Women in the Land of Socialism

Nina Popova’s Women in the Land of Socialism is an exemplary and exhaustive account of the plight, struggle and progress of women in the Soviet Union. The book outlines the momentous and unprecedented achievements of Soviet women and the Bolshevik Party in the striving for women’s empowerment. Popova highlights the countless acts of heroism of the Soviet women, casting off the chains of Tsarist and capitalist oppression, and striving forward with socialist construction. The author also elucidates the centrality and inseparability of women’s liberation to socialism, and the holistic nature of women’s progression in socialism: in industry, agriculture, politics, leisure, the military, the family and education. She contrasts the epochal and heroic liberation of women in the Soviet Union to the position of women in the capitalist countries, where women then and today are subject to the most brutal oppression at the hands of capital. The relevance and importance of this book remain today; it is just as relevant as it was in 1949. Every revolutionary must have intimate knowledge of the problems and struggles facing women, and the background of historic successes where women have cast off the chains that bind them.