A publicist who moved between reformist socialism and anti-party politics
During the famine of 1921 she worked in Pomgol relief, and the following year she was expelled from Soviet Russia.
Yekaterina Kuskova was a political activist and writer who moved from revolutionary populism through Marxism and Economism toward liberal reformist socialism. Her 1899 Credo, which prioritised workers’ economic struggle and democratic reform, helped provoke a major dispute over the strategy of Russian Social Democracy. After 1905 she pursued democratic alliances through the Union of Liberation, the cooperative movement, women’s equality work, and journalism; in 1917 she supported the Provisional Government while also opposing the Kornilov movement. During the famine of 1921 she organised non-Bolshevik relief work in Pomgol with Sergei Prokopovich, but after the committee was dissolved she was arrested and expelled, continuing to write in exile.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1880s–1893Joined clandestine populist circles; arrested and exiled to Nizhny Novgorod
- 1895–1899Married Sergei Prokopovich; worked in émigré Social Democracy and developed Economism
- 1903–1905Helped found the Union of Liberation; edited Nasha Zhizn
- 1906–1914Published Bez Zaglaviia; worked in cooperatives and for women’s equality
- 1917Published Vlasti Naroda; delegate to the Democratic Conference and Pre-Parliament
- 1921Non-Bolshevik organiser in the All-Russian Committee for Famine Relief, Pomgol
- 1922–1958After expulsion, worked in émigré journalism in Berlin, Prague, and Geneva
Related historical events
Women’s rights and cooperative work
Kuskova took part in the women’s equality movement and the cooperative movement. She discussed the cooperative movement’s aims and ideals in a pamphlet titled Son pod pervoe maya (skazka-pravda) [A Dream on the Eve of May Day (A True Tale)]. She also wrote on women’s equality. In “Women and Equality,” published in 1908 in Soiuz zhenshchin, the organ of a women’s equality organization, she argued that women were born free and entitled to the same rights as men, and called for civil and political rights commensurate with women’s labor for society. The article framed equality as a question of both the value of women’s work and their citizenship.