Dear comrades, dear friends,

In memory of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, I commemorate all the communists who brought his teachings to life and who fought and continue to fight for women's liberation. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, Lenin determined how important the contribution of proletarian women would be to the socialist revolution and put a lot of labor into the establishment of women's liberation work at that time. His arduous struggle is reflected in countless reports, letters and stories from Bolshevik and communist women who were the vanguard of this work. Lenin was primarily concerned with their development and helped them to take a step forward in the women's liberation struggle and certainly did not see them standing behind him, but to the left of him.

I. Zetkin's memories of Lenin and the topicality of his words

The communist Clara Zetkin, in her memoirs of Lenin, quotes him as saying: “we absolutely must create a strong international women's movement on a clear theoretical basis”. Over a hundred years after Lenin, clarity in the theoretical basis is still one of the most important aspects for the success of the international women's movement. Ideological attacks by bourgeois apologists, especially from the camp of postmodernism, with the aim of liberalizing, fragmenting and integrating women's movements worldwide are among the greatest challenges for us communists today. The formation of a militant international women's movement remains one of our most important tasks. Meetings like today are the milestones for realizing these goals. Comrade Lenin reflects the historical importance of women in the struggle for revolution and socialism in the following lines: "In Petrograd, here in Moscow, in cities and industrial centers out in the countryside, the proletarian women have held their own magnificently in the revolution. Without them we would not have won. Or hardly won at all. That's my opinion. How brave they were, how brave they still are! Imagine all the suffering and hardship they have endured. And they endure because they want to assert the Soviets, because they want freedom, communism. Yes, our proletarian women are magnificent class fighters. They deserve to be admired and loved.“ And he goes on to say: ”In the party we have reliable, intelligent and tirelessly active comrades. We have been able to fill many important posts in the Soviets and executive committees, in the People's Commissariats and public services of all kinds with them. Some of them work day and night in the Party or among the masses of proletarians, peasants and in the Red Army. This is of great value to us. It is also important for women all over the world. It proves the abilities of women, the great value their work has for society. The first dictatorship of the proletariat is a true pioneer for the full social equality of women. It eradicated more prejudices than volumes of women's rights literature. But with all this, we do not yet have an international communist women's movement, and we absolutely must have one. We must set about creating it immediately. Without it, the work of our International and its parties is not complete work and will never be complete work. But we must do all the work for the revolution."

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin guided Zetkin in drawing up guidelines for communist work among the women's masses, stating: "The guidelines must sharply express that true women's liberation is possible only through communism. The indissoluble connection between the social and human position of women and the private ownership of the means of production must be strongly emphasized. This draws a firm, indelible dividing line against women's rights. However, this also provides the basis for understanding the women's question as part of the social question, the workers' question, and as such firmly linking it to the proletarian class struggle and the revolution. The communist women's movement itself must be a mass movement, a part of the general mass movement. Not only of the proletarians, but of the exploited and oppressed of all kinds, of all victims of capitalism or of a relationship of domination. Therein also lies its significance for the class struggles of the proletariat and for its simple creation: communist society. We can be justifiably proud of the fact that we have an elite of revolutionary women in the party, in the Communist International. But that is not decisive. We must win over millions of working women in the cities and villages. For our struggles and especially for the communist transformation of society. Without women there is no real mass movement."

Today, women are proving the truth of this last sentence every day in various struggles around the world. The uprisings in Iran, which have developed from the anger and grief of women and their longing for freedom into a general popular uprising against the reactionary mullah regime. The women in Rojava prove how social reorganization and democratization can only work if women are represented in all areas of life. For this, it is above all the work among the masses that creates the conviction for this participation and initiates the process of change.

Lenin goes even further and insists: "The party must have organs, working groups, commissions, committees, departments, or whatever else one may call them, whose special task it is to awaken the broadest masses of women, to link them with the party and to keep them permanently under its influence. Of course, this means that we must work systematically among these masses of women. We must train the awakened ones and win them for the proletarian mass struggles under the leadership of the Communist Party." This instruction is still a guide for us communist women today.

