For the left, 2026 will be a sad year in the realm of late night comedy because The Late Show host Stephen Colbert will depart the scene in May. For everyone else, the CBS host’s Monday ode to the Soviet Union with Puck News Washington correspondent Julia Ioffe was a good reminder of why they will not miss him.
After discussing current events, Colbert asked, “So, okay, you have a new book. You have a new book called Motherland. What's it about?”
Ioffe replied that, “It's about Soviet and Russian women, and it's about Russian history and Soviet history told from the perspective of women. I pitched this book in early 2018 because after spending all of 2017 talking about Trump and Putin, I was so sick of talking about those two men, and I have not wanted to talk about them again, and here we are.”
Colbert then began his remembrance of the USSR, “The thing is, I remember seeing Soviet posters basically saying, ‘In the West women are not allowed to do any of this.’ There was a forward-looking feminist agenda to the communist enterprise.”
Ioffe agreed, “So, I think a lot of people forget, including Russians, that Russia and the Soviet Union were the vanguard of world feminism. Russian women had the right to vote in 1917, largely irrelevant very quickly. In 1918 they got access to free higher education, paid maternity leave, child support, even from men who were not their legally married husbands, and they had to start paying when the woman was still pregnant. Let’s see, they got no-fault civil divorce, they no longer needed their husband's permission for anything. In 1920, women got the right to abortion in the Soviet Union.”
She continued, “In World War II, over 800,000 women, most of them teenage girls, fought in active combat. Pete Hegseth, I'm looking at you. You know, they had all-female squadrons of fighter pilots. The best snipers in the Soviet Union were women.”
Colbert then wondered, “Was that sustained, or did that go away?”
After Ioffe claimed “it went away” and Colbert asked why, Ioffe declared, “Because men.”
Fact-check: Russian women got the right to vote in 1917 from the Provisional Government that replaced Tsar Nicholas II after he abdicated during the February Revolution. It became “largely irrelevant” because Colbert’s Soviet poster children took it away after the October Revolution and began their campaign of terror and repression. Also, 15 U.S. states allowed women to vote before 1917. The 19th Amendment was ratified three years later in 1920 without having to turn to communism. Finally, multiple countries had women’s suffrage before 1917, again, without the Bolshevism.
Here is a transcript for the January 5-taped show:
CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
1/6/2026
12:31 AM ET
STEPHEN COLBERT: So, okay, you have a new book. You have a new book called Motherland. What's it about?
JULIA IOFFE: It's about Soviet and Russian women, and it's about Russian history and Soviet history told from the perspective of women. I pitched this book in early 2018 because after spending all of 2017 talking about Trump and Putin, I was so sick of talking about those two men, and I have not wanted to talk about them again, and here we are.
COLBERT: The thing is, I remember seeing Soviet posters basically saying, “In the West women are not allowed to do any of this.” There was a forward-looking feminist agenda to the communist enterprise.
IOFFE: So, I think a lot of people forget, including Russians, that Russia and the Soviet Union were the vanguard of world feminism. Russian women had the right to vote in 1917, largely irrelevant very quickly. In 1918 they got access to free higher education, paid maternity leave, child support, even from men who were not their legally married husbands, and they had to start paying when the woman was still pregnant. Let’s see, they got no-fault civil divorce, they no longer needed their husband's permission for anything. In 1920, women got the right to abortion in the Soviet Union.
In World War II, over 800,000 women, most of them teenage girls, fought in active combat. Pete Hegseth, I'm looking at you. You know, they had all-female squadrons of fighter pilots. The best snipers in the Soviet Union were women.
COLBERT: Was that sustained, or did that go away?
IOFFE: It went away.
COLBERT: Why did it go away?
IOFFE: Because men.
COLBERT: I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.
IOFFE: Not you, you are great.
