Women Family and the Russian Revolution

<p>The Bolsheviks came to power in a workers' and peasants' <span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>revolution supported by the great </span>majority of Russian <span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>women. Abortion was legalized immediately and made available to women without charge. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>F</span>or the first time wives were empowered to divorce their husbands and <span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>many took the opportunity. In a society in which few homes had any basic amenities it was envisaged that women would be freed from household drudgery by child-care centres communal dining halls and public laundries; and the predictions of Engels that mutual affection and respect would underpin relations between the sexes would be realised. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Under socialism the bourgeois family would wither away releasing women from kitchen slavery and bringing them equality with men. </span>But the betrayal by Social Democracy of the revolutionary <span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>upsurge following WW1 and the pressure of imperialism on an isolated backward semi-feudal country meant a reactionary bureaucracy usurped political power imposed a totalitarian regime and enacted legislation to strengthen the conservative elements within Soviet society restricting women's rights to </span>divorce abolishing the right to <span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>abortion and strengthening the family. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)><span>?</span>This book ends by noting the social and economic degradation imposed on Russian women by capitalist restoration concluding that only a socialist proletarian-led revolution can finally achieve women's emancipation.</span></p>