FROM SHOCK WORKERS TO HEROINES: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY IN THE STALINIST PRESS, 1930-1940 Logan Mae Smith A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at ChapeL HiLL in partiaL fulfiLLment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of GLobaL Studies (Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Concentration) in the ColLege of Arts and Sciences. ChapeL HiLL 2020 Approved by: DonaLd J. RaLeigh Chad Bryant Louise McReynolds © 2020 Logan Mae Smith ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Logan Smith: From Shock Workers to Heroines: InternationaL Women’s Day in the StaLinist Press, 1930-140 (Under the direction of DonaLd J. RaLeigh) Interrogating the country’s two main newspapers, Pravda and Izvestiia, my thesis examines how the Soviet press between 1930 and 1940 represented InternationaL Women’s Day, the major holiday ceLebrating women. Curating a certain idea of what roles women should play in society, these portrayaLs of women changed over time as the “StaLin Revolution” of industriaLization and colLectivization fundamentaLLy aLtered the socioeconomic order. I present three arguments: 1) from 1930 to 1935, the Soviet press presented women as workers dedicated to buiLding sociaLism; 2) between 1936 and 1940, the papers depicted women as “heroines” committed to their roles as both workers and mothers; and 3) the press used internationaL politicaL threats (especiaLLy fascism) to compare the superior status of Soviet women to their oppressed femaLe counterparts in capitaList countries. iii To my mom, I couldn’t have done this without you. Thank you for your support and encouragement aLong the way. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would Like to thank Dr. DonaLd J. RaLeigh for agreeing to act as my advisor and for his countLess edits and advice for my project. I sincereLy could not have finished without your heLp. I aLso want to thank Dr. Chad Bryant and Dr. Louise McReynolds for lending their expertise and encouragement as members of my committee. I would not be the person or scholar I am today without the motivation and guidance of my professors at the University of North Carolina at ChapeL HiLL. Thank you aLL for continuaLLy supporting me in my academic journey. v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……………………………………………………………...…...viii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER 1: THE “WOMAN QUESTION” AND THE ORIGINS OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY IN RUSSIA……………………………………………...5 Marxism, the Bolsheviks, and the “Woman Question”………………………………...…5 The Origins of InternationaL Women’s Day in ImperiaL Russia…………………...…….10 InternationaL Women’s Day and the FaLL of Tsarist Russia……………………………...12 The “Woman Question” and the ZhenotdeL………………………………………….......13 Soviet Law and Disorder...................................................................................................17 The Fight over InternationaL Women’s Day......................................................................19 CHAPTER 2: INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY IN THE SOVIET PRESS, 1930 – 1935........................................................................................22 Introduction........................................................................................................................22 The StaLin Revolution........................................................................................................23 The End of the ZhenotdeL and the “Woman Question”.....................................................26 InternationaL Women’s Day and Soviet Women’s Identity...............................................27 CHAPTER 3: THE RISE OF THE SOVIET HEROINE, 1936-1940...........................................35 Introduction........................................................................................................................35 The Restructuring of the FamiLy........................................................................................35 The Stakhanovite Movement.............................................................................................38 Soviet Heroines and InternationaL Women’s Day.............................................................39 vi CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................45 REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................47 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union NEP New Economic Policy NKIu Commissariat of Justice NKT Commissariat of Labor NKZdrav Commissariat of HeaLth TsIK Soviet CentraL Executive Committee USSR Union of Soviet SociaList Republics or Soviet Union ZAGS CiviL Registry Office viii INTRODUCTION In 1910 Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), a