Women’s Rights and the Cold War – Re-approaching the Women’s International Democratic Federation’s Historical Role

By Yulia Gradskova

Even though the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) has disappeared from discussions on women’s rights since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, its history remains relevant to our understanding of state feminism and transnational women’s rights. Indeed, by the end of the Cold War, the WIDF—founded in Paris in 1945 by women from about 40 countries—became one of the world’s biggest transnational women’s organizations, known for its activity for women’s rights, peace, and anti-colonialism. However, the WIDF occupies an ambiguous position within the history of the women’s movement. While known to researchers as both an important actor in the struggle for women’s rights in a global context, it has been criticized for uncritically praising women’s emancipation under state socialism, while ignoring the double burden and lack of political freedom that women experienced there. The federation was thus an active participant within the Cold War and, during a certain period of time, its victim: accused by the American government of Communist activities between 1954 and 1967, the federation was deprived of its status as a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) in the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN.  

Figure 1. Cover of the WIDF magazine Women of the Whole World, 1985, Issue 2.

What were the organisation’s achievements and problems? And why did it eventually become almost invisible in historical accounts? In what follows, I propose a few answers to these questions. 

The third WIDF Congress, which took place in Copenhagen in 1953, adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Women. The Declaration demanded quite an impressive bill of rights for all women, regardless of their race, nation or class. These rights included, amongst others: the right to work and the right to choose a profession or occupation, equal pay for equal work, the right to the state protection of maternity and childhood, the right to education and the right of the peasant women to own land.^[1] Within their historical context, such demands were brave and challenging. Indeed, parts of Africa and of Asia continued to be occupied as colonies of European countries, where universal rights to education or maternity protection did not exist. In many European countries the principle of equal pay for equal work was far from being realized: in Sweden, for example, special salaries for women (kvinnolöner) ceased to exist only in 1960. Such a broad declaration of rights attracted many new supporters to the organization and, not least led to the WIDF becoming one of the initiators of the International Year of Women, 1975, and an important actor behind the UN’s adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). ^[2]   

On the other hand, looking at the history of the WIDF compels us to confront the problem of the ‘Soviet fronts’ (or, organizations sympathizing with the USSR, according to Peterson), and their fellow travelers.^[3] The question about how much the Soviet Union and other countries of the Eastern bloc influenced this organization continues to be asked by the historians even now, 30 years after the end of the Cold War^[4].

Figure 2. The WIDF’s foundation was controversial, due to its association with the Soviet Union. This WIDF communiqué condemns the French Government’s 1951 attempt to dissolve the WIDF.

The materials in the Moscow archive are particularly interesting in this respect. The files of the Committee of Soviet Women, a member of the federation, have preserved not only the protocols of WIDF board-meetings and congresses, but also a lot of classified reports that the representative of the Soviet Committee working in the WIDF Secretariat (from 1951 in East Berlin) wrote to Moscow. These reports suggest that Soviet expectations of WIDF activities included promoting a positive image of the Soviet Union and its foreign policy. The Soviet female employees involved in the work of the WIDF were organized through a hierarchical structure and received a salary from the Soviet state. 

Soviet employees in the WIDF were charged with informing the Soviet state about the WIDF’s internal operations and, in particular, individual opinions and conflicts with respect to the development of the organization and international politics. One report informed Moscow about the position concerning the ‘struggle for peace’ that was taken by one of the WIDF leaders, vice-president, Dr. Andrea Andreen from Sweden.^[5] According to the letter, Andreen:

Considers it important that while organizing cooperation with other women’s organizations we [the WIDF] should take the position that is different from one insisting that everything in the USSR is good and everything in the USA is bad. We have to criticize both. She also suggested to make an appeal to the governments of the USA, UK and the USSR demanding a ban of atomic weapons.^[6]

It is easy to suppose that such a position did not fully correspond to Soviet expectations. The report shows however, that in the case of Andreen, like in many others, the Soviet representatives did not have the power to give orders or demand certain behaviour from activists from different countries. Still, such classified information helped Moscow to choose their strategies, first of all with respect to cadre issues and the drafting of the WIDF’s official documents. 

