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careers and become active and influential among their fellow worker revolutionaries. Of the three Grigor'eva was the oldest by five years and there was a one year gap between Boldyreva and Karelina. They were all from working class or recent peasant backgrounds, while Grigor'eva and Karelina spent some of their early life in a foundling home. Grigor'eva's and Boldyreva's fathers were soldiers in the Imperial Army. Karelina also wrote about living in a village as a foster child with the family of a soldier's widow. Both Boldyreva and Karelina were married. But while Karelina 62 stayed with her husband and the couple shared their political views working closely together in each organisation, Boldyreva soon left her husband who did not share her political aspirations. From her marriage Boldyreva had three children, Karelina had one, while Grigor'eva remained childless. Grigor'eva and Karelina received their initial education in the foundling homes and Boldyreva attended the famous Smolenskaia Sunday School for Workers in the Nevskaia Zastava district of St. Petersburg. (Sunday Schools in Russia dated back to 1859 and were set up to give working class people, who could not attend classes on other days, access to basic education.) Boldyreva and Karelina also attended midwifery courses trying to improve their professional career prospects though neither turned this training into a profession thereafter. All three were persecuted for their political activities and received several prison terms and exile sentences. During the 1905 Revolution Boldyreva and Karelina were elected to the Petersburg Workers' Soviet, a mark of recognition of their political influence and respect among their fellow workers. However, Karelina soon withdrew from the political scene, apparently for reasons of ill health. Grigor'eva continued her work for the PSR for a number of years after 1905. But of the three, only Boldyreva remained politically active up to and during the 1917 Revolution. I have not been able to find any records with the exact dates of their death. All that is known is that the three were still alive in 1930. The information about other women workers who were members of the Brusnev group is considerably more fragmented. Tat'iana Razuvaeva was a deputy of the Petersburg Workers' Soviet in 1905 and like Karelina represented the Gapon Society. Norinskaia, Maklakova, Keizer, Nikolaeva and Zhelabina worked in a rubber factory. Keizer and Norinskaia were arrested in 1895 while the other female revolutionaries continued their active work in the Petersburg social democratic organisations right up to the 1900s. I could not find any more information on these revolutionary women workers. Sunday Schools in working class districts played an important part in spreading social democratic propaganda among workers. Set up by the government to teach literacy to the growing numbers of the urban proletariat they attracted liberal and Marxist intelligentsia eager to impart their knowledge or recruit new members into their clandestine circles. A considerable number of Sunday school teachers were female students from women's higher courses. For example, among the female teachers of Smolenskaia Sunday school were N. Krupskaia, A. Iakubova, Z. 63 Nevzorova, L.Knipovich and P.Kudelli - all of them later became leading Bolshevichki. Other Sunday schools in which propaganda and agitation was directed at workers were the Glazovskaia and Obukhovskaia schools. Though officially the subjects permitted for teaching in Sunday schools were Russian language, mathematics, geography, history, and literature, the radical teachers also lectured basics of economy and about the agrarian issue. They supplied illegal literature to the workers. Later Krupskaia remembered the trust their students held in them sharing with them their personal feelings and doubts. So who were these women that played an important part in shaping social democratic views among Petersburg workers? Nadezhda Krupskaia (b. 1869) came from an impoverished, democratically minded gentry family. Her father was an army officer who had been suspected of secretly sympathising with Polish insurgents in the early 1860s. In 1890 Krupskaia attended the Higher Women's (Bestuzhev) Courses in Petersburg. (Like the Alarchin Courses in the 1870s, they were opened for women in 1878 and had two faculties: Philology and Mathematics) There she joined a student circle led by Brusnev before beginning to teach in a Sunday school. In 1894 she met Vladimir Ul'ianov (Lenin) whose wife she later became. In 1896 she was arrested for membership of the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of Working Class (Union of Struggle) and exiled. In 1898 she joined the RSDRP and became one of the leading women Bolsheviks. She wrote extensively for the party press on women's and educational issues before and after the October Revolution. Zinaida