Aims and results of policies: Impact of Lenin's policies on women and minorities Notes

Lenin’s Policies: Impact on Women and Minorities

Women

1. Aims
   1. Promote gender equality as part of Marxist ideology.
   2. Mobilize women into workforce to support industrial/social transformation.
   3. Break patriarchal structures of Tsarist regime and Orthodox Church.
2. Policies
   1. 1918 Family Code: legalized divorce, equal rights for illegitimate children, secularized marriage.
   2. 1920: abortion legalized (first country to do so).
   3. Zhenotdel (1919): Women’s Department led by Alexandra Kollontai, focused on literacy, employment, childcare, communal kitchens, laundries.
   4. Encouraged women into work and education, promoted as “equal revolutionaries.”
3. Results
   1. Legal autonomy expanded but few economic safety nets.
   2. Zhenotdel successes in literacy/health but underfunded and resisted by men. Closed in 1930.
   3. Women often in low-paid work; patriarchal attitudes persisted.
   4. Rhetoric of equality outpaced reality, many faced “triple burden” (work, home, politics).

Nationalities and Minorities

1. Aims
   1. Win support of ethnic minorities, weaken opposition.
   2. Undermine Great Russian chauvinism of Tsarist era.
   3. Secure borderlands loyalty during Civil War.
2. Policies
   1. Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia (1917): equality and right to secede.
   2. Promotion of local languages in schools/administration.
   3. Tolerance of Muslim courts and practices at first.
   4. Jews granted civil rights; anti-Semitic laws abolished.
   5. Results
   6. Independence movements (Ukraine, Georgia, Central Asia) suppressed by Red Army.
3. In practice, “right to secede” revoked, Moscow reasserted dominance.
4. Cultural autonomy limited; centralized USSR established in 1922.