During the 1960s, the WIDF underwent significant changes due to many factors, including increased membership of women from newly independent countries or countries involved in anti-colonial struggles. The 1970s-1980s saw the WIDF’s biggest international success in this regard. As previously mentioned, during this period the WIDF was active in the UN, in particular before and during the UN Decade for Women (1975-1985). The WIDF continued to be active not only at the first UN conference in Mexico, but in all further conferences until the end of the Cold War.^[7] For example, the WIDF’s General Secretary, Vire-Tuominen, in her report for the WIDF council in 1980, proudly stated that the WIDF had accomplished a lot during the NGO forum in Copenhagen: 

Figure 3. A 1975 Bulletin on the WIDF’s activities

WIDF organized 17 seminars, 2 film projections, and wide distribution of our printed materials including a special issue of our journal prepared during the forum. Our president, Freda Brown, chaired two panels, and our experts participated in several panels.^[8]

On the other hand, the development of mass, grassroots radical feminist movements in Western Europe and the USA, often referred to as ‘second wave feminism’, influenced changes in how gender differences were seen by society. In many countries, feminist activism led to changes of legislation on marriage, divorce, work, abortion, as well as on taxation, contributing to more gender equality, and recognition of LGBT rights.^[9] Due to these changes in legislation, practice, and grassroots mobilization, the language of the discussions around gender inequality and discrimination in many countries of Western Europe and North America became both more radical and more specific than that which the WIDF could offer. 

The growth of grassroots activism was also in contrast to the WIDF’s centralized structures. Thus, the federation was forced to confront criticism on its lack of internal democracy. In the 1960s such a critique was made by the Italian delegates, and in the early 1980s the organization of French women demanded more democracy in the WIDF’s working routines. The Declaration of the National Bureau of the Union of French Women addressed participants of the WIDF’s 1980 bureau meeting, expressing the French contingent’s discontent with the lack of democratic decision-making.^[10] The document also criticized the WIDF’s unlimited support for the viewpoint of the ‘socialist countries’, and the use of the experiences of these countries as a positive example for other countries to follow. The declaration stressed, for example, that the WIDF congresses had to be transformed into a real space for discussion and decision-making, while the role of the administrative bodies like the Secretariat should be diminished.^[11]

 After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the WIDF headquarters at Unter den Linden 13 in East Berlin was closed, the WIDF periodical ceased publication, and in the years that followed, the organization’s centre moved to Latin America. However, paradoxically, one of the last issues of the WIDF journal published in 1991 contains an article by Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary General of the UN, who noted that during all these years, the federation had played an important role in promoting equality of women’s rights and wished ‘all the success in your work’ to the WIDF on the occasion of its 45^th anniversary.^[12]  Thus, it is possible to say that the WIDF’s importance for international women’s rights became particularly visible internationally at the very moment when the Cold War confrontation, which had been crucial to the WIDF’s existence, came to an end. 

Yulia Gradskova is Associate Professor in History, Department of History, Stockholm University. She defended her dissertation in History in Södertörn University/Stockholm University in 2007. You can read more about the WIDF in her book, which is forthcoming through Routledge in 2021: The Women’s International Democratic Federation , the Global South and the Cold War. Defending the Rights of Women of the ‘Whole World’.

References:

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^[1] Za ravnopravie, schastie, mir. Berlin: WIDF. 1953, 254-255.

^[2] de Haan, F., The Global Left-Feminist 1960s. From Copenhagen to Moscow and New York”. In: Ch. Jian, M. Klimke, M. Kirasirova et al. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties. Between Protest and Nation-Building (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 234-236.

^[3] Petersson, F. (2013). Caught Between Nostalgia, Anti-Colonialism, International Communism, Transnational Networks and Radical Spaces: A Re-Assessment on the Historiography of the League against Imperialism. CoWoPa – Comintern Working Paper, 28, pp. 1-31.

^[4] See for example, de Haan, F., Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women’s Organizations: The Case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), Women’s History Review, 19:4 (2010), pp. 547-73.

