Evening star., 1932-12-11

"HE gargantuan labor pains OF the
Russian revolution, expected to
bring forth the liberated woman,
i have brought forth slavey. In
Russia today women are ma
chinists but the head Of the machine
shop is man; women reap the mar
vests, but the head of the collective
farm is a man; women are actresses
and musicians, but the theater director
and orchestra conductor are men.
Here in America, where their climb has
been laboriously slow, women are reach
ing greater heights than in Russia,
where, with resounding fanfare, they
were heralded into q new era with the
stroke of pen.
There are Is women to IA men in
Soviet Russia's l64,000,00o population.
Yet of the go prominent figures in the
realm of Soviet art only two are women,
and these two are not the creation Of
the Communist regime, but products OF
the old revolutionary school OF pre-
bolshevik days.
OF the los prominent scientists In
Soviet Russia only one-the wife OF a
Communist poets a woman, and her
post is administrative rather than
scientific. She is the director Of the
Dostoyevesky Museum in Moscow. In
the field of literature Communist sta
tistics name 100 as being prominent.
Only seven of these are women, among
them being Vera Inber and Lydia Sci
fulina, both short-story writers known
outside of Russia.
'Lenin's Kin Rar k High.
OF the $50 members of the govern
ment and the Central Executive Com
mittee, only 20 are women. One OF
them. Nine. Krupskaya, is the widow Of
Lenin, and another, Nine. Ulianova, Is
his sister. OF the remaining 18, IL were
already active bolsheviks before the
revolution of 1905. The rest were either
social democrats or social revolutionaries
of the same era-the era of Grand
mother" Breshkovskya-who in 1917
affiliated with the Communists.
Why has the Soviet woman so utterly
failed to capitalize on her new-found
liberty? Is it because she lacks the
power and Vigor to meet men on equal
ground? Or is 1t because her new
found liberty and equality are in reality
only chimeras-words written into the
statutes, but not yet written on the
hearts Of 100000 men who have al
ways considered women as their in
feriors?
Unquestionably there is a large ele-
IuCllb VI u QLil III DOlIl t1lGoC al
The attitude of the average Russian
man, the Soviet courts, the conditions
surrounding marriage and divorce and
family life in general, and, above all,
the bitterness of the economic battle
for existence, tend to give the lie to the
assumption Of women's equality. And
it is also true that the Russian woman
lacks the heritage of freedom and finds
herself somewhat at loss in q world
where there is no precedent to guide
her, where she Is expected at one and
the same time to exhibit the sturdy in
dependence of the free worker and the
charm and dependence Of the alluring
woman.
Women Were Slaves.
The position of the Russian woman
up to the beginning of the nineteenth
century was considerably more difficult
and her social status more primitive
than her sisters of the Western Hemi-
sphere. The poor were slaves to their
men; the rich were idlers, doll house
women leading gay and useless lives,
reading French novels.
The novels of George Sand, avidly
read by the aristocratic woman, awoke
in her the consciousness OF an existence
| beyond that Of mere female. Alex
ander Herzen, Belinsky and to a great
| extent, Tourgeneff were responsible for
| the woman's rebellion against the then
! existing conditions.
| This rebellion brought forth highly
cultured, highly intellectual group OF
! women, such as Nine. Breshkov-
skaya, Nine. Spirodonova Ismailova
| Vera Figner and the still-active Nine
! Kolontai, Ambassadors to Norway
| These feministS advocated education
and professions for their sex. They
fought for and got what they wanted
! But they never dreamed that the battle
| they were fighting would some day re-
suit in women becoming bricklayers
shoemakers and machinists-that the
glorious equality they envisaged would
be achieved only at the cost (exacteo
by conditions they could not foresee)
Of women's femininity.
"Clinging Vines" Preferred.
This loss Of femininity at present i:
of great concern to both the Russian
woman and the Russian man. During
the last few years the Soviet man has
shown steadily increasing fondness
for the "clnging- vine" type Of woman
| rather than the emancipated type Thi.
is particularly true Of political leaders
who choose wives from the ranks o!
actresses and the ex-aristocracy. UI
to 1928, when very few foreign womer
had yet invaded the Soviet Union, ths
lyoung Russian woman who was brought