[page 13]
In 1917 the Russian working class made a revolution, and the changes that followed were largely determined by the programme of the Bolshevik Party. Many of the leaders of the party had realised the fundamental importance of liberating the women of Russia, not only from capitalist exploitation along with the rest of the working class, but that it was necessary to liberate women from their subjected position within relationships, which demanded new forms of relationships and thus the removal of all vestiges of the bourgeois family. Consequently some of the first decrees that were passed after October 1917 were the marriage decrees of December 1917. These established the equality of contracting parties in any marriage, and women were in future to determine their own surname and their domicile. More importantly, however, it was no longer necessary to register the relationship, and this ended the old distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children for in future all children were the same status, whatever the relationship of their parents. Marriage was thus to be a legal union, which need no longer apply, and by 1919 a decree of the People's Commissaires established that divorces could be had on demand; "divorce ceased to be a luxury accessible only to the rich; henceforth the working women would not have to petition for months or even for years for a separate credential, entitling her to make herself independent of a brutish or drunken husband, accustomed to beat her. Henceforth, divorce may be amicably obtained within a period of a week or two at most." - Communism and the Family, A. Kollontai, In 1919 Lenin wrote, "We actually razed to the ground the infamous laws placing women in a position of inequality, restricting divorce and surrounding it with disgusting formalities, denying recognition to children born out of wedlock, enforcing a search for their fathers, ete., laws, numerous survivals of which, to the shame of the bourgeoisie and of capitalism, are to be found in all civilised countries ... But the more thoroughly we clear the ground of all the lumber of the old bourgeois law and institutions, the more we realise that we have only cleared the ground to build on, but are not building."
Thus early on the Bolsheviks had attempted to nail the legal oppression of women, but they recognised that it was not the solution, only a necessary first step. They were still not able to radically alter the pattern of woman's existence as long as the woman accepted the responsibility of caring for the children. As she was the one who gave birth, she was the one who looked after, It was not only the child caring that restricted her, it was the domestic slavery... *Notwithstanding all the laws emancipating women, she continues to be a domestic slave because petty housework crushes, strangles, stultifies and degrades her, chains her to the kitchen and the nursery, and she wastes her labour on barbarously unproductive, petty, nervewracking, stultifying and crushing drudgery." (Lenin, 1919)
It was necessary for the Communists to devote resources to this area. In urban areas, particularly in Moscow and Petrograd, public catering establishments were set up.
Nurseries and kindergartens were needed to release women for productive labour, particularly in the period of the civil war, when there were huge labour shortages. (Some measures along these lines had to be taken by the bourgeois government in Russia during the First World War, as they had to service the needs of their largely female labour force, the women replacing the men who were fighting). Thus some of the domestic, private tasks of the women were gradually being taken over by the state. It was recognised that only when these forms of labour were taken from the shoulders of women could they start to take their share of productive activity (although many women had previously coped with both lots of work!). But it was not just the production side, of paramount importance was the task to involve the women of Russia in the political activity. If the revolution was to be maintained, it was essential for all workers, both men and women, to take an active part in the democratic processes. "Equality before the law is not necessarily equality in fact. We want the working woman to be the equal of the working man not only before the law but in fact. For this the working woman must take an increasing part in the administration of socialised enterprises and in the administration of the state. Elect more working women to the Soviet, both Communist and non-party women.. Send more women to the Moseow Soviet! Let the Moscow proletariat show that it is prepared to do everything, to fight for victory, to fight the old inequality, the old bourgeois humiliation of women." (Lenin, 1920, in Pravda)
But if they were to seize these opportunities they had to be released from the burdens of housework, there had to be socialised services. The problem that the Bolsheviks faced was resources.
In the sphere of education the attitude to the family and how best to overthrow its hold was one of the main differences between two main sections of Narkompros | the commissariat in charge of Education and the Arts]. The Muscovite section put the emphasis on the school commune (shkola-kommuna) which was to be the child's total environment, seven days per week, twelve months a yearif possible! The communalists were above all hostile to the family and it was to be that on which the education of the child was to be premised of secondary interest was the development of the child. In fact this was not the way that the schools developed, although during the first few years of the revolution many schools were set up along experimental lines attempting this type of education). But changes were occurring in attitudes. Although Kollontai tends to be optimistie in her writings of the early period, there is evidence of fairly deep changes. In a book written about Soviet Education by Pinkevich (1929 edition), he quotes a survey that was taken in 1925 of the ideas that students held on how they would like to organise their future sex lives ... Of the women interviewed, only 1.7% said that they would like "normal" marital relations. 67.3% said that they envisaged a series of prolonged love affairs. (The equivalent numbers for men answering the same categories were 2.4% and 50.8%). The survey was taken at
[page 14]
Further Education institutes in Moscow (and it was not being quoted approvingly by Pinkevich!).
