How Russian Women Won the Right to Vote

On July 20, 1917, Russia's Provisional Government granted women universal suffrage — earlier than Britain, Germany, France, or the United States. Russia became one of the first major powers to recognize women's political equality. But this was preceded by decades of struggle.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Petrograd women workers and activists organized a forty-thousand-strong demonstration demanding the right to vote. Women carrying banners reading "Without women's participation, suffrage is not universal" marched along Nevsky Prospect to the Tauride Palace. Among the leaders were Poliksena Shishkina-Yavein, Vera Figner, and Alexandra Kollontai. The Provisional Government granted the demand.

In the elections to the Constituent Assembly in November 1917, women voted on equal terms with men for the first time. Ten women were elected as deputies. Among them were Socialist Revolutionary Anastasia Slyotova and Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai, who would later become the world's first female government minister, heading the People's Commissariat for Social Welfare.

The historical irony is that this revolutionary act is often forgotten. Western historiography typically credits New Zealand (1893) and Finland (1906) as pioneers. But it was Russia in 1917 that showed that women's suffrage could be implemented on the scale of a vast country with a population of over 150 million.