혁명 전 모스크바 섬유공장 여성노동자의 일상세계 (1900-1917)

Abstract

For many decades historians of Russian labor, in an effort to explain 1917, divided workers usually into “backward” workers and 'conscious' workers. Women workers were placed unequivocally among the 'backward' elements. It is true that women were addicted to religion and traditional rural customs and did not engaged active in political organizations. But the reason of their “backwardness” is to be sought in the concrete situation, in which they fell. Illiteracy and other circumstances disturbed them to join cultural opportunities, which the city offered. Women workers were mostly unskilled and earned one-half to two-thirds of what men did. Especially a married woman with children were dependent on her husband's wage for family's survival. Women were exposed to prejudices and sexual harassment in the everyday life, both inside and outside the factory. The life as worker in the city might broaden a man's horizons and extend them into politics. But women's social contacts were likely to be limited. The length of their working day and the burden of their domestic labors left them no time to socialize outside the workplace. Women were desperately anxious about the family. If the husband were arrested, not only he but the whole family would perish. Judging by memoirs, the hardship in life wore women down and it offered them little in return. The constant struggle to balance the house budget, the death of infants, and the screams of hungry children made working-class women older than their own age. The experience left women workers more irritable, bitter, and fearful of any change. If women often proved to be more “conservative”, it does not seem to be a wonder.