Question: What do International Women’s Day and Vladimir Putin have in common?
Answer: Both were promoted by the KGB.
It is upon us once again: International Women’s Day. I’ve been writing about it here every year since our dumbed-down modern culture started mindlessly celebrating this Marxist holiday, utterly unaware of its poisonous roots. Here’s a good description of those roots, captured contemporaneously in a 1920 statement by leading Bolshevik feminist Alexandra Kollontai:
The 8th of March is a historic and memorable day for all the Russian workers and for the workers of the whole world. In 1917, on this day, the great February revolution broke out. It was the working women of Petersburg who began this revolution….
In 1910, at the Second International Conference of Working Women, Clara Zetkin brought forward the question of organizing an International Working Women’s Day. The conference decided that every year, in every country, they should celebrate on the same day a “Women’s Day” under the slogan “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism”.…
“Working Women’s Day” was first organized ten years ago in the campaign for the … struggle for socialism. This aim has been achieved by the working class women in Russia [in] the soviet republic.
Kollontai here referred to comrade Clara Zetkin, the infamous German socialist. In 1910, Zetkin had proposed the following motion at the Copenhagen Conference of the Second International: “The Socialist women of all countries will hold each year a Women’s Day, whose foremost purpose it must be to aid the attainment of women’s suffrage. This demand must be handled in conjunction with the entire women’s question according to Socialist precepts.”
Yes, IWD was indeed a national holiday in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Those are the facts.
Zetkin became the founding patroness of International Women’s Day (IWD), with Kollontai picking up the torch a decade later at the Kremlin and at the Soviet Comintern (Communist International, founded in March 1919), with the goal of global communism in full pursuit. Kollontai underscored that promoting IWD was central to promoting “the victory of communism.” To that end, Kollontai quoted the declaration of the Soviet Third International:
Working women of all countries! Organize a united proletarian front in the struggle against those who are plundering the world! Down with the parliamentarism of the bourgeoisie! We welcome soviet power! Away with inequalities suffer by the working men and women! We will fight with the workers for the triumph of world communism!
These basic facts of literal “soviet power” connected to IWD are understood by communists who know this history. People’s World, the flagship publication of the Communist Party USA and successor to the Daily Worker, puts it this way:
In 1917 in Russia, International Women’s Day acquired great significance—it was the flashpoint for the Russian Revolution. On March 8 (Western calendar), female workers in Petrograd held a mass strike and demonstration demanding peace and bread. The strike movement spread from factory to factory and effectively became an insurrection.
In 1922, in honor of the women’s role on IWD in 1917, Lenin declared that March 8 should be designated officially as Women’s Day. Much later, it was a national holiday in the Soviet Union and most of the former socialist countries.
Yes, IWD was indeed a national holiday in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Those are the facts.
Fast forward a century, and the IWD website in 2017 (the centennial of the Bolshevik Revolution) acknowledged this background in its “history” section. It candidly reported that in the year 1909, “In accordance with a declaration by the Socialist Party of America, the first National Woman’s Day (NWD) was observed across the United States on 28 February,” and that the following year, in 1910, “A woman named Clara Zetkin … proposed that every year in every country there should be a celebration on the same day … and thus International Women’s Day was the result.”
Again, all of those are facts. The IWD website further explained in its historical timeline that in 1913-14, “Russian women observed their first International Women’s Day on the last Sunday in February 1913. In 1913, following discussions, International Women’s Day was transferred to March 8, and this day has remained the global date for International Women’s Day ever since.”
Again, spot on. These facts were posted on the IWD website just a few years ago.
International (Marxist) Women’s Day in 2025
Since then, perhaps as rogue anti-communists like yours truly began annually reporting on these Marxist roots at The American Spectator, the IWD folks have wisely scrubbed this inconvenient history from their website. They no doubt did so in order to help attract corporate suckers as sponsors of their big day “for women.” Those sponsors have included the likes of McDonald’s, Caterpillar, BP, MetLife, PepsiCo, Western Union, and many more. (READ MORE from Paul Kengor: Marxist Women’s Day)
That whitewashing of IWD’s Marxist roots has helped advance the cause and the celebration of the day every March 8.
Now, we’re at the point where IWD pops up every March 8 on your Google search function and is listed on daily calendars that you purchase (along with holidays like Christmas and Easter, President’s Day, MLK Day, Indigenous Peoples’ Day). The Marxist holiday is increasingly celebrated by clueless pop culture on radio, TV, and social media.
This year’s IWD website, in March 2025, is much slicker. It certainly doesn’t have old comrade Clara as its poster girl on the site. No talk of the Proletariat and Soviet power. Instead, it states: “Imagine a gender equal world. A world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that’s diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated. Together we can forge gender equality.”
Yep, “DEI” and “gender equality.”
As for the history of the day, the website in 2025 states more neutrally: “International Women’s Day (IWD) has been around for over a hundred years…. Celebrate women’s achievement. Raise awareness about discrimination. Take action to forge gender parity. All IWD activity is valid, that’s what makes IWD so inclusive.” The statement concludes: “IWD has a long and powerful history of collective action.” (emphasis added)
Oh, yes — “collective.” That’s probably the most common word on the website. And in the hands of these comrades, you, dear conservative, can interpret that exactly as you should.
The language in 2025 is coy, clever, less revealing — all the better to pull in the ignorant to the cause. Of course, that ignorance is just fine — actually, it’s perfect — for the leftist organizers of the annual event. They’re happy to enlist the support of what Vladimir Lenin dubbed useful idiots — or dupes, to use another term. These are people in the wider culture who communists always looked toward to obliviously help support their causes and campaigns. (READ MORE: Biden Turns International Women’s Day Into a Bigger Spectacle)
International Women’s Day is one such event. Though most surprising, even Marxists in the day of Lenin and Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai would have been astonished to see the likes of everyday (non-communist) Americans in the 21st century celebrating the day. But decades of rotten education in our public schools — what the Marxists called “educational collectives” — our radical universities, and the liberal takeover of big tech, Internet search engines, and social media — has allowed International Women’s Day to now become part of American popular culture. Pathetic.
READ MORE from Paul Kengor:
Hail to Trump’s Garden of Heroes!
