Sovietization with a Female Face: Lviv Working Women and Socialist Project

We invite you to the lecture by Iryna Sklokina on the stories of Lviv women workers. The event continues the series of lectures on the urban experiences of Lviv, "Let's Have a City..."

The Soviet regime had particular expectations for women in Western Ukraine. On the one hand, women were needed as a powerful labor force to integrate the region into the unified system of the planned economy. On the other hand, the promise of wider educational and employment opportunities for women was one of the elements of propaganda and a contributing factor to the attractiveness of the new system. For decades, women from rural areas, other regions, and republics entered Lviv's workforce, changing the city itself.

The lecture will focus on the social history of female workers in Lviv: their social advancement, party membership and activism, sexual harassment, the combination of work at the factory and home, membership in the party and women's organizations, and informal networks of mutual support. One of the important examples is the Vynnyky Tobacco Factory, where production has continued from Austrian times to the present day, allowing us to see the continuity and discontinuities of social processes as political borders have changed. Women were a significant part of the workforce at the factory, which led to the development of social infrastructure, such as a kindergarten and crèche. Being on the border in many senses (between urban and rural areas, at the intersection of different ethnic and religious affiliations, and near the edge of other states), women used the opportunities that emerged in this situation "in between."

Credits

Cover Image: Near the Vynnyky tobacco factory, the 1950s // Photos of old Lviv

Gallery: Olya Klymuk