The “proletarian women’s movement” in contrast was an attempt to synthesize one brand of radicalism

But with the emergence of Stalinism in the 1930s, all but the thinnest of ideological

pretenses were laid aside.  Conservative divorce and abortion laws were issued, the Zhenotdel was abolished with

the explanation that women were now actually equal to men and that its work was no longer needed—a palpable

misstatement; wives of engineers and managers were publicly exalted for their work in beautifying the home and

adorning their husbands’ offices.  The old ideal of the ascetic, thin-lipped, and determined women

revolutionaries gave way to gushing images of supermothers and heroines of domesticity.  If the early Bolshevik

male leaders were conditioned by a cultural block to renege on the promises of women’s equality, some of them

at least had made an effort to recall these promises.  With Stalin, an unabashed repudiation of old intelligentsia

norms of political respect for women took place, and Soviet Russia reverted to many of the…..