Women's International Democratic Federation, the Third World and the Global Cold War (Gradskova, 2019)

=== [PDF page 1] === Women's History Review ISSN: 0961-2025 (Print) 1747-583X (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rwhr20 Women’s international Democratic Federation, the ‘Third World’ and the Global Cold War from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s Yulia Gradskova To cite this article: Yulia Gradskova (2020) Women’s international Democratic Federation, the ‘Third World’ and the Global Cold War from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s, Women's History Review, 29:2, 270-288, DOI: 10.1080/09612025.2019.1652440 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2019.1652440 © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 14 Aug 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 9736 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 8 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rwhr20 === [PDF page 2] === WOMEN’S HISTORY REVIEW 2020, VOL. 29, NO. 2, 270–288 https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2019.1652440 Women’s international Democratic Federation, the ‘Third World’ and the Global Cold War from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s Yulia Gradskova Department of History, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden This article examines the work of the Women’s International Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) with women from Africa, Asia and Democratic Federation; Cold Latin America. It analyzes their role in the WIDF’s decision-making War; Global South; process and activities during a period marked by decolonization decolonization; activism and the intensification of women’s rights activism outside Europe. This analysis contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which the WIDF’s official position on support for the rights of women in the Global South was translated into the practical work of organization. The article is based on materials from Moscow archives that have hitherto not been explored in research on the WIDF. It shows that, in spite of the WIDF’s formal anti-colonial stance, women from the Global South were not always given a voice or able to insert their demands into WIDF policy. ‘Dear African sisters! [..] We, the Soviet people, know well that the gifted and hardworking African people—being heirs to an ancient and advanced civilization—will make every effort towards overcoming the long-lasting traces of colonialism when it comes to education. […] The women of Uzbekistan happily showed their daily life to our friends. They told them, that in Uzbekistan, where before the revolution the entire population was illiterate, today there is an entire system of schools, technical educational centres and research institutions that prepare qualified specialists’.1 This is an extract of a speech delivered by Zukhra Rakhimbabaeva, an Uzbek woman, at a seminar on education for African women organized by the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF) in Tashkent in September 1962. Women from some 20 African countries participated in this seminar. In late 1960s, Rakhimbabaeva worked in the Secretariat of the WIDF in Berlin and in that capacity also helped to organize a conference on illiteracy in Khartum (Sudan) in 1970. The following will analyze the WIDF’s relationship with women not only from Africa but also Asia and Latin America, in particular the role that these women played in the organization’s decision-making process and its activities during a period marked by decolonization and the intensification of women’s rights activism outside Europe. CONTACT Yulia Gradskova yulia.gradskova@historia.su.se Department of History, Stockholm University, 10691, Stockholm, Sweden This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. === [PDF page 3] === WOMEN’S HISTORY REVIEW 271 Including women from non-European countries and (former) colonies into the WIDF was challenging, not only because conditions of life and activism in ‘Third World’2 countries differed from those in the First (Western) and Second (communist) worlds but also because it necessitated structural and ideological changes within this organization. In particular, the WIDF’s emphasis on the protection of peace was hardly compatible with the militant activities and armed struggle in which many women in Africa and Asia participated. The struggle for women’s rights was hindered by illiteracy, poverty and racism in the Global South more than it was in European and North American countries. As such, this study contributes to a better understanding of the extent to which the WIDF’s official position on supporting the rights of women in the Global South was translated into the practical work of the organization and how much of a role these women had in the WIDF’s decision-making process. Before the breakdown of the Soviet Union and the end of the state socialist system, the WIDF was one of the most important transnational women’s organizations;3 it had the official status of an NGO at the United Nations4 and included members from more than 100 countries in the 1970s-1980s. The WIDF was set up in 1945 in Paris by women from 40 countries as an attempt to prevent new wars and to demand more rights for women and better conditions for children.5 Between 1951 and 1991, it was headquartered in East Berlin. The organization had to leave France during the wars in Korea and Vietnam because of its active protest against sending French soldiers to Vietnam and the distribution of a special report on American war crimes in Korea.6 The WIDF held an International Congress of Women every four- five years. It had a Council that met once a year with participation from all member countries; an Executive Committee (later called Bureau) whose members were elected by the Council.7 The secretariat was the permanent body between council and board meetings and thus key to the WIDF’s decision-making process.8 Initially, it consisted of some ten people but expanded in the in the late 1960s. The WIDF was often accused by contemporaries of being a ‘Soviet front’ and a ‘Communist organization’ not only because the Federation defended Soviet foreign politics and the Soviet model of women’s emancipation but also because women from the Soviet Union and other Communist countries constituted an important part of its membership.9 The WIDF’s links with Moscow, in particular at the leadership level, continue to be disputed and this article contributes to this discussion on the basis of new materials from Moscow archives. Historian Francisca de Haan, who was the first to study the WIDF’s history, has described it as ‘a progressive, ‘left-feminist’ international umbrella organization, with an emphasis on peace, women’s rights, anti-colonialism and anti-racism.’10 She has argued that women who belonged to this organization had a political agenda independent from Moscow and focused on women’s rights and peace and should therefore not be seen as a ‘Soviet front.’11 In contrast to de Haan and various other scholars, including Melanie Ilic, Raluca Popa and Kristen Ghodsee, 12 some other historians have stressed the contradictory part that the organization played in the development of the women’s movement during the Cold War. For example, Mercedes Yusta has claimed that the WIDF fulfilled an important role in criticizing US involvement in Southeast Asia, the slow denazification of Germany, and the Franco regime in Spain. But she has also pointed out that the WIDF negatively influenced the development of the global women’s movement during the Cold War because of Soviet influence on the organization === [PDF page 4] === 272 Y. GRADSKOVA so that the ‘continent’s geopolitical division was reproduced within the women’s movement’.13 In other words, she has argued that Soviet influence prevented joint action of women in ‘pro-communist’ and ‘pro-western’ organizations. Chiara Bonfiglioli has shown the importance of the WIDF as a forum for women’s rights and as a centre of anti-fascist activism in post-war Europe but has also demonstrated the negative role the Federation played during the Soviet/Yugoslav split in 1949—the Yugoslav women’s organization was expelled from WIDF—and for the cooperation between Yugoslav and Italian women.14 When examining the popularity of the WIDF’s ideas in the Global South, it is important to pay attention to