Zhenotdel

Sredazburo had a special section specifically for women, known as the Zhenotdel.

It is quite likely that the Zhenotdel records were purged because of this.

Despite all these difficulties the Zhenotdel made significant gains in the area of organization-building during the period from 1919 to 1923.

From the outset the top leadership of the Zhenotdel faced a wide range of organizational problems.

The Zhenotdel was eventually closed in 1930.

The first government organization formed with the goal of women's equality was the Zhenotdel, in Soviet Russia.

Soviet rule encouraged the founding of the anti-veiling Women's Division, or Zhenotdel.

Elimination of the All-Union Communist Party's Zhenotdel also took place in 1930.

She was the most prominent woman in the Soviet administration and was best known for founding the Zhenotdel or "Women's Department" in 1919 .

It became the central priority for the Soviet Union and the Zhenotdel (The Party's Women's Department) by March 1927 in Uzbekistan.

Early Bolshevik Work Among Women of the Soviet East (details the work of Zhenotdel activists)

In September 1919 the Central Committee passed a decree upgrading the commissions to the status of sections (otdely) within the party committees, thus creating the Zhenotdel, or women's section.

The Zhenotdel supplemented this assault with additional women's liberation institutions, which included the construction of women's clubs, the re-stocking of women's-only stores, and the fight against illiteracy among women.

Unfortunately, the historical record of the Zhenotdel for the period after 1924 is less clear than the earlier record because the relevant files of the women's section are missing from the party archives.

On her return to Petrograd, she became director of Zhenotdel, an organisation that fought for female equality in the Communist Party and the Soviet trade unions, lasting till 1930, apparently.

In February 1922 Kollontai (now tainted as well by her involvement in the Workers' Opposition) was replaced as head of the Zhenotdel by Sofia Smidovich.

At the same congress, Stalin (normally reticent on women's issues) now praised women's delegate meetings organized by the Zhenotdel as "an important, essential transmission mechanism" between the party and the female masses.

The Zhenotdel, mostly composed of women haling from Russian and other Slavic areas, believed that such a campaign would be welcomed and adopted by the Muslim women in Central Asia.

Under the leadership of Alexandra Kollontai, the Zhenotdel spread the news of the revolution, enforced its laws, set up political education and literacy classes for working-class and peasant women and fought prostitution.

To eradicate the intended target (that is, the paranji), the Zhenotdel workers designated their time to organizing public demonstrations on a grand scale, where fiery speeches and inspirational tales would speak for women's liberation.

Women now had a voice in debates and the Zhenotdel, the women's section of the Central Committee from 1919-1930, made strides during its operation to increase political, social and economic agency of Soviet women.

In May 1924 the Thirteenth Party Congress again attacked the Zhenotdel, accusing it this time of one-sidedness (odnostoronnost) for focusing too much on agitation and propaganda rather than working directly on issues of women's daily lives.

While the founders of the Zhenotdel had hoped that they could carry women's voices and needs to the party, the party insisted that the principal role of the women's sections was to convey the party's will to the female masses.

It was re-organized in May 1917 as a Bolshevik journal administered by the Zhenotdel, the Women's Section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, becoming their central publication.

The Women's Section of the Executive Committee was terminated by ECCI in August 1930, as was the Russian Party's Zhenotdel, ending the Comintern's employment of a specific structure for propaganda to women.