NEW WOMEN IN RED: REVOLUTIONARY RUSSIA, FEMINISM, AND THE FIRST RED SCARE

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia L. Mickenberg
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
Red Scare ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
World War ◽  
New Women ◽  
Emma Goldman ◽  
First Red Scare

This essay seeks to reinterpret both the gendered rhetoric of the First Red Scare as well as the reasons why many feminists came under attack in the years following World War I. It underscores the ways in which women's activist concerns were de-legitimized through accusations of Bolshevism, but also highlights the very real attractions that the Soviet system held for American women seeking peace, economic independence, voting rights, professional opportunity, and sexual freedom. Although a number of historians have demonstrated the ways in which a focus upon gender and women offers important insights into the First Red Scare, they have given only minimal attention to the Soviet Union's appeal, presumably wishing to avoid giving credence to inflammatory and exaggerated right-wing rhetoric. However, this tendency has the effect of distorting the historical record and, in particular, of eliding revolutionary Russia's role in fostering the American feminist imagination. Attention to several prominent targets of the First Red Scare, including Louise Bryant, Emma Goldman, and Rose Pastor Stokes, helps to clarify these dynamics.

Women, Gender, and Red Scares in the Modern United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica J. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
World War I ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Red Scare ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
First Red Scare ◽  
Conservative Women

The first Red Scare, after World War I, and the Red Scare that followed World War II, both impacted American women in remarkably similar ways. Many women found their lives hemmed in by antifeminism and the conservative gender ideology that underwrote anticommunist national identity in 1919, and then again in the late 1940s. This cultural nationalism tied traditional gender norms to the defense of American values and ideals, positioning the family as a bulwark against communism while making women’s performance of gender roles symbolic of national health or sickness. Within this gendered nationalism, the first Red Scare offered opportunities for conservative women to join the antiradical cause as protectors of the home. These same antiradicals maligned radical and progressive women for their feminism and their social activism. The second Red Scare played out in similar fashion. Anticommunism provided a safe platform for conservative women to engage in political activism in defense of the family, and in turn, they participated in broader efforts that attacked and weakened civil rights claims and the social justice efforts of women on the left. In each Red Scare the symbols and rhetoric of anticommunism prioritized women’s relationship to the family, positioning them either as bastions of American virtue or as fundamental threats to the social and political order. Gender proved critical to the construction of patriotism and national identity.

The First Red Scare

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam J. Hodges
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Red Scare ◽  
World War ◽  
Public Attention ◽  
Palmer Raids ◽  
First Red Scare

The first Red Scare, which occurred in 1919–1920, emerged out of longer clashes in the United States over the processes of industrialization, immigration, and urbanization as well as escalating conflict over the development of a labor movement challenging elite control of the economy. More immediately, the suppression of dissent during World War I and shock over a revolution in Russia that energized anti-capitalist radicals spurred further confrontations during an ill-planned postwar demobilization of the armed forces and economy. A general strike in Seattle in February 1919 that grew out of wartime grievances among shipbuilders raised the specter of Bolshevik insurrection in the United States. National press attention fanned the flames and continued to do so throughout the year. In fact, 1919 became a record strike year. Massive coal and steel walkouts in the fall shook the industrial economy, while a work stoppage by Boston police became a national sensation and spread fears of a revolutionary breakdown in public order. Ultimately, however, much of the union militancy of the war era was crushed by the end of 1919 and the labor movement entered a period of retrenchment after 1922 that lasted until the 1930s. Fall 1919 witnessed the creation of two competing Communist parties in the United States after months of press focus on bombs, riots, and strikes. Federal anti-radical investigative operations, which had grown enormously during World War I and continued into 1919, peaked in the so-called “Palmer Raids” of November 1919 and January 1920, named for US Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who authorized them. The excesses of the Department of Justice and the decline of labor militancy caused a shift in press and public attention in 1920, though another Red Scare would escalate after World War II, with important continuities between the two.

THE NEW ERA AND THE NEW WOMAN

2004 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. A. CLEMENTS
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Progressive Era ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
World War ◽  
New Era ◽  
New Women ◽  
The New Woman ◽  
Domestic Roles

Lou Henry Hoover, wife of Herbert Hoover, demonstrated the strengths and limitations of the expanded social de�nition of womanhood that had been won by reformers during the Progressive Era and World War I. As a leader of several business and women's social welfare organizations, she urged young women to follow her example in seeking professional education and careers as well as upholding traditional domestic roles. Protected by wealth and social status from the most burdensome aspects of domesticity, her public position emphasized the opportunities but understated problems faced by the "new women" in the 1920s and later generations.

The Limits of Economic Restructuring

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Maier
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Economic Restructuring ◽  
Coal Industry ◽  
Red Scare ◽  
World War ◽  
Middle Classes

This chapter examines the problems encountered by France, Germany, and Italy as they each embarked on economic restructuring after World War I. A new bourgeois equilibrium seemed attainable in each country during the period; it rested on a consensus that united elites and middle classes against militant working-class claims. Capitalism and bourgeois hierarchies proved more resilient than either defenders or attackers had assumed. Furthermore, the movement of restoration was wider than the three societies. Across the Atlantic, “red scare” and recession were ushering in the era of normalcy. The chapter considers the evolution of leftist objectives in France, Germany, and Italy that accompanied the transition from the turmoil of 1918–1919 to the bourgeois recovery of 1920–1921. It also discusses the strategies of bourgeois defense and the failure of socialization in the German coal industry.

