This volume brings together a collection of exciting new essays that exemplify some of the ‘state of the art’ research currently being conducted in the field of Russian and Soviet women’s and gender studies. Taken in their broadest contexts, it is more than evident that Russian and Soviet Studies are well embedded in twenty-first-century academia in the West and that they also now have a global reach in higher education . A good number of specialist Russian research centres, libraries and archives exist in universities around the globe. Books and journals in Russian and Soviet Studies constitute significant entries on the lists of university and academic publishers, as well as in the popular press, around the world and they have a prominent place in wider ‘area studies’. It is also worth noting that the beginning of the twenty-first century has witnessed a tendency in academia in many countries to reduce the number of defined women’s and gender studies undergraduate courses and to confine these areas of study and scholarship to taught postgraduate and research degree programmes. Nevertheless, teaching about women and gender and feminist theoretical approaches are now much more embedded in the core disciplines of academia, and publishing on issues relating to women and gender is currently flourishing.
The Russian and Soviet Studies field has seen the emergence and growth of research and publication specifically on issues relating to women and gender, and this particular area of scholarship has expanded considerably since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Like its base field, Russian and Soviet women’s and gender studies have a global reach, as exemplified by the contributions to this volume. Chapters are included here by researchers currently based in the following countries (in alphabetical order): Australia, Canada, Estonia , Hungary , Lithuania, Mexico, the Russian Federation, South Korea , Sweden , Switzerland , the United Kingdom and the United States .
The context in which research is now being conducted and the types of scholar who undertake the research have had a significant impact on the development of the Russian Studies field. The collapse of the Soviet Union in itself provided (to some extent) greater and easier access to primary source materials within and relating to the former Soviet Union, with scholars now undertaking archival research not only in the major metropolitan centres, but also increasingly more often in the former Soviet republics, Russian regions and in local collections. In addition, the collapse opened up the possibility for Western scholars to talk to and work with former Soviet citizens in the conduct of their research, and to collaborate with new young Russian scholars who are unencumbered by the constraints that the former Soviet system imposed in scholarly research training, academic outlook and, moreover, in the publication of research findings (though there remain significant financial constraints on collaboration, research and publication). These changes in themselves have given a new vitality to the field. The collapse also resulted in an expansion of ‘acceptable’, ‘doable’ and possible research topics on which postgraduate students and established academics could conduct their research, no longer so constrained as they once were by Soviet bureaucratic oversight, the need for formal approval of the research topic and the restrictions imposed, bureaucratically, logistically and geographically, in the access to source materials.
The years since 1991 have seen a growing number of younger scholars, women in particular, entering the academic research field and university-level teaching in Russian and Soviet Studies , an area that has traditionally been dominated by men; this factor alone will also inevitably influence the future direction of the field. In addition, the quarter century since 1991 has seen many more scholars not only in post-Soviet Russia and the former Soviet republics, but also in the former Soviet-dominated Eastern bloc more broadly undertaking research in women’s and gender studies and finding outlets for publishing English-language translations of their works, thus making them more generally accessible to non-Russian readers in the West. 1 There is now considerable scope for researchers in the West and in Russia to work and publish collaboratively on projects of shared interest. These factors have all culminated in a lively and exciting research field and, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a new dynamic in research output and publications.
In its early developmental stages, and for some time after the initial take-off of research and publication specifically in Russian and Soviet women’s history, the field was served by two foundational survey texts, by Gail Lapidus and Richard Stites , the ongoing importance of which is demonstrated by regular citations indicating their continued use following their first appearance. 2 At the time of their original publication in the late 1970s, these works were supplemented by a small range of studies that focused on such issues as women’s role in the Russian revolutionary movement and biographies of prominent Russian and Soviet women. A small number of English-language textbooks, primary source extracts and documents collections have also become available to support research and teaching about women and gender in Russian and Soviet history, literature and cultural studies. 3 In addition to these, a whole array of academic publications—monographs, edited collections, biographies, book chapters, journal articles, and sometimes whole journals—have been made available dedicated to the study and exploration of women and gender in Russia and the Soviet Union. Many of these works are listed in the bibliography to this volume. Today, papers relating to the broad field of Russian and Soviet women’s and gender studies are regularly presented at academic conferences and, indeed, whole conferences, symposia, workshops and seminar series are sometimes dedicated to the subject.
