Abstract: During the 1920s, the Communist Women’s Movement (CWM) engaged in internationally coordinated campaigns. One of the most successful was the humanitarian aid campaign for Soviet Russia, a country ruined by the years of World War I and the Russian Civil War. This article studies the humanitarian efforts that the CWM engaged in, such as collecting funds and goods to be sent to Russia, setting up sewing and mending centers, and supporting children’s homes in Russia. It assesses the CWM’s contributions to broader relief efforts coordinated by the Communist International organization as well as by a variety of transnational networks, organizations, and countries. This article compares CWM’s humanitarianism to the efforts of nonproletarian women’s organizations. It analyzes the use of such conceptual frameworks as “motherliness” and women’s special role in humanitarian action that the CWM employed to galvanize more active support for their campaigns among women and to promote radical ideas of motherhood.
Daria Dyakonova (Fri,) studied this question.