Odd Arne Westad’s observation that ‘communist’ messages of a promise of progress and justice were attractive to countries in the Global South.15 The WIDF’s message was not explicitly coated in communist ideology and could indeed have attracted many women who saw themselves as mothers, aspired towards peace, independence and the development of their countries, and demanded education, political rights and children’s welfare. Cold War research has shown that many organizations in the Global South tried to achieve their goals by using (temporary) simultaneous alliances with the West and the East or by facilitating cooperation between the two sides (e.g. human rights activism in Global South countries).16 At the same time, recent studies on international youth and trade union movements during the same period have demonstrated that these movements were important battlefields in the cultural Cold War: Soviet attempts to control civil society and ‘capture the spirit of youth,’17 especially in the ‘Third World’, provoked responses on the part of Western intelligence.18 As for women’s organizations in the West and East, they too undertook many efforts to attract members from the Global South. Leila Rupp’s research on the three oldest transnational women’s organizations— the International Council of Women (ICW), International Women’s Suffrage Alliance (SAW) and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)—has demonstrated that these liberal organizations aspired to expand their influence in countries outside Europe and North America but in the beginning experienced problems with becoming ‘truly international’ and representing women from different parts of the world.19 This suggests that women’s organizations in Asia, Africa and Latin America struggled to assert a degree of agency in the transnational women’s movement, including the WIDF. Soviet archival materials which have so far received scant scholarly attention form the basis of this study. The Soviet Antifascist Women’s Committee (created in 1941and renamed The Committee of Soviet Women in the 1950s) was one of the founders of the Federation and as such the official languages of the WIDF included Russian alongside French, English and Spanish. The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) in Moscow has preserved a large collection of WIDF’s documents, including stenographic reports from the WIDF’s Bureau and Council meetings from its early years, as well as extensive correspondence between the Soviet Women’s Committee in Moscow and its representative at the WIDF’s Secretariat in Berlin (up to 1964), some of which was marked as ‘classified’.20 In addition to the archival sources in Moscow, this article also uses materials housed at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam, such as WIDF information bulletins, and the WIDF’s official publication Women of the Whole World.21 Together === [PDF page 5] === WOMEN’S HISTORY REVIEW 273 these materials help us to understand how the WIDF described its activities and the role that women from Africa, Asia and Latin America played in this organization. Following Chiara Bonfiglioli, I differentiate between Women of the Whole World and other publications and documents aimed at external readers on the one hand, and materials that circulated internally, such as protocols, minutes and letters, on the other.22 The archival collection in GARF enhances our understanding of how women from Africa, Asia and Latin America contributed to discussions in the various decision-making bodies and the concerns they raised. Particularly, the correspondence of the Soviet WIDF delegates provides information about discussions and rumours within WIDF leadership that were not minuted. Although the materials consulted rarely included first-hand accounts by women from the Africa, Asia and Latin America or evaluations of the work that they did in the WIDF, they do allow us to unpack the WIDF’s strategies with respect to women from these areas and understand Soviet interpretations of events and developments relating to them. The late-1950s to the mid-1960s were marked by crucial changes, in particular decolonization. The 1955, Bandung Conference of mostly new independent Asian and African states which discussed economic and cultural cooperation and opposed colonization,23 paved the way for the Non-Aligned Movement, a forum of newly independent states which advocated a middle course between the Western and Eastern blocs. The period also witnessed the growing political participation of women in Latin America.24 Hence it is of particular interest to explore how the WIDF advanced its activities vis-à-vis women from Asian, African and Latin American countries during this period. This article will do this first by offering a short summary of existing scholarship on the WIDF’s work relating to Africa, Asia and Latin America. It will then move on to analyze the WIDF’s work outside Europe and North America through a review of its official publications and reports and explore how any problems relating to this work and views on the role of women’s organizations from Asia, Africa and Latin America were discussed in correspondence between various Soviet representatives. And lastly, it will analyze how much agency women from Africa, Asia and Latin America had in the WIDF, using mainly protocols and minutes. The WIDF and women from the Global South The WIDF has so far attracted little attention from Russian scholars probably because they are more interested in the resistance of women to the Soviet regime and their everyday experiences under the Communism. 25 Most of what is written on the WIDF is in English and informed by a West European and North American feminist approach. The WIDF’s anti-imperialist politics has also received some scholarly attention but this focusses mostly on WIDF’s support for a specific country, organization or region, e.g. the Indonesian leftist women’s organization Gerwani, The National Federation of Indian Women, the anti-imperialist struggle in Vietnam and Algeria, and the antifascist movement in Latin America.26 Yet existing scholarship has so far not offered a more general and systematic picture of the WIDF’s attitude towards women’ organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The influence of the WIDF on the activities of women from the countries fighting against colonialism and for independence has been discussed by several researchers. Focusing on Vietnam and Algeria, Katharine McGregor has argued that the ‘WIDF’s support for anti- === [PDF page 6] === 274 Y. GRADSKOVA colonialism was remarkably progressive.’27 In particular, she has specified three strategies the organization adopted to support anti-colonialism. First, forging networks with colonized women by publicizing accounts of how women were affected by colonialism. Second, providing a platform for colonized women to articulate their ideas at the WIDF’s congresses and in its official publications. And finally, pressuring European powers ‘to uphold the new human rights standards.’28 In an article on Indonesian participation in the WIDF, McGregor has furthermore suggested that while the WIDF in its answers to Gerwani, the Indonesian women’s organization, conveyed ‘the impression of shared struggles’, the relationship between the two organizations was fraught with friction amidst a context of growing nationalism and militarization of Indonesia.29 Elisabeth Armstrong has studied the documents of the women’s congress in China in 1949 and shown its importance as one of several international events that contributed to a new type of solidarity.30 She has referred to this as the ‘solidarity of possibility when Asian activists took leadership and inspiration from one another.’31 Jadwiga Pieper-Mooney furthermore has done much to enhance our understanding of the importance of the WIDF’s information campaigns in its early period, starting with the Korean war in the 1950s.32 In addition to unpacking some of the work that the WIDF has done in relation to anticolonialism, which is not easy due to a lack of information concerning several aspects of the WIDF’s politics towards women in Africa, Asia and Latin America,33 scholars have also pointed to the negative impact that embracing the WIDF’s official line could have on member organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. For example, in her article on the well-known Argentinian Communist