Nevzorova (b. 1870) was one of three daughters (all of whom became Bolshevichki) from a teaching family. Like Krupskaia she was a graduate of the Bestuzhev Courses though she was a member of a social democratic circle in her hometown of Nizhnii Novgorod before coming to Petersburg. She joined the Union of Struggle in 1895 but was arrested in 1896 and exiled to Siberia. In Siberia she married G.Krzhyzhanovskii, also a member of the RSDRP and a Bolshevik. Between 1900 and 1905 she was an active agent for Iskra, the RSDRP newspaper. Praskov'ia Kudelli (b.l859) was a daughter of a former Polish serf who after the abolition of serfdom became a doctor. In 1878 she came to Petersburg to attend the Alarchin Courses. Her first involvement with revolutionaries was through student Populist circles. In 1890 she became acquainted with Marxist theory and decided to work with workers in a Sunday school where she made the acquaintance of other 64 socialist female teachers. After her arrest in 1900 she went to Pskov where she supported the efforts of the Iskra organisation. In 1903 she joined the RSDRP (b). So in contrast to the women workers from the Brusnev group the three women teachers came from more privileged, if not wealthy, families. The eldest of the three, Kudelli, had been involved in the Populist movement but did not take part in any terrorist acts. In her autobiography Kudelli, who described the poet Nekrasov as her first real political influence, recollected her early student days: Revolutionary views were growing stronger in me but I found terrorism per se instinctively repulsive.9 For Krupskaia and Nevzorova such early influence came from within their families. They became attracted to the social democratic movement during their student days and all three were professional teachers, turning later into professional female revolutionaries. Krupskaia and Nevzorova married fellow revolutionaries in exile (incidentally both couples were in Eastern Siberia at the same time and had close contacts). Kudelli remained single. None had children. Krupskaia, Kudelli and Nevzorova were active members of the Union of Struggle and later joined the ranks of the Bolsheviks after the split in the RSDRP in 1903. All three contributed to the Bolshevik party press, and Kudelli and Krupskaia were among the founding members of Rabotnitsa {The Woman Worker) in 1914 (revived after the February Revolution in 1917), a Bolshevik magazine specifically aimed at women workers. Like their counterparts from the women workers these female revolutionaries were arrested, imprisoned and exiled on many occasions. But Krupskaia, Lenin's closest ally, spent a long time working for the party abroad between 1903 and 1917. All three women lived on well after the October Revolution. So there is a clear difference in the social origins and in their political careers between these three Bolshevichki and the Brusnev group women, while Boldyreva's development took her from the latter to the Bolshevik Party. The efforts to recruit more members from the working class, and in particular women, to the ranks of the Social Democrats were not limited to St. Petersburg. In 1891-92, for example, there were women's Marxist circles inNizhnii Novgorod, 9 VOSB, fond 124, case 1009 65 which involved a number of sisters, including O. and E. Chachina, M.and E. Dmitrieva, A. and N. Rukavishnikova, M. and O. Ivanitskaia. In Ivanovo-Voznesensk 01'ga Varentsova, a weaver's daughter (her father had his own small workshop), and professional revolutionary, set up her first study circles for women in 1892. The meetings used to take place in her flat. In 1895 this circle was incorporated into the Ivanovo branch of the Union of Struggle. The workers' circles which Varentsova had established were finally crushed by the police in 1896. Several members of Varentsova's women workers' circle went onto conduct their own propaganda and agitation in their work places, and to join the social democratic movement. One of her students and circle members was Elizaveta Volodina, daughter of a textile worker and herself a seamstress, who joined the organisation in 1894. As an energetic and determined propagandist and organiser Volodina was co-opted into the work of the central circle and was made responsible for work among fellow women workers at her factory. Even before committing herself to the organisation, she had established the first women workers' circle there by the end of 1892. Daughter and mother seamstresses, Mariia and Ekaterina Iovlevy, were active members in the same organisation. Between 1896 and 1903 their flat was used as a safe house for meetings, clandestine literature and printing equipment. Another Ivanovo woman worker, Vera Zakharova, joined a social democratic circle in 1897. Elizaveta Andreeva, afeldsher from Ekaterinoslav, worked with women from the local tobacco factory and seamstresses from 1896. In Moscow, Vinokurova, a midwife, established