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Klavdiia Nikolaeva

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Klavdiia Ivanovna Nikolaeva (Russian: Клавдия Ивановна Николаева June 13, 1893 – December 28, 1944), was a Russian revolutionary, syndicalist, feminist, Old Bolshevik and Soviet politician.

Klavdiya Nikolayeva
Клавдия Ивановна Николаева
Klavdiya Nikolayeva in 1938
Personal details
Born13 June 1893
St Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died17 December 1944 (age 51)
Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Nationality
Occupationtrade unionist, writer, editor, politician

Early Life

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Klavdiia Nikolaeva was from a humble, working-class family. The daughter of a Saint Petersburg labourer and a laundress, Nikolaeva worked as a nanny from the age of 8 years old, after her father deserted.[1] After finishing elementary education and teaching herself to read and write, she worked in a printing press, where her activism began in the printer's union.[1] Her background allowed her to understand the plight of the working women firsthand. She was arrested for the first time in 1908, at the age of 15, being arrested three more times by tsarist authorities and exiled twice throughout her life.[2] Nikolaeva met Alexandra Kollontai when she was still young, through her Society for Mutual Aid to Women in 1908, where Kollontai took her under her wing and became a mentor.

Pre-Revolution Bolshevik Activism

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She became a member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1909, and became a Bolshevik, while also engaging in work within the printing union. While exiled in the village of Kazatchinskoe, in the Yeniseysky District, she was appointed head of the local RSDLP committee.[3][4] Nikolaeva became an editor in the influential women's newspaper Rabotnitsa and worked on the paper from 1914 to 1917.

Revolutionary and Politician

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Text reads: 'In this building lived a remarkable CPSU politician, a member of Supreme Soviet: Klavdiya Ivanovna Nikolayeva'

She was an active participant in the October Revolution. From 1918 she headed the women's section of the Petrograd branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), as well as its department of agitation and propaganda.[5] In the Spring of 1918 Nikolaeva, alongside with Alexandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand, Yakov Sverdlov, planned an all Russian Congress of Women with the goal of convincing women to join the Soviet cause.[6] Nikolaeva presided the congress which saw Kollontai's "The Family and the Communist State" speech, as well as a short speech from Vladimir Lenin.[6] This congress saw more than 1,147 working and peasant women in attendance in the Kremlin Hall of Unions.[7] She was then named the head of the Women's Bureau from 1924-25.[1]

In 1924 she became head of the Zhenotdel (the women's department of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), after Alexandra Kollontai and Sofia Smidovich.[8][9] Nikolaeva was the first working class woman to head the Zhenotdel until 1927.[6]

She, notably, was one of only 3 women to be full members of the Party's Central Committee.[1] The other members were Nadezhda Krupskaya and Aleksandra Artyukhina.[1]

She was close to the United Opposition and Grigory Zinoviev, whom she openly supported at the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).[8][9] With Zinoviev's failure against Stalin, she lost her job in the Zhenotdel, but maintained activity within the party. In 1928 she headed the department of agitation and propaganda of the North Caucasus Committee. From 1930 to 1933, she was a member of the Organisational Bureau of the CPSU Central Committee, heading the department of agitation and mass campaigns.[10] Following this, she became deputy secretary of the regional committees of the West Siberian Krai Party (1933) and Ivanovo Oblast.[8]

In 1930, Nikolaeva defended the need for a separate organization of women to focus on women's work in order to further the cause, as it was being attacked and criticized after the Zhenotdel had been eliminated.[11] They were defended as a necessarily transitional phase.

In 1940, Nikolaeva wrote an pamphlet explaining the revised view of a woman's role, where a woman should give 100% attention to both the industrial life and her maternal life.[1] It is often seen as a deviation from the original goal, where women became viewed an industrial asset for child-rearing that required the state to take care of them.

From 1936 she was secretary of the Central Trade Union Council.[10] From 1934, she was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union; Member of the Supreme Soviet from 1937 to 1944; and member of the Supreme Soviet's Praesidiumfrom 1938 to 1944.

The Second World War

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During the Second World War, she organized the preparation of nurses and health personnel, the evacuation of children, sponsorship of Red Army units by professional unions, and paramedical institutions. While returning to Murmansk from a political visit to the United Kingdom her convoy was bombed by the Germans and Nikolayeva helped rescue the wounded.

She died on December 28, 1944. During her life she was awarded the Order of Lenin along with other medals.[12] The urn containing her ashes is kept in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Red Square in Moscow.

Works

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In addition to her articles in The Worker, Klavdiya Nikolayeva wrote two books on the role of women in the construction and defence of the Soviet Union:

  • The Communist Party and the action among women (1925)
  • The Great Patriotic War and the Soviet Woman (1941

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f Vavra, Nancy G. “Rabotnitsa”, Constructing the Bolshevik Ideal: Women and the New Soviet State, University of Colorado at Boulder, Ann Arbor, 2002. ProQuest, http://access.library.miami.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/304812103?accountid=14585.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ STITES, RICHARD. “Zhenotdel: Bolshevism and Russian Women, 1917-1930.” Russian History, vol. 3, no. 2, 1976, pp. 174–193. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24649711. Accessed 19 Nov. 2020.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Vavra, Nancy G. “Rabotnitsa”, Constructing the Bolshevik Ideal: Women and the New Soviet State, University of Colorado at Boulder, Ann Arbor, 2002. ProQuest, http://access.library.miami.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/304812103?accountid=14585.
  6. ^ a b c STITES, RICHARD. “Zhenotdel: Bolshevism and Russian Women, 1917-1930.” Russian History, vol. 3, no. 2, 1976, pp. 174–193. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24649711. Accessed 19 Nov. 2020.
  7. ^ Noonan, Norma C. (2001). Encyclopedia of Russian women's movements. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 66, 67–. ISBN 978-0-313-30438-5. Retrieved 20 July 2011.
  8. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference :23 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference :3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference :42 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Goldman, Wendy Z. “Industrial Politics, Peasant Rebellion and the Death of the Proletarian Women's Movement in the USSR.” Slavic Review, vol. 55, no. 1, 1996, pp. 46–77. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2500978. Accessed 19 Nov. 2020.
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference :43 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
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