II The diversity of Lenin's contributions and his influence on the program of the women's revolution

Lenin did not deal with the question of women's liberation on one level alone. His multifaceted discussions and contributions enriched the struggle of communist and proletarian women. He dealt with and produced on the issues of mass women's work, the international women's movement and the necessity of press work for women. His theoretical discussions on the issues of women's labor power and its importance within production and capitalism provided the basis for further discussions. His insistence on including “equality between women and men” in the program and his success in doing so became a benchmark for communist parties. He insisted on equality, which he said should not only apply before the law, but above all in real life. To this end, he saw the representation of female workers in the management of socialized companies and the government as essential. The cook should be able to govern the state.

The approaches that Lenin gave women communists and the groundbreaking successes of the October Revolution, which were far ahead of their time, became the parameters in the struggle for communism. Today, in Lenin's way, it is important to be far ahead of our time and to be pioneering in the struggle for women's liberation. The theory of the women's revolution, which has formed a communist program for the liberation of women, is a further development of Marxist-Leninist teachings for a classless world in which the social gender division is abolished and private property as the cause of class exploitation and patriarchal oppression is abolished. The women's revolution as an indispensable part of every social revolution, in which the proletarian woman takes a leading role as the subject of the struggle with the proletarian man as her ally in the struggle against patriarchy, and as class brothers and sisters in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, requires a process that is already developing the necessary measures, interventions and mechanisms today. This program points to the fact that women must not only be seen as a mass labor, as a reserve in the social struggle, but as an independent social force in which there are also class differences in which proletarian women have a vested interest in the abolition of class relations. Not only as proletarian women, but also as women who are oppressed due to patriarchal class relations. Yes, proletarian men also have an interest in women's liberation and must position themselves accordingly in society and fight for the success of women's liberation. Independent organizations of communist women within communist parties, parity representation even at the top of clandestine communist parties, measures for the equal representation of women, measures to combat sexism and violence are essential experiences in social organization and communist work that we must build on today.

III Lenin's legacy and the establishment of the international communist women's movement

Lenin's contribution to the development of the women's movement and individual communist pioneers was not abstract. It was his concrete proposals and intellectual work that contributed to the strengthening of the women's liberation struggle. In 1914, the communists Inès Armand and Nadezhda Krupskaya drafted the first programs and plans for a Bolshevik women's magazine, the “Rabotnitsa”, which was created as a legal mass publication for Russian proletarian women. From the end of 1913, Lenin made great efforts to develop this idea and contributed to the organizational and theoretical work. We see ourselves in the tradition of many women who brought the theoretical elaboration of the question of women's liberation to the present day.

Lenin's words accompanied the communist women of his time in all their work. The Bolshevik Alexandra Artyukhina recounts how Lenin appeared at the First All-Russian Congress of Women Workers on November 19 and addressed the women with the following words: “There can be no socialist revolution without a large proportion of working women taking a significant part in it.” “We have kept his words in our hearts forever,” said Comrade Artyukhina. So today we also keep his words in our hearts and recognize them as pillars of our path.

As the theoretical women's publication Sosyalist Kadin, we would like to thank Lenin for his work in the women's liberation struggle, which, like the contribution of many communist women, helped us to reach today's position and left us their legacy. We would also like to thank all the organizers of the conference in memory of Lenin and for allowing us to speak here. Like the Bolshevik Artyukhina, let us carry Lenin's words in our hearts forever and fight with them. All the way to the socialist revolution, all the way to the women's revolution internationally. Jîn Jîyan Azadî!

Sources:

- V.İ. Lenin - Kadınların Kurtuluşu, derleyen: Nadezhda Krupskaya, Publisher: Akademi Kadın, 2010

- Pawel Poljaschuk - Inessa, Dietz Verlag, 1987

- Clara Zetkin, Memories of Lenin, 1925, marxist.org