Agitators, educators, organisers
The Bolshevik women, who had years of experience in making propaganda and agitation, fought off accusations of “feminine weakness” to take a full part in making propaganda in the civil war which followed the 1917 Russian revolution. Alexandra Kollontai travelled to the front taking instructions from the centre, and making speeches. Nadezhda Krupskaya did the same on the Agitational Boat. For all the Bolsheviks the civil war was a continuation of the revolution. In May 1918 the first Russian women’s conference was held. Just 130 delegates attended. But a Women’s National Congress held in...