Comrades in Arms

At the end of the 19th century and in the early 1900s thousands of young women joined the Russian revolutionary movement to fight against the brutal tsarist autocracy and the harsh capitalist system which was developing. They saw achieving the liberation of women and better life for all as indissolubly bound up with socialist revolution and the building of a new society.

Along with their male comrades in Lenin’s Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (the Bolshevik Party), these women militants came to know both triumph and defeat as the first socialist revolution in history succeeded against all odds but later succumbed to Stalinist bureaucratic counterrevolution.

Kathy Fairfax gives an inspiring overview of the contribution of these reolutionary women and enables us to see more clearly their full stature and continuing relevance of their struggle.