In the early 1920's, the Bolsheviks had established their power in certain Muslim areas such as Tadjikstan, Kazakhstan, etc.

But their secular doctrines had difficulty making headway among the devout. So for a few years, there was a policy known as: "Women: the Alternative Proletariat".

The basic idea was that women in Muslim lands were more oppressed, had surplus value extraced, etc, etc, and that they could stand in the place of the proletariat as bearers of revolutionary politics.

I believe the policy was unsuccessful. There is a good book about it, by Alexander Bennigsen, the name of which escapes me.

Would this qualify as "extreme"?

Editted to add: Google aided memory provides this:

quote:

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Massell, Gregory. The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919-1929. Princeton: 1974

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[ 16 April 2004: Message edited by: jeff house ]

One of the greatest Kirghiz writers, perhaps the greatest that ever lived, Chinghiz Aitmatov, wrote many of his stories from the point of view of young Kirghiz women of that time. His stories honouring Asian women of strength are inspiring. "Jamila", for example, is, in the opinion of the great French writer, Louis Aragorn, the greatest love story ever written. I agree. There's much, much more.

This is what James Riordan thought of Aitmatov's female heroines:

quote:

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These Aitmatov heroines have much in common: they break with the traditional life of a Kirghiz village woman; they take their fate into their own hands; and they suffer much personal hardship. The male characters are worthwhile only in so far as they remain in a positive relationship with the heroine. The dominant female figure surely refects Aitmatov's own fatherless upbringing and the love he has for the female relatives who surrounded him with such care and tenderness when the family was faced with adversity

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I'm not sure how much of a proletariat there was in Central Asia in 1920. But mocking the extremes of left wing social policy mocks the people for whom that policy was intended. For those who like to read astounding, inspiring and heart-rending literature, even in translation from Kirghiz and Russian, I heartily recommend Chinghiz Aitmatov to all extreme-feminists.

[ 16 April 2004: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

Wow. I think I want to have my "repulsiveness confirmed."

[ 16 April 2004: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

quote:

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Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.

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That is not satire; that is revealed truth!