At the end of the 1920s, a poor peasant woman named Zaminskaia was abandoned by her husband. Left to fend for herself and her two children, she went to the city in search of work. She tried to register at the labor exchange, which dispensed both jobs and unemployment benefits, but was told she was eligible for neither. “You must first work six months for wages,” an official explained. Feeling increasingly hopeless, she ran from one state agency to another, from the Department of Labor to the local soviet to the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate. She heard the same story from every official. Without previous work experience, she could not register to work. Finally she wrote a despairing letter to Rabotnitsa, a journal for women workers. “I am sick and I am starving,” she noted. “I have appealed everywhere.”