government successfully provided an improved quality of life for Russian Women. She argued that the Bolshevik government provided opportunities for women to step outside of traditional limitations. One historian, Galili, argues that while the government had mixed motives for the legislature passed, it did aid women in ways such as creating equal pay in 1917, legalizing abortions in 1920 and allowing women to own land in 19222. Alexandra Kollonati, the Marxist revolutionary and author, in her then contemporary writing, pushed against the idea that the Russian government had ulterior motives, as she was a member of the Zhenotdel and ensured the creation of a socialized welfare system3, where state run daycares and cleaning services allowed women freedom to work and escape pressure of domestic tasks.4 Kollontai also argued that women’s ability to enter labor was revolutionized, as seen by the Zhenotdel’s (a political party for women workers) creation. Clements, a historian who focuses upon the utopianism of the WOMAN-A FULL AND EQUAL CITIZEN OF HER COUNTRY.” Revolutionary Democracy 20:1 (April 2014), 77. (https:// www.galileo.usg.edu) 2 Ziva Galili. “Women and Russian Revolution.” Dialectal Anthropology 15:2/3 (1990): 122. (http://www.jstor.org/) 3 Elizabeth Waters. “The Bolsheviks and the Family.” Contemporary European History 4:3 (1995): 281. (http://www.jstor. org/) 4 Jinee Lokaneeta. “Alexandra Kollontai and Marxist Feminism.” Economic and Political Weekly 36:17 (2001):1409. (http://www.jstor.org/)
Bolsheviks, portrays the zhenodelovkis (Zhenotdel supporters) as pushing for women having an active role, as the new government would restructure women’s roles5, which Professor Goldman, the Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, claims failed to happen, due to an uneven distribution of emotional, political, and work-based labor between women and men6. However, Kollontai’s data on the entrance of women into the workforce demonstrates that it did increase from 423,200 to 885,000 over 1923 to 19307. The entrance of women into labor was fraught with conflict, but a notable increase of female laborers can be seen, despite social factors that limited it. Alongside the entrance of women into skilled labor, government publications and legislature fostered positive feelings towards female liberation, and lead to women in more active roles. For example, Russian women’s portrayal within government media (Gork’ii’s Mat) showed women as noble, which fostered a belief that women were able to hold power and contribute to labor and government, at least as figureheads8. 5 Barbara Evans Clements “The Utopianism of the Zhenotdel” Slavic Review 51:3 (1992): 488-489. (http://www.jstor.org/) 6 Wendy Z Goldman. “Industrial Politics, Peasant Rebellion and the Death of the Proletarian Women’s Movement in the USSR.” Slavic Review 55:1 (1996): 59. (http:// www.jstor.org/) 7 Wendy Z Goldman, Women At The Gates (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002): 12. 8 Heather Dehaan. “Engendering a
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