Inessa Armand was a French-Russian communist politician, member of the Bolsheviks and feminist. She was an important figure in pre-Revolution Russian communist movement and was the Director of the Zhenotdel or “Women’s Department” which worked to improve the conditions of women’s lives in the Soviet Union, fighting illiteracy and educating women about the new marriage, education, and work laws put in place by the Revolution. By 1919 she had become “the most powerful woman in Moscow.”