Russian Revolution and The Emancipation of Women - The February Revolution and Its Impact On The Bolshevik Party

The February Revolution and Its Impact On The Bolshevik Party

The February Revolution toppled the tsarist regime and established a provisional government. Women were highly visible in this revolution, gathering in a mass protest on International Women's Day to call for political rights. They gained rights under the provisional government, including the right to vote, to serve as attorneys, and equal rights in civil service. Women advocating for these kinds of political rights generally came from upper and middle-class background, while poorer women protested for "bread and peace." Record numbers of women joined the Russian army. All women's combat units were put into place, the first of these forming in May 1917. In light of the participation of women in the February Revolution, the Bolshevik Party began to rethink and restructure its approach to "the women question." Before the revolution, feminism was condemned as "bourgeois" because it tended to come from the upper classes, and was considered counterrevolutionary in the way it divided the working class. The Bolsheviks had opposed any division of the working class, including separating men and women to put some focus specifically on women's issues. They thought men and women needed to work together with no division, and because of this, in the party's early days, there was no literature printed specifically targeting women, and the Bolsheviks refused to create a bureau for women workers. In 1917, they acquiesced to the demands of the Russian feminist movement and created the Women's Bureau.