The only woman on the Orgburo and Secretariat, who led the Zhenotdel at its peak
At a 1927 international conference, she called out her own party's economists: "the tendency still prevails to look upon woman labour as of smaller value."
A textile worker turned revolutionary who led the Zhenotdel (Women's Department) at its peak, driving women's entry into industrial labour. She was the only woman to serve on the Orgburo and Secretariat (1926–1930).
Career Timeline
- 1906–1914Textile and metalworker in St. Petersburg; union organizer; Pravda contributor as 'Shura the Metalworker'
- 1914–1917Arrested and exiled
- 1917–1924Party committee, labour commissar, Tver women's dept head, Proletarka factory committee chair
- 1924–1929Head of Zhenotdel (CC Women's Dept); editor of Rabotnitsa journal
- 1926–1930CC member, Orgburo member, candidate Secretariat member
- 1930–1934Member of the Central Control Commission
- 1934–1938Chair of the Textile (Cotton) Workers' Union
- 1938–1951Director of textile factories in Moscow
Related historical events
The Last Head of Zhenotdel: Women's Industrial Integration and the 1930 Dissolution
Artyukhina led the Zhenotdel (the CC Women's Department) at its peak from 1925 to 1930. Under her direction, the Zhenotdel drove mass literacy campaigns for women, expanded crèches, communal laundries, and dining halls, and above all pushed for women's integration into industrial labour. In a 1927 report for International Press Correspondence she noted that 'among many of our economists, the tendency still prevails to look upon woman labour as of smaller value and as less remunerative,' and insisted that raising women's skill levels was essential to defeating this prejudice. During her tenure, factory crèches reached 778, women's cooperative membership surpassed 2.6 million, and women's share of the metal-industry workforce doubled from the pre-war level. / Yet by the late 1920s, as crash industrialization gathered pace, the party came to regard the Zhenotdel's autonomous women's organizing as an unnecessary drain on resources. Under Stalin's Great Break, on 5 January 1930 the Central Committee formally dissolved the Zhenotdel on the grounds that 'the woman question has been solved,' transferring its functions to general party bodies and trade unions. The dissolution of the Zhenotdel was a watershed in Soviet gender policy. Women's entry into industry continued to expand, but women still constituted only 5 percent of party membership, and the independent channel for women's political representation was gone. Artyukhina did not publicly oppose the decision. A committed communist, she went on to serve industrialization in the posts the party assigned her: chair of the textile workers' union, then factory director.