Was the “March of the Empty Pots” on March 8, 1857, in New York City its precursor? Up till now, no reliable sources have confirmed the existence of publications about this event. The photos accompanying these materials do not contain direct evidence that it was a march, let alone an “empty pots” march. There is also no certainty that the photo shows textile workers, who, according to some sources, were brutally dispersed.
Moreover, the American researcher Temma Kaplan, following French historians Lillian Kandel and Françoise Pic, notes that in 1955, the new generation of feminists sought to “separate International Women's Day from the Soviet Union and give it a meaning older than Bolshevism, more spontaneous than the 1910 congressional decision.” However, this was primarily a testament to the importance of giving March 8 a feminist color.
For the first time in Ukraine, March 8 was celebrated in 1914.
On that day, proclamations bearing the seal of the Kyiv Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party were distributed on the streets of Kyiv, calling on women workers to go on strike on February 23 (March 8, New Style) to protest the oppression of women, in fact, according to the American tradition (on the last Sunday of February). The February Revolution in the Russian Empire began on Thursday, February 23 (March 8, New Style), 1917. After the publication of the March issue of “Pravda”, many decades have been spent trying to connect these two events. However, it is more appropriate to consider it a coincidence.
In 1920, for the first time in the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, March 8 was celebrated in the then capital, Kharkiv, under the auspices of women's departments that were part of party branches. Officially, it was believed that the participation of peasant women in International Women's Day in Ukrainian regions began only in 1921. Still, the first campaign events occurred in the Poltava region in 1920. Then, a tradition emerged to at least shorten the working day or provide a paid day off for women who worked for hire so that they could attend meetings, rallies, concerts, etc.
In 1927, with the beginning of collectivization and industrialization, the Soviet government, led by Stalin, became more active in all spheres of public life.
Gradually, March 8 became a reporting day for resolving the “women's issue” in the Soviet Union: social institutions were opened, women were admitted to the party, and promoted to leadership positions. These changes were so evident that avoiding them even in celebratory speeches was impossible.
After Stalin's death, it was allowed to print and sell postcards for March 8. The day off, introduced in 1965, did not cancel the propaganda activities of the day before, but gradually moved the celebration from the public space to the private sphere, the family circle. In general, this applied to all Soviet holidays amid the gradual decline of communist ideology.
The expansion of the Soviet Union's geopolitical influence in the world, particularly in the United Nations, led to the establishment of International Women's Day in 1977, the full name of which is the International Day for Women's Rights and International Peace.
Despite the correctness of the idea, the holiday is still a part of the Soviet tradition that interprets it as a “day of mothers, girls, beauty, and spring.”
It is still challenging to get rid of this stereotype, and therefore, the actions of the feminist movement on this day in modern Ukraine remain rather marginal. However, imperial traditions eventually disappear, and the meaning of memorable dates is transformed. And as long as there is a need to fight for women's rights, March 8 remains an important date.
The translation from Ukrainian was created with the help of DeepL.
