Equality and Revolution: Women’s Rights in the Russian Empire, 1905–1917

Chapter 8

8 Twelve Years of Struggle Hail the Women! —Maria Pokrovskaia,  T  of women’s suffrage is one of the most significant democratic reforms of the twentieth century and represents an advance in the ongoing feminist struggle for equal rights. Female suffrage is now a fact in almost all countries in the world, save for a few holdouts among the absolute monarchies of the Middle East. The Russian case is thus part of a larger discussion about the signi- ficance of the women’s suffrage reform in any society. Women’s suffrage had its opponents on the right and on the left. And they have been strange bedfellows—rightists who feared that women’s suffrage would radicalize the electorate, leftists who feared that women would vote for conservatives , and both who claimed to fear a peasant male backlash. Those who question the efficacy of giving women universal suffrage rarely do so in discussing universal male suffrage. For the history of women the suffrage victory in the Russian Empire is significant for several reasons. It challenges the assumption that the attainment of suffrage happened first in Western democracies and that democracy was a prerequisite for women’s suffrage. It offers a case study in the winning of 239 women’s suffrage in a society in which government was not stable and which endured revolutions, war, and social turmoil. Revolutions have served as impediments to women’s rights, as was the case with the French Revolution. But in Russia the revolutions of  and February  served instead as catalysts for women’s activism. The  revolution impelled women into the public sphere to fight for their rights. Finnish women won suffrage as part of a national independence revolt against Russian authority. The February Revolution began with women’s demonstrations on International Women’s Day. While these revolutions increased the hopes for greater rights, they brought challenges that had to be overcome. The toppling of the tsar did not in itself bring the hoped-for democratic freedoms for women. The dual authorities, the Soviets and the Provisional Government, that emerged with the end of the autocracy both temporized on women’s suffrage. The war and the revolution alone did not bring women the vote. These events created the opportunity, but ultimately women had to act to push their demands forward.₁ The revolutions in the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century are notable as the first revolutions to extend the definition of democratic citizenship to include women. In both Finland and Russia struggles against an entrenched autocracy created the conditions for pioneering women’s suffrage victories. Both the Finnish and Russian achievements were remarkable for their swiftness. Neither could have occurred without the revolutions that swept the Russian Empire and unleashed long-simmering democratic impulses. Both victories represented the incorporation of gender-inclusive universal suffrage into modern concepts of the nation-state. Some scholars attribute the Finnish breakthrough on suffrage to Scandinavian liberalism; others argue that Finland’s place at the periphery of Europe is key; still others argue that Finland benefited from the advantages of “backwardness.” In all these cases the relation between Finland and Russia in this period are minimized. I have shown that events in the Russian Empire and Finland ’s place within it are significant factors that must be addressed for an understanding of the Finnish suffrage victory.² Gender and Historical Analysis The history of Russian feminism and the women’s rights movement from  to  contributes to our knowledge about a number of phenomena that have been of particular interest to historians after the fall of the Soviet Union. Very few 240 TWELVE YEARS OF STRUGGLE Russian historians even try to include gender as an analytic category in their writings , as if there has been no scholarship about gender in prerevolutionary Russia. It is still far too common to find discussions of such groups as peasants, proletarians , intellectuals, and professionals with the implicit or explicit assumption that they are all male. The use of gender-inclusive language is generally foreign to the field. The change in the attitude toward women’s suffrage is a significant aspect of the evolution of civil society and voluntary associations in the development of the opposition to the autocratic state. As Nicholas II hardened his resolve to preserve his...