^[5] The Soviet government usually presented itself internationally as a country aspiring for peace and détente. However, as it is widely known the USSR also participated in arm race and the development of atomic weapons.

^[6] GARF 4 106, pp. 36-38.

^[7] Ghodsee, K., Revisiting the United Nations Decade for Women: Brief Reflections on Feminism, Capitalism and Cold War Politics in the Early Years of the International Women’s Movement, Women’s Studies International Forum, 33 (2010), pp. 3-12; Ghodsee, K., Second World, Second Sex (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018).

^[8] GARF 3 5077, p. 90

^[9] See Gildea, R., James, M. & Warring, A., Europe’s 1968. Voices of Revolt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

^[10] GARF 3 5077, pp. 268-279.

^[11] GARF 3 5077, p. 277.

^[12] Zenshchiny mira 1991 (1), p. 9.

Images are the author’s own. Figures 2 and 3 were taken at Arbetarörelsens Arkiv och bibliotek and IISH respectively, and should not be reproduced without the express permission of both Gradskova and the relevant archive.

Nazarbayev, historical revivalism, and national legitimacy in Kazakhstan

By Ellen Leafstedt

On 1 December 2019, Kazakhstan celebrated its first Day of the First President since Nursultan Nazarbayev’s resignation from the presidency earlier that year. The national holiday has been celebrated since 2012, but this year was particularly significant as Kazakhstan’s first post-Soviet leader had been celebrated not as its president, but as a symbolic figure: the ‘leader of the nation’, Elbasy.

Nazarbayev takes pride in this role, and the celebrations of his leadership last December focused not only on Nazarbayev as the state-builder, but also the nation-builder of contemporary Kazakhstan. As president, Nazarbayev placed great importance on creating new shared histories, myths, and symbols for Kazakhstan, which form an important part of any nation-building project.[1] Having written several books on pre-colonial Kazakh history, the former president’s central place in these nation-building efforts is significant, given that much of Kazakhstan’s official post-1991 history has been centred around his cult of personality. His interest in revitalizing interest and awareness of pre-colonial history results from his publicised concerns over the fact that ‘over 150 years, Kazakhs nearly lost their national traditions, customs, language, religion’ during Russian/Soviet colonial rule, which in his view has diminished Kazakh national identity too far.

Indeed, as a multi-ethnic country with a major fault line running through its middle between the predominantly Kazakh south and the largely Russian north, it is in Kazakhstan’s interests to bring a sense of legitimacy, continuity and national authenticity to the entire country.[2]

Billboard of Nursultan Nazarbayev
in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Source: Jeffrey Beall

However, maintaining legitimacy is complicated for a country with flawed democratic institutions and political processes governed more by patronalistic self-interest than by the rule of law. Therefore Kazakhstan’s claim to Weberian legal legitimacy, which derives from trust in the rationality and predictability of a political system based in the rule of law, is devalued by the patronal character of the Kazakhstani system. As a result, legitimacy deriving from other sources, such as historical tradition, perhaps take a greater role in justifying the regime’s political authority in Kazakhstan than elsewhere.

For these tasks, the rewriting of history is a useful tool with which to ground hegemonic discourses about what it means to be Kazakhstani (a civic identity) and Kazakh (an ethno-cultural identity) on the state’s preferred terms.[3] The former president has institutionalized his push for greater pride and awareness of this Kazakh nomadic past through cultural policies, such as the ‘Spiritual Revival’ program, which proposes to ‘modernize historical consciousness’ through the production of documentary films, new museums and a park dedicated to ‘The Great Names of the Great Steppe’, as well as an archive digitization project, Archive-2025.

Projects such as these have tended to focus on the period immediately preceding tsarist conquest, the Kazakh khanate period (15^th-19^th centuries). The Kazakhs’ nomadic chiefdom system, comprised of three ‘hordes’ (in Kazakh, zhuz, meaning hundred) and many clans within each horde, long set them apart from other peoples inhabiting the steppe.[4] As a society featuring strong leadership, spiritualism, collectivism, and defined social roles, the khanate period is often portrayed in contemporary Kazakhstan as a semi-utopian golden age. National holidays, museums, and monuments created in the post-Soviet period have linked contemporary Kazakhstan to this ‘golden age’ in an effort to draw on traditional legitimacy.

