Women's rights history in the Presidential Library stock

Shortly before the 8th of March the Presidential Library is featuring the electronic copies of publications, revealing the history of the women's rights movement in Russia.

“One of the most important, the most significant issues that occupied the minds at the end of the last century was the issue of human rights – the Russian writer, secretary of the Committee of Foreign Censorship M. Zlatkovsky wrote in his focused on Historical sketches on the woman. I. Primitive woman study of 1867, an electronic copy of which is available on the Presidential Library website. - This general question comprises a mine of the other more specific questions. But we have to ask now: have the thinkers of the last century ever been taking a woman into account when imagining the human rights? Not for all the tea in China; the opinions and reviews about her of all the then authorities, starting with Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and ending with Danton, Robespierre and Saint-Just, prove this. “A woman is specially designed to please a man, - Rousseau believed. - Whether she likes a man or not - it's a matter of lesser importance; se likes him already because he is stronger.”

The researcher M. Dietrich in her work “Russian woman of the grand ducal period” (1904), a digitized copy of which is available on the Presidential Library website, writes about how the position of the weaker vessel in Russia have changed since the adoption of Christianity: “The long-standing solitary existence of Russian women inside a terem – a chamber in Russian tradition - from which she got rid of relatively recently, pinning down her will, her capacity, her development, robing all human rights from her, besides the only one – a child-bearing – this isolation completely enclosed and moved aside from us another era - when the woman was recognized as a human being, when she freely enjoyed all the gifts of nature and all her personal gifts given to her by God. I'm talking about paganism and Christianity.”

In the pagan period, the author supposes, the image of the Russian woman appears in very bright and well-defined features; “she is an equal society member, having all the charms of beauty and love, boldness and daring, sometimes even gifted with a prophecy.” Christian period brought in the Byzantine concept into Russian life. The situation of Russian women has deteriorated, “but her value, by virtue of her moral superiority, has increased. Naive and pure Slavs’ minds, thirsting for light and truth of the new religion, accepted, of course, and with full devotion, this look on the woman. And we have every right to say that the Russian Christian women hold high the banner of purity and greatness.”

In printed in Moscow University book by Blagorazumov The rights and a value of women in their historical aspect (1880), available on the portal of the Presidential Library, is said: “There is nothing to be afraid of the fact that an absolute half of the human race wishes to enter into its own rights and to become as free as a free man does.” The history itself linked up with that scenario.”

The rare lifetime editions of Clara Zetkin, including “Russian woman in the struggle for freedom” of 1900, represent the years of a beginning of the active involvement of women in public life in Russia. How relevant this question was at the beginning of the XX century could be found out from a book of Alexei Polyansky entitled “Russian woman on the state and public service” from the Presidential Library stock.

A number of publications of the last century, such as “The rights of women under Soviet law” demonstrate an attitude to the woman in the first years of the Soviet authority: there are no any formalities for a marriage; everything is very simple and easy. Just as simple and easy to divorce. Because it makes no sense to believe that people get married to live together forever. According to Soviet law, a divorce takes place without difficulty, even if only one of the spouses want it - a wife or husband? It doesn’t matter. They receive an extract from the subdivision, where a marriage was recorded, and that’s it, their marriage is terminated,” – as the edition interprets the laws passed in 1925.

The Presidential Library stock is a unique repository of materials on the history of the Russian state, which became part of the so-called “women's rights issue.” Different interpretations of that problem in different fields of science and practice of our society show that so far it does not lose relevance.