During the early years after the Revolution, the Bolsheviks attempted to fulfil their obligations to the women, and had attempted to start the loosening of the grip on the family. But as Trotsky was to argue later in The Revolution Betrayed, it was impossible to take the family by storm ... not because the will was lacking, but because the society was too poor. The real resources of the state did not correspond to the plans and intentions of the Communist Party ... it was not possible to "abolish" the family, it had to be replaced, and given that the society was too poor the liberation of women was unrealisable at that time.
Throughout the early "20s the Bolsheviks faced huge economic problems and they were forced at times to make retreats. However, these retreats were always on the understanding that if for any reason there was to be a return to bourgeois forms, that this was to be a temporary return, and was to be undertaken only to underpin the gains of the revolution. (In education, the early "20s saw the reintroduction into the schools of specialisation, fought against by Lunacharsky and Krupskaya, but in the end reintroduced as a temporary measure). But through the *20s with the establishment of the power with Stalin and his clique, the temporary retreats on principle became solidified into an actual change of principle and this can be seen clearly in relation to the position of women in the Soviet Union throughout the "30s and '40s. Through the "30s there was an erosion of the gains that had been made in the sphere of socialisation of the household tasks; communal kitchens began to be closed down, throwing the burden of food preparation once again squarely on the shoulders of the woman. Homeless children who had been a huge problem during the period of the civil war and the years after had been cared for in state orphanages. In 1933 the Central Committee had decided that the children should be placed into private hands. An area that the state should have been able to deal with was once again returning to the family. And throughout the '30s the Family was gradually being reinstated. (Obviously there were large areas of the Soviet Union that had hardly been touched by the changes relating to the family, notably in the rural areas, but the towns had seen gains made by women). In 1933 a law was passed punishing homosexual acts (1919 had seen the laws altered to allow homosexual relations); and this marked the squeezing back towards "normal marital relations". By 1936 abortions had been made illegal and divorces became increasingly difficult to obtain. It was automatic that at some stage the old categories of legitimate/illegitimate would be resurrected by the bureaucracy, and in 1944 a marriage decree was passed stating that "only legally recognised marriages entailed rights and duties for both the man and his wife". Illegitimacy had returned. The depths were found in 1949, when Stalin introduced the honours of maternity medals for five or six children, the Glory to Motherhood decoration when the woman produced between seven and nine children, and for all who succeeded in bringing forth ten or more, the Heroine Mother of the Soviet Union. Thirty years after the first blows were struck against the family, it was back with a vengeance.
Since 1949 there have been few significant changes in the position of women. Due to the pressure from the huge numbers of illegal abortions that were taking place in Russia, abortion was legalised in 1955. There is a declining birth rate and the problem for the bureaucracy was highlighted in the year 1958 to 1959 when the number of abortions exceeded the number of live births, consequently there have been alterations in the amount of time allowed for maternity leave and the women now have 56 days' paid leave before and after the birth; they can also take a year's unpaid leave if they wish after the birth, unprejudiced. But the woman still does the housework and the shopping. And there is still a shortage in the most basic of services, the childcare facilities; in 1960 only 13% of the children in the age group one to six could be accommodated. As for the development of laundries, eating places, creches, all are inadequate, and the woman is still doing two jobs.
If we look at the figures for the membership of the CPSU, we find that women number 3 million amongst about 14 million members, only about 20% (The proportion of women members of the party has fluctuated around the 15% to the 20% levels sinee the '30s). As there are more women than men in the USSR, it is obvious that women are not taking their full part in the political life of the state. In employment there are definite "feminised" industries, similar to Eastern Europe, e.g. textiles, light engineering. Of specialists with higher education, the women make up 72% of the doctors, 68% of the teachers and cultural workers, and 63% of the economists. They are under-represented on the managerial levels, and large numbers of women are in heavy manual categories, particularly in agriculture. There are still fewer chances for women to get education, skills and experience, and 77% of all women workers are "physical workers". [In 1922 a decree was passed prohibiting women from performing mining jobs and controlling the shift work that women could do. In the 1960s women are still found in mining jobs.] It is apparent, even from this brief survey of the changing position of women in the Soviet Union, that many of the advances made in the early years of the revolution have been whittled and chopped away. The degeneration of the revolution started in the "20s when the Communists were facing huge economic problems internally — shortages of food, raw materials, skilled labour, many of these the result of the civil war and the intervention; the fact that Russia was relatively underdeveloped in 1917; the loss of large numbers of cadres in the war; and the problem of forging connections with the working class became increasingly difficult. Externally the Soviet Union was facing a hostile world, and Comintern policies led to defeats of the proletariats in other PREMA MANAMPERI-MURDERED BY THE CEYLONESE GOVERNMENT This poster of one of the many women members of the JVP (Ceylonese revolutionary organisation) raped and killed by government forces in last year's repression, is being sold to raise money for the defence of Ceylonese prisoners.
15p + postage from the International Marxist Group. 1182 Pentonville Road, London N.1. 01-278 2616.
