Stalin 1933
Written: 1933;
Published: Women and Communism, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1950;
Transcribed and HTML Markup: Sally Ryan.
Now a few words about the women, the women collective farmers. The woman question in the collective farms is a big question, comrades. I know that many of you under-rate the women and even laugh at them. That is a mistake, comrades, a serious mistake. The point is not only that women comprise half the population. Primarily, the point is that the collective farm movement has advanced a number of remarkable and capable women to leading positions. Look at this Congress, at the delegates, and you will realise that women have long since advanced from the ranks of the backward to the ranks of the forward. The women in the collecdve farms are a great force. To keep this force down would be criminal. It is our duty to bring the women in the collective farms forward and to make use of this great force.
Of course, not long ago, the Soviet government had a slight misunderstanding with the women collective farmers. That was over the cow. But now this business about the cow has been settled, and the misunderstanding has been removed. We have reached the position where the majority of the collective farm households have a cow each. Another year or two will pass and there will not be a single collective farmer who will not have his own cow. We Bolsheviks will see to it that every one of our collective farmers has a cow.
As for the women collective farmers themselves, they must remember the power and significance of the collective farms for women; they must remember that only in the collective farm do they have the opportunity of becoming equal with men. Without collective farms-inequality; in collective farms--equal rights. Let our comrades, the women collective farmers, remember this and let them cherish the collective farm system as the apple of their eye.