Veronika Helfert has written an innovative study of the Austrian revolutionary and worker councils’ movement from 1916 until 1924. Unlike most prior works on this period, Helfert applies women's and gender history as the primary lens through which to examine left-wing revolutionary parties and groups amid the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the establishment of the First Republic.
Helfert's work does much more than revisit the primary sources of the era and establish the roles and participation of women and female activists, which in itself would be a valuable contribution to the literature. The author sets out to illuminate the hopes of and possibilities for women in order to challenge the view that historical events could not have transpired differently. Helfert uses feminist/gender analysis to interrogate critically the largely masculinist political narratives (Social Democratic and Communist) of the period, noting that historical writing itself – past and present – is an ideological act. The very sources (police reports, newspaper accounts, activist memoirs, official histories of the period) and categories (revolution, worker, militant) were gendered, so Helfert brings a critical eye to them. In doing so, the author has made some important choices to study the topic. For example, Helfert incorporates female activist memoirs (or interviews) several decades after these events as an important primary source. Helfert also proposes a different periodization of the revolutionary period from 1916 to 1924 to capture fully women's participation and exclusions.
In the first two chapters, Helfert establishes the historiographical and theoretical literature pertinent to her investigation. She unpacks the meaning of revolution and poses the question, “What happens when women and their experiences are placed at the center?” (23) The author shows convincingly how contemporary representations of the revolutionary period varied from Christian Socialists calling it anarchic and bloody, to Social Democrats holding it up as an exemplary achievement to transition peacefully to a new political regime, to left radicals and Communists describing it as incomplete. Those accounts, however, shared androcentric definitions and concepts of revolution, citizenship, and participation. Food riots or “spontaneous” protests were not understood as political actions. Because representation in left-wing political organizations and groups was restricted largely to “workers,” where a worker was defined as a full-time skilled tradesperson or union member, women were largely excluded from the official institutions (like city councils) and organs (such as workers’ and soldiers’ councils) of the revolution. These gendered blinders informed how scholars have dated and explained different phases of the revolution. Finding the standard 1918 to 1924 timeline inadequate, Helfert proposes a new periodization of the revolution. The author includes the proto-revolutionary phase from 1916 to 1918 because it prominently featured women's antiwar activism and political engagement and wartime challenges remained acute into the immediate postwar period.
The first part of Helfert's book, which covers the proto-revolutionary phase from 1916 to October 1918, consists of three strong chapters on food insecurity and unrest, strike and labor militancy, and antiwar activism. Building on the work of Maureen Healy, the author affirms that hunger and food shortages were a catalyst for political transformation even as authorities failed to identify food riots, marches to the town hall, or occasional violence as political acts. Helfert shows through data and examination of specific strikes that female labor militancy increased during the war, even while activists were marginalized from formal male-dominated institutional and political spaces intended to resolve those disputes. The food crisis and labor unrest dovetailed into socialist women's calls for peace and attainment of female suffrage. From dissemination of pamphlets to attending meetings to involvement in youth groups at the university, women played critical roles to pressure the government to end the war. Several of these militants such as Elfriede Eisler-Friedländer a.k.a. Ruth Fischer would become prominent members of the Austrian Communist Party and later German and international communism.
The second section of the book, spanning November 1918 to 1924, situates the role of working-class women in the broader revolutionary struggle to determine what type of political system Austria would have in the wake of the collapse of the empire and the monarchy. Chapter six spotlights the cleavages within the Austrian Left, as Social Democrats prioritized erecting a democratic republic while Communists and left radicals pushed for the creation of a Soviet Republic. Helfert offers a fascinating analysis of male constructs of the “revolutionary” in Social Democratic circles. These centered on discipline, self-control, and a “pragmatic rationality” (208), while women were cast as peacemakers. Women who advocated the use of force could not escape these gendered norms so their actions and visions for political change involving violence were depicted as emotional and transgressive.
Chapter seven takes up the newly formed Austrian parliament and representation in workers’ councils. Notions of citizenship remained tied to occupation, which helped explain why, of 408 members of parliament during the Republic, only 19 were women, and why women were barely represented in the workers’ councils. Both in terms of gendered constructs and political and economic structures, Helfert demonstrates the broad-based exclusionary obstacles women faced.
While hindered at the national or institutional level, women did find some outlets for self-actualization and expression on the local and municipal level and in the publication of ideals for the new socialist woman, the focus of chapters eight and nine. We learn a lot about Emmy Freundlich, who advocated peaceably in Vienna for the democratization of the economy as a precondition for the achievement of socialism and later would lead the International Women's Cooperative Guild. Helfert also surveys socialist visions to socialize housework and childcare and affirm sexual and cultural freedom. While government at the local and national level rejected wholesale these challenges to Victorian gender norms, some welfare policies and rights were strengthened in favor of women.
In sum, Helfert contributes an impeccably researched and excellent study of gender and revolutionary politics in Austrian and European history, exposing both opportunities and ultimate limitations. Challenging the Social Democratic narrative that the revolution liberated women, Helfert upends this view persuasively, showing that women helped forge the revolution, yet the revolution did not lead to women's full equality and emancipation.