leading German Marxist and feminist, decLared at the Second InternationaL Conference of SociaList Women, which brought together sociaList women from around the world to fight for the politicaL and sociaL emancipation of the femaLe sex, that there should be a “speciaL Woman’s Day.” This “speciaL Women’s Day,” maintained Zetkin, was to be organized by sociaList women and cLass-conscious organizations to “promote Women’s Suffrage propaganda.”1 Zetkin’s words did not faLL on deaf ears. On March 18, 1911, European sociaLists ceLebrated the first InternationaL Women’s Day in Vienna to voice their support for women’s suffrage, whiLe their American counterparts in New York ceLebrated women on February 23.2 On February 17, 1913 (March 2 in the Gregorian caLendar),3 the Bolshevik Party observed InternationaL Women’s Day in an effort to increase cLass consciousness and party membership among working-cLass women.4 Commemorating Women’s Day would later become a Soviet-era tradition, in part owing to the role that women’s demonstrations played in the February Revolution of 1917 that toppled the Romanov dynasty. Protesting food shortages caused by inflation and war, Russian women took to the streets on InternationaL Women’s Day, articulating 1International Socialist Congress, “Second International Conference of Socialist Women,” Report of Socialist Party Delegation and Proceedings of the International Socialist Congress at Copenhagen, 1910 (Chicago: 1910), 21. 2Temma Kaplan, "On the Socialist Origins of International Women's Day," Feminist Studies 11, no. 1 (1985): 166. 3It is important to note that the Russian Empire used the Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian or “New Style” Calendar, which is widely used by most countries today. The Julian calendar was 13 days behind the Gregorian. 4Choi Chatterjee. “Celebrating Women: International Women's Day in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1909-1939." (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1995), 35-36. 1 politicaL demands, incLuding “Down with the Autocracy.”5 Prominent Bolshevik feminist ALexandra KolLontai (1872-1952) in 1920 wrote of the protests: “On this day the Russian women raised the torch of the proletarian revolution and set the world on fire.”6 On February 27 (March 12 in the Gregorian CaLendar), the tsarist autocracy ended in Russia. After the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, the Party’s leaders began the politicaL and sociaL transformation of Russian society. The Soviet state and the Communist Party heLd ceLebrations and mass festivaLs as part of a larger culturaL-buiLding campaign to change society and exercise politicaL power. Yet, a battLe ensued over InternationaL Women’s Day between the Women’s Section of the Communist Party (ZhenotdeL), established in 1919, and top maLe leaders of the Party. Citing the holiday as essentiaL to ensuring women’s support of Party goaLs, ZhenotdeL leaders argued for the continuation of InternationaL Women’s Day during the CiviL War; however, Communist Party leaders feLt differentLy and found the ceLebration to be too costLy in a time of dire nationaL need.7 In an attempt to placate Bolshevik leaders who saw the holiday as a bourgeois feminist deviation from Marxist principles, ZhenotdeL leaders asserted the holiday could be used as a way to liberate women from domestic responsibiLities and to redirect their energy toward nationaL and internationaL goaLs, such as increasing literacy and politicaL goaLs among women workers.8 Despite the importance of the holiday, scholars have devoted only limited attention to InternationaL Women’s Day.9 I seek to redress this imbaLance by examining how the Soviet press 5Kaplan, “On the Socialist Origins,” 169. 6Alexandra Kollontai. Mezhdunarodnyi Den’ RaBotnits, trans. Alix Holt (Moscow: 1920), https://www.marxists.org/archive/kollonta/1920/womens-day.htm. 7Chatterjee, “Celebrating Women,” 145. 8Ibid., 62. 9There has been little English or Russian-language scholarship on the topic of International Women’s Day in the former Soviet Union. The most prominent work is Choi Chatterjee’s CeleBrating Women: Gender, Festival Culture, 2 between 1930 and 1940 represented the holiday. During StaLin’s First Five-Year PLan (1928- 1932), miLLions of women entered the industriaL workforce, forever changing the composition of the working cLass in the Soviet Union. With the shutting down of the ZhenotdeL in 1929 and the mass entrance of women into jobs, 1930 serves as the starting point for my research. The year 1940 serves as the endpoint of this thesis because of the wartime mobiLization caused by World War Two the folLowing year, which temporariLy caused massive upheavaL in Soviet society. I draw on two major Soviet newspapers to determine how the Communist Party institutionaLized InternationaL