All-Russian Women’s Congresses of the Early 20th Century as a New Method of Struggle for Equality

This article presents a reconstruction of the organisation and activities of the All-Russian women’s congresses, which became a new method of struggle for women’s rights in the Russian Empire in the early twentieth century. The novelty of the study lies in the complex analysis of the materials of the Proceedings of the All-Russian women’s congresses, which remain a fully unexplored array of historical sources. The research draws upon legislative acts, materials of women’s congresses, and organisations. It employs the gender approach in the history of historical feminology, which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in the wake of the development of women’s studies. The approach makes it possible to analyse the socioeconomic and political position of women in society in relation to other participants of social interaction through their social status and stereotypical roles (those of a wife, mother, etc.). The author concludes that the crisis of the women’s movement in the 1880s brought to the forefront the need to change the strategy of the struggle: modest charity was replaced by campaigning and propaganda of the ideas of equal rights by holding all-Russian women’s congresses. Thus, by the early twentieth century, the main problems which feminists focused on were civil rights, comprehensive women’s education, and the fight against prostitution. All-Russian feminist congresses became an act of consolidation of Russian society around the problem of women’s disenfranchisement. They allowed the development of many public initiatives, draft laws on labour protection, motherhood and childhood, the fight against prostitution, and women’s education. The congresses became a catalyst for transformations, which were later supported by the state. However, despite all the successes achieved by the women’s national movement, their results were interrupted by the events of October 1917.