That surprised me too! I looked it up - in 1989, USA pop. was 246.8 million, while the USSR pop. was 286.7 million. Of the Soviet Union's 286.7 million, Russia made up 51.4% of the total, with the remainder living in the other republics.
Actually there were three (or so says Wikipedia). The first was Elena Stasova, an original Bolshevik who somehow survived the Great Purge, although she came close to being arrested. The second was Yekaterina Furtseva, who ascended into prominence by denouncing a famous actor for mocking Soviet leaders, then became a protege of Khrushchev's during deStalinization, then lost her position for criticizing Khrushchev in a phone call that was overheard. The last was Aleksandra Biryukova, who was a Soviet functionary up until the demise of the USSR. I know, fascinating.
I'm shocked that, at the time of writing, over 35% of quizzers thought that as many as 30% of the Politiburo would have been women. In the USA today, congress is less than 30% women (although it's close).
People who thought so, please respond: why would you think this could be true?
The USSR was often seen as a more gender-egalitarian country than the USA. Women certainly made up a much higher percentage of the workforce as a whole. (This for various reasons; a good part of it being that the male population was decimated in WW2 and the government needed to find some way to pick up the slack. But either way...)
It's certainly not remotely inconceivable that the soviets would have had (far) more women in government than the USA does today. In fact I would be surprised if that wasn't the case.
As it turns out, that didn't extend to the higher echelons of power. Which is maybe not so surprising. But I also wouldn't have been surprised to learn that it did.
Yeah, the US seems to be behind many countries in this regard. Pakistan, India, and the Philippines all had female leaders in the 80s or earlier. Mexico's just-completed election was between two women (and the winner was Jewish, which to me seems inconceivable in the US). We've had 44 white Christian men and one half-Black Christian man. Not exactly leading the charge here.
Did the USSR maintain outposts on arctic ice sheets? I thought I'd read stories of seasonally or temporarily supplied stations for radio operations, or something like that. But I can see how that is neither qualifies as a "base" nor "the North Pole"
-Maybe not. Seems like ice camps may not last more than days/weeks, there's some stories about US/UK Ice Camps, including one near Alaska Ice Camp Nautilus from ICEX-2014.
People who thought so, please respond: why would you think this could be true?
It's certainly not remotely inconceivable that the soviets would have had (far) more women in government than the USA does today. In fact I would be surprised if that wasn't the case.
As it turns out, that didn't extend to the higher echelons of power. Which is maybe not so surprising. But I also wouldn't have been surprised to learn that it did.
-Maybe not. Seems like ice camps may not last more than days/weeks, there's some stories about US/UK Ice Camps, including one near Alaska Ice Camp Nautilus from ICEX-2014.
Normally the word "larger" is used when talking about population size.
but on Wikipedia I read "Only four women ever served in the Politburo; Elena Stasova, Yekaterina Furtseva, Alexandra Biryukova and Galina Semenova."
In Soviet Russia, the quiz answers you!!!