Today it seems to us that this light, saturated with the first spring sun and warmth, was always. And if the representatives of the older generation still remember the meaning of the title "International Women's Day," and some did not forget the name of the one who came up with the March 8, then almost nothing is known about it to the youth. School lessons of the early twentieth century's history are remembered, perhaps, by one. Meanwhile, the history of the birth of a women's holiday is far from as romantic as one would like. But behind it is a very specific name, and, in fact, the basis of this day is the life story of one woman, the one who 100 years ago came up with the holiday on March 8.
Klara Zetkin is a revolutionary and just a woman
March 8, 1857 in New York, there was a demonstration of workers in textile and shoe factories, which required a reduction of the working day (at that time a 16-hour) and improve working conditions. And after half a century the women's holiday will be timed to this event. With the date it is clear, but who came up with the holiday on March 8, you ask. So, 1857 is also significant because it was then that the daughter of Clara was born in the family of a modest rural teacher from Saxony named Eismann.
It is not known how the fate of an intelligent and respectable girl would have developed, if, as a student of a pedagogical educational institution, she had not met with emigre socialists and was not carried away by their ideas. Among the participants of the youth circle was her future husband - a Russian Jew Osip Zetkin, who fled to Germany from the persecution of the tsarist authorities. Clara Zetkin joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany, became one of the activists of her left wing. Many shocked family and friends, the girl for ideological reasons left her family forever, for which she received the nickname "Wild Clara."
In 1882, the one who would later come up with the March 8, was forced to emigrate after Osip to Paris, where she became the civil wife of a revolutionary (officially they were not married). In the marriage they had two sons, Maxim and Kostya, and in 1889 Clara's beloved husband died of tuberculosis. To somehow survive, a woman writes articles, translates, teaches and even works as a laundress. She conducts active political activity, becomes one of the founders of the Second International. Known as a theorist of the socialist movement in Europe, Clara Zetkin also became famous as a fighter for women's rights, sought to give them universal suffrage and to relax labor legislation.
Soon there was an opportunity to return to his native Germany. Here she not only continued her difficult struggle, but also became close to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who became her close friend, but also married the artist Georg Friedrich Zundel, who was younger than Clara for 18 years. Years later, a rather unusual alliance between a revolutionary and a talented painter will fall apart due to a different attitude towards the First World War, and the age difference will play a fatal role. For Clara Zetkin this will be a serious blow.
Already an elderly, but still energetic lady, now engaged in the organization of the Communist Party of Germany. Since 1920 she is the oldest member of the Reichstag, the head of the International Organization for Assistance to Revolutionaries, one of the leaders of the Comintern. With the coming to power of the Nazi Party of Germany, in 1932 Clara Zetkin emigrated to the USSR, where she soon died at the age of 75.
History and name of the holiday on March 8
As for the holiday itself on March 8, it is necessary to mention here the International Conference of Socialist Women, which took place on August 27, 1910 in
On the calendar of UN memorable dates, the name of the holiday on March 8 is "Day for Women's Rights and International Peace", and it is not a holiday at all. In all the states that still celebrate it, this is an exclusively political event. The status of a holiday and a day off on March 8 was received only in the Soviet Union and already in 1965, turning into a day of honoring all the fair sex. Gradually, he finally lost his ideological coloring, forgetting who invented the holiday on March 8, and in most post-Soviet countries it is celebrated today as a day of spring, beauty and femininity.