The Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF) was one of the largest international women's organizations of the postwar period, but after the end of the Cold War, its activities and significance were largely ignored. In this monograph, Yulia Gradskova makes an important contribution to the recent scholarly reconsideration of the WIDF.
The WIDF was founded in 1945 to promote peace and protect the rights of women and children. Its main administrative apparatus, the secretariat, was originally located in Paris. During the 1950s, the WIDF became embroiled in Cold War politics. Its positions on the independence struggle in Vietnam and the Korean war resulted in a ban by the French government, the removal of the secretariat to East Berlin, and the loss of recognition as an NGO by the UN in 1954. As anti-colonial campaigns intensified in the 1950s and 60s, the WIDF evolved, and the subsequent period, from 1955–85, is Gradskova's primary focus. She details how women from the Global South increased their influence on the organization and pushed it to broaden its conception of women's rights to encompass anti-colonialism and anti-racism, education, land rights, and other issues. This coincided with a period of growth and international prestige for the WDIF; it regained recognition by the UN in 1967 and influenced important UN initiatives in the 1970s and 80s.
Researching transnational organizations presents many logistical challenges, especially in this case because the WIDF's central archive in East Berlin disappeared after 1991. Gradskova has exercised great ingenuity in locating available sources. In addition to published materials, she analyzes the archival records from the WIDF's Soviet affiliate, which was called the Antifascist Committee of Soviet Women (ACSW) and then the Committee of Soviet Women (CSW). These records include Russian translations of WIDF meeting protocols and classified correspondence between the Soviet representatives at the WIDF headquarters and the leadership of the ACSW/CSW back in Moscow.
Gradskova disputes the characterization of the WIDF as a “Soviet Front.” She demonstrates convincingly that while the Soviet Communist Party certainly expected ACSW/CSW delegates and WIDF officials to reinforce Soviet ideologies and policies, it never prioritized women's organizations and the ACSW/CSW did not have the power or resources to rein in communists and unaffiliated WIDF members from outside the Soviet Union. Gradskova details numerous conflicts within the WIDF leadership, and describes how women activists from Asia, Africa, and Latin America participated in the WIDF while simultaneously pursuing their own diverse agendas.
Gradskova applies the insights of postcolonial feminist theory to the WIDF to highlight the conflicts that arose among women's organizations and the challenges this posed to universal understandings of womanhood. She also draws upon and contributes to the recent historiography of the Cold War, which has moved away from a narrative of bipolar politics to emphasize its cultural dimensions and global impact. Advocating for women's rights was a way for the Soviet Union to garner allies and demonstrate the superiority of state socialism to an international audience; eventually the US was forced to respond. Thus, Gradskova concludes, the success of the transnational movement for women's rights was dependent on Cold War dynamics.
Gradskova carefully connects changes in the WIDF to the international context. Her effort to capture the complexity of WIDF's history makes this book a little hard to follow in places, as the analysis moves back and forth through decades and across the globe. It might have benefited from a short introductory narrative providing an overview of the WIDF's trajectory and laying out its organizational structure. Nonetheless, Gradskova's work adds greatly to our understanding of the Cold War and the activists who created a transnational movement for women's rights.