[page 15]
countries, which would have been the only way to maintain the October Revolution, by breaking through the isolation.
In 1921 the CPSU banned factions in the Party, as a necessary, temporary measure, in 1924 the death of Lenin, and the highly successful manoeuvring of Stalin, ensured that the CPSU would become bureaucratised. The development of the theory of socialism in one country and the ensuing sacrifice of the revolutionary struggle in other countries in subordination to the interests of the Soviet Bureaucracy, cut off much of the internationalism and quality of the heritage of the October Revolution. Through the "30s the policies of of Soviet bureaucracy towards the family developed in response to two major needs. One was the need for increased labour, the birth rate had to be forced up; and secondly the family was needed as a hold on the youth. Where the hierarchical structure of the family had broken down and disintegrated, children and young adults would be developing with an independence and self-confidence that would run counter to the interests of the bureaucracy, which needed to keep control over the workers. Discipline had to be imposed from an early age. The family and the education system were the means by which this could be achieved.
One of the major contradictions of the Soviet Union is, however, the essential fact that all of the population are aware of Marxism, and, albeit in a distorted form, Leninism. In the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, they analysed the bourgeois state and the bourgeois system of social relations, and developed the method by which capitalism could be overthrown. It is necessary that the Russian workers extend the method so that they can analyse the Soviet bureaucracy. and as Trotsky did in the "30s, develop the theories that can release them from their present position. The seeds of the bureaucracy's destruction lies in the workers of the Soviet Union, and the destruction of the bureaucracy would release the energies of the workers to develop a socialist man and socialist women.
-Jane Porter MAIRIN KEEGAN-DIED, DUBLIN 7th January 1972 The death took place in Dublin on January 7th of Mairin Keegan, a member of the Irish Fourth International Group. Sean Reed writes: Mairin first entered politics through the Republican movement in Dublin in the mid-fifties, when she played an active part in setting up Sinn Fein branches in that city.
Working in the North in the 1955 election which saw the return of two imprisoned Republicans as members of the "Mother of Parliaments" *, she later took a prominent part in the Prisoners Defence Fund throughout the "50s and early "60s.
Following the end of the border campaign, Mairin was one of those Republicans who saw the need to transcend Republicanism and move towards a revolutionary socialist position. She was one of those who helped to form the Irish Workers Group in London, and worked for the group until ill-health forced inactivity for a period. Following an operation for cancer of the womb, Mairin moved to France where she took an active part in the May-June events.
The rise of the Civil Rights movement in the North brought Mairin back post-haste-stopping only in London for a quick briefing, she moved straight into the thick of the struggle in the North. Returning first to Belfast where she did secretarial work in the opening phase of the Peoples Democracy election campaign in 1969, she moved on to Continued from page 6 did, allowing them greater precision in describing things. The difference was greatest between working class girls and boys. Bernstein suggests that these differences arise out of their different social roles. Older girls in working class families are likely to look after younger brothers and sisters, and to mediate between them and their parents. Girls are more likely to rely on using language rather than physical coercion to control younger children. They are less tied than boys to an activity-dominated peer group structure, for example a street gang or a football team. This, together with more varied roles they play, develops in the girl a more differentiated and individuated use of a language. Younger sisters will tend to copy the language model of their older sisters.
CONCLUSIONS The social roles of children determine their language use, and the different socialisation of girls and boys of even five years old is evidenced in their different language use. On the one hand, middle class girls are more tied to their mothers' apron strings and therefore more dependent on how their mothers talk to them. In any case, their mothers will explain and reason with them less than with boys. On the other hand, boys play a less varied role within the family, because looking after younger children is regarded as a girl's job, and develop a less individualised and discriminating use of language as a result.
-Richard Hatcher [This article draws on two books under the general editorship of Basil Bernstein:
A Linguistic Description and Computer Program for Children's Speech by Turner and Mohan, 1970.
Social Class, Language and Communication by Brandis and Henderson, 1970] Fermanagh, where she helped in the election for the three P.D. candidates in that county.
After the election, Mairin moved back to Dublin where she worked to build the Young Socialist movement.
While rejecting mere feminism, she was always conscious that she was a member of an oppressed sex, so while continuing to play her part in the struggle of her class and her people, she integrated into that the struggle for the full emancipation of women, taking part in the new women's movement in Dublin.
After the pogroms of August 1969, when armed defence came clearly on the agenda, Mairin was one of those who took steps to acquire the necessary finance to make this possible. She represented Saor Eire on the committee of the Socialist Labour Alliance.
Mairin was one of those comrades who realised that a revolutionary socialist organisation in Ireland could not be built in isolation from the international socialist movement, and her energies up to her recent illness were devoted to the foundation of an Irish section of the Fourth International.
Revolutionary upheavals make it possible to strut across the stage of history achieving the adulation of the masses.
Mairin was a true revolutionary. As such a large part of her political work had to be done under cover. She was in the best sense of the word a backroom girl—a liberated woman because she was a true revolutionary.