Question

What do you understand by the 'Safragant movement' in the Russian Revolution?
1. Women suffrage movement
2. Movement supporting the ideology of communism
3. Revolutionary movement against monarchy
4. Movement for support of farmers and workers

Answer 1

Correct Answer - Option 1 : Women suffrage movement

The 'Safragant movement' in the Russian Revolution was regarding the Women suffrage movement. 

Background

• The life experiences of women in the Russian Empire before the Revolution were extremely diverse.
• While wealthier women had access to limited education, especially after women’s higher education courses were introduced in the late 1870s, peasant women (who constituted the majority of the Empire’s female population in the 19th century) were mostly illiterate.
• Despite class differences, society was staunchly patriarchal and women of all backgrounds were not allowed to vote or hold public office until 1917.

The first women revolutionaries in Russia

• In the 1860s and 70s, a number of women joined the populist revolutionary movement that was gathering momentum in Russia. 
• Calling for social justice and political change, these women took advantage of the revolutionary mood sparked by Alexander II’s reforms to serfdom, the judiciary and education.
• Both male and female revolutionaries printed and distributed propaganda, and carried out political and economic terrorist acts. In 1874, thousands of Populists (Narodniks) went to the countryside to live among peasants in the hope of improving living standards and raising socialist consciousness.
• Tsarist authorities swiftly crushed the movement and hundreds of male and female activists were arrested. New non-violent and violent groups soon emerged, including the revolutionary terror organisation People’s Will (Narodnaia Volia), which was responsible for the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881.

• The rise of Social Democracy in Russia in the 1880s attracted both women workers and women from the intelligentsia. S

• tudents from the newly established women’s higher courses played a particularly key role in shaping the social-democratic views among urban workers and many later became leading Bolshevik figures.

• Among them was Nadezhda Krupskaia. A tireless advocate for women’s and educational issues, Krupskaia married Lenin in 1898 and held prominent roles within the Bolshevik party until her death in 1939.