Communist greetings for women on March 8

Let's celebrate March 8 as the International Women's Day in Latvia with the words of the communist leader Stalin and the poet Lija Brīdaka!

Address from Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), Secretary General of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, on International Women's Day, March 8, 1925:

- International Women’s Day is a token of the invincibility of the working-class movement for emancipation and a harbinger of its great future. (..) Consequently, the first task of the proletariat, and of its advanced detachment—the Communist Party, is to wage a resolute struggle to free women, working women and peasant women, from the influence of the bourgeoisie, to enlighten them politically and to organise them under the banner of the proletariat. International Women’s Day is a means of winning the reserve of women toilers to the side of the proletariat.

But the women toilers are not only a reserve. If the working class pursues a correct policy, they can and must become a real working-class army, operating against the bourgeoisie. To forge from this reserve of women toilers an army of working women and peasant women, operating side by side with the great army of the proletariat—such is the second and decisive task of the working class.

Stalin, J. V. (1954). Works, Vol. 7, pp. 48-49. Moscow: Foreign Languages Pub. House.

Summary of the Women's Day as a National Holiday in Latvia by Lija Brīdaka (1932), a poet, writer, publicist and head of art institutions:

- Oh, the ceremonial council tables from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean with a one-day regulated tribute to the working woman - the social being! Oh, the upliftingly bustling celebrations in institutions and collectives, when even the most sloppy and inexperienced colleagues turned into miraculous supermen and were richly rewarded with the gratitude that only femininity can provide! Oh, the business of flower, flower, flower sellers, oh, sweet care in trolleybuses crowded with cake boxes, when after official celebrations sons and daughters rushed to their mothers until late hours... Yes, several generations will have something to remember, both good and evil, and I would be hypocritical to say that I do not remember a glass of sparkling champagne drunk for this event, flowers that do not fade in my heart, kindness and sweet warmth on a family Sunday, even the smell of something so fleeting and elusive as white lilac amid the snow.

Brīdaka, L. No Sieviešu dienas atvadoties (Saying goodbye to Women's Day) - "Zvaigzne", March 1990 (No 5), pp. 9.

The distance between Stalin's official justification for the celebration of Women's Day in Soviet times, and the actual course of the celebration word for word as depicted by L. Brīdaka, can be expressed in truly astronomical units. However, the two components of the celebration were inextricably linked and inseparable from each other. As soon as it was no longer possible to chant the phrases inherited from Stalin at the beginning of the celebration, the celebration itself ended, despite the fact that in the last years or even decades of Soviet rule, the opening speeches seemed a small thing that did not so much disturb as simply delay what people considered to be the real celebration. Namely, after the shortest possible speeches, to begin as big a celebration concert as possible, as long celebration tables as possible and as long dances as possible until the last tram, until the next morning or until the end of the week.

The collapse of the Soviet system in Latvia does not mean - at least did not mean until Covid-19 - the end of parties. On the contrary, people won the right to a more idle life on average with more extensive and varied leisure activities. However, the increase of such activities was not achieved just by adding new opportunities to old ones. The entertainment basket was revised in much the same way that people go through their belongings before moving to a new place of residence. Many items are more likely to end up in a landfill than in a workshop, where they will be repaired, upgraded and repainted for use following fashion and the new lifestyle of the owners. However, Women's Day as a public holiday has proven useful in most territories of the former Soviet Union - 11 of the 15 republics of the USSR. However, this does not mean that Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Moldova, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, as well as 12 other countries that have not inherited it from the USSR, are still celebrating the holiday in the same way. Women's Day has been used by the three Baltic States and Turkmenistan as an opportunity to show their renunciation of the Soviet heritage.

During the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was a worn-out phrase that what was happening was moving from one communal apartment to separate apartments. On paper, this is an improvement in living conditions, although it does not exclude the possibility that for some residents of the communal apartment his new separate apartment will turn out to be a cardboard box under a bridge or at the stairwell of the same house. In such unfortunate cases, people will probably regret giving up their place in their previous home. It's harder to guess what is the opinion of people whose living conditions have improved.

Never and nowhere is it so good for people not to want something better, including the impossible. Basically, everything revolves around the impossibility of going back to the past, when the grass was greener and the sky was bluer. It is, of course, an impossibility to return to childhood, youth, and later but still previous stages of life, when there was still more strength and hope than afterwards.

It is not possible to renew the celebration of Women's Day in essence if the state were to give it some status, the discussions of which have not stopped since 1990.

In reality, this would only increase the confusion, in which the majority of Latvians would rather ignore these days than try to find out whether Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May is the same thing or something different than Family Day on May 15; and there is also Father's Day on the second Sunday in September and All Lovers Day on February 14, which should not be confused with All Saints' Day, which - the day - is to be celebrated on the night of October 31 to November 1.

Not specifically for Women's Day, but for the introduction of any holiday, a decision of the state authorities is not enough if it does not express the will and goals like in the given Stalin's example. Specifically for the introduction of Women's Day in Latvia, his words were translated and localized by the Central Council of the Latvian SSR Trade Union Bureau decision of 27 February 1941 "On the organization of the International Communist Women's Day of March 8" "for it to happen in the spirit of implementing the decisions of the XVIII Party Conference, implementing production programs, raising labor productivity, strengthening labor discipline, socialist competition and further development of the Stakhanovite movement and protection and increase of the economic power of our land, at the same time raising revolutionary vigilance and including Soviet Latvian women in the active production and community work”.

Celebrations do not arise from thin air, but from violence at least to the extent that the Soviet occupiers practiced in Latvia in 1940/1941. Its effects varied greatly, including the creation of "even the smell of something so fleeting and elusive as white lilac amid the snow."

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