RUSSIAN WOMEN IN THE BUILDING OF SOCIALISM By Anna Razumova INTRODUCTION We are publishing this pamphlet, written by a Russian working- woman for International Women's Day, as a document of the victo- rious struggle which the men and women workers are carrying on for the complete realisation of Socialism in the only workers' state, the Soviet Union. Why is it so important for the working-class women of England to learn about the triumphant co-operation of their Russian sister workers in the building up of Socialism? The Congress of the British Communist Party declared that work among women and the youth has now taken on a new signifi- cance, based upon new economic conditions. For while the process of rationalisation throws more and more workers on to the streets, every day and every hour increasing the army of unemployed, it is the woman, whose labour power is cheap in capitalist countries, who is to an increasing extent taking the place of the male worker. The married woman is forced, because of her husband's unemploy- ment, to go into the factory or to take other work. And when that happens, what kind of care do the children get? And what does it mean for the mother, struggling under the double burden of earning a living and keeping house – cooking, mending, cleaning and nurs- ing when she is already tired out? Is it any wonder that under these conditions British women hate their work? How should they know that everything can be different – that the order of things which they know must be turned upside down to put it straight? She is forced to work in a factory; she does not care about the factory, she does not care about capitalist busi- ness, of which she knows and understands nothing but that it ex- ploits her and crushes out her life. What does she know of this business, of the figures and facts which are deliberately withheld from the understanding of those whom it should most directly concern – the workers? How different it is in the Soviet Union! 1 In this pamphlet we can read what a Russian working woman has to tell us about Soviet Russia's Five-Year Plan. Figures mean something different to this woman, who has helped to put them to- gether, who works as an equal – getting the same wages as men – in putting them into practice and making them a reality. How simply does this free woman of Soviet Russia speak of equal wages, almost unheard of, almost impossible in capitalist countries! How could the English capitalists “reduce the costs of production," if not by dismissing men and taking on women at low- er rates? In the workers' state, on the other hand, the fact that wom- en also work means that hours of labour are reduced and that real wages rise. This explains the joy which flows, like a warm stream of new life, through this pamphlet written by a woman – joy in be- ing able to take part in this great work of construction, in surpassing the men in Socialist competition, in putting forth all the forces which were formerly crushed back. She is free from all worry about her children; the preparation of meals and all the duties of the housewife are provided for; nothing stands in her way. True, the struggle is still a hard one. The workers in capitalist countries must never forget the heritage which the Russian revolu- tion took over from savage Tsarism. At every success won in the Soviet Union they must remember what such a success means in a country with such a legacy, as compared with the technically ad- vanced capitalist countries. Every figure, even if at the beginning it falls short of the corresponding figure for capitalist countries, if rightly understood is as important to other workers as it is to the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union themselves, whose ener- gies are directed towards making each figure in the production ta- bles come true. With the living picture of the Five-Year plan given in this pam- phlet, the working women in capitalist countries will also under- stand the real meaning of this emancipation of woman: this com- plete transformation of her daily life, this change from a "home" which never really existed to a productive life. And they will do everything in their power, side by side with the men workers, not only to protect such a country from the approaching war, but also to win for themselves a workers' country such as that which the Rus- sian women workers and peasants won by fighting shoulder to shoulder with their menfolk; and which to-day they are still ready to protect with their lives against the attacks of the capitalist world. 2 RUSSIAN WOMEN IN THE BUILDING OF SOCIALISM Figures Which Every Working Woman Should Know The Revolution of November, 1917, which set free the working class and the peasantry of Russia, above all brought freedom to the women workers and peasants: gave them full and complete equality with men. But it is not only the revolution that has profoundly influ- enced the life of the working woman : it is also all the creative work of the proletariat, which has arisen and developed on the soil of the proletarian revolution, that has led her continuously from one stage of development to a higher one. Every step taken in the realisation of Socialism means at the same time an advance in the life of women workers and peasants. This is particularly true of the period during which the gigantic work of Socialist construction, the Five-Year Plan, is being achieved. The Five-Year Plan determines the whole life of the country, its entire development in town and village. It is the task of the Five-Year Plan to translate into reality the demand which Lenin made, that Soviet Russia should "overtake and surpass the whole capitalist world, Europe and America." If we are to overtake Europe and America, and leave them be- hind, we have to do more than re-establish the old industry. We must build new factories and works on the latest technical lines. If we can industrialise Soviet Russia, if we can build up heavy indus- try – which means in the first place