Summary and Critique of “Gender, state, and society in Soviet and post Soviet Russia”
by Sarah Ashwin. 2000.

Marxism and its offspring’s have had major impacts on the political and economic world around us, shaping the 20th century and the world we face today. Though the Soviet system has since collapsed, China, the world’s largest country in terms of population and economy, and several other nations still employ the command economy of communism. It is interesting that though the feminist authors we have so far read found many criticisms within free market economy, they have not investigated the competing system that attempts to remedy many of the complaints of the assumed free-market system. Marxism as a system is primarily interested in reforming the economic realm but also reinvents the social and cultural sphere. Therefore, a look into gender and economics in command economies is not only useful but also necessary for understanding gender issues on a global scope.

Sarah Ashwin investigates these issues in “Gender, state, and society in Soviet and post Soviet Russia”. The Revolution of 1917 led to the eventual communist takeover in 1918, a takeover by the Bolsheviks that received noticeably much more female support than either the Mensheviks or the Whites, their two main enemies. The first legislation from Lenin regarding females came in late 1918, when woman were allowed to have full control of their earnings and their property. Woman were denied from the higher positions in the party and within communes and state owned enterprises. However, this was a major step from Czarist Russia where women were limited to house and farmwork in the feudal system.

The initial reforms were the beginning of a much grander picture in a Cultural Revolution that would reeducate the citizenry to embrace the communal society. Ashwin describes that the most basic reform was targeted at the base of society: the breaking down of patriarchal society to liberate both men and women (7). In the Bolsheviks view, the traditional family not only hindered women but forced men into unconventional and backwards economic positions. The family structure led woman into a reoccurring cycle of housework and men into a cycle of dependence on salary instead of himself, with the end result of producing unfit children stuck in a similar situation. The Soviets too would impose a distinctive gender order, but the new system was to be rewarding and respected for husband and wife (1). Woman were portrayed, and expected to be, the mother’s of society, creating children fit for hard work and selfless dedication to the attainment of communism. Men were now the fathers of the community, not only responsible for their own families’ well being but his neighbors as well. But how could Russian society, previously one of the most backward and male-dominated, effectively move towards this ideological perfection?

The transformation began in 1924, when men could be tried for committing ‘traditional’ offenses, such as polygamy and underage marriage (4). Both of these customs were familiar to the heavily Muslim Asiatic part of Russia and their removal from life was complicated, but necessary to grow out of the patriarchal society. The countryside was bombarded with propaganda and ideology. Women were encouraged to embrace Leninism, the new tool that empowered them above male oppression, and those who held onto old ways were portrayed as enemies of the people.
Indeed woman did embrace Leninism, but Ashwin asks why did Leninism embrace women? The answer was apparent to her: all of Russia’s labor had to be mobilized and correctly used in order to catch up with the Western world (3). As Alexandria Kollontai, the head of the Woman’s Section of the Communist Party (Zhenotdel) stated, the old society created “uneconomic expenditure on products and fuel and unproductive labor, especially by women” (6). Though men occupied almost all of the most powerful positions, women were not explicitly kept out of well paying or powerful positions (3). Women saw the largest rise in employment during the first two five year plans that were rapid plans to industrialize beginning in 1927. They became crucial in production factories and a main reason for the continuous six to ten percent growths in gross domestic product in the 1930’s (10). This trend continued into the 1940’s when the labor shortage created by World War II forced most women into the workplace and increasing the chances of upwards mobility but stagnated with the end of the war. The USSR and United States faced similar trends in their maturation as industrial super powers, where the inclusion of woman became vital to sustained growth.

Unaddressed though is at what cost did modernization, industrialization, and relative equality come to women? The modernization of Russia took over thirty million lives and the Great Leap Forward of China over fifty million, implying that growth for many countries is synonymous with the extermination of part of its societies. The most vulnerable were the people built on traditional values, the men who refused to cede their power to their wives and the state. It is hard to justify history, whether Communist defined ‘progress’ is equivalent to the Capitalist defined ‘evolution’ and that the world is governed by ambiguous goals with equally punishing results. Though many rose to prominence and experienced a new way of life that may not have come to them in other systems, the Communist fall out of the early 1990’s was the most severe on women. The labor participation rate had a normalized gap of two percent between men and women during the Communist era, but by 1995 the gap had grown to five percent and growing. More importantly, the social norms had constricted so that the future had an even bleaker picture, falling back to traditional gender roles (19). Younger people especially men, now have much more conservative views on gender, marriage, and values, a trend that has some wondering whether Russia is reverting to pre-Communist tendencies (20).

Do the ends justify the means? It is difficult to gauge the true impact of the Communist Revolution on women. Though they rose economically, they faced many told and untold social pressures that parallel the self-imposed restrictions females face in the Western world. Both the free markets of the west and the command markets of the east faced similar labor shortages during their industrializations, which were satisfied by the increasing of woman’s rights coupled with a labor push and pull. The inclusion of all people’s into the economy was not an ideological dream but a simple and effective method of flooding the labor market and maximizing production. Woman today in Russia face a new world intolerable towards their status and an equally confused outlook on gender roles. Thus in my opinion, the sudden success of woman during the Communist era produced an equally sudden demise and reversion back to more conservative systems beneficial to neither male nor female.