Liudmila Nikolaevna Stal
Stal’, Liudmila Nikolaevna
Born Mar. 2 (14), 1872, in Ekaterinoslav, now Dnepropetrovsk; died Apr. 23,1939, in Moscow. Russian revolutionary; leader in the international women’s movement. Member of the Communist Party from 1897.
The daughter of a factory owner, Stal’ became involved in the revolutionary movement in 1890 and conducted party work in St. Petersburg, Odessa, Kursk, Moscow, and Ekaterinoslav. A member of local committees of the RSDLP, she was arrested several times and exiled. She emigrated in 1907 and assisted in the work of the Bolshevik section in Paris and of the French socialist party. From 1912 to 1914 she contributed to the newspaper Pravda and was a member of the editorial board of the journal Rabotnitsa (The Woman Worker).
After the February Revolution of 1917, Stal’ was an agitator for the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP(B). She took part in the work of the Seventh (April) All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP(B). Beginning in August of that year she worked in Kronstadt as a member of the Presidium of the committee of the RSDLP(B) and of the Executive Committee of the city soviet. From 1918 to 1920 she was engaged in political education work in the Red Army and was a member of the Ufa and Viatka (Kirov) provincial committees of the RCP(B).
In 1920, Stal’ became head of the department of women workers of the Caucasian Bureau of the RCP(B). From 1921 to 1923 she was a member of the International Women’s Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. At the same time she was a staff member in the department of women workers of the Central Committee of the RCP(B) and head of the department of mass-circulation literature for working and peasant women at Gosizdat (State Publishing House of the RSFSR). In 1924 she also became editor of the journal Kommunistka (The Woman Communist), and beginning in 1928 she took part in scholarly work at the Museum of the Revolution of the USSR.
Stal’ was a delegate to the Eighth and Sixteenth Congresses of the RCP(B). She was awarded the Order of Lenin.
REFERENCES
Lenin, V. I. Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed. (See Index volume, part 2, p. 474.)Slavnye bol’shevichki. Moscow, 1958.
U istokov partii, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1969.