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SOVIET WOMEN-EQUAL BUILDERS OF THE SOCIALIST SOCIETYWomen in the Land of Socialism
N. Popova
IV. Free and Equal Daughters in the Stalin Family of Peoples of the U.S.S.R.
As we have seen from the previous chapters, the victory of Socialism, the. Bolshevik Party’s policy towards women, the policy formulated by Lenin and Stalin, have ensured women in the U.S.S.R. an equal economic and political status with men. And Soviet women have a great share in the victory of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. In the course of our country’s socialist development hundreds of thousands of women learned to manage public industry and to administer the state.
Here are some figures which eloquently testify to this. In 1922 the First Congress of Soviets elected five women to the Central Executive Committee; fifteen years later, in December 1937, the people elected 227 women to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.; and on February 10, 1946 the number of women elected to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. was 277. Besides, more than 1,700 women are members of Supreme Soviets of Union and Autonomous Republics, and hundreds of thousands are members of local Soviets of Working People’s Deputies.
The following are the figures for the number of women members of government bodies as of February 1948: 277 in the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., i.e., 20.7% of the total number of members; 1,235, or 26.5%, in Supreme Soviets of Union Republics; 503, or 29%, in Supreme Soviets of Autonomous Republics.
Here is a table showing the proportion of women elected to the local Soviets of Working People’s Deputies in 1947 in some of the Union Republics:
Total number members elected Number of Women Percentage
Byelorussia SSR 64,897 19,379 29.87
Georgia SSR 26,652 7,995 30.00
Kazakh SSR 53,219 17,992 33.81
Kirghiz SSR 12,735 4,269 33.49
Azerbaijan SSR 23,348 8,207 35.15
The women elected to central and local government bodies are among the finest daughters of the Soviet people. Some of them have won fame by their achievements in work, others are noted scientists, distinguished writers or artists. Among them are women of all the nationalities of the U.S.S.R. and of the most diverse professions and trades: factory workers and collective farmers, doctors and engineers, teachers and agronomists, scientific workers, literary and art workers, executives, public leaders, Party and government workers. Millions of women hold positions of responsibility in government bodies, in social organizations, in industry and other branches of the national economy. Millions of women belong to trade unions, and hundreds of thousands of them are active members of leading trade union bodies – from local committees to central bodies. Over 80,000 women are members of district trade union committees, comprising 56.3% of the total number of members of district committees; 450,000 members of factory trade union committees, i.e., 46.9%, and 350,000 trade union group organizers at factories, mines, power stations, Soviet government institutions, etc., or 45.2% of the total, are women. In recent years many women have been promoted to positions of responsibility in trade union bodies – positions of chairmen, secretaries and members of presidiums of central and regional trade union committees.
The fact that women of all trades and professions – factory workers, collective farmers, scientific, literary and art workers – and of all nationalities of the great family of peoples of the Soviet Union take part in economic and cultural construction and in state administration as equals among equals lends additional strength to the Soviet social and state system, it is one of the great and undeniable advantages of socialist democracy as compared with the vaunted democracy of bourgeois countries.
“My lot would have been quite different were I living in some capitalist country and not in the Soviet Union,” said Zinaida Troitskaya, Railway Director-General, Third Rank. “Only in our socialist country have all people, men and women, every opportunity to work in their chosen field....
“I was only 22 when I drove a train myself for the first time. I felt elated, the knowledge that I could do this difficult and useful job filled me with joy. In the grim days of the defence of Moscow I was put in charge of directing the flow of transport, and I was truly happy to be holding a responsible position in those days of anxiety, to feel that I was doing something that was of help to my Country.
“In 1945, I attended the International Women’s Congress in Paris as a member of the Soviet delegation. Our delegation was the centre of attention. And that was natural. For in what other country are women so active in economic, cultural and political life as citizens enjoying full equality?
“This knowledge filled all of us with particular pride.
