The Women’s Revolution: Russia 1905–1917

The dominant view of the Russian Revolution of 1917 is of a movement led by prominent men like Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Despite the demonstrations of female workers for ‘bread and herrings’, which sparked the February Revolution, in most historical accounts of this momentous period, women are too often relegated to the footnotes. Judy Cox argues that women were essential to the success of the revolution and to the development of the Bolshevik Party. With biographical sketches of famous female revolutionaries like Alexandra Kollontai and less well-known figures like Elena Stasova and Larissa Reisner, The Women’s Revolution tells the inspiring story of how Russian women threw off centuries of oppression to strike, organize, liberate themselves and ultimately try to build a new world based on equality and freedom for all.
Judy Cox is a longstanding socialist and campaigner. She lives and works in Tower Hamlets, East London, where she is a primary school teacher. She is currently researching the activities of working-class women in nineteenth-century radical movements. She has written on Rosa Luxembourg, Robin Hood, William Blake, and Marx’s theory of alienation.