On
the surface, the ideologies of the Soviet and Nazi regimes were
diametrically opposed. On the one hand, the Soviets were on the far
left and sought (at least in theory) to create a society in which
everyone was equal; on the other hand, the Nazis were on the far
right and sought to impose an order on society in which Aryans were
on top and Jews were on the bottom. These differences were also
reflected in their policies on women. The Soviets publicly stated
that their goal was the full equality of women under the law, with
equal participation and contribution to the state in exchange for
equal benefits and protections. The Nazis, as radical
traditionalists, wanted to roll back the progress in women's rights
of recent decades and return women to Heim
und Herd
(home and hearth). However, as the horseshoe theory of politics
posits, as political ideologies tend more toward the extremes, they
tend to resemble each other more. If we consider writings and
speeches from both societies and compare the actual policies, we can
see the truth of this theory.
Approaching
the writings chronologically, the speech by Clara Zetkin from
November 1922 comes first, and it poses certain problems because,
while Zetkin was German, the speech was given in Soviet Russia and
its topic is Soviet communism. That said, Zetkin's speech is intended
to explain to her audience the role of the International Women's
Secretariat within the Communist International (Comintern), i.e.,
both to integrate women who are already communists into the structure
of the Comintern and to persuade working- and middle-class women to
become communists. On the former point, Zetkin's speech offers a sort
of "state of the union," with some parties within the
Comintern (e.g., Bulgaria) doing better than others (the United
Kingdom). On the latter point, Zetkin references the "pitiless
inroads present day conditions make into the lives of millions of
women, causing many of them to awaken from their torpor."1
On the whole, Zetkin's speech is a call to action to communist women
to mobilize women inside and outside the party to transform the
conditions for women worldwide.
The
second selection, from the writings of Aleksandra Kollontai -- one of
only a very small number of women to have held a position in the
government of the Soviet Union -- addresses the topic of
transformation of male-female romantic and sexual relationships in
the wake of communist revolution. Broadly speaking, Kollontai argues
that the free love engendered the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent
Civil War, which she characterizes as "wingless Eros,"
might have been appropriate for the time, but "winged Eros"
must soon displace this free love, which poses a challenge because
its "love is woven of delicate strands of every kind of
emotion,"2
i.e., it is based on interpersonal commitment rather than momentary
pleasure. To accommodate this paradigm shift, Kollontai argues that
the traditional bourgeois notion of married love must be replaced
with "love-comradeship," based on equality, mutual
recognition by each partner of the rights of the other, and
"comradely sensitivity," all packaged within a communist
collective that demands a greater tie to itself than either partner
to the other.3
Such love, according to Kollontai, would be more equal and more
rational.
Unfortunately
for both Zetkin and Kollontai, the reality of women's position in the
Soviet Union was inferior to that envisioned by both women. As
already noted, Kollontai was part of a very small minority of women
with real political power, and Zetkin enjoyed political power, but in
Germany and not Russia. Moreover, as noted by Felix Gilbert and David
Clay Large, economic realities kept women in a subordinate position
in the post-Civil War USSR because, under the New Economic Policy,
women "were generally the first to feel the pinch of job
cutbacks."4
In the seventy years of its existence, no woman ever held supreme
political power in the Soviet Union, in comparison to several other
countries that afforded significantly less lip service to the
equality of women (e.g., India, Pakistan, Israel, the United Kingdom,
and others). As a consequence, the Soviet experiment in communism,
while making big promises, ultimately delivered comparatively quite
little in real results, notwithstanding the legal equality of women.
Turning
to the case of National Socialist Germany, the 1934 speech by Adolf
Hitler to the National Socialist Women's League makes a clear case
for radical traditionalism. In a society in which, since World War I,
women had received a variety of legal rights, including suffrage, the
Nazis made it clear that it was time to return to an earlier time
where a woman's place was in the home. Hitler states, "We do not
consider it correct for the woman to interfere in the world of the
man, in his main sphere. We consider it natural if these two worlds
remain distinct."5
As was his wont, Hitler characterizes women's emancipation as a
"Jewish" creation that must be reversed.6
In addition, Hitler ties the traditional role of women to natalist
policies, implying that women being ensconced in the home results in
stronger family ties, which in turn result in "the willingness
of the woman to risk her life to preserve this important cell and to
multiply it."7
In
her speech from two years later, Getrud Scholtz-Klink, leader of the
same organization addressed by Hitler, characterizes this role for
women in a more revolutionary sense than the Führer. Like Hitler,
she denounces the proto-feminism of the preceding generation and its
emphasis away from family and particularly from childbirth and
motherhood. She goes a step further, however, in stating, "It is
therefore our task to awaken once again the sense of the divine, to
make the calling to motherhood the way through which the German woman
will see her calling to be mother of the nation. She will then not
live her life selfishly, but rather in service to her people."8
Interestingly, despite the very different final role that
Scholtz-Klink sees for women, her exhortation to the greater good is
not unlike that of Kollontai thirteen years earlier. Importantly,
also like Kollontai, Scholtz-Klink sees the role of women as being
equally important to that of men.
Given
the clear point of view expressed by Hitler and the emphasis placed
in Nazi German society on the Führerprinzip,
or leadership principle, it is unsurprising that the place of women
largely returned to a more traditional context in the National
Socialist period. At least legally, the law tended to reflect this
principle, particularly the natalist anti-abortion laws and the
positive incentives offered for couples to have large families.
Nevertheless, as in the Soviet Union, economic realities undermined
the full implementation of this goal. Again, as pointed out by
Gilbert and Large, only four years in Nazi rule in Germany, some of
these pro-birth policies were reversed to provide incentives to women
to go back to work, given the urgent need for workers in the context
of German rearmament.9
Even when slave laborers were brought to Germany during the war, a
percentage of these laborers were women, even if they were largely
domestic workers for upper-class Germans and party elites.10
1
Clara Zetkin, "Organising Among Women," Marxists' Internet
Archive, accessed July 4, 2016,
https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1922/ci/women.htm, para. 13.
2
Aleksandra Kollontai, "Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to
Working Youth, Love as a Socio-Psychological Factor," in From
Symbolism to Socialist Realism: A Reader, ed. Irene Masing-Delic
(Brighton, Mass.: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 162.
3
Ibid, 171.
4
Felix Gilbert and David Clay Large, The End of the European Era,
6th edition (New York: Norton, 2009), 209.
5
Adolf Hitler, "Hitler’s Speech to the National Socialist
Women’s League (September 8, 1934)," Germany History in
Documents and Images, accessed July 4, 2016,
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1557,
para. 4
6
Ibid, para. 1.
7
Ibid, para. 4.
8
Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, "To Be German Is to Be Strong,"
German Propaganda Archive, accessed July 4, 2016,
http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/scholtz-klink2.htm,
para. 12
9
Gilbert and Large, 266.
10
Ibid.
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