“At present I am the assistant chief of the Moscow Metropolitan Railway. The government has acknowledged my modest efforts highly and awarded me the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, the Order of the Red Star, the Badge of Honour, and several medals....”
The biography of anyone of the hundreds and thousands of women members of Soviet government bodies provides the most convincing proof of the fact that women enjoy true equality in our country, that they have, as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin said, caught up with the men. Women are a great force in Soviet society.
Yelena Chukhnyuk is a member of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. She was a young girl when she started to work as an engine driver not long before the Patriotic War broke out. During the war she drove munitions trains, displaying fearlessness and skill which could well be envied by the bravest soldiers and most experienced engine drivers. She drove through fire curtains of enemy artillery, and by ably manoeuvring eluded the attacks of German bombers. And she always managed to deliver her precious cargo to the men at the front on time. She won nation-wide fame by her fine work, and became a Hero of Socialist Labour. Could a plain girl of the people like Yelena Chukhnyuk attain to such a position were she living in a bourgeois country? Of course not!
Only in the Soviet Union, where the people are master, is real appreciation shown for the self-sacrifice, heroism, skill, talent and patriotism of any ordinary man or woman. By the beginning of 1948 the title of Hero of Socialist Labour had been conferred on 59 women in the U.S.S.R.
“My mother’s lot was a bitter one, the lot of the long-suffering peasant woman,” relates Hero of Socialist Labour Praskovya Angelina, Member of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. “And her children shared her poverty and her tears. Her older sons had no childhood. All of them went out into the world when still small children, to work for rich peasants at a miserable wage. I was no exception. At the age of eight, I left home and hired out in order to earn my crust of bread....
“My father is 70 years old now, yet he does all he can to help with the work on the collective farm. He was awarded a medal for valorous labour during the Patriotic War. The Soviet Government has decorated my mother too for having brought up seven children. My oldest brother is an agronomist and has been decorated for his wartime work with the Order of the Patriotic War and several medals. My second brother, Vasili, is a colonel and has earned eleven decorations for valour in active service. My sister, Nadezhda, has been awarded the Order of Lenin for her splendid work on the collective farm and two medals for participation in the Patriotic War. My brother Konstantin is now chairman of a collective farm and also has government awards.
“My work as a tractor driver has brought me honour. Twice I have been elected to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. and I have been awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labour for the large harvest our collective farm obtained in 1946.
“We owe all this to our Soviet system. It is the Soviet system that has made us what we are today, that has raised us so high.”
The Krasnoye Znamya Collective Farm, one of the best in the Kursk Region, is called a women’s kolkhoz. More than three-fourths of the total number of workday units are earned by women, and women hold all the leading positions in the collective-farm administration. Its chairman is T. P. Dyachenko, member of the Supreme Soviet of the R.S.F.S.R. In her youth Dyachenko was a nursemaid in a rich peasant’s house. Now her own children, as well as many of her friends’ children, have graduated college. Her daughter, Anna Dyachenko, is a physician; Yekaterina Kalmykova is an engineer, her sister Praskovya and her brother Sergei are agronomists. Children on the collective farm attend school where Nina and Tatyana Orlova, former collective farmers, teach.
Many Soviet women, trained by the Bolshevik Party, have become eminent statesmen of the Lenin-Stalin type.
Yelena Dmitrievna Stassova, an old Bolshevik and outstanding member of the Party of Lenin and Stalin, is well known far beyond the borders of our country. Yelena D. Stassova is 75 years old. Fifty years of her life have been devoted to the struggle for the liberation of the working people, and for the victory of Communism in our country. Stassova was one of that original group of like-minded fighters who gathered round Lenin to build a proletarian party, the Bolshevik Party. Stassova became well-known as an outstanding Party worker before the first Russian revolution of 1905. In 1905 she was the secretary of the Northern Bureau of the Central Committee. She was a loyal disciple of Lenin and waged a determined struggle against the Mensheviks, giving all her energy to the cause of training the proletariat for the revolution and of rallying the Party round Lenin. Stassova took an active part in the preparations for the Prague Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. which expelled the Mensheviks from the Party and at which the Bolsheviks formally constituted themselves an independent party, a party of a new type, the Party of Leninism. Repeated arrests and banishment to Siberia could not swerve Stassova from the path she had taken.
