Maya Surduts (17 March 1937 – 13 April 2016) was a Latvian-born, French activist and women's rights supporter. She considered herself to be a permanent revolutionary and lived in various countries including South Africa, Switzerland, the United States and Cuba protesting regimes which discriminated against or exploited people.
Early life
Merija Surduts was born on 17 March 1937 in
Riga
Riga ( ) is the capital, Primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Latvia, largest city of Latvia. Home to 591,882 inhabitants (as of 2025), the city accounts for a third of Latvia's total population. The population of Riga Planni ...
, Latvia into a
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
communist family. Her father was a physicist and had left for Paris in 1936 after being arrested for his political activities, before her birth. Her mother was a psychologist, originally from Ponevezh, Lithuania, and immigrated in 1938 when Surduts was an infant with her mother and child. During the German occupation of Paris, the family fled to
Nice
Nice ( ; ) is a city in and the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative city limits, with a population of nearly one millionValdeblore on the border with Italy. When the
Gestapo
The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
came to the border towns, they fled again to Montseveroux, but patrols in the area forced Surduts' parents to send her to live with a Catholic family. Between 1945 and 1946, Surduts was placed in a children's home run by the ''Entraide française'' (French Mutual Aid) in Bourgoin. She was later transferred to another ''Entraide'' home in
Saint-Étienne
Saint-Étienne (; Franco-Provençal: ''Sant-Etiève''), also written St. Etienne, is a city and the prefecture of the Loire département, in eastern-central France, in the Massif Central, southwest of Lyon, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regi ...
and was finally reunited with her family in Paris. During this period, she only occasionally was able to attend school, but in addition to the Russian spoken in her home, she learned French and German.
In 1948, Surduts and her mother traveled on Nansen passports to South Africa to visit her maternal grandfather. They had planned to visit for six months, but stayed two years. Surduts enrolled in high school in
Cape Town
Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...
and she and her mother lived in a Jewish commune in Seapoint, where her mother became very active in the movement against
Apartheid
Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...
. Returning to France in 1950, the family lived in
Arcueil
Arcueil () is a Communes of France, commune in the Val-de-Marne Departments of France, department in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the Kilometre Zero#France, center of Paris.
Name
The name Arcueil was recorded f ...
and Surduts enrolled in the Lycée de Montgeron, but finished her high schooling at the Lycée Marie Curie, because her parents had moved to
Bourg-la-Reine
Bourg-la-Reine () is a Communes of France, commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the Kilometre Zero, center of Paris.
History
In 1792, during the French Revolution, Bourg-la-Reine (meaning "Town of the Queen") w ...
Algeria
Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...
Geneva
Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
in 1960. Finishing school in Switzerland as an
interpreter
Interpreting is translation from a spoken or signed language into another language, usually in real time to facilitate live communication. It is distinguished from the translation of a written text, which can be more deliberative and make use o ...
of English and Russian, in 1962, she received a scholarship to study in the United States and settled in Chicago. Participating in many events of the American civil rights movement, she attended the
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (commonly known as the March on Washington or the Great March on Washington) was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic righ ...
in 1963 and then left for Cuba by way of Mexico.
Career
Arriving in Cuba, Surduts was referred to the Ministry of Foreign Trade and was employed as a French translator, while she studied Spanish. At the time, there was a thriving cultural and literary community of foreign nationals in Cuba, and Surduts became prominent in that circle. For eight years, she worked translating and teaching French for the Trade Ministry and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, simultaneously engaging in various activist enterprises to reduce the reliance of Cuba on foreign aid from the
USSR
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
. She performed voluntary work in the cane fields, and planted citrus trees and coffee, joining the militia units. When it became evident that the economic policies of the government were not working, those who had criticized the regime were arrested. Surduts was held for three months and then deported in 1971, returning to France.
Surduts tried working as a freelance translator, but having been out of the country for so long, she had no network. She joined the radical left party, Revolution!, which would later become the Revolutionary Communist League. Activists working with factory workers referred her to the :fr:Mouvement pour la liberté de l'avortement et de la contraception MLAC, where she got involved in reproductive rights. Participating in demonstrations and circulating petitions, she fought for the passage of the Veil Law in 1975. After the right to abortion was assured with the law becoming permanent in 1979, she turned her sights to reform on the laws concerning rape and incest and then in the 1980s, began pressing for changes in employment laws, to address pay inequality, job insecurity and women being forced into part-time work.
In 1990, Surduts founded and became president of the Coordination of Associations for the Right to Abortion and Contraception () in response to repeated attacks on abortion clinics and attempts to prevent women from obtaining the legal procedures in hospitals. CADAC pressed for and obtained passage of legislation in January 1993, of a law which made impeding the right to abortion a crime. In 1995, fearing that conservatives might gain in the
presidential election
A presidential election is the election of any head of state whose official title is President.
Elections by country
Albania
The president of Albania is elected by the Assembly of Albania who are elected by the Albanian public.
Chile
The p ...
and protections might be rolled back, CADAC organized a demonstration to rally support for women's right to equal pay, reproductive control and equality. Forty thousand protesters gathered and sparked a movement to stop roll backs in health and retirement benefits. After the rally, the National Collective for the Rights of Women, was formed and Surduts, one of the founders, became spokeswoman for the umbrella organization.
From the turn of the decade, Surduts continued to work to maintain women's right to reproductive decisions, but pressed for approval of laws to guarantee minors the right to contraception and abortion, which passed in 2001; legislation to protect women from domestic violence, which passed in 2010; protested proposed closings of public hospitals in 2013; and worked on reforms of the laws on prostitution, which were being considered by the legislature at the time of her death.
Death and legacy
Surduts died on 13 April 2016 in Paris after a brief illness. Though mainly remembered for her fight to secure reproductive rights for women, she saw herself as a permanent revolutionary fighting for the human rights of those who were exploited or discriminated against because of systemic biases.