and WIDF leader of the 1970s, Fanny Edelman, Pieper-Mooney has shown that in line with the WIDF’s Marxist rigidity, the Women’s Union of Argentina, a member of the WIDF led by Edelman for many years, criticized feminism as a bourgeois movement which in turn led to conservative views on sexuality and sexual rights.34 As has been amply demonstrated in existing scholarship on anti-colonial movements and the formation of independent states, a declaration of national independence did not always mean full independence in practice.35 In fact, during the Cold War attempts at finding a new way often led to new dependencies, not least from the Soviet bloc.36 According to Laura Bier, aspirations of modernity among some women’s organizations, such as some of those in Egypt, led them to aspire to Western modernity rather than reject it.37 While the WIDF and the Soviet Union and countries of the Eastern bloc used the language of modernity in its policies relating to newly independent countries,38 it is important to explore what interpretations of modernity and in particular women’s status were offered by the WIDF, and if these clashed with local understandings of women’s rights. The following section will assess what ideas of modernity and women’s status were voiced at WIDF meetings by both the leadership and delegates from the Africa, Asia and Latin America. Decolonization, anti-imperialism and the WIDF’s defense of women’s rights in the Global South From the moment of its creation, the WIDF was open to women’s organizations from different countries and the representatives from women’s organizations from several countries of the Global South, including India, Argentina and Algeria, were present in === [PDF page 7] === WOMEN’S HISTORY REVIEW 275 Paris for the first WIDF congress in 1945. The second WIDF congress in Budapest in 1948 decided to send an international commission to travel to India, Burma and Malaysia ‘to enquire into the question of women’s struggle for their rights and a decent life in security.’39 The commission also had to ‘assure the women of those countries of the unqualified solidarity of the WIDF.’40 Around the same time, the WIDF tried to organize the next congress in India.41 Due to the negative attitude of the Indian government, however, the first WIDF congress in Asia took place in China in 1949. That the WIDF was actively involved in the Cold War political confrontation in Asia can be seen in the case of its support for the Korean fight against the ‘aggression of American imperialism’ which led to accusations of being a ‘Communist front’ under the control of Moscow and its concomitant international isolation as well as the closing down of one of its members—the Congress of American Women—by the US government.42 The WIDF’s support for the anti-colonial war in Vietnam furthermore led to a conflict with the French government. The Soviet representative in the Secretariat, Zinaida Gurina, wrote in February 1950 about a ‘visa war’ started by the French government against Soviet representatives in the WIDF. According to Gurina, ‘the French government is so angry with the Soviet Union because of Vietnam that it uses every possibility for retaliation.’43 In her letter to Moscow in May of the same year, Gurina wrote about the beginning of the court case against WIDF president, Ms. Cotton, for approving a poster calling for a protest against the enrolment of soldiers to be sent to Vietnam.44 These difficulties contributed to the removal of the WIDF’s headquarters from Paris to East Berlin in 1951.45 During the 1950s, WIDF’s activities in different countries outside Europe intensified. For example, the WIDF organized two conferences aimed at Latin American women— one in Rio de Janeiro in 1954 and another in Santiago de Chile in 1959. Furthermore, in December 1960, the Bureau of the WIDF had its first meeting outside Europe—in Jakarta, Indonesia. And in 1961 the WIDF supported the Conference of Women of Asia and Africa in Cairo, Egypt.46 At both its international congresses and the European meetings of its leadership, the WIDF expressed solidarity with several countries in particular. In addition to Vietnam, Algeria and Cuba were at the centre of the WIDF’s attention. But the WIDF also attempted to collect information about other countries of potential interest. In 1961, it carried out information-gathering missions to Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Mali, Guinea, Ghana and Nigeria. A year later, a WIDF delegation visited the Republic of South Africa for the purpose of ‘studying the effects of apartheid on the life of women and children’.47 And in 1963, the WIDF hosted the World Congress of Women in Moscow with representatives of 113 countries. As Francisca de Haan has shown, this congress paved the way for the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination of Women (the basis for the future Convention for Elimination of All the Forms of Discrimination Against Women—CEDAW), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1967. A total of 18 out of 22 countries that supported the resolution behind this declaration were ‘Third World’ countries.48 Thus the WIDF paid significant attention to problems of countries outside Europe, attempted to study the situation of women and children there, and made an effort both in bringing women’s organizations into the Federation and offering leadership positions to prominent women from these organizations. These activities led to increased participation, as women from 113 countries participated in the Moscow Congress of 1963 compared with representatives of 67 countries at the 1953 Congress in Copenhagen.49 === [PDF page 8] === 276 Y. GRADSKOVA The WIDF periodical Women of the Whole World published many letters that expressed solidarity with various Asian, African and Latin American countries and also letters from women in these countries showing gratitude for the WIDF’s support. For example, a Jordanian woman expressed her thanks to the WIDF in issue 2 from 1953: When we learned about a telegram that was sent to our government, which expressed the protest against an inhuman relationship to our husbands, sons and brothers—those who supported peace, but were sent to the concentration camps in the desert—we felt the support of the WIDF. This telegram expressed the solidarity of millions [of women].50 In 1958, many editions of Women of the Whole World were dedicated to the fight against colonialism and focused on newly independent countries. For example, the WIDF congress in Vienna that year was dedicated to two key issues—the struggle for peace and the struggle against colonialism.51 An article about the congress stated that among its participants were many from countries ‘with the police regime and where colonialism sheds the blood of innocent victims. And they did not hide that this meeting gave them unlimited hope.’52 The same issue published also short articles on the history of the African National Congress, apartheid, and on a women’s march in Pretoria (in 1956).53 Issue 11 of 1958 furthermore published a letter from the leader of a new organization for Iraqi women, Lamis Hussein.54 Entitled a ‘letter of a friend’, it quoted Hussein’s request for an Arabic language issue of Women of the Whole World: ‘I request, do not forget about us, send us 20 copies with the first post.’55 Her request highlights the importance of the WIDF’s political agenda for a women’s organization of an independent Iraq: We have an urgent need for information about the women’s movement. You will easily understand the need for such cooperation. That is why we ask you to send: (1) copies of your journal, including old issues, (2) copies of other women’s journals that according to you could be useful for our work and for our women.56 An issue of Women of the Whole World from 1959 included a report by Leyli Ahmad, the magazine’s correspondent, entitled ‘Happy meeting’, which focused on the fifteenth anniversary of the women’s federation in Albania to which women from the United Arab Republic, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq were invited. Ahmad expressed her happiness in getting to know her Albanian sisters: For the first time, we realized that we have our dear relatives who were separated from us during many years of colonial domination. Now, when the sun of freedom is shining over Albania, and some Arab countries can see the sky free from