At the Sixth Congress of the Party, the congress which headed the Party for armed uprising, Stassova was elected to the Party’s general staff, the Central Committee, as an alternate member (later she became a full-fledged member of the Central Committee). She took a direct and active part in the Great October Socialist Revolution. For three years, from 1917 to 1920, Stassova was a secretary of the Central Committee of the Party. In all the succeeding years she held leading positions in the Party. Despite her advanced age, Yelena Dmitrievna Stassova, glorious daughter of the Bolshevik Party, steeled in many battles, is as active as ever, an ardent propagator of the great doctrine of Lenin and Stalin, the doctrine of the Party which is leading our people to the complete victory of Communism in the U.S.S.R.
In our country it is quite the usual thing for women to hold leading government positions. Maria Sarycheva, Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Moscow City Soviet, is also Vice-Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the R.S.F.S.R. P. G. Radchenko is Vice-Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian S.S.R. Zoya Andreyeva is President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Chuvash Autonomous S.S.R., and also Vice-President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the R.S.F.S.R. Chimnaz Aslanova is Vice-Chairman of the Soviet of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. Fatima Kadyrbayeva is Chairman of the Supreme Court of the Kirghiz Republic.
The Public Health Minister of Azerbaijan is a woman, Kyubra Faradjeva. The Minister of Justice in the Turkmenian Soviet Socialist Republic is Nuri Karadjayeva. Tatyana Zuyeva is Vice-Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the R.S.F.S.R.; Olga Lauristin is Minister of Social Insurance of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic; Praskovya Kalinina is Minister of the Food Industry of the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Three women, Basti Bagirova, Varvara Vakholdina and Natalya Kuklina, are members of the Council for Collective Farm Affairs under the Council of Ministers of the U.S.S.R. Many women are deputy ministers of the U.S.S.R., and of Union and Autonomous Republics, as well as chairmen of Executive Committees of local Soviets of Working People’s Deputies. In the R.S.F.S.R. alone over 27,000 women head village Soviets.
An especially vivid illustration of women’s absolute equality in the U.S.S.R. is the fact that many of them are judges. This was impossible in Russia before the October Revolution. At present there are fourteen women members of the Supreme Court of the U.S.S.R. Women comprise 33.9% of the members of Supreme Courts of Union Republics. Many women are presiding judges of regional and territorial courts, and 35% of all people’s courts judges are women.
Soviet women, as we thus see, hold a prominent place in state administration bodies. They take full advantage of their equality in political life, they really exercise their equal rights – an achievement of historic significance. The Stalin Constitution makes equal political rights for women the law of the land, and it provides the guarantees for the full exercise of these rights.
Since the inauguration of the Stalin five-year plans the material conditions have been created permitting millions of women to take an active part in the building of Socialism. The policy of extensively enlisting women in public industry in town and in country and the constant solicitude displayed by the Party and the Government for the welfare of all the working people have made Soviet women economically independent, widened their outlook and the range of their interests.
However, the mere fact of the existence of these conditions would not have been enough to draw more and more working women and peasant women into active public and government work. It was necessary, besides, to give women a political education, to train them in the spirit of Communism, and this the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government have done and are doing. The splendid fruit of this work is evident. We feel proud to have the full right to say that women, along with men, are building the first great Socialist State in the world and are taking part in the administration of this state.