a circle for female students, which involved Sofia Muralova, Pelageia Karpuzi, Anfisa Smirnova, E. Petrova, L.Birant, M.Gorbacheva, N.Zheliakova and N.Kush. At that time, the seamstress Mariia Boie with her two brothers Konstantin and Fedor (both metal workers) were all active in workers' circles in Moscow. The Vinokurova circle developed links with circles of women workers in the textile mills and millinery workshops. The students taught women to read or improve their literacy skills through illegal literature. Until one of the circle members, Karpuzi, managed to get hold of a typewriter the women would copy works by hand for distribution or sale. They also raised funds for the movement, even organising lotteries with no prizes and on one occasion, a collection to help a fictitious dying female student.10 S.Mitskevieh, Na gram dvukh epokh, 97 66 Muralova had already been involved in a study circle in the town of Taganrog. One of the members, N.P.Perekrestov, who conducted propaganda among workers in a local railway depot, acquainted Muralova with female tobacco workers, who were eager to learn literacy. Muralova met regularly with them, teaching them to read and write. As their class literature they used to read political pamphlets. Within three months two of the seven workers in Muralova's circle were carrying out their own propaganda in the tobacco factory. Muralova herself still had no clear idea what socialism was, but she was convinced that the working class should lead the way. In 1893, she went to Moscow to continue such work. Rumours were rife that not only was there a strong workers' organisation there, but that Moscow workers were on the brink of a mass rising. At her first lecture she met Vinokurova and Smirnova, who soon invited her to join the female student circle. This is where Muralova's political education began in earnest. As yet there were no efforts specifically directed at women workers in Moscow. When the female propagandists realised that workers' wives and sisters were trying to prevent them from being influenced by atheistic intelligentsia, it was decided to infiltrate the Sunday schools for workers by taking posts as teachers. Muralova jumped at the chance to resume the work she had begun in Taganrog. In her classes she taught students through using examples based on their own life experiences pointing out to them the inequalities of the existing regime and stressing their hard working and living conditions. By this time (1895), the Moscow Workers' Union had been formed but women were effectively debarred from entry because of their low educational level and lack of political preparation. Members of the Moscow Union were not at all typical of the city's workers, who were for the most part recent peasants with strong ties to the village. Muralova was particularly aware that many leading members of the Union were rather dismissive, even contemptuous, of women workers. Hence she resolved to continue her separate work among the latter. She and the other female intelligentsia had considerable success: by the spring of 1895 there were around 50 women workers organised in propaganda circles attached to the Moscow Workers' Union. In June, however, Muralova and most of the leading female propagandists were arrested. n S.Mitskevich, Na zare rabochego dvizheniia v Moskve,79-85, 67 Muralova had gone to Moscow in search of revolution. Others of her social class had less overtly political reasons for doing so. In 1892 Elizaveta Elagina, a daughter of a landowner, came to Moscow to continue her education and married a student. The Elagins both became involved in the work of social democratic circles. Prior to that Elizaveta had spent two years fighting famine and cholera in the villages of Central Russia, inspired by Populist ideals. Between 1896 and 1898 while studying at a midwifery course she carried out propaganda there. A large part of the reasoning behind these efforts to recruit female workers, besides the feet that their numbers were growing, was a fear of their backwardness, that they would act as a drag on the labour movement, discourage their husbands from participating in it, and put the interests of their families over that of their class. Whatever the intentions of the intelligentsia, however, the women workers whose consciousness was raised set about spreading the new ideas themselves, in an attempt to draw their sisters into the labour movement. There did not, as yet, seem to be a fear that women-only circles would divide the labour movement, but rather there was a recognition that not only were literacy levels considerably lower among women than men, but also that the labour force was rigidly divided along gender lines, that women often took jobs outside of factories, and that as women they had specific needs. The Brusnev circles did Download 88.01 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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