Women against War

2019 ◽  
pp. 169-200
Author(s):  
Anya Jabour
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Social Work ◽  
World War I ◽  
Women's Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Red Scare ◽  
International Social Work ◽  
World War ◽  
International Social

Chapter 7 focuses on Breckinridge’s involvement in an international women’s movement dedicated to feminism, pacifism, and justice that flourished in the United States and Europe during and after World War I. This chapter explores the origins of Breckinridge’s pacifism, her introduction to feminist-pacifism during World War I, and her continuing commitment to internationalism in the isolationist 1920s. Breckinridge maintained her commitment to social justice and her participation in international social work circles even at the height of the Red Scare.

How Hegemonic Orders Unravel

2020 ◽  
pp. 54-79
Author(s):  
Alexander Cooley ◽  
Daniel Nexon
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
International Order ◽  
Great Power ◽  
Soviet System ◽  
World War ◽  
System P ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Power Transitions

This chapter identifies three drivers of hegemonic unraveling and transformation in international orders: great-power contestation and alternative order building; how the dominant power’s loss of its “patronage monopoly” enhances the bargaining leverage of weaker states; and the rise of counter-order movements, especially transnational ones, that weaken support for existing international arrangements—sometimes within the leading power itself. Because analysts tend to focus their attention on the relationship between power transitions and great-power wars, they have only recently begun to appreciate the significance of these three processes. This chapter shows that these challenges—from above, below, and within—played a key role in past power transitions and transformations in international order, including the decline of Spanish hegemony, challenges to British hegemony before World War I, the rise of fascism and Bolshevism during the interwar period, decolonization, and the collapse of the Soviet system.

The Adversity and Empathy of Emma Goldman

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-136
Author(s):  
Nolan Bennett
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Red Scare ◽  
Structural Injustice ◽  
Attempted Murder ◽  
The People ◽  
The Family ◽  
William Mckinley ◽  
Emma Goldman ◽  
First Red Scare

Chapter 4 examines how Emma Goldman wrote her 1931 Living My Life to challenge the state authority that had deported her during the first Red Scare, turning inward before a global audience to analyze experiences in the family, factory, anarchist circles, prison, and in nursing. Through autobiography Goldman theorized two approaches to antiauthoritarian politics. Whereas an adversarial approach aimed to emancipate the people through targeting and removing agents of oppression, empathy would raise awareness of the people that suffer structural injustice. The chapter traces this shift in anarchist politics across Goldman’s descriptions of her assistance with the attempted murder of Henry Clay Frick and her response to the assassination of President William McKinley. Recognizing Goldman’s claim of experience elevates Living My Life among her anarcha-feminist essays and speeches, and it explains why she revealed her previously secret involvement with the attack on Frick though it made difficult her return to the United States.

Historical Approaches to Terrorism

2019 ◽  
pp. 193-206
Author(s):  
Brenda J. Lutz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
World War ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Reign Of Terror ◽  
Over Time

While many have considered terrorism to be a uniquely modern phenomenon, a review of terrorism over time indicates it has deep historical roots. Historical cases include violence in the late Roman Republic, the Zealots in Roman Judea, anti-colonial attacks against the British, Dutch, and Spanish in Asia, the prelude to the American Revolution, the Reign of Terror in France, and eventually the more modern manifestations and uses by nationalist or ethnic groups, extremists drawn from most religious traditions, leftist dissidents including the anarchist, and right-wing extremists including the Fascists and Nazis after World War I as well as the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. While terrorism has been present for centuries, there have been significant changes. Police and security forces have increased in quantity and quality, but terrorists have gained access to more lethal techniques and weapons.

“Purifying the Upper Atmosphere”: Women’s Work in Early Radio, 1905-1913

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Anne Gessler
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
National Conversation ◽  
Class Hierarchies ◽  
Commercial Radio ◽  
Female Employees ◽  
Political Economic

This essay argues that between 1905 and 1913, female commercial radio operators deployed a range of complicated and contradictory arguments to establish credibility in the new, male-dominated communications field. Women envisioned early radio as a utopian space that would renegotiate gender roles in the American workforce. Female radio operators also engaged in a larger conversation around women’s citizenship and voting rights. However, while wireless companies initially hired female employees to diffuse tense labor relations, a national conversation around women’s dubious moral character and inferior physical capabilities soon animated the field. The essay explores the political, economic, and cultural events that transformed radio from a potentially transgressive space to an industry that instead reinforced gender and class hierarchies: the RMS Republic-Florida disaster in 1909; the formation of the wireless division of the Commercial Telegraphers Union of America in 1910; the American Marconi Company’s takeover of the United Wireless Company in 1912; and finally, the RMS Titanic disaster in 1912 and the subsequent passing of the Radio Act of 1912. These events pushed female radio operators out of the industry. Not until World War I would the federal government and corporations formally recruit women to serve as professional radio operators.

Linguistic accommodations and electoral participation

2016 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 250-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shauna Reilly ◽  
Jeffrey Mark Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Minority Language ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Linguistic Accommodation ◽  
The Usa

The purpose of this study was to advance the understanding of the influence geo-political events and legislation can have on the accommodation of minority language voters. Particularly, this study focused on the effects of (1) the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on minority language voters in the USA, and (2) World War I on minority language voters in Austria. We use a most similar systems design with our case studies. The results from the most similar systems design suggest that while both the USA and Austria have similar constitutional structures, are stable democracies, and have laws enacted to help protect the rights of minority language speakers (the VRA of 1965 in the USA, and Art. 8 of the Austrian State Treaty of 1955), they have developed two different approaches to linguistic accommodation for minority language speakers at elections. This study has helped to further the researchers’ understanding of the influence geo-political events and legislation can have on the accommodation of minority language voters.

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