machines and tools for develop- ing agriculture – it will be possible to transform a backward agrari- an country, with little industry, into an industrial country with well- developed agriculture. It will mean a complete change in agricul- ture. Its old, unproductive methods will be replaced by tractors and new machines. The large areas of land now lying fallow must be cultivated. If this technical revolution is accomplished in the village, it will be possible to build up Socialism in the country as in the town, to change the scattered, backward, individual peasant econo- my into efficient collective economy. All this, however, requires a gigantic exertion of forces, a tre- mendous expenditure of energy and money; for the change that we want to bring about can only be made by breaking down the old forms and traditions, by overcoming the dullness, the backwardness, the lack of culture among the peasant population, by fighting against the resistance of the class enemy in the village – the rich peasants, kulaks, as they are called. 3 Let us look for a moment at the contrast between what is going on to-day in the capitalist countries of Europe and America and what is taking place in the Soviet Union. In Europe and America the economic plans of the capitalists and the state are directed towards enriching a diminishing minority at the expense of the workers. As a consequence of over-production, it is becoming ever more diffi- cult to sell what is produced. Unemployment is growing to an ap- palling extent. The cost of living is continually increasing because of tariffs and higher prices – which means that real wages (i.e., what can be bought with the wages) are falling – while the hours of la- bour are being lengthened. The standard of life of the working class as a whole is being lowered. But in the Soviet Union, as the plan of Socialist construction is gradually fulfilled, the condition of the working class is constantly improving. Unemployment is rapidly diminishing, because as fast as production increases, the market (i.e., people who want to buy the goods) increases, too. Wages are rising; hours of work decreas- ing; the working week being made shorter; the welfare and the standard of life of the working class and the peasantry improving all round, leading to a higher level of culture. The first year of the Five-Year Plan has given the Russian worker the five-day week – four days work and one day of rest; the seven-hour instead of the eight-hour day; improvements in working conditions because of the introduction of the most modern machin- ery; improved labour protection; and the establishment of all kinds of facilities which enables the woman worker, without neglecting her home, to work in the factory and devote herself to public life. We will let the figures speak for themselves. For the purpose of carrying out the plan the state, during the five years covered by the plan, will invest more than 64.6 milliard rubles (£6,500,000,000), which is double the amount invested in the previous five years. Of this total, 16.4 milliards will go into indus- try, 3.1 milliards for electrification, 10 milliards for transport and 23.2 milliards for agriculture. Tremendous building works are arising, such as the huge power station Dnieperstroi, which is called a "combine," because it is both an electric power station (beginning with 330,000 kilowatts) and also includes most important industrial works; the Volga-Don canal, the Turkestan-Siberia railway, the great tractor factories with an annual production of thousands of tractors. (The Five-Year Plan 4 provided for an annual production of 100,000 tractors, but this fig- ure has been passed; it has grown into 200,000 or 300,000.) The new factories and works will make it possible for the U.S.S.R. to develop independently of the capitalist states, to utilise the gold re- serves of the country for internal needs instead of expending them to buy machinery abroad. They will make it certain that Socialism is built up in the Soviet Union, despite all the blockades, the slander and hostile acts of the capitalist world. They will make it possible for the U.S.S.R. to develop to such an extent that the annual in- crease in production amounts to 20 per cent (actually it is already 32 per cent.), while the corresponding figure for capitalist countries is 5 per cent. Let us follow the development in electrification, the production of pig iron and fuel, the chemical industry and agriculture mapped out in the Five-Year Plan. This will give us a closer view of the tremendous rate at which construction is taking place. Electrification first: At the end of the five years the U.S.S.R. will have surpassed Germany in electrification. It has already far outstripped what was done in Tsarist Russia (2.1 milliard kilowatt-hours as against 1.9 milliard in 1913). Now for coal: At the end of the five years the U.S.S.R. will have an output of 75 million tons. This means that France will be behind Russia in the matter of coal production. At the end of the five years about ten million tons of pig iron will be produced. With this figure the U.S.S.R. will have surpassed not only France but England as well. And these three industries are the most important of all, deter- mining the development of the entire national economy. Electrifica- tion, fuel and metallurgy – in these spheres the U.S.S.R. will have won first place among a number of great European states. The pro- gress in these basic industries is also helping agriculture to take a great leap forward. In this tremendous country, which covers about one-sixth of the earth's land surface, whose soil contains untold wealth, there were in the past great difficulties in procuring grain and in provisioning the towns. This is explained by the manner in which agriculture was conducted, by the fact that there were 26 mil- lion different peasant holdings, each peasant concerned only with his own little bit of land which he worked in an old-fashioned way, 5 not at all as agricultural