Communist Women's International
[3] Ultimately eight women were named to the body, including six Russians — Kollontai, Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lyudmila Stal, Zlata Lilina, Konkordia Samoilova, and a woman known to history only as Similova — as well as the Dutch Henriëtte Roland-Holst and Rosa Bloch from Switzerland.
[1] Delegates heard details of the system of so-called "delegates' meetings" conducted in Soviet Russia which brought together assemblies of elected female representatives of factories and villages in an effort to mobilize them on government administrative tasks and to build female participation in village and factory soviets as well as the Russian Communist Party.
[5] Zetkin acknowledged that the Secretariat conducted its work under the "immediate direction and leadership" of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, governing body of the Comintern.
"[9] Zetkin also noted the important place played by female activists in the International Workers' Aid for Soviet Russia campaign of fundraising for famine relief.
[11] The 4th World Congress officially endorsed Zetkin's views in the resolution which it adopted, lauding the efficacy of "special structures" for female communist party members, such as national women's secretariats, and remarking that "unfortunately, some sections have failed partially or completely to carry out their duty to systematically promote Communist work among women" by failing to create such "indispensable" institutions.
[17] This change was to be unpublicized, however, with the same decision cravenly declaring that "in presentations to a general audience it is good, for tactical reasons, to preserve the name International Women's Secretariat.
"[17] At the same time ECCI suspended publication of the official organ of the Women's Section, Die Kommunistische Fraueninternationale, ostensibly for financial reasons.
[19] Also determining the course of the proceedings were the disciplined body of delegates from the Soviet Union who, in the words of historian E.H. Carr, "dominated the debates and confidently laid down the line for others to follow and imitate.
[22] Despite the lack of conviction of the concept's applicability outside of the specific conditions of the USSR, no formal challenge was made to the resolution calling for the system's implementation.
[25] In accord with the return to the radical rhetoric and policies of the so-called Third Period, Overlakh emphasized the need for women to engage in "special tasks" such as physically intervening in the transport of strikebreakers across picket lines.
[25] ECCI was determined to further lessen the place of specific appeals to women at this time, however, and two plenipotentiaries were dispatched to the meeting — exiled Finnish Communist leader Otto Kuusinen and Boris Vassiliev.
