3. Working Women of Petrograd Ignite the Russian Revolution¶
Core Argument¶
In early 1917, the Bolshevik Party initially lagged behind the mass movement, still tethered to the theory of the Revolutionary Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry, which held that a bourgeois-democratic revolution must precede socialism in backward Russia. Lenin, upon his return, broke decisively with this orthodoxy. His April Theses argued that Russia’s bourgeois-democratic tasks—land to the peasantry and an end to the war—could only be resolved through socialist revolution. This position was fiercely opposed by the Pravda editorial board, including Stalin and Kamenev, and by the Petrograd Committee. Lenin’s writings on women increased six-fold in frequency, shifting from commentary to direct mobilisation, insisting that women’s participation was essential for both democracy and socialism. The Seventh All-Russia Conference in late April passed his resolution condemning the Provisional Government and demanding power to the Soviets.
The Bolshevik women’s journal Rabotnitsa, relaunched in May 1917 under the editorship of Armand, Kollontai, and Krupskaya, sold 40,000 to 50,000 copies per issue and became the central organ for organising proletarian women. It operated on the principle that women’s liberation and socialism are inseparable. The journal organised factory gate meetings, agitators selling the paper, and demonstrations of soldiers’ wives against the war and rising prices, drawing crowds of up to 10,000 women. In April, 15,000 soldatki confronted the Soviet; Menshevik chair Fedor Dan blocked Kollontai from speaking officially, and she urged the women to elect anti-war delegates. On 1 May, laundresses struck, led by Bolshevik women, demanding nationalisation, an eight-hour day, minimum wages, and maternity protections. After a month, the strike won pay for time lost, breaching the Menshevik-SR ‘civil peace’ and demonstrating that unskilled, scattered workers could be mobilised. The Bolsheviks expanded their party programme to include specific protections for women workers. After the July Days, Rabotnitsa remained the only functioning Bolshevik publication. Lenin concluded the Soviets had gone over to counter-revolution and argued the proletariat must take state power independently; without this, land reform and other tasks could not be completed.
By late August, the Bolsheviks won majorities in the Petrograd and Moscow Soviets, and Trotsky became President of the Petrograd Soviet. Lenin demanded immediate insurrection, independently of the Soviets. Trotsky’s counter-proposal—to organise the uprising as defence of the pro-Bolshevik Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets—won mass legitimacy and secured the support of the revolutionary army. Meanwhile, Rabotnitsa activists, led by Slutskaia, Samoilova, and Kollontai, persuaded the Petrograd Committee to hold a Petrograd Conference of Working Women, stressing it would create no independent women’s organisation. An Initiative Group organised over seventy preparatory factory meetings. On 10 October, the Central Committee passed Lenin’s insurrection resolution by ten to two; Kamenev and Zinoviev opposed it, later publicly revealing the plan. Stalin, as Pravda editor, published Zinoviev’s dissent and claimed opponents and supporters of insurrection were “of one mind”. The Conference was postponed when the armed uprising began, then reconvened afterwards.