science teaches us that the land should be worked. But as we have seen, under the Five-Year Plan the peasants will be supplied with hundreds of thousands of tractors and machines, with millions of tons of chemical manures; during the five years thousands of collective agricultural concerns will be established. The Five-Year Plan provided originally for 26 million hectares of land to be worked collectively, and for the establishment of numer- ous soviet farms which, at the end of the five years, should together supply 84 million hundredweight of grain. Yet even these enormous figures have been far surpassed by the living, hurrying reality. A great change is taking place as a result of the resolute social- ist fight against capitalist elements in town and village. Under the leadership of the Communist Party a socialist transformation is tak- ing place in the villages. Beginning by making things difficult for the kulak, the struggle goes on up to the point where the kulaks as a class are entirely eliminated. This struggle is actively supported by the poor peasants and by the middle peasants, who have been freed from the domination of the kulaks. Of course, the capitalists (both in Russia and abroad) howl about the fact that their brothers are no longer permitted to grow rich at the expense of the workers and the poorer peasants. But the results have shown that these tactics were right. Even now, after one year only of socialist construction, whole districts are merging into collective farms. The village which once lived by the flare of a pine torch – which thought oil lamps a luxury and feared the electric bulb as the devil's eye – is now undergoing electrification. The electric lamp (the "Lenin lamp," as it is called) has become part of the life and work of the peasant. And the peasant, who at first did not want to hear a word about co-operative farming – who feared every invention as he did fire, is now working hard for the complete collectivisation of the land – is anxious to change his wooden plough and his threshing-flail for the tractor, the threshing machine and the separator. The New Meaning of Work and the New Means of Work One great change brought about by this revolution in the indus- try of town and village has taken place in the relation of the workers towards their labour. This is particularly significant for women 6 workers and peasants. Once they have been drawn into the process- es of production, they recognise the tasks and the great importance of the Five-Year Plan, and do their share in carrying it out with en- ergy and enthusiasm. In the factories and mills they help to increase the productivity of labour and reduce costs. They have been particu- larly vigorous in contending against absences from work, against a negligent or indifferent attitude towards work, against all workers who have not recognised that they are now working for their own class. They take good care that the industry in which they are work- ing should turn out the best possible in quantity and quality; they feel that they themselves are responsible for the entire industry, for socialist construction as a whole. They recognise quite clearly that the realisation of the Five- Year Plan demands the mass participation of all the workers of the Soviet Union; that everybody must learn to work in a new way, di- recting all their energy and all their will to carrying out the plan. So new methods of work are developing which the plan itself did not take into account in its calculations. Even before the plan was finally ratified, the great wave of socialist competition began to spread over the country. Now millions of workers have taken it up. One factory challenges another to a socialist competition: Who will work better? Who will effect a greater reduction in the costs of pro- duction? Who will produce the best goods? Who will produce the least faulty goods? Where will absences from work cease first? Where will the machines stand idle the least time? These are questions, bound up with the life of the works, that form the subject matter of the different competitions; which are held not only between one factory and another, but also between one department and another; between men as against women workers; workers against peasants; cotton against wool workers. Town even competes against town. They compete as to who will establish bet- ter provisions for education, more crèches, kindergartens, dining rooms, clubs, etc. On 8th April, 1929, the woman textile workers of Moscow, Tver and Ivanovo-Vosnessensk challenged each other to a socialist competition: 60,000 women workers determined to reduce costs of production and to increase the productivity of labour. 7 The Luberets and Kramator works, which turn out agricultural machinery, have challenged each other to a competition; the largest rubber works, the Red Giant and the Red Triangle, have done the same; in the coal, the metal and the electrical industries competi- tions are under way; and other industries are not behind. The peas- ants, too, are taking an active part, seized to an ever-growing extent by socialist enthusiasm. The Volga district, Northern Caucasus and the Ukraine are competing for first place in the harvest and in col- lectivisation. The agricultural concerns in Samara have organised a socialist competition between the village of Vladimirovka and the collective farm Green Grove; the peasants have undertaken to ex- tend the area under cultivation and the workers to increase produc- tivity and to reduce costs. Since the first days of socialist competition, the women workers have accomplished real miracles. For example, in the Proletarka mills of Tver, the woman worker, Maria Stepanova, who examines the quality of the product, has examined 320 pieces per day instead of her usual 200. Another woman textile worker turned out 954 pieces on the first day of the competition, and 1,027 on the second; her usual output was 750. There are numberless similar examples which could be given. The socialist