The main vectors and agents of socio-political mobilization of rural women of Volyn in the first years of establishment of soviet power
Abstract
The October coup of 1917 in the Russian Empire determined the establishing of new standards of gender policy of the Soviet state by the Bolshevik Party. Their introduction took place in parallel with the process of Sovietization of certain territories of the former empire. It had both common and distinctive features, which to some extend manifested themselves in particular regions. The subject of our study is the women’s movement in Volyn in the first half of the 1920s. The location of the region on the border, its national diversity, mainly the agrarian nature of the economic system were reflected in the regional specifics of the women’s movement.
The objective of our article is to reveal the determinants of political and social mobilization of peasant women during the first decade of the Soviet government on the example of the Volyn region; to identify the main agents of influence on the process of organizing the women’s movement in the villages and establishment of its content and forms.
The methodological basis of the study is the principles of scientificity, historicism, determinism, a combination of systemic and regional approaches, authorial objectivity. A set of general scientific and specifically historical (historical-genetic, historical-typological, historical-systemic) methods was used to solve the set tasks. The scientific novelty is that for the first time in the historiography of the Ukrainian women’s movement the topic of involvement of rural women in the process of Sovietization of Volyn in the first half of the 1920s was clarified, as well as the policy of Bolshevik’s power of using women as an important instrument of imposing the soviet power in the region was disclosed basing on previously unknown archival documents. The controllability of the process of activation of women by party structures is shown.
Conclusions. It can be stated that the emancipation policy was considered by the Soviet authorities as an integral part of the overall process of Sovietization. It was tightly linked with solving the tasks that contributed to its establishment in the village: conducting propaganda work, organizing sowing and harvesting campaigns, creating the committees of poor peasants, care for the socially vulnerable, etc. The activities of women’s departments did not contribute to the consolidation of rural society. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the Bolshevik Party’s policy, rural activists organized their work on the basis of class antagonism.
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