The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-03-09
By SONIA CROLL

Note.-The writer has just re-
turned from three years stay in
the Soviet Union and this article is
based upon observations made at
International Women's Day meet
ings.
International Women's Day in the
Soviet Union is celebrated by hun
dreds and hundreds of thousands of
women. A real holiday spirit pre-
walls. And a spirit also of pride
which comes with achievement, for
International Women's Day in the
Soviet Union is made the occasion
for thousands of women gradual
ing from one or another of the
special courses or schools provided
to raise their cultural and political
level. Hundreds of women are pro-
NOTED to more responsible and more
skilled jobs. Hundreds of hitherto
completely illiterate women make
their first speeches or conduct their
first large public meetings. Muir
series, kindergardens, communal
living quarters and dining rooms
are opened, machine-equipped laun-
dries. In short, International Wom-
ems Day in Russia is the occasion
for putting into practice the behest
of Lenin that "every cook must
learn how to administer the govern
ment."
To achieve this under the die
tatorship of the proletariat. and to
emancipate women from the petty
enslaving household drudgery, it is
necessary to build those institutions
which will liberate her from them
and leave the woman free to take
her place in society as an equal.
Fill Club Rooms, Theatres.
Every factory and mill, every en-
terprise in the Soviet Union has its
club room, or if it is too small,
sha.es one with a nearby institu-
tion. These as well as all the thea
tres are filled to OVERLOOKING with
women and their families on Inter
national Women's Day.
In the first years of the revolu-
ton International Womer.'s Day was
celebrated mostly by recognizing
women as an equal, by acts designed
to encourage and stimulate the
masses of toiling women to the
realization that they were now free
and no longer the slaves or play
things of their menfolk; that they
We're no longer bound and oppressed
by feudal and capitalist customs and
traditions. They had to be aroused
and equipped to utilize the freedom
they had won struggling side-by-
side with their class brothers of the
proletariat and poor peasantry
against their common capitalist
enemy.
Cultural, Political Education.
But now it is no longer so much
a question of arousing the mass of
toiling women to the consciousness
of and desire to utilize their new
status of equality, but a problem of
finding ways and means to equip
them to raise their cultural and
political qualifications for participa-
ton in all spheres of life in the
Soviet Union.
Unlike capitalist parties and gov
e, lments, the All-Russian Commu-
mist Party and the Soviet Govern
ment were not content with merely
passing laws giving woman equal
suffrage. The Soviet Government
not only threw open the doors of all
economic, political and social insti-
tutions to the women of the toiling
classes, but took concrete measures
to enable this hitherto most back
ward and suppressed section of the
Russian people to make use of these
privileges for themselves and for
the new free socialist society.
Special Women's Department.
Just as soon "a few months after
the October Revolution, early in
1879 as the All-Russian Communist
Party realized to what a great eX.
tent the old order had held back ano
prevented women from developing
their mental and physical capacities
and how this illiteracy prevented