Moreover, as a project led by the symbolic head of the state, Kazakhstan’s historical revival serves to legitimize not only the existence of the nation-state, but also the form which the state and the nation take in Kazakhstan. More specifically, Nazarbayev’s historical revivalism legitimises the domination of Nazarbayev’s presidency and personality over the public sphere. Historical Kazakh symbols and Nazarbayev’s own symbols are intentionally placed side by side to highlight the links between the country’s heroic past and glorious present.

Arc de Triomphe in Kazakhstan’s capital city of Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana). The gold letters on its face read ‘Eternal Nation‘ in Kazakh, after the name of one of the pillars of the Spiritual Revival program. Source: Wikimedia commons

In front of the Nazarbayev Museum, in his former official residence, a statue of the founders of the first Kazakh khanate, Kerey and Zhanibek, stands as a visual reminder of the two pillars of the regime: historical tradition and personal charisma. Thus, these projects have the effect of not only reinforcing the central place of historical Kazakhs in the country’s national symbols, but also of cementing Nazarbayev’s own place in Kazakhstan’s history.

The framing of the Kazakh khanate as a semi-utopian society also serves as a moral framework, against which contemporary Kazakhstan is evaluated. Nazarbayev for instance says: ‘Our heroic ancestors willed us to always hold our banner high, wishing us great victories. Since then, all our successes and achievements have been realized under our sky-blue flag’. The imagery of Kazakh ancestors tacitly approving of Kazakhstan’s current course gives a sense of continuity between past, present, and future, and legitimizes the current political course by linking it to Kazakh tradition as the ‘correct’ course. By corralling Kazakhstan’s historical narrative into a linear story, the state is able to lay claim over concepts of patriotism, belonging, and ultimately, legitimate political expression. In this sense, historical reframing has the ability to strengthen the stability of the regime by justifying its present with the use of the past.

Moreover, references to the moral character of Kazakh ancestors also serve to de-legitimize movements and ideas which run counter to the state’s desired political culture, resulting in a hegemonic, rather than democratic, understanding of patriotism.[5] This is seen in discourses on the Kazakh tradition of religious tolerance; an official book commissioned by the Ministry of Education, The World of Values of Independent Kazakhstan, maintains that as a result of the spiritualism of Kazakhs’ nomadic ancestors, ‘religious tolerance and lack of fanaticism’ characterize contemporary Kazakhstan.[6] While religious tolerance might initially seem uncontroversial, it is significant because Islamist political movements have mobilized against Nazarbayev’s regime in the past; the state has thus made a point of deflating undesirable political ideas by framing them as fanatical, and therefore, as an affront to Kazakhstan’s ‘inherent tolerance’, unpatriotic or un-Kazakh.[7]

In this way, conformism with the state-imposed political culture is a prerequisite to contemporary Kazakhstani patriotism as framed by official historical discourse, which thus acts to reinforce the undemocratic nature of the current political system. In sum, Kazakhstan’s state-led historical revival projects play a role in strengthening the foundations of the authoritarian state by grounding it in nationalist, traditional, and charismatic forms of legitimacy. In turn, this historical project informs Nursultan Nazarbayev’s reputation as founder of the new Kazakhstani nation-state and upholder of Kazakh traditions and legacies, and will likely continue to do so long after his departure from office.

Ellen Leafstedt is a master’s student in Russian and East European Studies at Oxford University, where her research focuses on political institutions and legitimacy of authoritarian states in the former Soviet Union. Find her on Twitter @ellenleafy.

References:

[1] A.D. Smith, ‘State-Making and Nation-Building’ in J. A. Hall (ed.), States and History (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1986), pp. 228-263.

[2] S. N. Cummings, ‘Legitimation and Identification in Kazakhstan’, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 12:2 (2006), p. 178.

