Comrades in Arms

Bolshevik Women in the Russian Revolution

At the end of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th, thousands of young women joined the Russian revolutionary movement to fight against tsarist autocracy and capitalism. They saw achieving the liberation of women and a better life for all as indissolubly bound up with the socialist revolution and the building of a new society.

Along with their male comrades in Lenin's Bolshevik Party, these women militants came to know both triumph and bitter despair as the first socialist revolution in history succeeded against all odds but later succumbed to Stalinist bureaucratic counterrevolution. Kathy Fairfax gives an inspiring overview of the course of these Bolshevik women and enables us to see more clearly their full stature and the continuing relevance of their heroic struggle.