Rie Lips-Odinot

Maria Elizabeth "Rie" Lips-Odinot (4 May 1908 – 26 January 1998) was a Dutch politician. She was a member of the Dutch House of Representatives from 1951 to 1959 and of the North Holland provincial council from 1949 to 1962, initially for the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) and after being expelled from the CPN in 1958 for the Socialist Workers' Party. She also served as head of the CPN-aligned Dutch Women's Movement (NVB) from 1953 to 1958.

Early life

Rie Odinot was born on 4 May 1908 in Wijk bij Duurstede to Johannes Marinus Odinot, a carpenter, and Alida Clasina van Bentem. She was the second of four children in a religious orthodox Reformed family, though she abandoned the faith following a conflict with a minister. After completing her education, Odinot worked as a childcare worker for several years, before marrying Jan Douwinus Nobbe in 1928, with whom she would have two children. Odinot came into conflict with SDAP leadership for her willingness to cooperate with communists, such as in providing aid to the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War.

After the beginning of de-Stalinisation in the USSR under Nikita Khrushchev, Lips-Odinot became associated with the opposition within the CPN, known as the Brug Group. In 1959, she joined the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP), becoming a part of its leadership and running on the party list for the 1959 Dutch general election, but was not elected.

Later life After the failure of the SWP, Lips-Odinot became a member of the Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP) in 1965, but left the PSP in 1973. Though she remained politically left-wing her whole life, Lips-Odinot became increasingly critical of communism and her former party, admitting in later years that she and the CPN had mistreated political dissenters due to a belief in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin as a utopia. In 1988, she publicly spoke out to sociologist Jolande Withuis about the Red Army's mistreatment of women in Ravensbrück concentration camp following its liberation.

Rie Lips-Odinot died on 26 January 1998 in Hilversum.