Only the Bolshevik Party proved capable of accomplishing the world historical task of transforming a capitalist society into a socialist one, and the Soviet people regard the Party as their leader and teacher, wisely guiding them under the leadership of the great Stalin on the way to the pinnacles of Communism. Soviet women, like all the Soviet people, regard Comrade Stalin as their best and most beloved friend, their great leader and teacher.
In the 1947 elections to local Soviets the people chose Comrade Stalin their first deputy. The hearts of working women and women collective farmers, the hearts of all Soviet women, are filled with ardent love for and faith in the great Party of Lenin and Stalin. The elections proved once more that the Soviet people stand heart and soul behind the policy of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government, that the working people of town and country, men and women, consider the Bolshevik policy their very own.
Both Party members and non-Party people are part of one united community, welded together by the ideas of the Bolshevik Party, by the Soviet system, and working to multiply our country’s strength. Communists and non-Party people fought shoulder to shoulder in the late war, shedding their blood in common for their country’s victory. In recent years, both during and since the war, Party membership has greatly increased. The Party has now a membership of 6,300,000 as against 3,800,000 before the war. Over one million women, the finest daughters of our people, are members of the great Party of Lenin and Stalin.
As far back as in 1920 the immortal Lenin said that “the peoples are being taught by the course of events to regard Russia as a centre of attraction.”39 All over the world all true champions of equality and freedom for women regard the U.S.S.R. as a great model to emulate. The banner of Lenin and Stalin is the banner of the people’s struggle against imperialism, for a lasting peace, for national freedom, for people’s democracy and Socialism.
* * *
From the very first days of the October Revolution, the great Bolshevik Party took steps to ensure the genuine emancipation of Mohammedan women, a cause to which it attached vast importance. In April 1921, when in parts of the Soviet land the thunder of Civil War had not yet entirely died down, the first non-Party convention of women of the East was held in response to the call of Lenin and Stalin for a new, free life. The Party’s work among women of the Soviet East was an inseperable part of Lenin’s and Stalin’s wise policy in the national question, the aim of which was to strengthen the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry.
Women’s clubs and delegates’ assemblies were organized in the Eastern republics and regions, and conferences of women promoted to work in Soviet government bodies were held regularly. The Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government assured the economic emancipation of Eastern women, rendered material assistance to women’s cooperatives, drew women into industry and organized industrial training courses for them.
Soviet law, which most emphatically protects the rights of women, made it a special point to protect the interests of Eastern women. That was a manifestation of Bolshevik consideration for the special condition of women in the East.
The remnants of the bourgeois-landlord world – the local landowners, kulaks, who sucked the blood of the poor, merchants and religious fanatics – obstinately opposed the Soviet system, persecuted, even murdered Moslem women who sought freedom and knowledge and went to work in factories and mills. The emancipation of Moslem women from the yoke of the old life and customs had to be accomplished in the midst of an acute class war that was being waged in the non-Russian border regions. The enemy was not particular about the means employed in the fight against the emancipation of Moslem women, resorting to treachery, vile slander, terrorism and even murder.
The Bolshevik Party boldly organized the struggle, and worked painstakingly and perseveringly, to uproot the centuries-old heritage according to which women in the East were treated as slaves.
Now, as we look back over the path that has been traversed, we have every right to declare that the Soviet system has secured for the Moslem women all civil rights, as it did for all the women in the non-Russian republics and regions. Socialism and the collective-farm system have ensured women economic independence and rapid cultural progress. Many thousands of women in the non-Russian regions have developed into excellent Bolsheviks, Party and non-Party, have become statesmen and leaders in industry and cultural activities.
All this has become possible only because the Soviet system wrought a basic change in the condition of the peoples of the East. The opportunity was provided for them to exist and develop as free and equal peoples on a par and in fraternal cooperation with the other peoples of the U.S.S.R. The consistent implementation of Lenin’s and Stalin’s policy with regard to nationalities ensured the rapid economic and cultural advancement of all the Union and Autonomous republics.
