The Zhenotdel (Russian: Женотдел), the women's department (zhenskii otdel) of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), was the department of the Russian Communist party devoted to women's affairs in the 1920s.
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History
The Zhenotdel was established by two Russian feminist revolutionaries, Alexandra Kollontai and Inessa Armand, in 1919. It was devoted to improving the conditions of women's lives throughout the Soviet Union, fighting illiteracy, and educating women about the new marriage, education, and working laws put in place by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In Soviet Central Asia, the Zhenotdel also spearheaded efforts to improve the lives of Muslim women through literacy and educational campaigns, and controversially, through compulsory "de-veiling" campaigns.
The Zhenotdel persuaded the Bolsheviks to legalise abortion (as a 'temporary measure'). The Bolsheviks legalised aborting in November 1920. This was the first time in world history that women had won the right to free abortions in state hospitals.
Although the leaders of the Zhenotdel were committed communists, and worked as part of the Soviet state apparatus, historian Elizabeth Wood has argued that the organization took an active interest in women's problems, and initially served as a conduit for women's issues from the people to the state. Soviet leaders observed the increasing effectiveness of the Zhenotdel in organizing women at the local level, and they felt that too much of a focus on women's issues would challenge the ideological primacy of class solidarity fundamental to Marxist–Leninist politics. As a result, the Zhenotdel was shut down in 1930, in accordance with the then-dominant theory that all women's issues in the Soviet Union had been "solved" by the eradication of private property and the nationalization of the means of production.
Leaders
Zhenotdel had five leaders during its 11 years of existence: