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ABSTRACT
Two of the earliest women's suffrage victories were achieved in the Russian Empire, in Finland and Russia, as a result of wars and revolutions. Their significance has been largely ignored, yet study of these achievements challenges the standard paradigms about the conditions (struggle within a democracy, geographic location on the 'periphery'), which favoured early suffrage breakthroughs. This article analyses the particular circumstances in Finland and Russia, which, in a relatively short amount of time, broke down resistance to giving women the vote. An examination of the events surrounding the February 1917 Russian Revolution, which toppled the Tsar, demonstrates the significant role of women in initiating and furthering the revolutionary momentum as well as fighting for their own rights. Both the Finns and the Russians pioneered in extending the legacies of the French and American Revolutions to include women.
KEYWORDS: Feminism, Finland, Russia, Revolution, Women's Rights, Women's Suffrage
The Russian Empire was the site of two of the earliest, quickest, and most complete female suffrage breakthroughs, in Finland in 1906, and in revolutionary Russia in March and July 1917, yet their significance has been largely ignored. Historians of global feminism generally portray the first women's suffrage victories as happening in the Western democracies, colonial and post-colonial states. Some argue that early suffrage gains were won 'in nations most similar to England', 'independent, Western countries with a strong, national women's movement', or 'countries where there was no, or at most minimal, class tension'. Those favouring a more global context argue that women's suffrage first came to states and nations on the periphery, far from Europe but with strong connections to the West, like New Zealand and Australia.1
As part of the West or as part of the rest, Russia does not fit these paradigms. At the turn of the twentieth century, Russia was neither stable, nor democratic, nor lacking class tension, but a highly stratified multinational empire ruled by an autocratic Tsar. Although its relation to the West has been contentious, Russia, occupying the largest landmass of any country on earth, was hardly peripheral. Part of the system of European alliances, a major battlefield in Europe's wars, Russia was more central in the early twentieth century than was the United States.2
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