Socialist Women and the Great War: Protest, Revolution and Commemoration, an open access book, is the first transnational study of left-wing women and socialist revolution during the First World War and its aftermath. Through a discussion of the key themes related to women and revolution, such as anti-militarism and violence, democracy and citizenship, and experience and life-writing, this book sheds new and necessary light on the everyday lives of socialist women in the early 20th century.
The participants of the 1918-1919 revolutions in Europe, and the accompanying outbreaks of social unrest elsewhere in the world, have typically been portrayed as war-weary soldiers and suited committee delegates-in other words, as men. Exceptions like Rosa Luxemburg exist, but ordinary women are often cast as passive recipients of the vote. This is not true; rather, women were pivotal actors in the making, imagining, and remembering of the social and political upheavals of this time. From wartime strikes, to revolutionary violence, to issues of suffrage, this book reveals how women constructed their own revolutionary selves in order to bring about lasting social change and provides a fresh comparative approach to women's socialist activism.
As such, this is a vitally important resource for all postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in gender studies, international relations, and the history and legacy of World War I.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollection.com. Open access was funded by Knowledge Unlatched.
Author(s): Ingrid Sharp, Matthew Stibbe, Corinne Painter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 272
City: London
Cover
Halftitle page
Title page
Copyright page
Contents
Illustrations
Glossary and Abbreviations
Contributors
Preface
1 Socialist Women and the Great War, 1914–21: Protest, Revolution and Commemoration Matthew Stibbe, Ingrid Sharp, Clotilde Faas, Veronika Helfert, Mary McAuliffe and Corinne Painter
The liberal-progressive and the Socialist women’s movements: overlapping temporalities and spaces
1905 – 1914 – 1917: overlapping moments in the development of a democratic protest culture
The impact of war on women’s bodies and the fight back against militarism
Biographies, networks and life trajectories
Commemorating revolution, commemorating women
Feminist methodology: curious conversations
2 Socialist Women and ‘Urban Space’: Protest, Strikes and Anti-Militarism, 1914–18 Matthew Stibbe, Anna Hammerin, Katharina Hermann and Ali Ronan
The International Socialist Women’s Conference in Bern and the Bern Peace Manifesto
Socialist women and anti-war protest
Cooperation between socialist women, suffragists and youth campaigners
Large-scale strikes and mass action
Anti-militarism and urban spaces
Conclusion
3 Socialist Women and Revolutionary Violence, 1918–21 Veronika Helfert, Clotilde Faas, Tiina Lintunen and Mary McAuliffe
Revolutionary women in violent times: four case studies
Discussing revolutionary violence
With guns or kitchen knives in hand: women fighting for a different society
(Gendered) state violence against revolutionary women
Sexualized violence
The phantasma of the revolutionary women
After the revolutions: closing remarks
4 Suffrage, Democracy and Citizenship Ingrid Sharp, Manca G. Renko, Ali Ronan and Judith Szapor
Suffrage and the revolution in historical accounts and narratives
Complex histories, contested legacies
Clara Zetkin’s speech on suffrage at the International Socialist Congress in 1907
Suffrage and socialist women’s priorities during and after the First World War
Barriers to socialist women in male-dominated political places
Internationalism and interdependence
Suffrage commemoration
Conclusions
5 Life Trajectories: Making Revolution and Breaking Boundaries Corinne Painter, Veronika Helfert, Manca G. Renko and Judith Szapor
Revolutionary contexts
Finding voices in and beyond archives
Making revolution
Resistance
Conclusions
6 Commemorating Revolution, Commemorating Women Mary McAuliffe, Ingrid Sharp, Clotilde Faas, Tiina Lintunen and Ali Ronan
One hundred years of male historiography
Owning commemoration and public space
The Irish Decade of Centenaries
Conclusion
Notes
Further Reading
Index