the influence of domination and imperialism, and now that we met nothing will separate us.57 Some famous women from countries outside Europe were also represented on the pages of Women of the Whole World. Issue 1 from 1963, for example, included an article by Maria- Luisa Vincentini about a visit of the Chilean singer/songwriter Isabel Parra to the WIDF quarters in Berlin.58 The same issue also included an article on the president of the Federation of Cuban women, Vilma Espín. This short overview of selected issues and articles of the WIDF’s main periodical shows that the organization was presenting itself as interested in women’s rights in countries outside Europe and also offered new women’s organizations practical help and information. Finally, although we need to remember that letters and reports from local organizations in different countries were carefully selected for publication by the journal editors, === [PDF page 9] === WOMEN’S HISTORY REVIEW 277 it seems that women’s organizations from different countries were very grateful to the WIDF for help and support. Echoes of this material can be found in other externallyfacing WIDF’s documents and publications. This material, however, does not tell us much about the most debated issues, differences in opinion, and the specificities of interactions between WIDF’s European representatives and representatives from the Global South. The next section, based on some of the WIDF’s internal documents, will explore how discussions around women’s rights in the Global South and on anti-colonialism developed and how decisions about action to advance them were taken. On the crossroads between ideology and organizational growth Already from the moment of its creation, the WIDF was officially open to women from every country of the world, including dependent territories. The title of the Federation’s periodical Women of the Whole World amply highlights this aim of becoming a worldwide organization. However, in the early 1950s, the WIDF was mainly an organization in which white (West and East) European women constituted the majority of both the memberand leadership. And it is important to note that WIDF membership59 was particularly high amongst women’s organizations in socialist countries, including China. In 1953, only one non-European woman (from Communist China) was a member of the Secretariat and three non-European women were part of the WIDF’s top-leadership—president, vice-presidents and general secretary- 60: Chai Chan from China, Seza Nabarawi from Egypt, and Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti61 from Nigeria. Chan was the leader of the Chinese Communist women’s organization, while Nabarawi and Ransome-Kuti were independent female activists. 62 It seems, however, that Ransome-Kuti, one of two female activists from a non-European, non-Communist country, only sporadically participated in WIDF bureau and council meetings as her name rarely features in the minutes. Seza Nabarawi, a non-Communist activist from Egypt, was the only one non-European woman who seems to have played a more prominent role in the WIDF’s top-leadership. However, financial difficulties and political repressions in her country often prevented her from visiting the WIDF’s leadership meetings. The WIDF’s bureau was its main governing body in between the yearly council meetings. It had about 40 members from some 12 countries from the ‘West’63, 9 ‘communist’ countries (8 East European and China) and about 9 countries from the Global South— Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Egypt, India, Iran, Mongolia and Nigeria. However, while each of the countries of the Global South was represented on the bureau only by one person, Italy was represented by four, France, Germany, USSR and China by three each, and Poland and Hungary by two each.64 By the mid-1950s, the WIDF’s leadership started to see an expansion of the organization as one of its primary tasks: it was particularly important for growth of the organization in the context of hostile politics of USA and many other Western countries.65 Yet as the organization was deemed by many in Europe and North America to be a ‘communist’ organization, achieving this goal was not easy. However, at the same time, the development of anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia, the Bandung movement’s political aims of independence and development, and the interest of several newly independent countries in socialist ideas facilitated the expansion of the WIDF’s work outside of Europe. === [PDF page 10] === 278 Y. GRADSKOVA Documents from the Soviet archives show that the Soviet women changed their views on the participation of women from newly independent countries over time. Firstly, representatives from the Committee of the Soviet Woman in the WIDF were very interested in the expansion of the organization, particularly in attracting women from Asia, Africa and Latin America to ‘their camp’ in the Cold War. Indeed, a letter from 1957 from Ivanova, the Soviet representative in the Secretariat in Berlin, to Nina Popova, the head of the Antifascist Committee of Soviet Women, indicates that the Soviet authorities pushed for the visibility of women from non-European countries in the WIDF’s leadership: I want to send you some information about how different countries are represented in the Secretariat. There are nine countries that are represented there: Italy, France, England, China, the Soviet Union, Spain, the DDR, Czechoslovakia, and the USA (represented by emigrant American women). Thus, from nine countries there are seven that belong to the European continent, one country belongs to the American one and one belongs to Asia. Latin America, Africa and the Middle East are not represented in the Secretariat, while Asia is represented insufficiently.66 It is important to mention that Nina Popova was elected as one of the WIDF’s vice-presidents in 1953. Between 1956 and 1961, Popova occupied key positions in the Communist party of the Soviet Union. For instance, in 1956 she was elected onto the Central Committee of the CPSU67 and later served as head of the Soviet Societies of Friendship with Foreign Countries.68 As such, it is likely that she was able to share information received from the Soviet representatives at the Secretariat in Berlin directly with the Central Committee of the party and that her questions to the Soviet representatives at the WIDF’s secretariat were partly requests for information that the Soviet leadership required for planning its policies vis-à-vis newly independent and non-sovereign countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The documents show that the Soviet Communist Party and state leaders saw women’s organizations from the ‘developing countries’ as an important political force and allies in the Cold War. The new women’s organizations from Asia and Africa that joined the WIDF were usually addressed in the WIDF documents (and also in the Soviet propaganda) as ‘progressive’ forces. It was argued that failure to attract these organizations to the WIDF would enable them to side with the ‘enemy’ camp. The lack of representatives of the newly independent countries in WIDF governing bodies or the lack of visibility of prominent women from Asia, Africa and Latin America at the WIDF congresses and meetings had the potential to damage the image of the organization, while also upsetting Soviet plans for spreading its influence in Asia, Africa and Latin America. However, the WIDF structures changed only slowly. This is why the Soviet representatives in the WIDF often suggested making a special effort to attract important and respected women from countries of the Global South to its meetings. For instance, while discussing the WIDF meeting in Copenhagen in 1960, which celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of International Women’s Day, in a letter to the Soviet representative in the Secretariat, Popova insisted on the importance of bringing African female leaders to Copenhagen, yet acknowledged that many of these women would probably have been more interested in taking part in another conference in Africa organized by Egyptian women.69 === [PDF page 11] === WOMEN’S HISTORY REVIEW 279 One of the ways the WIDF’s leadership tried to extend membership was by bringing its activities closer to non-European countries, such as the earlier-mentioned bureau meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1960. The Indonesian women’s movement was one of the biggest and most active outside Europe. Not all (European) members of the WIDF’s leadership considered the bureau meeting in Jakarta successful, largely for logistical reasons. But it seems also that this meeting confronted WIDF leaders with women whose conditions were so unlike their own. For example, Soviet representative Maria Skotnikova informed Nina Popova on 23 March 1960 that: After coming back from Indonesia, Carmen Zanti70 informed the Secretariat about the meeting of the WIDF’s Bureau and its decisions. She stated that in spite of the drawbacks of having a meeting of the Bureau in Indonesia, it was a positive step in the development of the women’s movement in Asia, in particular, for the women’ s movement in Indonesia. At the same time, it allowed members of the Bureau to better understand the problems faced by women in Asia and Africa.71 But the most difficult challenge of including women from different countries into the WIDF’s leadership was that it required fundamental changes in the structure and working methods of the organization. Representatives of women’s organizations from countries in the Global South often held different understandings of women’s rights, development, and working methods than the European women who had set up and run the WIDF for the years as their countries were marked by mass illiteracy, poverty and racism. As such, the WIDF’s leadership had to reconsider its strategies in reaching out to and communicating with its existing and potential members. A discussion in the early 1960s centring around the WIDF’s aims of peace and ‘antiimperialism’ illustrates the challenges of extending membership beyond Europe. The active participation of women from Asia and Africa in anti-colonial movements questioned both the solidarity of women from colonizing and colonized countries and the central place of the protection of peace in the WIDF’s ideology. In particular, it was connected to the armed struggle against colonialism that many women from Africa and Asia actively participated in or supported. For example, the Jordan representative at the WIDF’s bureau meeting in Prague in 1959 questioned whether the aims of peace and national independence could coexist. After expressing her support for Khrushchev’s visit to the US and for the new Soviet initiatives on disarmament, she stressed that: Even if our century is one of peaceful coexistence, there cannot be a real coexistence between the colonizers and the colonized. That is why we ask you to take into consideration the conditions in our country.72 The idea that imperialism was the main obstacle to progress, peace and women’s rights— actively developed in early 1960s by the Chinese representatives in WIDF—also provoked a lot of discussion. In March 1963, a representative of the Chilean women’s movement expressed concerns about using anti-imperialist rhetoric in their everyday work with women: Our organization wants to be a mass organization. On our first congress we spoke about a fight against imperialists as well. The women in Chile are less advanced than women in Venezuela and Cuba. Thus, we do not speak to them in the language of Communist women [i.e. not using communist rhetoric]. Not all of them understand what the ‘fight against imperialism’ means. We speak to them about problems they have, this is our tactic. In order to expand === [PDF page 12] === 280 Y. GRADSKOVA the influence of the WIDF we have to use the language that can attract women from other organizations. We have to attract them, and can only then make a qualitative change.73 This position found support from Soviet representative Nina Popova as it corresponded with the aim of creating a mass organization, while also leaving open the door for the further transformation of women in the Chilean organization towards an embrace of communist ideas. As already mentioned, the slowly growing presence of women from outside Europe posed challenges to the internal structures and decision-making processes in the WIDF. But also contributing to this was the critique of Stalinism after Khrushchev’s speech at the 1956 CPSU congress.74 Bonfiglioli has shown that the Italian representatives of the WIDF played an especially important role in these discussions about the WIDF’s democracy due to changes in the Italian Women’s Union (UDI), which led to more emphasis on women’s emancipation and the adoption of reformist rather than revolutionary strategies.75 A letter sent to Moscow by one of the Soviet representatives at the WIDF’s headquarters in Berlin in 1957, discussing the publication of the Women of the Whole World, highlights the insistence of Italian representatives on internal democracy: Comrade Drynina [the USSR representative and member of the editing committee of the journal] has problems with our Italian friends on the journal. Angiola76 and Maddalena Rossi77 are not happy with the situation[..]. Angiola said to Maddalena and Odette Roux [a French representative] that Nina [ Drynina] wants to make the journal like ‘Pravda’. It means that she does not listen to our Italian friends. [According to Rossi] Everything is meaningless because the Soviet [members] do not understand their position. But the time will pass and everybody will understand that they [Rossi and other Italian women in WIDF]are right, similar to how the mistake with Yugoslavia78 is understood now.79 Rossi, then, suggested the WIDF was at present too much of ‘a party mechanism’ (makhovik partii),80 and needed to democratize in order to become a real mass organization. The discussion became even more heated when Rossi responded to Chinese representatives: ‘I want you to discuss the issues how they should be discussed here, and not how they are discussed at the Communist party’s meetings.’81 According to a classified letter sent by the Soviet representative, Maria Skotnikova, to Moscow in 1960, another Italian representative, the communist and WIDF General Secretary Carmen Zanti stressed ‘that it is wrong that WIDF leadership (rukovodiashchie organy) consists mainly of communist women.’ Skotnikova added that ‘in her discussion with M-me Cotton Carmen analyzed the WIDF membership and showed that 200 million WIDF members are mainly in the socialist countries’.82 Documents from the Soviet archives show that critiques such as Rossi’s and Zanti’s led to demands for a review of the WIDF’s structures and to make more space for the new women’s organizations from the Global South. In her speech at the opening of the WIDF bureau meeting in Prague in May 1962, WIDF’s General Secretary, Carmen Zanti, reflected on recent major changes which made the world a very different place compared not just to 1945 when the WIDF was founded but also to 1958 when the WIDF had held its last congress: There is the continent Africa, where we see enormous changes almost everywhere, where women are taking part in national liberation movements, and where they now occupy a place that is very different from the one they had before.83 === [PDF page 13] === WOMEN’S HISTORY REVIEW 281 And as such, Zanti argued, representatives of the newly independent countries should play a more prominent role in the WIDF. The classified letters from the Berlin Secretariat to Moscow around the same time discussed the problems of incorporating non-European women in the WIDF in more detail. According to the Soviet representative in the Secretariat, Zoya Lebedeva, Zanti had struggled with accepting African women as her equal yet was also adamant that the leadership of organization should not just be held by Italian or French women.84 Thus the gradual participation of women from the Global South led to growing tensions within the Federation. It did lead to some changes in the leadership of the organization—including the withdrawal of active participation of Italian women—85 but did not end Soviet women efforts to dominate the organization and use their positions to highlight the achievements of female emancipation in the USSR. Women from Asia, Latin America and Africa claiming their place in the WIDF Despite attempts by the WIDF’s leadership to attract more women from newly independent and other non-European countries, documents of the internal meetings from the 1950s and 1960s show that representatives from outside Europe struggled to obtain powerful positions in the WIDF and were often