With the fraternal help of the great Russian people the formerly backward regions of old tsarist Russia have become prosperous socialist republics with modern industries, mechanized agriculture, and highly developed culture, national in form and socialist in content.
At a conference of leading collective farmers, men and women, of Tajikistan and Turkmenistan with Party and Government leaders on December 4, 1935, V. M. Molotov pointed out that: “Our successes are not based on the exploitation of one people by another; they are based on the premise that the success of one people becomes the success of all the other peoples of our country.” And that is why many women collective farmers of our non-Russian republics, “only recently backward and obscure people in the village, now, by their honest work in the collective farms and their persistent struggle for the advancement of the collective-farm system, give ample proof that they are firmly holding the banner of victory for the collective-farm system in their hands.”40
The achievements scored under the Soviet system in the development of culture, national in form and socialist in content, among all the nationalities of the great family of peoples in our country seem as if out of a fairy tale. The tsarist government and the ruling classes of Russia looked down upon the non-Russian nationalities and regarded their lands as their colonial possessions. Tsardom oppressed and exploited these peoples, deliberately hindered their progress, and never permitted the establishment of institutions of higher learning in the non-Russian frontier regions. Even primary secular schools were a rare thing there. Among the Azerbaijanians, Uzbeks, Turkmenians, Tajiks, Kazakhs and many other nationalities the number of people with a higher education could then be counted on the fingers of one’s hands. And it goes without saying that a higher education was out of the question for women of these nationalities, or of the great majority of other non-Russian peoples. Even a semiliterate woman was a rare exception among the oppressed, subservient slaves women were there. Forty non-Russian peoples in the country even had no written language.
The imperialist bourgeoisie of today, which stifles every striving for culture among the peoples it oppresses, is like tsardom in its brutal colonial policy.
One of the finest achievements of the non-Russian Soviet republics of the East is the advancement of the cultural standard of the masses and the rise of a national intelligentsia among them – engineers, physicians, agronomists, teachers, scientists, poets, artists, writers, many of them women. School attendance is compulsory for boys and girls alike in the formerly backward non-Russian regions of old Russia, which are now Union or Autonomous Republics of the U.S.S.R. Universities and colleges, technical high schools and various vocational schools have been established in these republics, and there are places of culture, clubs, libraries and museums.
In pre-revolutionary Turkmenia only seven persons per thousand could read and write. In 1946 the proportion was nine hundred to a thousand. At present over 200,000 boys and girls attend public schools in Turkmenia. This does not include the pupils of factory trade schools, vocational courses and evening schools. Formerly Turkmenia did not have a single higher educational institution. Now there are several, including a teachers’ college, a medical college and an agricultural college. There are about a thousand libraries in the republic. Ashkhabad, the capital of Turkmenia, boasts one of the largest public libraries in the Soviet Union. Turkmenia has over 1,200 clubs and reading rooms, five museums and dozens of other cultural institutions. Before the revolution the theatrical art was unknown to the Turkmenian people. Now there are fourteen theatres in Turkmenia, including an opera and ballet theatre.
The extent to which women are represented in the teaching profession in the non-Russian Soviet republics is indicative of their cultural progress. The percentage of women among teachers in primary and secondary schools before the war, in 1941, was as follows: Georgian S.S.R. – 51.3%, Kazakh S.S.R. – 37.8%, Armenian S.S.R. – 30.9%, Kirghiz S.S.R. – 30.2%, Azerbaijan S.S.R. – 29.5%, Uzbek S.S.R. – 25.4%, Turkmenian S.S.R. – 17.6%. In recent years the percentage of women teachers has still further increased.
The number of scientific workers among the non-Russian peoples has increased so rapidly that it has been possible to organize Academies of Sciences or branches of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. in all the union republics. Many women are among the foremost Academy workers. Over 100 women are employed in the Georgian Academy of Sciences, nearly 100 in the Azerbaijan Academy, about 200 in the Kazakh Academy, about 50 in the Turkmenian branch of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R., 30 in the Tajik branch, 30 in the Kirghiz branch.
