Women in the Revolutionary Movement of the Late 19th – Early 20th Centuries (the Case of the Kostroma Province)
Abstract
In the late 19th – early 20th centuries more than a half of the Kostroma province’s population was represented by women. By 1917 women made about 65 % of the population. Their activity had a significant impact on the result of revolutionary events. The most widespread women’s movement was organized in Kostroma – once a provincial centre. In this very city vivid personalities of women-revolutionaries were shaped, and their role in the protest movement was determined. They were involved in illegal movement of the populists, took part in the Marxist sections, but they played a more active role in the labour movement. On the other hand, all political parties in Russia tried to attract women to their side. In Kostroma these parties included the cadets, the social revolutionaries, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. The year of 1917 was marked by the strongest battle for the influence on women. The special attention was paid to those women whose husbands fought or died in the First World War, since many of them lived in Kostroma. In the course of the struggle women preferred the Bolsheviks’ party. In Kostroma the power passed to them by peaceful means, mainly because the revolutionaries were mostly represented by women-workers. Thus, the participation of Russian women, particularly in the Kostroma province, in the revolutionary struggle of the early 20th century allows to see the mechanism of protest ideas generation and development in society, as well as to understand the power of specific political parties’ certain ideas.
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