quite critical about decisions taken, as documents relating to WIDF council’s meeting in Prague from 13 till 15 October 1959 illustrate. The council meeting in Prague discussed the problem of representation among other issues.86 The protocols show that representatives from several countries demanded to have more representatives on the WIDF’s decision-making bodies. For example, the representative from Brazil, Isula Gerhard, stressed the need for more representatives from Latin America on the WIDF’s leadership: It is not correct that only two representatives from Latin America are present in the leadership. It makes it difficult to fully understand the problems experienced by other countries.87 In addition, Safira Jamila from Iraq demanded more representatives from Arab countries in the Secretariat: ‘The WIDF still does not fully understand the problems in some countries, which is also the case of the countries of the Arab East.’88 The same stance was also taken by the representative from India, Bhavni das Gupta, who suggested having more representatives from Asia and Africa on the WIDF’s leadership, in particular, on the Bureau. According to her: ‘The Bureau has to discuss not only general problems, but also the national ones. And it is impossible without representatives from those countries.’89 The representative from Cameroon, Marthe Moumie, too suggested the need for increasing the number of non-European women on the WIDF’s Secretariat. She also expressed the view that having a representative from Cameroon on the Secretariat would not just help the work of women’s organizations in her country and thereby aid its struggle for independence,90 but also enrich the WIDF, opening it up to the plight of women in different parts of the world. According to Moumie: ‘She (the female representative from Cameroon on the Secretariat) would be able to learn how to work (in the international women’s organization), but also for the correct orientation in the === [PDF page 14] === 282 Y. GRADSKOVA problems of the women of Cameroon.’91 Moumie, in other words, thought that if a Cameroonian woman was able to spent some time at the Secretariat, she would gain skills useful in mobilizing women when returning home, while members of the Secretariat would learn from her about the women in Cameroon. Alongside these various demands to increase non-European representatives on the WIDF’s various decision-making bodies, Nina Popova, the Soviet representative, was keen not to change the WIDF too much both in terms of structure and ideological outlook. For instance, Popova stressed that having relevant qualifications and experience on the secretariat was more important than having a diversity of the representatives from different continents. According to her, those Secretariat members: … had to have a high level of educational development and be able to analyse all the problems of the women’s movement, they had to be able to analyze the activities of regional organizations and also draw relevant conclusions from this analysis. The secretaries must be able to prepare high-quality recommendations to the Bureau and to the Council of the WIDF so that the organization’s leadership can arrive at the right decisions.92 Popova was supported by the French communist and former WIDF General Secretary, Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier,93 who also stressed that the Bureau’s membership could not expand too much and that in fact it already had enough representatives from Africa.94 Soviet representatives and some European representatives, then, were of the opinion that the WIDF should be a centralized organization collecting important information, analyzing it, and presenting its demands to the international media, other transnational organizations, national governments and various others. This view of the organization’s structure and decision-making, however, sidelined the voices of women from non-European countries, and any changes adopted were achieved without broad debate. Documents relating to later WIDF’s meetings suggest that the representatives of countries outside Europe continued to express concerns about and disagreements with some of the political ideas proposed by the WIDF’s leadership. For example, during a discussion of the new version of the WIDF programme at the 1963 congress in Moscow, a representative from Indonesia said: First of all, I want to propose changes to the title of this chapter [that was under discussion]. According to the table of contents that we have here and prepared by the Bureau, it sounds like: ‘Defense of women, mothers, workers,’ etc. We want to suggest the following title: ‘Defense of women and realization of the rights of women in political, economic social and cultural and educational spheres’. Also, we would like to add a paragraph dealing with peasant women. We want to include a special point on the equal rights for men and women with respect to the ownership and use of the land. I want to repeat this in order that my words should be correctly translated into French: equality of women and men with respect to the ownership and use of land, as well as in use of the products of land.95 In turn, the delegate from Sudan stressed the need to include in the program support for the struggle for independence: We want the program of the Federation to correspond to the desires of our women. We want the Federation to directly state in its program that it supports the struggle for national independence and democracy, and against colonialism.96 === [PDF page 15] === WOMEN’S HISTORY REVIEW 283 In other words, representatives of women’s organizations from the Global South fought two fights: first, they tried to get their concerns and issues included in the WIDF’s official programmes, and second, they wanted to get a seat on the WIDF’s main decision-making bodies. Conclusion The WIDF’s publications and externally-facing documents show that during the period under consideration the organization offered support for women’s organizations involved in the struggle against colonialism, exploitation, and racism. The WIDF’s journal, appeals and congress declarations demanded to end the colonial wars, create facilities for children’s health and education, improve women’s working conditions, stop discrimination on the grounds of race, and secure rights for women and women’s organizations. These demands were supported by evidence of women, who were victims of war or were imprisoned as a result of political activism or participation in anti-colonial uprisings. The voice of non-European women in these outward-facing materials nearly always consisted of expressing gratitude for the WIDF’s support and solidarity. Yet documents aimed for internal use and in particular the correspondence between Soviet representatives at the WIDF reveal a different picture of the role of non-European women in the organization. They show that the gradual inclusion of women from Africa, Asia and Latin America led at times to conflict about the structure and aims of the organization. Documents preserved in the Soviet archives examined in the foregoing show that non-European women were interested in taking an active role in the Federation’s work at all levels and that they suggested changes in the Federation’s programme and structure in order to ensure that the WIDF better represented the women in their countries. Yet in many cases WIDF leadership, and particularly Soviet representatives, opposed their demands. This happened especially when proposed changes went against current Soviet foreign policy goals (for example, the conflict between the Soviet insistence on detente and women’s participation in armed anticolonial struggles) or when representatives of women’s organizations from the Global South tried to insert their priorities on the WIDF’s agenda, such as demanding women’s right to be landowners. The lack of the internal democracy in the Federation and the dominant role of the Secretariat in the organization’s decision-making process meant that women from the Global South were rarely appointed onto the key bodies. As result, they struggled to shape the WIDF’s programmes in ways that benefitted the women in their countries. That they nevertheless continued to participate in the WIDF was largely because if offered them crucial support at the international level. Notes 1. GARF 7928 3 776, pp. 26–27. 