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IT helped to spark a red revolution that swept Lenin into the Kremlin but celebrations overnight of Russian womanhood owe more to rampant capitalism than communist solidarity.
International Women's Day is marked with intensity in Russia, where men began a frenzy of consumption this week to buy flowers, chocolates and perfume for the ladies in their lives.
Unlike Valentine's Day, a recent foreign import, men are expected to buy gifts for their wives, girlfriends, sisters, daughters and female work colleagues to express their admiration for the opposite sex.
The state also joins the celebrations - banners were hung across many city streets to congratulate women on March 8, which remains a public holiday in Russia and other former Soviet republics.
This tradition was established by the Communist Party in 1966 to honour the "outstanding merits of Soviet women in communistic construction (and) in the defence of their Motherland during the Great Patriotic War".
Women's Day has strong revolutionary roots in Russia.
A strike by women for "bread and peace" on February 23, 1917, helped trigger events that led to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II a week later. Russia was still using the Julian calendar at that time, which coincided with March 8 on the Gregorian calendar in use elsewhere. Women were given the vote by the provisional government that followed.
When Lenin took power in the October revolution, Bolshevik feminists persuaded him to mark International Women's Day officially, though it remained a day of labour.
The revolutionary roots were largely lost on the millions of Russian men who were scrambling to buy gifts this week, anxious only to avert any upheavals at home. Many men are also returning the compliment that they received from women on February 23, the Defenders of the Fatherland Day. Introduced initially to honour the Red Army, it has evolved into a celebration of Russian manhood that typically involves the consumption of vast amounts of vodka.
March 8 marks the peak of the Russian flower trade, a business that imports more than $745 million worth of blooms each year.
The day also gives a boost to the country's booming cosmetics industry, though Russian men often appear as clueless as their Western counterparts about what to buy for their loved ones.
The Times
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