Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

Initially termed a women’s “commission,” the organization was upgraded to a full department of the RKP(b) Central Committee in September 1919, partly in reaction to the perception among the party leadership that if the Bolsheviks failed to sponsor an alternative, supposedly “backward” women might be drawn toward moderate socialist, “bourgeois-feminist,” or even religious alternatives. Another motive was the desire to mobilize women’s support for (and participation) in the Red Army at a critical juncture of the civil wars, when female soldiers were being mobilized in some strength. Over the following years, despite the fact that its most active members tended to be redirected to other work (and that its chief inspirer, Kollontai, was sent into diplomatic exile for her part in the Workers’ Opposition), the Zhenotdel achieved some success in creating interdepartmental commissions to coordinate the work of the People’s Commissariats for Health, Education, Social Welfare and Internal Affairs (where their operations touched upon issues such as maternity, abortion, prostitution, female education, and so forth). The department also organized innumerable conferences, congresses, and educational courses across Soviet Russia; oversaw “women’s pages” in major party- and state-run newspapers; and issued its own very popular journals, Rabotnitsa (“Female Worker”) and Krestianka (“Female Peasant”). However, with the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1921, women workers faced disproportionate unemployment, and the Zhenotdel-sponsored social services (child care, communal kitchens, etc.) were cut by a newly budget-conscious state. When the Zhenotdel complained, it was criticized as a “feminist deviation” and the socially conservative Sofia Smidovich was appointed to replace the disgraced Kollontai as its head in 1922. Thereafter, its influence declined, and in January 1930, the party Central Committee announced that the Zhenotdel was being closed down, as part of a general reorganization of the party. However, it was also officially implied (by J. V. Stalin’s henchman, L. M. Kaganovich) that in the Soviet Union, the Zhenotdel was now surplus to requirements, as the “women’s question” had been solved.

During the civil-war period, the Zhenotdel was headed by Inessa Armand (September 1919–24 September 1920), A. M. Kollontai (9 September 1920–1922), and S. N. Smidovicha (1922–January 1930).

ZHILUNOVICH, DMITRII FEDOROVICH (23 October 1887–11 April 1937). The Belorussian poet, dramatist, editor, and politician D. F. Zhilunovich (who had the pen name “Tishka Gartnyi”) was born into a peasant family at Kopyl′, near Minsk, and attended two years of school there. He worked in a tanning factory, was active in the 1905 Revolution, and joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1911. He moved to St. Petersburg in May 1913, to work at the Vulkan factory, and subsequently a number of his poems were published in Pravda. In the capital during the First World War, he undertook agitational and propaganda work among refugee Belorussians.

Following the October Revolution, Zhilunovich became secretary of the Belorussian National Commissariat (Belnatskom) within the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and edited its newspaper, Dziannitsa (“The Dawn”). He also served as chairman of the ephemeral Provisional Worker-Peasant Government of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belorussia (1 January–4 February 1919). He subsequently served as editor of numerous newspapers and journals published in the Belorussian language in the RSFSR and the Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, became director of the state publishing house of the Belorussian SSR, and was head of its national archives. He served also as the Belorussian SSR’s deputy people’s commissar for education and was a member of its Central Executive Committee (1920–1931).