2. I use the term ‘Third world’ to refer to the term used in the Cold War to refer to countries that were neither part of the ‘First’ (western) world or the ‘Second’ (Communist) world. The term was applied to countries mainly defined today as ‘the Global South’. 3. According to Francisca de Haan, the WIDF was the largest of the three most important transnational women’s organizations. Two others were created much earlier – the International Council of Women (ICW) and the International Alliance of Women (IAW). See Francisca de Haan, ‘Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational === [PDF page 16] === 284 Y. GRADSKOVA Women’s Organizations: The Case of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF)’, Women’s History Review 19, no. 4 (2010): 547–73, 547548. 4. Except for the period between 1954 and 1967, see ibid. 5. See more De Haan, ‘The Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF): History, Main Agenda and Contributions (1945–1991)’, in Women and Social Movements (WASI) Online Archive, ed. Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar (2012), 2. http:// alexanderstreet.com/products/women-and-social-movements-international, 10. 6. The report of the special commission created by the WIDF, ‘We accuse’ was published in several languages in 1951.We accuse (Berlin: Women’s International Democratic Federation, 1951). 7. De Haan ‘The Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF)’, 10–11. 8. The membership of the Secretariat as well as the key leadership positions seem to be held by particular countries but more investigation on this issue is necessary. 9. De Haan writes about House of Un-American Activities Committee decision from 1950 to disband the US member of WIDF – the Congress of American Women. This Committee declared WIDF to be a Soviet ‘front organization’ – ‘The Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF)’, 4–5. WIDF continued to be under CIA supervision during later years, see the declassified CIA document from 1956 ‘Women’s International Democratic Federation. A Compilation of Available Basic Reference Data’ https://www.cia.gov/library/ readingroom/document/cia-rdp78-00915r000600140010-9. 10. De Haan, ‘The Women’s International Democratic Federation’. 11. De Haan, ‘The Women’s International Democratic Federation’. 12. Melanie Ilic, ‘Soviet Women, Cultural Exchange and the Women’s International Democratic Federation’, in Reassessing Cold War Europe, eds. S. Autio-Sarasmo and K. Miklossy (London: Routledge, 2011), 157–74; Raluca Maria Popa, ‘Translating Equality between Women and Men Across Cold War Divides’, in Gender Politics and Everyday Life, eds. Sh. Penn and J. Massino (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), 59–75; Kristen Ghodsee, ‘Rethinking State Socialist Mass Women’s Organizations: The Committee of the Bulgarian Women’s Movement and the United Nations Decade for Women, 1975–1985’, Journal of Women’s History 24, no. 4 (2012): 49–73. 13. Mercedes Yusta, ‘The Strained Courtship Between Antifascism and Feminism: from the Women’s World Committee (1934) to Women’s International Democratic Federation (1945)’, in Rethinking Antifacism, eds. H. Garcia, M. Yusta, X. Tabet, C. Climaco (New- York: Berghahn 2016), 178. 14. Chiara Bonfiglioli, ‘Revolutionary Networks. Women’s Political and Social Activism in Cold war Italy and Yugoslavia (1945–1957)’ (PhD Dissertation, Utrecht: Utrecht University 2012), https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/254104/Bonfiglioli.pdf?sequence 15. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 16. On solidarity with Chile, see Kim Christiaens, Idesbald Goddeeris, and Magaly Rodriguez, eds., European Solidarity with Chile, 1970–1980 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2014); on scientific-technical cooperation, see also Sari Autio-Sarasmo, ‘Knowledge through the Iron Curtain’; Autio-Sarasmo, S and K. Miklossy eds., Reassessing Cold War Europe (London: Routledge, 2011), 66–82; and Celia Donert,’Whose Utopia? Gender, Ideology and Human Rights at the 1975 World Congress in East Berlin’, in The Breakthrough: Human Rights in the 1970s, eds. Jan Eckel and Samuel Moyn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 68–87 on women’s rights. 17. Jöel Kotek, ‘Youth Organizations as a Battlefield in the Cold War’, in The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe. 1945–1960, eds. Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam (London: Frank Class, 2003), 168–69; Hakeem Tijani, Union education in Nigeria: Labor, Empire, and Decolonization since 1945 (New York: Palgrave, 2012), 5–7. 18. World Youth Festivals, like the one in Berlin in 1951, provoked a lot of discussion on communist indoctrination of the youth and made secret services in the UK and other countries pay special attention to all the participants, see Kotek, ‘Youth Organizations’, 170–3. === [PDF page 17] === WOMEN’S HISTORY REVIEW 285 19. Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 20. The archive of WIDF that was preserved in the Federation’s Headquarters in Berlin disappeared after 1991 when the organization moved out of Berlin. According to Francisca de Haan, it may be in Latin America but so far it has not been discovered (as mentioned in personal correspondence). Some documents of the WIDF can be found in local archives of countries where member organizations were active, such as the Archive of Working Movement in Sweden (ARAB) or in the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. The collection of WIDF Council, Bureau and Congress protocols (mainly in Russian translation) are most fully preserved in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) (fond 7928, Committee of the Soviet Woman). All the translation of this archival material from Russian into English are mine. 21. Women of the Whole World was published from 1951 in English, French, Russian, Spanish, German and later on Arabic. I mainly used the Russian language edition Zhenshchiny mira, available from 1953 (the first years are incomplete) in the Slavica Library at the University of Helsinki. I was also able to compare some issues to English-language publications from the later period: I could find only issues from 1969 in English (in the Århus University Library and from 1971 in the Atria Library in Amsterdam; both collections are incomplete). In most instances, the material in English and Russian-language issues was the same but occasionally the issues contained minor differences. 22. Bonfiglioli, Revolutionary Networks, 47. 23. Christopher Lee, ed., Making the World After Empire. The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2010). 24. Adriana Valobra and Mercedes Yusta, eds., Queridas Camaradas. Historias iberoamericanas de mujeres comunistas (Buenos-Aires: Mino y Davida, 2017). 25. One exception could be a book of memoirs dedicated to Nina Popova, the head of the Antifascist Committee of Soviet Women, published by her daughter - R.A. Grigorieva, Golub mira Niny Popovoi. K 65-litiyu pobedy v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, sozdaniia MDFZh I 45-litiyu prisvoeniia Moskve zvaniia goroda-geroia (Moskva: Tonchu, 2010). 26. Katharine McGregor, ‘Opposing Colonialism: The Women’s International Democratic Federation and decolonisation struggles in Vietnam and Algeria 1945–1965’, Women’s History Review 25, no. 6 (2016), 925–44; Elisabeth Armstrong, ‘Before Bandung: The Anti-imperialist Women’s Movement in Asia and the Women’s International Democratic Federation’, Signs 41, no.2 (2016): 305–31; Jadwiga Pieper Mooney, ‘Fighting Fascism and Forging New Political Activism: The Women’s International Democratic Federation in the Cold War’, in Decentering Cold War History, eds. J. Pieper Mooney and F. Lanza (London: Routledge, 2013), 52–73. 27. McGregor ‘Opposing Colonialism’, 926 28. McGregor ‘Opposing Colonialism’, 926. 29. Katharine McGregor, ‘The Cold War, Indonesian Women and the Global Anti-Imperialist Movement, 1946–1965’, De-centering Cold War History. Local and Global Change, eds. Jadwiga Pieper-Mooney and Fabio Lanza (London & New York: Routledge, 2013), 31–51. 30. Armstrong, ‘Before Bandung’, 305. 31. Ibid., 329. 32. Pieper-Mooney, ‘Fighting Fascism’, 57. 33. McGregor, for instance, has noticed that ‘it is more difficult to discern what was going on within the leadership of the organization, and even within the editorial board of Women of the Whole World.’ McGregor ‘Opposing Colonialism’, 938. 