since maintained a complete silence on the question. In the Soviet Union, 5 December is • public holiday. Everyone stops work to celebrate the constitution Stalin presented to the nation in 1936. Among the benefits promised in this document, and among the benefits only enjoyed in modern Soviet society to a limited degree, & full equality for women.
One only has to observe how this holiday is celebrated. Over the preceding week the shops are more crowded than usual. It is customary to put a few good things on sale before public hol- few of the special food tems that usually only find their way into the 'paiki", the food allowances for the special peopic December is the month the mandarins ripen along the coast of Georgia and the queus, forty to Sity persons long, shiver a couple of hours in the cold. There are endcas lines curling round even the dosed kiosks where rumour has it that crates of the fruit might be brought. The queues are queues of women. Queues are nearly always of women, Even for their own International Holiday 8 March if is they who have to collect in the holiday fare.
And snopping is no casy trip to • supermarket. Acquiring the ten inpredients of a borshch soup may mean visiting as many shops and manding in as many queues. Then in her smail kitchen, which lacks even elementary facilities, she has to prepare the meal. After the feast the dishes need washing Then the fat must be tidied.
As for the two days of the week-end that follow, there is a lot of washing to de, the children to be looked after, and her husband needs a new pair of socks. REPETITION Her "holiday" is in fact merely a repetition of all the other days of the year, According to statistics, the average Soviet woman spends from three to four hours overy day on her housework, and six hours on Saturdays and Sundays, She does 75% of the housework and plays the main role in bringing up the children. She has over one hour less sleep a day than her husband.
Of course, she never doubts that she is better off than her grandmother. She is better fed, better clad, better housed and better educated Even queues are not us bad a they used to be, and families are beginning to buy refrigerators and washing machines.
But although she is no longer the illiterate peasant woman of the carly 1920s, she no longer strives for the new life-style of which her grandmother dreamed, She may take her tole in social production, croche facilities and maternity leave for granted —but she also takes her domestic role for granted.
Her government sees to that. Though now the economic funde razal to abolish the private kitchen.
i separate martiage from the kilben, and to realise in practice all the other proud slogans of the still only 2% of Soviet washpes through the public laund195% of evening meals are home. Only 5% of domork is socialised: progress at makes the road to com ourney. ind of her Women in the Communist Party of Great Britain have for some time been playing an active part in the women's liberation movement. This is despite the fact that the press in the Soviet Union originally made fun of it —equating it simply with the bra-burning image- and has The attitude of the Soviet press is no accident, as TAMARA VOLKOVA points out below. For while the Communist Party claims to support women's liberation in Britain, it simultaneously champions a regime in the Soviet Union which actively encourages the retention of fundamental aspects of women's oppression.
millions of compatriots is not enough to convince her that the domestic load is right and honourable, the propaganda-machine is there to teach her where her duty lies.
Women's inequalities are spoken of in enraptured tones, women are praised for managing to do everything at once (the praise they obviously deserve, but praise is no substitute for anger and concern). have to collect in the holiday fare."
"Women', cooed one newspaper, "are absolutely equal with men and not only carry i huge weight in production but are the educators of our wonderful childeen -our future, they are amazing housewives they create comfort and atmosphere in the family and their smiles and charm force us men to forget the little misfortunes and unpleas antnesses of our lives.
The ideology-makers never doubl that whatever else a woman may be she is always the housewife. I took my overall home for mum to wash; remarks a character in a typical Soslet short story. It's my turn to wash the corridor, remarks the bero of the same story to his mother come on a visit from the North, 10 you ve come time MARXISM *Even for their own International Holiday-B March-it is the women who written for overseas consumption. by their very nature are endowed with certain qualities, For example many like to sew, to knit, and to think up recipes. And the mother, of course, spends more time with the children than the father. It seers to us that at all times in the future the mother will want to sew her daughter a dress or prepare a vourite dish for her children. One would not like to see such pleasant tasks die oul.!
Alexandra Kollontai wrote in Communism and the family: "Capitalism has placed on women's shoulders a crushing burden: it has made her i wage-worker without having lessened her cares as a housekeeper or mother, Woman stagger beneath this triple load The workers state, she promised would do all it could in every way to help women.
As the Soviet working rowded bus to ЗА РОДИНУ МАТЬ!
nurses.
LAURENCIA: The political repression being unleashed by the Franco dict atorship in Spain includes among its victims an increasing number of women. Eight women are among those whom the dictatorship is currently trying to frame-up for the bombing of a Madrid cafe last September.
Two of these —Eva Forest and Lydia Falcon- are well known as activists in the newly emerging women's movement in Spain. Both have been ruthlessly tortured by Franco's police, and are in danger of receiving the death penalty if the frame-up succeeds.
The following interview with two militants of LCR-ETA (VI) [Spanish sympathising organisation of the Fourth International] first appeared in La Breche, paper of the Swiss section of the Fourth International.
It seems that women are increas ingly among those being arrested in Spain today. Does this reflect their growing radicalisation and participation in the struggle against the France dictatorship?
ISABEL: The involvement of wom en in strugples is not entirely new, but it is something that is growing.
About five years ago there were strikes by women in those sectors which mainly employ women workers. For example, in the textile factories in Barcelona in 1970, There have also been strikes of But very few women have jobs, Workers wives, however, play a part in their husbands' strikes by organising material and mors sup port. For example, they organise hunger-strikes, This is a very common type of soldarity action in the Basque country.
The involvement of women in the organisations of the revolutionary left is also quite important. It's really this which explains the number of women political prisoners, almost all of them members of ETA(V) [Basque nationalist organisation], FRAP Inks of those fighting the dictatorship (far-left group|, or the LCR-EI (VI).