Every republic has its own dramatic theatres and opera houses with talented producers and actors. Before the revolution there was not a single theatre on the territory now occupied by the Kazakh, Tajik and Kirghiz republics. In 1947 the Kazakh republic had 42 theatres, the Uzbek – 40, the Tajik – 17, the Kirghiz – 11, besides a large number of moving-picture houses and amateur dramatic and music groups. In 20-25 years under the Soviet system modern dramatic theatres, opera and ballet have been built and splendid actresses, dancers and singers have developed in the countries where formerly there were no professional theatres at all and where men played the female roles in amateur performances. The names of many outstanding actresses of these republics are known all over the Soviet Union.
“The revolution emancipated our woman, removed the horsehair veil in which she had been wrapped for centuries,” says a letter from the Azerbaijan people to Comrade Stalin. “Azerbaijan women have become active builders of our socialist society. Women hold positions of responsibility in the government, in factories, in the oil fields, on college teaching staffs and in surgical wards of hospitals. There are women ships’ captains and aeroplane pilots.”
Stalin’s solicitude for mother and child has penetrated to the most distant corners of our vast socialist country. The women of our non-Russian republics find a new happiness and joy in motherhood. Mothers enjoy the solicitude of the government and universal respect. A ramified system of maternity homes, obstetrical centres, and nurseries cater to the needs of mothers and children of these republics.
In 1913 there were nineteen kindergartens in all of Russia. Now there are sixty-two in Northern Ossetia alone.
Libraries, clubs, electricity, telephone, radio, good furniture are common in the towns and villages of the republics where not long ago patriarchal law and plain barbarism reigned supreme.
The influx of masses of women into industry, their participation in state administration and public activities and the large number of women political leaders in the U.S.S.R. is the proof, provided by history, of the truth and force of the Marxist-Leninist principle that the woman question can be fully solved in all its aspects only after the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, class inequality and the oppression of man by man.
Women of our East have come a long way from domestic slavery and subservience, from the horsehair veil to active, intelligent participation in the building of socialist society as Stakhanovites in industry and agriculture, as engineers, physicians, teachers, geologists, scientists, leaders in industry and agriculture, in government administration and political activities. This way was cleared for them by the Soviet system, by the Bolshevik Party, by its great leaders Lenin and Stalin.
Women who have recently come to the Soviet Union from abroad, where they and their families led a life filled with sorrow, humiliation and poverty, are deeply grateful to their new-found country. Armenians, who were scattered all over the world, are returning to their homeland, to Soviet Armenia. One of the first to return was the family of Anna Pogosovna Deiremejian.
Hers was a joyless life, and her seven children had nothing better to look forward to. All of them had to go to work at a very early age.
“Our native land welcomed us cordially and with joy,” Anna Pogosovna relates. “Our big family was given an apartment. I was amazed and deeply moved by the constant care and attention shown mothers of large families by the Soviet Government. In no other country in the world is motherhood so honoured. By government decree I was awarded the Order of Maternal Glory. That was the happiest day of my life. I receive a monthly allowance for bringing up my children – this in addition to assistance in the shape of a large lump sum of money.
“My children will never again have to suffer what they did in the past. I have no worry about their future. They can study in their native language and work for the good of their country.”
One of the women on whom the Soviet Government has conferred the lofty title of Mother Heroine is Maria Petrovna Pechekha, an immigrant from Poland. The story of her life is an illustration of the position of women who are languishing under the yoke of exploitation.
Maria Pechekha spent 43 years of her life in Poland under the gentry. When still a small child she hired out to a landlord and worked from dawn till dusk. Later she married a farm labourer like herself and together they shared sorrow and misfortune. They never even dared dream of a house and land of their own, of a farm of their own. The birth of every child was welcomed with joy mixed with fear for the future. The children grew and had to be clothed and given at least some education, but there wasn’t enough money even for bread. Their children were barefoot, ragged and hungry. The older children, Yekaterina, Ivan and Maria went to work for the landowner without ever having been able to go to school.