[3] O. Kesici, ‘The Dilemma in the Nation-Building Process: The Kazakh or Kazakhstani Nation?’, Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, 10:1 (2011), p.31.

[4] Some Western and Kazakh historians argue the khanate marked the beginning of Kazakh statehood, as these hordes functioned as political and military unions using customary law; moreover, their nomadic lifestyle arguably distinguished them from neighboring peoples enough to give them a sense of national identity and distinctiveness. Martha Brill Olcott, The Kazakhs (Stanford University Press, 1987), 15.

[5] Brudny and Finkel show how this hegemonic conception of patriotism is a marker of authoritarian political culture in the case of Russia, where the regime commands discursive hegemony over what behaviors are considered patriotic and appropriates patriotism to mean alignment with the regime; Y.M. Brudny and E. Finkel, ‘Why Ukraine Is Not Russia: Hegemonic National Identity and Democracy in Russia and Ukraine’, East European Politics and Societies, 25:4 (2011), p. 830.

[6] A. Nysanbayev, Mir tsennostey nezavisimogo Kazakhstana [The World of Values of Independent Kazakhstan] (Almaty, 2011), p. 6.

[7] S. Akiner, ‘The Politicisation of Islam in Postsoviet Central Asia’, Religion, State & Society, 31:2 (2003), pp.103-119.

Fulton and Fátima: 1917 in the Mind of Catholic Cold Warriors

by Brooke Sales Lee

You might certainly wish for divine intervention, were you a right-wing dictator, circa 1946, who had spent the war making deals with both the Americans and the Germans. For Portugal, that was exactly what the regime got, facilitated by certain eager Americans.

In 1954, Bishop Fulton Sheen announced to Americans across the eastern

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

seaboard that the ‘birth of the modern world’ took place on 13 October 1917. His popular television show, Life is Worth Living, showed the auxiliary bishop of New York striding grandly across his small set in full clerical dress, explaining that on that day in Moscow, horsemen had charged in on a catechism class in the Church of the Iberian Virgin, destroyed the altar, and attacked the children.[i] ‘At the same hour,’ in Rome, Eugenio Pacelli was consecrated archbishop; he later survived an assassination attempt in Munich by communists and became Pope Pius XII. And finally, on 13 October 1917, in a village in Portugal, three children surrounded by a crowd of curious onlookers witnessed an apparition. The apparition revealed herself to be the Virgin Mary, warned them of danger, and made the sun appear to ‘dance in the sky.’

In 1954, Portugal had been under the dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar for twelve years. He had come to power as the prime minister in 1932 and written a constitution ending the military dictatorship that had replaced the unstable First Republic in 1926. His regime, the Estado Novo (New State) would outlive him and end only with a military coup in 1974.

But how did Fulton Sheen’s assertion that the modern world began in October of 1917 relate to the workings of a 42-year dictatorship? The answer may be found in Fátima. In 1942, Pope Pius XII announced that Our Lady of Fátima, as the apparition had come to be known, told the children on 13 October 1917 that a war worse would come and that atheistic Communism would spread; the only way to save the world from

Emblem for tourists to Fatima for the closing of the Holy Year, 1951 (Torre del Tombo archives)

annihilation, and the wrath of an angry God, was to repent earnestly, pray the rosary, and consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.[ii]

Salazar was more than familiar with Catholicism; he had attended seminary as a teenager before studying law and economics. His friend and roommate in university, Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, had quickly risen through the Church to become Cardinal Patriarch of Portugal. And after 1945, the traditional Catholicism of Portugal was a godsend to an authoritarian dictator who had flirted with fascist aesthetics through the thirties, and traded with Germany through the forties.

Fighting against a potential destabilizing shift in both in domestic and foreign public opinion, , Salazar turned to Catholicism and specifically, to Fátima. While Portugal’s leaders could not claim to represent a land of democratic rights, they argue that it was devoutly Catholic and therefore anti-Communist. Fátima was no accident, they could argue; God had given Portugal a special role in saving the world from atheistic Communism.