The women's prison at Ale de Henares has conditions that a said to be harsher than those I the men's prisons. What's mor women who are arrested are a ost always tortured... This L s the same sort of torture as fo men It's perhaps not so trash physically -but its aim is to / tate women as women.
Whenever the Francoist new papers botter to write about o woman who has been arrested it's only in order to say that was bving with two of three m in the same fist. The regime always cries to pia the label o "prostitute on women militan The regime bases itself on whole set of ideas about the t ily. Women are only supposed to exist to become molliers...In Sp the situation of women in the be allows the regime to deny them and thus to avoid the dangers of social explosion. As a result man women emigrate abroad. where they work as domestics or get as crably line jobs.
ISABEL: The Franco regime has built up a whole body of discrim wish ruling dass have always kept women locked away in t of the Civil War women played their full part in the fight-as th
atory laws, The 'age of majority" for women is 23 years, but is anly 21 for men. A woman cannot buy anything important without the approval of her husband.
Voting for the Cortes [Spain's one-party Parliament] is organised by family: only the head of the family - the man - is able to vote. This is not very important, since no one is interested in voting for the Cortes, but it shows the sort of ideas on which the regime is based: only a man who has set up i family is considered a first-class citizen. LAURENCIA: The sexual repression which women have to undergo is unbelievable. Only a married wom un can obtain the pill, and even then only if her doctor agrees. There are almost as many abortions as births in Spain each year. But this doesn't stop the courts sentending anyone having carried out an abortion, or having assisted in one, to thirty years in prison.
Of course unmarried mothers are vigorously condemned by the dominant social standards, in the clinics which look after them they are required to give the name of their child's father. Often they give the first name which comes into their heads. This creates incredible legal tangles!
Isn't the question of an independent women's movement which Eva Forest and Lydia Falcon tried to encourage - an urgent one then? ISABEL: Certainly the objective conditions exist. But the radicalisation of women specifically around their own problems so far only affects maddle class women - those who have jobs and a certain amount of education. Women workers still have a long way to go to break with the dominant ideas and taboos... Moreover the nature of the regime means that any attempt to organise on these questions is vigorously suppressed, Radicalisation over the oppression of women is just beginning. But I think that an increasing number of people especially on the extreme are becoming aware of the intcrest that exists in propaganda on the question, and of the need for women to start organising thems*Arrested in Madrid at her home on September 16, by the political police. Dragged down to the headquarters of the chief of security after the method ical ransacking of her apartmant. Turned over to a dozen "Young athletes with their sleeves rolled up"", Eva later reported lin her letter].
Insults, obscenities. She is flattened against a wall and the athletes" work on her. Punches, kicks, butts with the head, No part of her body is spared. "You'll tell the truth, then we'll throw you out the window. You'll have committed suicide, that's all.."
*'You'll lick up your vomit! Eva refuses. She receives a blow worse than times deaths.
50 injured Rolando attack hour legal limit.
The following are excerpts from a leaflet published by the London Spanish Solidarity Committee:
Franco's dictatorship, in order to ion, which seeks to break the working class and the Spanish people who are fighting in their own interests. A day doesn't pass without avidence of the repression: dismissals of workers in factories and shipyards, and of teachStrikes and demonstrations by the workars and the people are violently broken-up by the police, causing a great number of injuries and some Among the political prisoners hold at the present time there are eight whom Franco's dictatorship accuses of being involved in the bomb-attack on the Cafe Rolando in Madrid, where 13 people wore killed and more than Apart from the statements obtained under torture, the pollee have no evid ence either of who took part in the were used. The police and the press at First, put the blame onto FRAP, afterwards on GARI (two far-left groups), and finally onto the Spanish Communist Party and ETA(VI (Basque netionalists). All the left-wing parties have condemned the attack and denied that they perticipated in it, accusing fascist groups of being responsible.
Eva Forest was tortured for at least 10 days; another of the accused, Antonio Duran, was twice taken from the prison to the police station for further questioning in order to extend police interrogations beyond the 72ADESI Therefors, we should not pay the slightest attention to what a gang of to contess. The picture that the police and the press are putting out is false and scandalous. Antonio Duran, the leader of the Pegaso car factory strike in 1968, and leader as well of construction building workers in Madrid in 1971-2, who was savagely tortured on several occasions, is a lighter for the rights of the working-alass and not s terrorist without principles as he has been made out to be by the Spanish Government, who for 35 years have assessinated hundreds of Spaniards. Eva Forest, who is an intemational fighter, who pioneered Spein's unrelonting solidarity with the Vietnamese people, Isader of the first groupe to protest against the oppression of wo men, is a shining example of solidarity with all those persecuted by the dict storship.
Over Antonio Duran, Eva Forest and thair comrades, hangs the thrait of capital punishment for their invol vement in the revolutionary solidarity against the enemies of the working class. But their fate depends on the working class and the people of Spain, the workers and peoples of the world, on the strupgle which must be launched for their freedom. Join in the fight for their freedom and that of the political prisoners, which is beginning in Europe STOP THE ASSASSINATIONS OF WORKERS, STUDENTS AND NAT• JONALIST MILITANTSI DISSOLUTION OF THE REPRESSIVE CORPS AND SPECIAL INSTITUTIONS! FREEDOM FOR EVA FOREST, ANT ORIO DURAN AND THEIR COMRFREEDOM FOR POLITICAL PRIS ONERSI DOWN WITH THE MURDEROUS
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The following account of Eva Forest's torture at the hands of the Spanish police was published in the French paper Le Monde. It is based on the statement she managed to smuggle out of jail, and was written by Gisele Halimi, a friend of Forest and prom- inent figure in the French women's liberation movement.