When Maria Pechekha immigrated to the Ukraine, which is her native country, the Government gave her a house, land for a vegetable garden, over a ton of grain, clothing for the children, and 2,000 rubles. Her children Genya, Fanya, Yosif, Hannah and little Franek go to school. The older ones work.
Maria Pechekha’s eyes filled with tears of joy when the Order of Mother Heroine was handed to her. At that moment her heart flowed over with love for the great leader of the Soviet people.
The position of women and children in Bessarabia, in Lvov Region and in other districts freed from the rule of the landlords and capitalists has also changed fundamentally.
A large number of schools, colleges, clubs, libraries, theatres, medical institutions have been opened in Western Ukraine, and state universities function in Lvov, Uzhgorod and Chernovitsy. Within the last three years 466,000 illiterate adults in Western Ukraine have been taught to read and write, and over 242,000 illiterate and semi-literate persons are attending special schools for adults. By the end of 1949 illiteracy will have been entirely eliminated in Western Ukraine and in the Izmail and Transcarpathian regions of the Ukraine.
The story of the life of L. D. Demyakh, Vice-Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, is a, typical one and provides a vivid picture of the new, Soviet life of the people of Western Byelorussia.
“My life began in a poverty-stricken hut in the poor Byelorussian village of Ostrovo, Grodno Province. My mother – ‘Widow Alyona’ she was called – could not support the family. We were hungry and poorly clad and there were no shoes in the house at all.
“ ‘You’ll have to find a job, my daughter,’ my mother said to me when I was thirteen.
“And my life as a farm labourer began – a life devoid of joy and devoid of hope for anything better in the future. There was nothing ‘Alyona’s daughter,’ – nobody even called me by my own name – could hope for.
“In 1939 a new life began for me. Immediately Soviet government was established in Grodno I was given the opportunity to study, to cost off the burden of ignorance which was the lot of all working women in Poland under the gentry. I was sent to a special school and in a short time I was made chairman of our village Soviet.
“In 1940 I was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian S.S.R.
“Is this really you, “Alyona’s daughter,” a deputy?’ I kept asking myself the first time I came to Minsk to attend a Session of the Supreme Soviet.
“During the war, when our country was in danger, I took up arms to defend the great rights brought to the people by the Soviet system.”
In the Latvian S.S.R. the expenditures on cultural development in 1947 were 92,600,000 rubles more than in 1946. The doors of secondary schools and colleges are wide open to young people. Public health services and social insurance have improved. The number of medical institutions is larger than before the war.
The free and equal women of the non-Russian Soviet republics are working heart and soul for the further strengthening of the Soviet State and for the development of our national economy and culture.
* * *
Only in our country, where the people rule, have women of all nationalities the widest, absolutely unrestricted opportunity to participate in public and political activities. Only in our country is it possible for women from all walks of life to stand at the helm of state, as equals among equals, to become members of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R., as Pasha Angelina, the Ukrainian tractor driver, Gaji Perigyul, Azerbaijanian oil fields worker, Aikanush Danielyan, Armenian actress, Naimo Bazanova. Kazakh biologist, Orz-gul-Anna Muhamedova, Turkmenian cotton grower, Aishe Gurgenidze, Georgian director of a tea factory, and many, many other women of all nationalities inhabiting the U.S.S.R.
The consistent application in our country of the Lenin-Stalin policy with regard to nationalities and the provision of full, genuine equality for women in all fields of economic, government, cultural, public and political life, formed the basis for the political and cultural progress of women in the non-Russian republics, even in those which were especially backward before the Revolution.
