The First All-Russian Women’s Congress

In 1908, three years after the 1905 Revolution forced Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II to create the first Russian parliament (Duma), over 1,000 women gathered in the City Hall of the country’s capital St. Petersburg from December 10 to 16. Denied political rights to vote for and serve in the Duma, women activists created their own deliberative body, the First All-Russian Women’s Congress, dubbed the first Russian Women’s Parliament. Within the context of an authoritarian regime actively suppressing dissent, the congress demonstrated the possibilities and constraints of feminist resistance. I define feminism as both a movement and a discourse aimed at challenging male hegemony in a variety of historical and cultural settings.