User:Sammakai04/Clara Zetkin

Joining the Communist Party

Zetkin became further enveloped in the Communist movement through her interactions and fellowship with Vladimir Lenin. The relationship between Zetkin and Lenin first began in 1920 when she conducted and recorded interviews with him. In her journal entries outlining their conversations, she discussed her admiration for his leadership as he used his position of power to give a voice to the oppressed people. Included in speaking for the voices of the oppressed, Lenin discussed with Zetkin the need to establish an international women’s movement.

From the outline of the conversations, it’s apparent that Lenin respected Zetkin as a colleague who could help him implement his political strategy, not as an inferior. In addition to the conversation’s rhetoric, Lenin’s respect for Zetkin is evident as he employed her to establish the women’s movement based on the principles of Marxist theory. Zetkin was allocated a position to provide support to the women’s rights committee drafting a resolution, theses, and directives to move along the progression of the movement. Because of its previous success in bringing women’s emancipation in both theory and practice, Zetkin subscribed to the socialist movement in the early 1920s.   

Fight for Women's Rights

From Zetkin’s perspective, the women’s movement was a key component to the whole of women’s rights. Not only was the movement essential to the women’s rights movement, but it was also essential to building the Communist state. Lenin made it a point to mention that everyone who has been exploited or oppressed under the capitalist system should be included in the women’s rights movement, further pushing the movement in Communist ideals.

Lenin and Zetkin’s work as colleagues in the work of pushing the Communist and women’s rights agendas progressed the liberation of women in the Soviet Union.[2] By associating the movement with the larger proletarian revolution, they advanced the cause of women’s liberation. Their combined efforts pushed for systematic changes such as labor protections, childcare facilities, women’s suffrage, and dismantling the bourgeois societal norms. All of this would eventually become for naught as Stalin assumed political power in the Soviet Union, as women's reproductive health and personal liberties began to be stripped away.

Publications  

Cover page of Die Gleichheit edited by Clara Zetkin from 1892 to 1917.

Zetkin’s literary involvement began in 1892 when she started editing and writing for the SDP women’s newspaper, Die Gleichheit, which translates to Equality. Originally, the newspaper was titled Die Arbeiterin (The Woman Worker), however, its publications received little success. She edited this newspaper until 1917. Her publications aimed at mobilizing the female working class, which included workers and mothers, to adopt socialism and feminism. Which might seem contrary to Zetkin’s adamant protest of being called a feminist. The topics covered ranged from female worker strikes in Germany, women’s suffrage, and child labor. Under Zetkin’s leadership, the newspaper grew forty-fold by 1910.  

In 1921, Clara Zetkin began to write for the communist periodical, Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale. Her purpose in writing for the periodical was to convince women of the effectiveness of socialist reform thinking over capitalist thought. The published periodicals expanded globally and became a forum for communist women to hear about the lives of other communists. The periodical focused on the lives of women in Russia, which had experienced a successful communist revolution. As Zetkin subscribed to the communist model of reform, her writings continued to outline and advocate for women to join her in her adherence. Of the periodicals Zetkin produced and edited for, Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale portrayed the most accuracy in her actual worldviews. The periodical rejected “bourgeois feminism,” which was not an outrageous claim for Zetkin and advocated for women to become workers in the proletarian state.  

Zetkin’s published works began to be stalled during the rise of the Stalinist government in the early 1920s. Stalin’s politics stunted and regressed much of the progress of the women’s movement in the Soviet Union, returning the country to be based in conservative ideals. The May-June 1925 issue of Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale was the last issue to ever be published. This was an appendage to the decision to move the International Women’s Secretariat from Berlin back to Moscow. By April 1926, the International Women’s Secretariat lost its independence and became absorbed into the Women’s Section of the Comintern Executive. The rise of Stalin’s bureaucracy in the Soviet Union dissolved the relationship the women’s movement established with the government under the leadership of Lenin.

Legacy

In the decade preceding her exile and death, Zetkin’s legacy has been largely forgotten. There appeared to be a negative connotation associated with her name as political figures, even the former Soviet Union Prime Minister Joseph Stalin labeled her as an ‘old witch.’ Attempts have been made to renounce International Women’s Day in Germany, one of the highlights of Zetkin’s political career. Her demonstration on March 8^th has been heralded as the ‘an event of the devil’ by some. In 1994, Christian Democrat Chancellor Helmult Kohl, put a stop to naming a street by the Reichstag in Berlin after Zetkin. His hard stop to acknowledging her legacy is because he believed her works played a part in destroying the first German democracy.

Her legacy was further tarnished because her works were unpalatable to the feminist movements of the 60s and 70s. In 1960s and 70s Europe, Western Europe began its transition into second-wave feminist ideologies. As second-wave feminist ideologies took hold, a direct consequence was the exclusion of men from participation in women’s movements. This is contrary to Zetkin’s philosophy of the need for men and women within the working class to work together to achieve women’s liberation.

Today, many authors attempt to attribute Zetkin’s work under the categories of “socialist feminism” or “Marxist feminism.” However, during her lifespan, the term “socialist feminism” did not exist. In analyzing her published works, the term “Frauenrechtlerei” has been mistakenly translated as “feminist” or “feminism.” In its truest translations, however, the term was used in demeaning rhetoric to separate Zetkin’s political efforts from the bourgeois feminists.

Her son, Maxim Zetkin, continued her legacy of Communist leadership through his medical practice in the Soviet healthcare system. In the 1920s, Maxim joined Clara in attending several Comintern congresses and worked for a number of Comintern missions. Maxim eventually joined the Soviet Communist Party after being commissioned to practice surgery in Moscow.