Soviet Women, Cultural Exchange and the Women’s International Democratic Federation

Abstract

This chapter examines the processes of cultural exchange in Europe during the Cold War drawing on the example of the international women’s movement. It places a particular focus on the roles played by Soviet women in the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), founded after the end of the Second World War in 1945. At the micro level, regular meetings of the WIDF bureau and secretariat, convened on both sides of the iron curtain, provided the opportunity for individual women to work together to formulate and promote the organisation’s international agenda. At the intermediate level, the periodic World Congresses of Women and WIDF’s own congresses brought women together from across the globe to debate issues of shared experience and interest. As well as examining WIDF’s magazine publications, this chapter draws in particular on archival materials relating to WIDF’s fifth congress in Moscow in 1963 and its sixth congress in Helsinki in 1969. At the macro level, WIDF operated in the realm of ideas. Members of the organisation worked together to promote what it believed to be universal ideals and values not only as they related to the rights of women and children, but also for the benefit of societies worldwide.