Who declared 8 March as International Women's Day in 1922?

Vladimir Lenin declared March 8 International Women’s Day in 1922, honoring women’s role in the 1917 Russian Revolution.

The date had become historically significant because women in Petrograd began demonstrations on March 8, 1917, using the Gregorian calendar, or February 23 under Russia’s then-used Julian calendar. Their protests over bread shortages, war, and political oppression helped trigger strikes and the February Revolution, leading to the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II days later.

The observance itself had older international roots. Socialist women in North America and Europe had promoted annual women’s demonstrations, and Clara Zetkin helped advance the idea at the 1910 Copenhagen conference. In 1921, the Communist women’s movement fixed March 8 as the common date, after linking it to the Petrograd uprising.

Lenin’s 1922 declaration helped establish the date across the socialist movement and communist countries. It did not mean he invented the broader women’s-day tradition; rather, he formalized March 8’s revolutionary significance in the Soviet context.