ABSTRACT
Women’s emancipation and sexual equality were concepts central, in theory at least, to the Bolshevik revolutionary project. For Bolshevik policy-makers, women’s emancipation was thought principally to lie in their economic independence through their individual wage-earning capacity, so that women would no longer have to be reliant on men for their subsistence. Nina Markovna’s observation of couples walking on the streets of Moscow perhaps provides a broader visual indicator of the everyday inequalities that shaped women’s everyday lives: whilst men’s arms were hanging freely, women’s hands were used for carrying shopping bags and holding on to children. The Soviet system offers many examples of progressive employment and welfare policies targeted specifically towards women, especially in terms of their attempts to combine motherhood with paid employment. In some people’s minds, the drive to sexual equality in the Soviet Union resulted in stripping women of their specific gender attributes and distinctiveness.