34. Jadwiga Pieper-Mooney, ‘El antifascism como la fuerza movilizadora: Fanny Edelman y la Federación Democratica Internacional de las Mujeres (FDIM)’, Anuario IEHS 28 (2013): 225–6. 35. Julian Go, ‘Modeling States and Sovereignty’, in Making the World After Empire. The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives, ed. Christopher Lee (Ohio: Ohio University === [PDF page 18] === 286 Y. GRADSKOVA 36. Lee, Making the World After Empire. 37. Laura Brier, ‘Feminism, Solidarity and Identity in the Age of Bandung. Third World Women in the Egyptian Women’s Press’, in Making the World After Empire. The Bandung Moment and Its Political Afterlives, ed. Christopher Lee (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2010), 157. 38. James Mark and Peter Apor. ‘Socialism Goes Global: Decolonization and the Making of a New Culture of Internationalism in Socialist Hungary 1956–1989’, Journal of Modern History 87 (2015): 852–91. 39. Women’s International Democratic Federation: published for the 40th anniversary of the founding of the WIDF (Berlin, 1985), 23. The publication is preserved in the archive of the Institute of Social History, Amsterdam. See also ‘The 25th anniversary of WIDF. Some significant dates to remember’, Women of the Whole World, 1970, issue 1. 40. Women’s International Democratic Federation: published for the 40th anniversary of the founding of the WIDF (Berlin, 1985). 41. Armstrong, ‘Before Bandung’. 42. The Congress of American Women was confronted with the requirement to register as a ‘foreign agent’ – letter from Z. Gurina to Nina Popova, GARF 6928 4 45, p.28. For more on the Congress of American Women, see Kate Weigand, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). 43. GARF 7928 4 45, p. 52, letter from 14.02.1950. 44. GARF 7928 4 45, p. 128, letter from 25.05.1950 45. See WIDF’s letter to its member organizations from 14 March 1951 in the collection of documents of the Swedish Women’s Left Organization (SKV) in Arbetarörelse arkiv och bibliotek, Stockholm. 46. Women’s International Democratic Federation: published for the 40th anniversary (Berlin: WIDF, 1985). 47. Women’s International Democratic Federation: published for the 40th anniversary, 25. 48. Francisca de Haan, ‘The Global Left-Feminist 1960s. From Copenhagen to Moscow and New York’, in The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties. Between Protest and Nation- Building, eds. Chen Jian, Martin Klimke, Masha Kirasirova, et al. (London: Routledge, 49. Women’s International Democratic Federation: published for the 40th anniversary. 50. Zhenshchiny mira, 1953, 2, p. 10. 51. Zhenshchiny mira, 1958, 7–8, p. 4. 52. Zhenshchiny mira, 1958, 7–8, p. 5. 53. Zhenshchiny mira, 1958, 7–8, pp. 18–19. 54. After the military coup in July 1958 Iraq was proclaimed an independent republic and its union with the Jordanian monarchy ended. 55. Zhenshchiny mira, 1958, 11, p. 28. 56. Zhenshchiny mira, 1958, 11, p. 28. The list is continued with a request to send the addresses of editors of women’s journals. 57. Zhenshchiny mira, 1959, 2, p. 8. 58. Maria-LuisaVincentini in Zhenshchiny mira 1963, 1, pp. 21–22. 59. Only organizations (and no individual women) could be members of WIDF. However, in some cases 2–3 organizations from the same country were members. 60. Za ravnopravie, schastie, mir. Vsemirnyi Kongress zhenshchin v Kopengagene (Berlin: WIDF 1953), 258–59. 61. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1900–1978) advocated women’s right to vote already in the 1940s and is known as the founder of the women’s Union of Abeokuta. In 1970 she was awarded the Soviet peace prize. A recent publication by UNESCO depicts Ransome-Kuti as a leading example of the African women’s rights activists http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/ MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/publications/frk_en.pdf. 62. According to Cheryl Johnson-Odim, the WIDF got into contact with Ransome-Kuti in London and invited her to be part of the leadership. Cheryl Johnson-Odim,‘“For their === [PDF page 19] === WOMEN’S HISTORY REVIEW 287 Freedoms” The Anti-imperialist and International Feminist Activity of Funmilayo Ransome- Kuti of Nigeria’, Women’s Studies International Forum 32 (2009): 51–9. 63. Germany was represented as one country including women’s organizations from East and West Germany. 64. Za ravnopravie, schastie, mir. 264–265. 65. For example, in 1948 the Swedish social-democratic party prohibited participation of its members in the Swedish Union of Left Women (SKV), a WIDF’s member. See Elisabet Larberg and Magna Andreen Sachs, Andrea Andreen. För livets skull (Stockholm, 2015), 74–5. 66. GARF, 7928 4 115, p. 30, report from 4.01.1957. 67. Ilic, ‘Soviet women’, 159. 68. Grigorieva, Golub mira Niny Popovoi. 69. Most probably, it was the plan for the first Afro-Asian women’s conference supported by the WIDF and the Non-Alignment movement that took place in Cairo in January 1961. GARF 7928 4 142, p. 23. 70. Carmen Zanti, representative of Union of Italian Women, was a General Secretary of the Federation in that period. 71. GARF, 7928 4 142, pp. 52–54. 72. GARF 7928 3 221, p. 18. 73. GARF, 7928 3 1027, p. 20, (1967). 74. Secret correspondence between Soviet representatives in Berlin and Moscow shows that many representatives of women’s organizations in European countries started to become more critical to Stalin’s politics while the Soviet representatives in Berlin struggled without clear directions from Moscow. One of the well known WIDF activists, the leader of German women’s organization Lilly Wächter, left WIDF after the public revelation of Stalin’s crimes (GARF 7928 4 106, p. 79). 75. Bonfiglioli, Revolutionary Networks, 229–30. 76. Angiola Minella (1920–1988) was an active participant of Resistance movement, member of Italian Parliament and Senate from the Communist party. She was WIDF’s General Secretary in 1953–1958. 77. Maria Maddalena Rossi (1906–1995) took an active part in the Resistance movement and in 1946 represented the Communist party in the Italian assembly. Rossi fulfilled the functions of vice-president of WIDF in the late 1950s. 78. Rossi meant that expelling the organization of Yugoslavian women from WIDF in 1949 in connection with the Soviet-Yugoslav split was a mistake. 79. GARF, 7928, 3, 115, 76–82 letter from 2.04.1957. 80. GARF, 7928, 3, 115, 76–82. 81. GARF 7928 3 1027, p. 24. 82. GARF 7928 4 142, p. 105. 83. GARF 7928 3 79, p. 20. 84. GARF 7928 4 149, letter from Lebedeva to Popova from 19.01.1961. 85. The Italian Women’s organization decided to stop its active participation in WIDF in 1963, see Bolfiglioli, Revolutionary Networks. See also Wendy Pojmann, Italian Women and International Cold War Politics, 1944–1968 (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013). 86. GARF 7928 3 221. 87. GARF, 7928 3 221, p. 8. 88. GARF 7928 3 221, pp. 39–41. 89. GARF 7928 3 221, p. 41. 90. Cameroon attained independence from France in 1960. Marthe Moumie was the head of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women. Her husband, independence leader, Félix- Roland Moumie, was assassinated in Geneva in 1960. 91. GARF 7928 3 221, p. 41. 92. GARF, 7928 3 221, pp. 34–38. === [PDF page 20] === 288 Y. GRADSKOVA 93. Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier (1912–1996) was a French Communist and women’s movement activist. She participated in the Resistance movement, was a prisoner at Auschwitz and Ravensbrueck and witness at Nuremberg’s Trial. She was a General Secretary of WIDF from 1946. She was also a member of the French National Assemblée. According to a recently published book dedicated to Popova, Vaillant-Couturier was friendly with Popova and her family (see Grigorieva, Golub mira Niny Popovoi, 144). 94. GARF, 7928 3 221, p. 42. 95. GARF 7928 3 970, p. 101. (06.27.1963) 96. GARF 7928 3 970, p. 301. Acknowledgements The research for this article was supported by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. Notes on contributor Yulia Gradskova is associate professor in History and researcher at Stockholm University. She is the author of Soviet Politics of Emancipation of Ethnic Minority Women (Springer, 2018) and co-editor with Ildiko Asztalos Morell Gendering Postsocialism: Old Legacies and New Hierarchies (Routledge, 2018). Correspondence to: Yulia Gradshova, Department of History, Stockholm University, Sweden. Email: yulia.gradskova@historia.su.se