The number of women in various organs of state power are highly revealing in this respect. In the Tajik S.S.R. eighty-six women are members of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic and over four thousand are members of regional, city, district and village Soviets. Thirty-two women are members of the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh Republic, 345 are chairmen of village Soviets and thousands are members of local Soviets. In the Uzbek and Turkmenian Soviet Socialist Republics one-third of the members of local Soviets are women. The same is true of other republics of the Soviet Union.
The women of the Soviet republics and regions which have comparatively recently become part of the Soviet Union and for whom the Soviet system has opened up hitherto non-existent horizons have likewise begun to take an energetic part in state affairs.
Thousands of recently backward Galician working women of the Lvov region are members of village and district Soviets and of the regional Soviet. Many are members of various permanent committees of village Soviets.
The very best have been elected to the higher organs of state power. Alexandra Ivanovna Pastushina, a peasant woman, is now a member of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. M. S. Kikh, M. R. Matsko, P. A. Moskal and D. D. Polotnyuk are members of the Supreme Soviet of Soviet Ukraine.
Maria Kikh, Vice-Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian S.S.R., had a hard time of it in Western Ukraine before it became part of Soviet Ukraine. She was the daughter of a farm labourer and at an early age went to work as a tailor’s apprentice. Very soon she became connected with the underground movement and her revolutionary work led to arrest and imprisonment in the Tarnopol and later in the Lvov prison.
“There were many people in Western Ukraine,” relates Maria Kikh, “who strove for the establishment of the Soviet system. Its establishment in 1939 was the greatest joy in our life. In my own life a momentous change took place: I was elected to the People’s Assembly of Western Ukraine.
“Our hearts were so full of joy, our emotions so keen and so new to us, that each day seemed like a wonderful festival. Our boldest plans and ambitions were becoming realizable. One year later I was a student of the Lvov University. When the Germans tried to force capitalist rule on my people again, I joined a partisan detachment that fought in Western Ukraine.
“Now we are again building our life in accordance with the Stalin laws of the Land of Soviets.”
In bourgeois Estonia women were kept out of government bodies, and they were paid less than men for the same kind of work. Now, in Soviet Estonia, they have equal rights with men, and many women who are talented and loyal to the people have become public and political leaders. There are twenty-four women deputies in the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian S.S.R., among them Elfrieda Augustovna Selgmia, a peasant, Linda Gustavovna Otto, a schoolteacher, Elfrieda Robertovna Kastra, a working woman employed at the Krenholm Textile Mills.
In bourgeois Latvia women, formally, possessed equal rights with men. Actually, they were made to feel at every step that they were inferior and unequal. Women received less pay than men for the same work. It was much more difficult for women to find jobs, even the most unskilled, than it was for men. Many women with high school and college education had to go to work as domestic servants in rich homes or as farm labourers for rich peasants. Scientific work was an unattainable dream for Latvian women. There was not a single woman in the Latvian bourgeois parliament.
The Soviet system has opened all roads to the women of Latvia. There is nothing and no one to prevent them from taking part in government bodies, nothing and no one to interfere with their political activities. And they are, indeed, becoming more active with every passing day. Thousands of women are members of district and village executive committees. Thousands of women are representatives of ten-farm groups and members of permanent committees. Women comprise 25% of the employees of Soviet government institutions. Eight women have been elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian S.S.R. and seven Latvian women are members of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R.
The Moldavian people have elected sixty-six women to their Supreme Soviet. Hundreds of Moldavian women are members of town, district and village Soviet executive committees, dozens of village Soviets are headed by women, and hundreds of women are vice-chairmen and secretaries of village Soviets. Thousands of women are farm representatives. About two thousand women have been elected to the boards of cooperatives and to store committees.
The elections of deputies to regional, district, and village Soviets, held at the end of 1947 and the beginning of 1948 in the Union and Autonomous Republics, once again demonstrated how closely the people are rallied around the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet Government, around the great leader and teacher of the peoples, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin.