the 20th centuries. In her opinion, working within the established order has never brought women any advances, and only through revolutionary socialist movements have women made any social gains. Rowbotham has argued that though male revolutionaries are willing to accept women as partners as long as the revolution lasts, once the revolution is over, women are expected to return to their traditional roles. As an example of her thesis in Women, Resistance and Revolution, she examined the role of Russian women in the late Imperial, Provisional government, and early Soviet periods. Rowbotham wrote that women played a key role in toppling Emperor Nicholas II and with him the House of Romanov, which had reigned since 1612, noting that the February Revolution in Petrograd began with women's demonstrations on International Women's Day. Rowbotham has praised Vladimir Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders in Women, Resistance and Revolution for legalising abortion, divorce, and contraception plus founding the Zhenotdel (women's department) together with socialised restaurants, health care and laundries. Rowbothham argued that the changes experienced by Russian women from the Imperial era, where superstition, poverty, illiteracy, and the patriarchal view as women as property were the norm to the early Soviet era were an improvement. She has criticised Soviet policies starting with the First five-year plan of 1928–33 for not only expecting women to work full-time, but also to take on the burdens of housework and child-raising while at the same time banning abortion and birth control. Rowbotham argued that the Stalinist era marked the beginning of a retrogression for Soviet women, as Stalin to a certain extent brought about a return to traditional Russian values, most notably via a lavish personality cult that incorporated Tsarist imagery and iconography. Rowbotham has contended that to achieve women's liberation requires a "revolution within the revolution" or freedom from the "colony within the colony" as sexism was and is just entrenched in left-wing men as it is on the right. In Women, Resistance and Revolution, she wrote that though women were allowed to participate in revolutionary events such as the French Revolution and the Chinese civil war, once a new order was established whatever under Napoleon or Mao Zedong, a retrogression to the previous patriarchal values took place. Writing about the Vietnam War, which was then on-going, Rowbotham stated that Vietnamese women involved serving in the Viet Cong especially felt committed to the cause because of