V. I. Lenin repeatedly stressed that the proletariat will not defeat its class enemies if it does not involve the broadest strata of the population in the struggle; "and it is impossible to draw the masses into politics without involving women in politics. For the female half of the human race is doubly oppressed under capitalism. " 1 In 1917, female workers made up about 40% of the Russian proletariat .2 Before the First World War, they prevailed in such traditionally "female" industries as textiles, clothing, and tobacco. By 1917, their share had increased markedly where previously only male labor was used: metallurgy, heavy engineering, etc., because they, along with teenagers, replaced the men who had left for the army. In Petrograd, the number of women who worked doubled during the three war years .3War and hunger, merciless exploitation and the most difficult conditions of labor at the minimum wage, the disenfranchised position in society and the family pushed the workers to fight the existing system. As early as the beginning of 1917, the tsarist Okhrana reported: "The mothers of families, exhausted by the endless standing in the tail of the shops, who have suffered at the sight of their half-starved and sick children, are probably now much closer to the revolution than the Milyukovs, Rodichevs and Co., and, of course, they are much more dangerous, since they represent the same kind of a warehouse of combustible material, for which a spark is enough to start a fire " 4 . On February 23 (hereafter dates are given in the old style), on International Women's Day, it was the workers who became skirmishers of the revolutionary battles. Thanks to the great organizational and political work of the Bolsheviks among the toilers, they remained an active force in the February Revolution throughout all the days. Pravda noted in its editorial: "A week ago, on February 23, in Petrograd, the old government prevented women workers from celebrating their day. Because of this, ... Читать далее