Aleksandra Kollontai, who became commissar of public welfare, had lofty goals for the new government. Kollontai had been a prominent figure in the women's liberation movement and she was eager to put her ideas into practice now that she held a position of power despite the looming economic problems and ensuing war. Party members criticized Kollontai for focusing her energy on these ideas at that particular time. People thought “that to bring up the question of women's equality and their liberation at such a time of chaos was irresponsible.” The pressing problems facing Russia did not line up with Kollontai's abstract goals for society. She wanted “relationships based on the unfamiliar ideas of complete freedom, equality, and genuine friendship” while what the people really needed was food and unity. Kollontai's upper-class upbringing made her too idealistic and an unfit for any kind of leadership position. The Bolsheviks were uncomfortable with her ideas to create a separate woman's department within the Party. Kollontai became aware of the Bolsheviks semi-commitment to the women's liberation movement, and she began to suspect that the Bolshevik's policies were threatening the true cause of the Revolution.
Kollontai was not the only revolutionary suspicious of the Bolshevik's policies. Other opposition to the Bolsheviks authoritarian policies came from moderate Social Democrats such as Ekaterina Dmitrievna Kuskova. She saw the rise of the Bolsheviks as “a knife in the back not only of the army but also of the revolution.” However, opposition took a backseat to efforts to unify all types of revolutionary democracy. Kuskova had a strong belief that freedom would “cleanse the most sympathetic layers of Bolshevism of demagoguery and blend them together with the rest of the democracy in one common, creative line of socialism.” The lack of unity among the more moderate socialists allowed the organized and unified Bolsheviks to take power.
In order to become accepted in revolutionary circles, Kuskova ignored her feminine identity. While her beliefs were in line with most feminists, she did not fight for feminists causes, save giving suffrage rights to women. Like many other female socialists, she assumed that equality for women would come with the reorganization of Russia's socio-economic structure. It was important for her to be careful to not let her gender show in her politics for if she did, she would loose her credibility and influence.
Prominent revolutionary women were visible in the political sphere until immediately after the Civil War. However, after 1923, no women held high positions of power, although they became more active in the political process on the civilian and local level. Kollontai lost much of her influence in the Party as she began to distribute dissenting literature to Party members which criticized the bureaucratic and authoritarian tendencies of the Bolsheviks after the civil war. She lambasted the implementation of the New Economic Policy (NEP) for its capitalist tendencies and said that the Party should be supporting “the collective, creative effort of the workers themselves” instead of asking the people to blindly follow the country's policies. Displeased with her opposition, Lenin relieved her of her responsibilities and sent her to Norway as a diplomat. She later became the ambassador to Sweden, but she never regained the prestige in the Party that she had once held.
Women revolutionaries tended not to share the lust for power that many of their male counterparts had. Instead, they valued the work that they did for the underprivileged and worked on a more personal level to implement policy. Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, dealt with propaganda and education, contributing to the education and liberation of women. When Krupskaya threatened in a letter to show Party members the contents of Lenin's “Last Testament,” which criticized Stalin's continuing support of militant communist polices during peace time, Stalin exclaimed, “Krupskaya is an old whore,” demonstrating his lack of respect for women and the liberation movement. Krupskaya became a rallying point for the opposition to Stalin, however, she could not match his political cunning, and by 1924, he had begun to take over as the head of the Soviet Union.
The revolution made many steps in promoting women's rights up to this point despite civil war, economic depression, and conflicting revolutionary ideas. However, under Stalin, the women's liberation movement began to take steps backwards. Laws were enacted to distinguish illegitimate children, the right for a woman to have an abortion was abolished, divorce became as difficult as ever, and coeducation was no longer offered. Stalin glorified motherhood in an effort to restore traditional household roles. He even portrayed it as their duty as Soviet citizens by saying, “The Soviet woman has the same rights as the man, but that does not free her from a great and honorable duty which nature has given her: she is a mother, she gives life.” The Soviets looked out for the needs of the state, asking women to work in industry and collective agriculture for lower wages while at the same time raising children to keep the birth rate from declining. Because of the need for their services, women were able to pursue a wide variety of careers in industry and manufacturing, but this came at the cost of living a double life between work and the household.
By 1936, the Soviet Union declared “the woman question” answered by proclaiming women's equality in the new Constitution. Although political participation had increased, the liberation movement ceased to exist. Movements determined to transform society had been made nonexistent thanks to the purges, and the party felt no need to intervene because of the official status of women's equality.
During this extended time of political and social change, women in Russia and the Soviet Union put worth an unprecedented effort to follow their dreams. Under the old Tsarist regime, women were forced into de facto slavery positions under their husbands. They had no social mobility and no opportunity to participate in politics. This oppression, combined with enlightenment thought supported by the intelligentsia, motivated women to work toward a more satisfying existence. Many women found the means to do this through revolutionary socialism and revolutionists were more than willing to have women to join their cause. Soon, the Tsarist government saw that the people wanted change, but by this time the revolutionaries had gained too much momentum and they inevitably took power. Once the Bolsheviks took office, they had to answer for all the promises they made to the women who supported them.
While they made many reforms, Lenin's government had to deal with the more pressing economic and oppositional problems they faced. Women were often treated as equals, allowing them to serve the state as well as any man, but the government put little effort into changing the public opinion of women, or ensuring that they would receive fair treatment from employers. This caused many prominent female party members to criticize the government which led to them leaving the party of else serving in lower level positions. When Stalin took power, he rolled back many reforms that allowed women to thrive outside the household. He encouraged women to fulfill their duties as wives and mothers while at the same time contributing to the work force. The Constitution of 1936 officially ended the struggle for women's liberation on a large scale in Russia, despite the fact that there were still disparities in the way that women and men were treated in society. These problems were left to be fixed through generations of progress instead of being done through political and social revolution.
