The regime mobilised to overcome women's resistance. In 1929, it instructed the Zhenotdel to work with this 'backward layer', organising peasant women to support collectivisation. Posters and films trumpeted the advantages that collectivisation brought to women and recast the image of the peasant woman to portray her as a collective farm woman (kolkhoznitsa), the antithesis of the backward peasant baba who opposed collectivisation. Young and slim, the kolkhoznitsa had become a 'new woman', the rural counterpart of her liberated urban sisters.[201] Enthusiastic about constructing socialism, earning her own income and prizing her independence, she was fully committed to the goals of the party-state. Those peasant women who embraced their government's values received considerable publicity, which often emphasised their freedom from traditional constraints on women and subordination to men. The regime rewarded its female supporters more concretely, too. In addition to meeting important functionaries and having their pictures displayed, such women became eligible for goods in short supply. Whether in traditionally male occupations such as tractor driver, or, far more commonly, in traditionally female ones such as milkmaid, such women became poster-children of the new era in the countryside, symbols of the success of the Stalinist revolution and its commitment to promoting women.
Most rural women, however, enjoyed none of these benefits. Comprising roughly 58 per cent of collective farm workers by the late 1930s, women supplied two-thirds of the backbreaking labour. A rigid sexual division of labour prevailed, making it hard for women to work in trades labelled 'male'. Access to health and maternity care improved only slowly. By 1939, there were 7,000 hospitals, 7,503 maternity homes, 14,300 clinics and 26,000 medical assistants in the entire USSR, serving a rural population of over 114,400,000.[202] A genuine advance over the previous decade, these facilities nevertheless remained a drop in the bucket. The network of rural day-care centres intended to free women from childcare fell far short of the goals set by the Five-Year Plan. As always, it was women who shouldered the burden of housework, and without basic amenities such as running water, indoor plumbing and electricity. Women also assumed primary responsibility for tending the private plot that fed most families. Consequently, women's work-days lasted far longer than men's. Women earned far less, however, because most oftheir work was considered 'unskilled' and they devoted a smaller fraction of it to collective production. In any case, despite celebration of the newly independent collective farm woman with her own individual wage, collective farm payments, such as they were, customarily went to the household and not the individual.
A great retreat?
During the First Five-Year Plan, the leadership ceased even to pay lip-service to women's emancipation as a goal in itself; emancipation became linked exclusively with women's participation in production and contribution to building socialism. In December 1928, the government eliminated all women's organisers within trade unions, thereby halting efforts to train, promote and defend women workers on the shop floor. On 5 January 1930, the Zhenotdel itself was abolished, ending advocacy within party circles on behalf of women. Some women in other official organs tried but failed to fill the gap. The absence of persistent advocacy on women's behalf left the leadership free to deploy the female labour force as it chose and at the lowest possible cost. Slowly at first, and then at breakneck speed, the industrialisation drive encouraged women to take up new trades and opened the gates of the industrial labour force to them. In 1928, there were 2.8 million women in the labour force; by 1932, there were twice as many and over four times as many by 1940.[203]
However, despite claims to the contrary, industrialisation failed to provide women with equal employment opportunity. During the First Five-Year Plan, women's share of every branch ofindustry increased, including those branches, such as chemicals, metallurgy and mining, traditionally dominated by men. The introduction of machinery made women's lack of skill and education less of an obstacle to hiring them, enabling the state to replace men with women and to transfer men where needed. Old lines of gender segregation gave way. However, new ones took their place, as industries and sectors of the economy were designated 'best suited' for women's labour. Entire sectors of the economy became 'female', including food processing, textiles and the production of consumer goods, and the lower and middle ranks of white-collar and service professions.[204]
The 1930s brought some women unprecedented social mobility. The proportion of women in institutions of higher education grew from 31 per cent in 1926 to 43 per cent in 1937. Women's progress was particularly marked in fields such as economics, law, construction and transport, where the proportion of women students had hitherto been quite low. Most of the women who benefited derived from lower-class backgrounds. Female role models encouraged women to choose new paths. In September 1938, Valentina Griazodubova, Marina Raskova and Polina Osipenko set a world record for non-stop flight by women. Yet despite the highly acclaimed breakthroughs of a few, the majority of women workers continued to fill the lowest-paid and most physically arduous positions. Concentrated in light industries, such women were left behind by investment policies that favoured heavy industry and neglected consumption. Some experienced a worsening of working conditions and living standards so severe that they staged protests, as did about 16,000 mostly female workers in 1932.[205]
Moreover, because the state failed to socialise domestic labour as promised, working women often did two jobs rather than one. Despite ambitious goals in both the First and Second Five-Year Plans, only modest progress was made because heavy industry tookpriority. Managers even commandeered for other purposes buildings designated for childcare. According to official figures, the number of children in childcare centres in 1936 numbered 1,048,309, a tenfold increase from 1928, but still far short of the goals.[206] The First Five-Year Plan actually made housekeeping more difficult. Collectivisation severely disrupted food production. Having abolished private trade with the onset of the plan, the state experienced substantial difficulties in distributing goods. Women, not men, were encouraged to assume the housekeeping burden. In 1936, employed wives spent on housework a total of 147 of their leisure hours each month, as compared to thirty spent by husbands. Women spent almost as many hours on housework as they spent on the job.
Women's reproduction was likewise harnessed to the needs of the state. Between 1927 and 1935, the birth rate declined from 45 births per 1,000 people to 30.1; the working-class family decreased in size. Officials found the change alarming. As did other European states, the Soviet state sought to increase the size of its population to meet the demands of industry and modern warfare. Bearing and raising children ceased entirely to be a private matter; instead, they became women's responsibility to society and the state. As Joseph Stalin put it, the fact that a Soviet woman enjoyed the same rights as a man did not release her from the 'great and honourable duty' of being a mother.
Not a private matter, motherhood had 'great social significance'.[207] Efforts to modernise motherhood continued, now entirely directed by the state and linked to productivist goals. Media portrayed motherhood as a natural part of women's lives and avoiding motherhood as 'abnormal'.
202
Roberta Manning, 'Women in the Soviet Countryside on the Eve of World War II', in Beatrice Farnsworth and Lynn Viola (eds.),
203
Gail Warshofsky Lapidus,
204
Wendy Zeva Goldman,
205
Jeffrey Rossman, 'The Teikovo Cotton Workers' Strike of April 1932: Class, Gender, and Identity Politics in Stalin's Russia',
207
Choi Chatterjee, 'Soviet Heroines and Public Identity, i930-i939',