollontai and her close assistant, Vera Golubeva, did not cease to sound the alarm about women’s plight, even when Kollontai was reassigned to the Soviet trade union delegation in Norway. From her exile in 1922, Kollontai, calling the New Economic Policy “the new threat,” expressed fears that women would be forced out of the workforce and back into domestic subservience to their male companions. She now even began to question whether feminism was such a negative term.

  The Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923 reacted vehemently against the possibility of any such feminist deviations. At the same congress, Stalin (normally reticent on women’s issues) now praised women’s delegate meetings organized by the zhenotdel as “an important, essential transmission mechanism” between the party and the female masses. As such, they should be used to “extend and direct the party’s tentacles in order to underENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY mine the influence of the priests among youth, who are raised by women.” Through such tentacles, the party would be able to “transmit its will to the working class.” Three months later Smidovich announced that Kommunistka would no longer carry theoretical discussions of women’s emancipation.

  Unfortunately, the historical record of the zhenotdel for the period after 1924 is less clear than the earlier record because the relevant files of the women’s section are missing from the party archives. The women’s section in 1924-1925 was headed by Nikolayeva, herself a woman of the working class and long-time activist in the Leningrad women’s section. In May 1924 the Thirteenth Party Congress again attacked the zhenotdel, accusing it this time of one-sidedness (odnostoronnost) for focusing too much on agitation and propaganda rather than working directly on issues of women’s daily lives. Soon thereafter Nikolayeva, Krupskaya, and Lilina became embroiled in the Leningrad Opposition. It is quite likely that the zhenotdel records were purged because of this.

  Alexandra Artyukhina, newly appointed as director of the section (replacing Nikolayeva), made a point of arguing that the women’s sections should propagandize against the Leningrad Oppositi
on on the grounds that otherwise female workers would fall for their false slogans in favor of “equality” and “participation in profits.” Now more than ever the women’s sections strove to prove their original contention that they had “no tasks separate from the tasks of the party.” During the second half of the 1920s the women’s section toed the party line, participating in military preparedness exercises for women workers during the war scare of 1927, as well as in the collectivization and industrialization drives of 1928-1930.

  In January 1930 the Central Committee of the CPSU announced that the women’s sections were being liquidated as part of a general reorganization of the party. While the decree declared that work among the female masses had “the highest possible significance,” this work was now to be done by all the sections of the Central Committee rather than by special women’s sections. In some parts of the country, especially Central Asia, the women’s sections were replaced by women’s sectors (zhensektory). Kommunistka was completely closed down. Lazar Kaganovich, Stalin’s spokesman for this move, claimed that since the women’s section had now completed the circle of its development, it was no longer necessary. The historic “woman question” had now been solved.

  1727

  ZHENSOVETY

  The impossible position of the women’s sections can be clearly seen in resolutions and criticisms of the last years of their existence. They were sometimes criticized for devoting too little attention to daily life (byt), while other times they were attacked for too much of a social welfare bias in helping women in their daily lives. If they were too outspoken, they were accused of feminist deviations, while if they were not visible enough in their work, they were accused of passivity. Ultimately, the untenable position of the women’s sections arose from their position as transmission belts between the party and the masses. While the founders of the zhenotdel had hoped that they could carry women’s voices and needs to the party, the party insisted that the principal role of the women’s sections was to convey the party’s will to the female masses. See also: ABORTION POLICY; ARMAND, INESSA; FEMINISM; KOLLONTAI, ALEXANDRA MIKHAILOVNA; KRUPSKAYA, NADEZHDA KONSTANTINOVNA; MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE; SAMOILOVA, KONDORDIYA NIKOLAYEVNA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Clements, Barbara Evans. (1992). “The Utopianism of the Zhenotdel.” Slavic Review 51:485-496. Clements, Barbara Evans. (1997). Bolshevik Women. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Elwood, Ralph C. (1992). Inessa Armand: Revolutionary and Feminist. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Goldman, Wendy Z. (1996). “Industrial Politics, Peasant Rebellion, and the Death of the Proletarian Women’s Movement in the USSR.” Slavic Review 55:46-77. Hayden, Carol Eubanks. (1976). “The Zhenotdel and the Bolshevik Party.” Russian History 3(2):150-173. Massell, Gregory. (1974). The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919-1929. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wood, Elizabeth A. (1997). The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia. Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press.

  ELIZABETH A. WOOD

  ZHENSOVETY

  The zhenskie sovety (women’s councils), or zhensovety in shortened form, were set up after 1958 under Nikita Khrushchev as part of his attempt to mobi1728 lize the Soviet people around issues concerning their lives. Involvement in trades unions, comrades courts, and citizens’ volunteer detachments was also encouraged during this period. The zhensovety were part of Khrushchev’s “differentiated approach” to politics, according to which women’s organizations were now acceptable again on the grounds that they targeted one particular group of citizens, just as other organizations dealt with particular groupings, such as youth and pensioners. From 1930 when Stalin declared the “woman question” to be solved, separate organizations for women, with the exception of the movement of wives (dvizhenie zhen), were closed down on the grounds that they smacked of “bourgeois feminism” and were divisive of working-class unity. Now it was recognized that the political education of women was one of the weakest areas of party work and in need of attention.

