In 1926, two years after Lenin’s death, Clara Zetkin, our highly honored fighter and pioneer of the international communist women’s movement, lamented in her memoirs: “Is Lenin really dead? ... No and again no. ... Lenin’s spirit, heart and will live on immortally in the rich legacy he left us. In his writings and speeches...” [own translation].

The victory of the October Revolution with the elimination of the oppressive system marked the beginning of the path to women’s liberation under socialism for the first time. Lenin identified the abolition of private ownership of the means of production as the first and most important step towards women's liberation.

As early as 1918, at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women, he formulated one of the fundamental requirements for this. Lenin saw the possibility to create a new social self-image of the equal role of women in political and social life in building a socialist society.

Why? Because it gave the production and reproduction of immediate life a new purpose: The production of goods was to serve the satisfaction of the all-round needs of the people and no longer the maximization of profit for a few. The care of offspring, nursing and education were no longer to be burdened on private families, i.e. on women in unpaid work. They were to be the responsibility of society. Above all, the liberation from “domestic slavery”, as Lenin called it, should enable the mass of women to lead a truly self-determined and equal life and to actively participate in the new social tasks.

The twofold conception of production must therefore be applied in order to recognize the double exploitation and oppression of the mass of women as inherent in the system. Herein lies the great potential of women’s struggle for their liberation. The special oppression of women due to their gender thus forms the essential basis for women from all classes and strata to unite against their oppression and exploitation. As revolutionary women, we see the goal in the struggle for genuine socialism.

Lenin and Clara Zetkin also emphasized the mass basis of the women’s movement. They extended the circle of women to all strata because “all were the prey of capitalism”. They outlined then what we are still fighting for in the women’s movement today. At the Tenth Women’s Political Council in Ludwigsburg, we proclaimed our goal of winning over the masses of women. “From religion to revolution” is still our guiding principle for mobilizing, organizing and uniting the masses of women worldwide.

The closing resolution of the Third World Women’s Conference in Tunis in 2022 demonstrates a new quality of this realization.

With the great potential from the most diverse political-ideological directions and the experience of worldwide struggles of women from all over the world, the imperialist system was named as the cause of the special exploitation and oppression of the mass of women for the first time at the World Women’s Conference. Without overcoming imperialism, there is no liberation of women. This is the first time that the world women’s movement of grassroots women agreed on this so clearly and unanimously, which is a great success and progress. However, this realization does not yet lead to the common recognition that only a revolutionary solution is the foundation for the liberation of women in a liberated society. The need for a broad mass base of women’s movements in the individual countries has also not yet been cemented as a principle.

In view of the growing strength of the international women's movement, the struggle for women's liberation must be waged on a non-party-affiliated basis. The struggle against the divisive attitudes of the anti-communist, petty-bourgeois feminist, post-modernist, reformist and opportunist women's movements must come together. They must come together in common goals and struggles to overcome oppressive systems. The experiences of all women’s struggles must be used as potentials for the common struggle. The indispensable orientation to system-changing struggles of women is underestimated worldwide. That is why they must be a mandate for the militant perspective of organizations such as the ICOR, the United Front and also the World Women’s Conferences of grassroots women.

The claim “From Religion to Revolution” obliges us, as revolutionary women, to do everything we can to overcome divisions and focus our struggle on what we have in common.

In its closing resolution at the Third World Women’s Conference in Tunis, a turbulent future with increasingly frequent revolutionary situations was predicted, in which the militant women’s movement will play its society-changing role if it aligns and prepares itself for this today.

This can be seen as a mission to win over the masses of women “from religion to revolution” for the society-changing goals of the international women's movement.

At the aforementioned Tenth Women’s Political Council in Ludwigsburg, Monika Gärtner-Engel put forward theses as a plea for being or becoming a revolutionary.

Thesis 5 reads: “Revolutionaries measure their fellow fighters by their actual position on the women's issue – in theory and practice, in word and deed.”

In this sense, Lenin remains to this day our indispensable comrade-in-arms at the revolutionary women’s front.