Maria Fedotovna Filipenko, My Life. The Story of Maria Fedotovna Filipenko. 1924

Original Source: Delegatka, No. 2-3 (1924), pp. 19-20.

I was in domestic service until 1913. In 1914 I got married and started to work at a factory, because my husband was a fireman and there wasn't enough to support the family. And our daughter, a year and a half old, was left alone in a locked room. Then my husband went away for course in firefighting; a second son was born and I supported them.

During the 1917 Revolution, I did not understand anything and when we came out of the gates against tsarism, we met Cossacks. I became frightened, but they lowered their rifles and joined us. But I was still afraid. I arrived at the courtyard and there were soldiers there. I was crying from fright. They asked-was it possible that I was sorry for the tsar? What was I supposed to say? I had heard that he was the terrestrial king and I didn't know anything more about it. I wasn't sorry for him, but afraid. Afraid what would happen next, how the children would live.

Then we went to bury the dead. Comrade Batyshev led us. He worked with us at the tool-making shop (now he's a member of the raikom of Krasnaia Presna) and he led us then, although not all of us believed him, and even called him a bandit. He probably remembers now and laughs.

Well, we went to the funerals. They put me in the choir and we sang verses: "exhausted with heavy slavery." That song entered into my soul. And I started to distinguish the truth. But I still lived my own life and talked my husband out of public life. I thought that he would carouse at the meetings. And I wouldn't let him join the party. And I argued to the teeth with the workers. I was that ignorant. And the people who lived around us weren't good. The tenants, especially the women, called me 'factory worker' and 'desperado' and I argued with them. Because I had found a family at the factory. I'm a "shpitomka" [slang for orphan]. I don't have any relatives and I have been alone all my life. I was a domestic servant, and the lady of the house poked me in the teeth with a plate, but when I went to the factory the workers treated me kindly and taught me how to work on machines.

You couldn't find out a thing from the foreman; he wouldn't say a kind word; he swore. Then he was replaced when the Soviets came to power.

I began to sympathize with our power, but was still afraid of everything. I was invited to bring the children to the nursery, and I was as afraid as if they were going to take them from me forever. I left the children in a locked room. I tied the girl to a table by the leg, so that she would not hurt the younger child.

I was finally talked into bringing them to the nursery. I brought them, I was in a flood of tears, kissing the children, as if saying goodbye forever. I went to get them in the evening. They were given to me. I checked under their clothing. Had they broken anything or were they covered with bruises. I saw that nothing was the matter. The child was full; shortly he began to grow better looking; he gained weight, became clean and rosy. And then I believed that the nursery was our salvation. I became conscious. And then, because of that, the women workers chose me as a delegate.

I went to the Soviet for the first time, but I was afraid to go in. I just stood near the door and then went home. But I was ashamed to tell them at the factory. "They wouldn't let me in," I said. Then our organizer raised a stink. He got everybody excited, "They wouldn't let a woman delegate into the Soviet. " Then I admitted that I hadn't told the truth, that I'd just been afraid to go alone. Then the organizer took me himself. First there was a speech by Comrade Loginov about the dangers of religion. And I was so excited, came home, took down all the icons, wanted to thrown them away. My husband and I quarreled-he's religious, but I later reformed him. When I was ignorant I hung like a weight on his legs, preventing him from joining the Party. But when I understood myself I stopped trying to restrain him. Quite the opposite, I pushed him toward public life. That's how important it is for a man, his wife to be conscientious.

So I began to work as a delegate. It's been two years and I've joined the party. After me, my husband was enrolled in the party, and we work together as comrades.

Now as a delegate, I help in the Presenskii Zhenotdel to meet our needs.

In the Section of the Department of Health Care of the Soviet, a dispensary (which distributes to the sick) has been opened and a new cafeteria, and we are opening a night sanatorium there. A sick worker can come straight from the factory and rest in pleasant surroundings. He'll receive good food and any treatment that he requires. In other words, work and be treated. Before they sent him off to a sanatorium and he got better, and then he would come back and the recovery was undone. With us the worker can undergo further treatment in the night sanatorium until he is completely well.

At the dispensary we give out to sick workers (who are being cured at home) whatever they need; medicine to some, linen and shoes to others, even beds, if they sleep on the floor.

We're fighting tuberculosis this way.

I am also connected, through my work as a delegate, with various hospitals, maternity homes, children's homes.

I track down where there is disorder, I help to eliminate them. [sic]

My life is no longer without purpose and I call on you comrade female workers and peasants to join in public work.

Source: William G. Rosenberg, ed., Bolshevik Visions: First Phase of the Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1984), pp. 139-141.