  Zhensovety were formed in factories and offices and on farms. They were set up at regional (oblast), territory (kray), and district (rayon) levels of administration. Their sizes varied from around thirty to fifty members at regional levels and fifteen to twenty at district level to smaller groups of five to seventeen in factories and farms. There was no uniform pattern across the women’s councils, as some were closely affiliated with the party, others with the soviets, and still others with the trade union. They divided their work into sections such as daily life, culture, mass political work, child care, health care, and sanitation and hygiene. Their activities usually reflected official party priorities for work among women.

  The zhensovety continued to exist on paper in the years of Leonid Brezhnev’s leadership but in fact did very little. They were formal in most areas rather than active. As part of his policy of democratization, Mikhail Gorbachev revived and restructured them. In 1986, at the Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in Moscow, Gorbachev called for their reinvigoration. By the spring of 1988, 2.3 million women were active in 236,000 zhensovety. As in the past, each women’s council was preoccupied with issues of local concern. Their work was divided into the typical sections of “daily life and social problems,” “production,” “children,” and “culture.”

  At the nineteenth All-Union Conference of the CPSU in June 1988, Gorbachev argued that women’s voices were not heard and that this had been the case for years. He regretted that the women’s movement was at a “standstill,” at best “formal.” He placed the zhensovety for the first

  ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

  ZHIRINOVSKY, VLADIMIR VOLFOVICH

  time under the hierarchical umbrella of the Soviet Women’s Committee. In 1989 Gorbachev reformed the electoral system. In the newly elected Congress of People’s Deputies, the zhensovety had 75 “saved” seats among the 750 seats reserved for social organizations. See also: FEMINISM; MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Browning, Genia. (1987). Women and Politics in the USSR. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Browning, Genia. (1992). “The Zhensovety Revisited.” In Perestroika and Soviet Women, ed. Mary Buckley. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Buckley, Mary. (1989). Women and Ideology in the Soviet Union. Ann Arbor: University of Mchigan Press. Buckley, Mary. (1996). “The Untold Story of Obshch-estvennitsa in the 1930s.” Europe-Asia Studies 48(4):569-586. Friedgut, Theodore H. (1979). Political Participation in the USSR. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

  MARY BUCKLEY

  Ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky rails against the United States during a January 19, 2003, rally in Moscow. © AFP/

  CORBIS

  ZHIRINOVSKY, VLADIMIR VOLFOVICH

  (b. 1946), founder and leader of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia, deputy speaker of the State Duma.

  Born in Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan, Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky was the son of a Jewish lawyer from Lviv and a Russian woman. After his father’s death he was raised by his mother. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1969, then served in the army in Tiflis, where he worked in military intelligence. From 1973 to 1991 Zhirinovsky worked at various jobs in Moscow and at night attended law school at Moscow State University. In the 1980s he directed legal services for Mir publishing.

  With the coming of perestroika Zhirinovsky began his political career. In 1988 he founded the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), the second legal party registered in the Soviet Union. In 1991 he ran for the presidency of Russia and received 6 million votes. Emphasizing populism and great-power chauvinism and denouncing corruption, he built up a loyal party organization. In the December 1993 parliamentary elections, ZhiriENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY novsky parlayed discontent with Boris Yeltsin into a plurality in the State Duma. In the complex election system for individual candidates and party slates, the LDPR received 23 percent of the total vote, fifty-nine of the party seats in the Duma, and five i
ndividual seats.

  In the December 1995 Duma elections, the LDPR vote fell sharply to 11.1 percent, and the party won only fifty-five seats in the parliament, well behind the resurgent Communist Party. In 1996 Zhirinovsky ran for president again, but this time he finished fifth (5.7 percent) in the first round of voting and was eliminated.

  In the Duma elections of 1999 the LDPR drew 6.4 percent of the vote and got nineteen seats. Zhirinovsky was elected deputy speaker of the Duma. In the 2000 presidential election he ran again and drew only 2.7 percent of the vote, or a little more than 2 million out of the 75 million who voted. Zhirinovsky supported both the first and the second Chechen War. An acute student of mass media, he remained in the national spotlight by combining outlandish behavior, populist appeal, and authoritarian nationalism. His antics included fist fights on the floor of the Duma and throwing

  1729

  ZHORDANIA, NOE NIKOLAYEVICH

  orange juice on Boris Nemtsov during a television debate. He made headlines by threatening to take Alaska back from the United States and to flood the Baltic republics with radioactive waste. Zhirinovsky has called for a Russian dash to the south that would end “when Russian soldiers can wash their boots in the warm waters of the Indian Ocean.” See also: LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Fraser, Graham, and Lancelle, George. (1994). Absolute Zhirinovsky: A Transparent View of the Distinguished Russian Statesman. New York: Penguin Books. Kartsev, Vladimir, with Todd Bludeau. (1995). Zhirinovsky! New York: Columbia University Press. Kipp, Jacob W. (1994).“The Zhirinovsky Threat.” Foreign Affairs 73(3):72-86. Zhirinovsky, Vladimir. (1996). My Struggle: The Explosive Views of Russia’s Most Controversial Public Figure. New York: Barricade Books.

  JACOB W. KIPP

  ZHORDANIA, NOE NIKOLAYEVICH