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

Epilogue

Epilogue I   of , Anna Backer, the corresponding secretary of the International Council of Women (ICW), received a letter from Dr. Anna Shabanova, addressed from St. Petersburg and written in French. Shabanova had been the head of one of Russia’s most prominent women’s rights organizations, the Russian Women’s Mutual Philanthropic Society. She had replaced Anna Filosofova as a vice president of the ICW after Filosofova’s death in . With the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent civil war, Shabanova decried “the misery of the famine in Russia [that] menaces the life of millions.” She as a “shepherd without a flock is condemned, temporarily, to inactivity.” This comment referred to early Soviet laws denying work and civil rights, including the vote, to those of bourgeois or gentry origins and to the closing of all feminist organizations.₁ In the wake of the October Revolution, some Russian women activists fled abroad, but the majority remained. They were unrepresented at subsequent femi248 nist congresses, although at least Shabanova maintained steady contact with Lady Aberdeen of the ICW. Russian feminism was submerged in the USSR by a narrative that emphasized socialist style women’s liberation, comradely relations between the sexes, and international class solidarity. Within the global women’s movement this interpretation gained acceptance. The history of Russian feminist activism and victories were made invisible or inconsequential, to be rediscovered largely after the fall of the USSR. Whether in exile or in the Soviet Union, feminists were largely silent or silenced about their former activism. After fleeing Russia with her husband in , Anna Miliukova served as the chair of the London Russian Red Cross Committee . Settling in Paris, she maintained her concern about the plight of women but limited her involvement to philanthropic activities. They may have considered relocating to Italy. An old friend, the archaeologist Tatiana Warscher, remembered Anna and Paul’s  visit to Rome and how happy they were during their stay. The storm clouds emanating from Hitler’s Germany affected them; they met a family of Jewish refugees from Berlin escaping to Argentina. Still, Italy seemed different . Both loved the country. To Warscher, Miliukova’s enthusiasm for the Italian “fascist revolution” showed how Mussolini’s “genial masquerade” could fool “even such exceptional people.” She still retained her focus on the situation of women, especially mothers. Warscher noted her friend’s particular interest in Italy’s state-run maternal and child care centers. But after ten weeks the Miliukovs returned to Paris.² Two years later Miliukova died. Her obituaries said nothing about her support for women’s rights, but a memorial service was held for her at the Russian chapter of the International Federation of University Women.³ Ariadna Tyrkova, along with Miliukova, formed part of the delegation that had met with Provisional Government Prime Minister L’vov to reaffirm his commitment to legalize women’s suffrage. Tyrkova also left Russia in , eventually settling in London with her husband, Harold Williams, where they formed a circle of anti-Bolshevik liberals. She spent the war years in France, then moved with her son to the United States in . In her autobiographical writing, published in  and , Tyrkova barely mentions all of her feminist activity. Her most extensive description of speaking out for women’s rights concerns her support of Miliukova at the Kadet congresses in  and , but there is nothing about her subsequent involvement or about the March  meeting of feminists with Prince L’vov. She also appears to have had no contact with the international feminist movement.⁴ 249 EPILOGUE Two activists were targeted by the Bolsheviks, not for feminist advocacy but for their vocal opposition to the revolutionary government. Neither attempt was successful, but both presaged later Soviet arrests and show trials. Countess Sofia Panina, the most prominent participant in the March meeting with L’vov, became an early target of the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. In the first show trial of the Soviet era, held on December , , she was charged with stealing ninety-three thousand rubles from the Ministry of Education. Defended by Iakov Iakovlevich Gurevich, the brother of Liubov and Anna Gurevich, Panina was found guilty by the revolutionary tribunal of “opposition to the people’s authority .” She was to be kept imprisoned until the money taken was returned to the Bolshevik Commissariat of Education, but her actual punishment was limited to “public censure.” Friends raised the money to ransom Panina right before Christmas. In , with...