The Portuguese government made sure to emphasize their Catholic legacy. As part of the construction of a glorious ‘Golden Age’ by the regime, the state renovated and restored historic buildings and encouraged tourists and locals alike to think of Portugal as a country born out of a Catholic struggle to claim land and souls for Christendom, first in Moorish Iberia and then in colonies around the world.[iii] Fátima showed that God smiled upon this mission and wished it to continue. After all, Portugal had remained neutral throughout the Second World War, and the Estado Novo had ended the anticlerical policies of the First Republic.

Fulton Sheen was one of dozens of prominent Catholics from around the world invited by the Portuguese government to witness the ceremonies for the closing of the Holy Year on 13 October 1951. He alluded to this event in his 1954 television show as he

Sketch for the closing of the Holy Year in 1951 (Torre del Tombo Archive)

claimed that a million people crowded into the square in Fátima. Footage from this event was shown on Sheen’s program, filmed not for news coverage but for a Warner Brother’s feature film about Our Lady of Fátima and the seers.

All things considered, Fulton Sheen essentially jumped on the bandwagon when it came to Fátima and Portugal. As early as 1946, The Catholic World published an essay by Hungarian Catholic convert Eugene Bagger entitled ‘Portugal: Anti-Totalitarian Outpost.’ The piece argued that the Catholicism of Portugal meant it was not totalitarian, and instead a benevolent dictatorship. In 1950, the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society in Canada published William C. McGrath’s short book Fatima or World Suicide which argued that nuclear war was imminent if Catholics did not take heed; it was one of several books on the topic published between 1947 and 1955. Sheen had been a prominent Cold Warrior from the start, and his popular reach in America made him an attractive mouthpiece for the holiness of Fátima and Portugal’s government. He only began writing and speaking of Fátima after he was hosted by the Portuguese government in 1951.

In 2017, we should remember that while Fulton Sheen and other prominent Catholics seemed to readily broadcast the message of an authoritarian regime, most Catholics in the Anglophone world latched onto Fátima through the Church and their understanding of the metaphysical world. Of the several books written about Fátima, most focused not on Portugal or any kind of special blessing from God upon the place where the apparitions occurred, but on the message of hope in the face of grave danger. Even though Sheen was quick to suggest parallels between a ‘white square’ in Fátima and the Red Square of Moscow, he was speaking of the faith he had devoted his life to and what he saw as the greatest contemporary threat to his Church. It was not that he had been bribed with a free trip to Portugal, but that in this matter, the regime’s interests and his own aligned neatly. The Church wished to increase piety and fight Communism. Salazar and his government needed a godsend, which it found in 1917.

Bio: Brooke Sales-Lee has a Master’s Degree in History from York University in Toronto. Her work there focused on the use of Our Lady of Fátima as a transnational political tool of the Estado Novo and the intersection of secular politics and Catholicism during the Cold War more widely. She is currently an independent researcher and can be found on tweeting about politics, the Church, and extremism at @BrookeSalesLee

References

[i] The entire episode of Life is Worth Living is viewable on YouTube: https://youtu.be/YWzPU1oeViM Fulton Sheen wrote up the themes and topics of his show as a series of essays published in Volumes under the same name, Life is Worth Living. They were published by McGraw-Hill in the 1950s and can sometimes be found in Catholic libraries.

[ii] The full text of the “secrets of Fátima” are available in translation on the Vatican website: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000626_message-fatima_en.html

[iii] This project began during a period of nationalist activity by the state that echoed the Italian Fascists and German National Socialists in their attempt to write a more heroic history of the nation. A key example of this in Portugal was the Portuguese World Exhibition of 1940. Several monuments were rebuilt to last and remain popular tourist attractions to this day: http://www.padraodosdescobrimentos.pt/en/monument-to-the-discoveries/1940-portuguese-world-exhbit/

Full image attributions

Image 1: By Fred Palumbo, World Telegram staff photographer [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Image 2: Provided by the author, scanned image from Torre do Tombo archives in Lisbon

Image 3: Provided by the author, scanned image from Torre do Tombo archives in Lisbon