PR 101, Bolshevik Style

Westerners aghast at the treatment of women by the Taliban will be no more
amused to learn that the record of others in the region leaves as much or
more to be desired. In Mission to Tashkent, a memoir of Lieutenant Colonel
F.M. Bailey, the British officer recounts an incident that occurred in
Tashkent shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. He arranged to smuggle a
message out of the city with a Mrs. Stephanovitch, who was leaving by train
for Kashgar in China, but it turned out she was carrying another forbidden
paper as well:

"Mrs. Stephanovitch was wearing a scarf over her head and carrying a straw
hat in her hand. Curiously enough the police never even looked at this hat,
and it was fortunate for her that they did not. The Soviet of Syzran, a town
on the Volga, had issued a proclamation nationalizing women. All the best
and most beautiful women, the proclamation stated, belonged to the
bourgeoisie, while the peasants and workers had to put up with the second
best. Therefore all women were to be public property. This was too much for
Lenin and the Bolsheviks at the centre, and the order was withdrawn and
possession of even a copy was forbidden. It would have been dangerous
propaganda against the Bolsheviks, especially abroad. Mrs. Stephanovitch had
a copy of the order in her hat. The mere possession of this might have led
to her being shot."

This bit of context will do little to put the Taliban in a softer light, we
know, but it does at least tell us that Lenin had some sense of public
relations.

Ed Fowler

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(c) 2001 Millennium Relief & Development Services, vol. 1 no. 7
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