competition has spread to every corner of the Soviet Union. There is no aspect of public life, how- ever insignificant, which has remained untouched by this tremen- dous example of mass energy. The idea has even caught on among the militant workers in capitalist countries, who are now competing in the organisation of the revolution: so many new members must be won for the Communist Party, so many new factory cells estab- lished by a certain time. Socialist competition has made even the more backward men and women workers of the Soviet Union feel that they are the real masters of industry, who are themselves re- sponsible for their own affairs, their own factory, their own national economy. The results of this new relation to work were soon apparent. The first year of the plan showed that only four years will be re- quired in order to carry out the plans which it was thought would take five years to execute. The method of self-criticism – i.e., bringing to light all mistakes and defects – is another factor which has greatly contributed to- wards the successes gained. Self-criticism sometimes goes so far that all those who have .stayed away from work unnecessarily, or 8 who are careless or indifferent about their work, are publicly re- proved by the other workers who are conscious of their goal, and they are gradually brought to take part in the general work of con- struction and in the new methods of work. The capitalist press outside Russia often quotes such criticisms, made by the workers as a means to improve their common work, and tries to show by doing so that things are going badly in Russia. But the enlightened workers and the U.S.S.R. know that they are stronger by reason of collective examination of defects. They are exerting all their strength to increase the rate of socialist construc- tion. In spite of the clamour of the capitalist world, which maintained that the Five-Year Plan was an impracticable fantasy, in spite of all those who, fearful of difficulties, maintained that the plan was im- practicable and the proposed rate of development impossible to achieve, the men and women workers of the Soviet Union have proved that, aided by these new methods of work, the plan can and will be carried out, and in a period shorter by one year than the time proposed. The New Forms of Life, the New Daily Life Apart from the more rapid execution of the Five-Year Plan, we have to solve the burning questions of education and the complete transformation of daily life. The building up of the industries and development of collective farming requires not only improved machinery, tractors, power sta- tions, etc., but also men who are capable of utilising them, drivers, mechanics, electricians, trained and educated persons. We need men everywhere, we need men for the simplest ma- chines as well as for its management and organisation. But our country is poor in trained workers and technical experts; the twelve years of intense work in training new specialists have not yet fully supplied this deficiency, although in those years we have overcome the worst legacy of Tsarism, illiteracy, which was more prevalent among working women than among men. To overcome this short- age of trained managers and skilled workers in town and country, a plan for abolishing the last remaining illiteracy has been drawn up. In the last seven years 250,000 women have learnt to read and write, but still, in 1926, only 34.4 per cent of women could read and write. In 1927-28 53.9 per cent of the population of the U.S.S.R. 9 could read and write; 78.5 per cent of the urban population and 48.3 per cent of the village population. By the end of the Five-Year Plan at least 82 per cent of the population will be literate, 93 per cent in the towns and 79.4 per cent in the villages. But the new scheme aims so to speed up education that «every industrial worker will be literate within one year from now, and the last of illiteracy will have vanished from the country within three years. The emancipated woman of Russia desires education and knowledge. Being able to read and write, an accomplishment which once seemed to her to be the essence of the desirable, does not satis- fy her any longer. After she has learned to read she goes further, and trains herself to be a skilled worker in the factories or in agriculture, to be capable of doing important and responsible work. In 1929 there were 8,818 women (20 per cent of them from the workshops) attending the various educational institutions of the U.S.S.R. for technical and agricultural training. In the technical high schools there were 4,784 women, 82 per cent of them workers; in the professional schools 4,975, 47 per cent of them children of workers, in the factory schools 7,079 girls, 84 per cent of them chil- dren of workers. The peasant woman, too, is growing more and more anxious to receive education, to attend the workers' colleges, the technical training-centres, the various lecture courses. In 1929, 21 per cent of the women attending high schools were peasants who formerly worked in agriculture in their villages. 32 per cent of the students at the workers' colleges, 28 per cent at the technical training schools, and 27 per cent at the various agricultural courses were peasant girls. Thus we see agricultural experts, doctors and engineers com- ing forward from the ranks of the women workers and peasants. Still more astonishing are the figures relating to the women of the east. In 1925 in Turkmenia there were only 25 women who could read and write, and in 1926-27 in the Turkmenian schools 1,084 women were taught to read and write and given a technical training. Every Turkmenian or Uzbek girl at school means a revolu- tion in the life of the east, undermining the influence of the clergy. But the greatest factor in emancipating the woman is the possi- bility of combining work outside the home with provision for the duties and cares of the household. This is the effect of the Five-Year Plan on the forms of daily life. 10