On the fairly lengthy list of people who usually don’t get the respect they deserve until years after their attention-worthy actions have taken place are millions of women. Most of whom we don’t know by name, but for their collective efforts to push back against social injustices that affected both women and men.
In 1917 Russia was a country that was reeling from its involvement in World War I. Since the start of the 20th century Russia’s worldwide reputation was one of a country late to the industrialization movement that was moving other countries forward. Its major cities saw their populations doubling in the early years of the 1900s, throwing their citizens into a life of poverty and destitution. Housing and food shortages escalated, and Russia’s role fighting alongside the British during WWI say them taking the largest number of casualties of all the Allied nations.
On International Women’s Day, March 8, 1917, hundreds of female factory workers in Russia’s then-capital city of Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) took to the streets in protest. The movement soon increased its numbers to an estimated 100,000 people, both male and female. As a direct result, the Russian Romanov regime would fall after centuries in power.
Story by Jay Moon