In addition, the Russian and Soviet women’s and gender studies field now benefits from a range of first-hand written narratives—autobiographies, memoirs, reminiscences and similar testimonial literatures, for example—many of which have been published and made available also in English language translation . Similarly, first-hand written and oral testimonies are now increasingly being archived and made accessible to academic researchers. These are further supplemented by a growing number of publications arising from research projects that have involved conducting surveys and interviews with women and men, many of whom lived through the Soviet period and are now able to speak more openly and freely in post-Soviet Russia about their experiences.
Often arising from oral history interviews or public calls for submissions of testimonials, such writings sometimes examine specific experiences of different facets of Soviet and post-Soviet life (such as life course events, survival in the labour camps, and living in a communal apartment, for example), and they have given rise to critical considerations of their methodology and research ethics. 4 These first-hand commentaries can provide a window into, for example, how Soviet policies on sexual equality were formulated and received, how they worked in practice and the extent to which they are reflected (or rejected) in the present-day Russian gender regime. Such publications are now regularly being further supplemented by materials and dedicated websites that are becoming available to researchers online. All of these materials now provide increasing scope for explorations of the gendered aspects of Russian, Soviet and post-Soviet everyday life.
As is evident from the reading of the field’s varied publications, academic approaches in Russian and Soviet Studies are intrinsically multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary (as, too, are women’s and gender studies). Underpinned by a desire to understand and explain ‘Russia’ and its place in the world, the Russian Studies field draws on a broad range of methodological approaches and academic disciplines (mostly in, but not limited to, the arts, humanities and social sciences) to examine its core subject. This is reflected in the contributions to this volume, which have been presented here not only by historians, but also by sociologists, political scientists, geographers, visual and cultural theorists, economists and scholars of Russian literature and linguistics. All of the contributors are interested, in one way or another, in the interplay of women’s and gender studies with their core subject disciplines and the broader Russian Studies field.
There are too many chapters in this volume to provide a summary of each individually in this brief overall introduction to the book. As reflected on the Contents pages, the ordering of the chapters follows a loose chronological structure, with a nod along the way to providing some thematic continuity: the studies start at the critical turning point of the late nineteenth century moving into the final years of Imperial Russia; they progress through the Soviet period from the revolutionary foundations of the Bolshevik and Stalinist state, onto the Second World War , to the ‘thaw’ and into the years of late socialism ; and, finally, they examine the transition period of post-Soviet Russia as it moves into the twenty-first century.
In terms of thematic and subject content, the collection includes a broad variety of topics and approaches interlinking and interconnected with historical and contemporary studies: bibliographic and biographic studies; research based on visual and cultural analyses of a variety of Russian and Soviet art forms and communicative and propagandistic output; social and cultural studies that explore different facets of life in Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, focusing on both the everyday and the extraordinary; literary studies that contribute to understandings and explanations of the construction of femininity and masculinity in Russia; explorations of particularly Soviet attitudes to sexuality and changing post-Soviet norms; women’s working lives and the struggle for equality in the Soviet Union and since 1991; humour and satire as sources for gender analyses; the framing of women’s life chances, opportunities and choices as reflected in legal enactments, media reporting and online discussion forums.
The individual studies included in this collection draw on topics and issues that can be linked across and between chapters, as will become clear as readers make their way through the volume or as they dip in and out of separate chapters. This is perhaps most obvious in such areas as women’s experiences in the workplace or of warfare, as supporters of the Russian revolutionary movement and activists in post-revolutionary Soviet organisations or as dissenters in opposition to the various impositions of the Soviet state. It is seen in the ways in which women and men were constructed by, conformed to, contended against and came into conflict with both state-imposed expectations (from above) and Russian and Soviet social and cultural norms (from below) about how they should situate themselves in society, how they should view themselves and how they should live their lives.
Furthermore, as some of the chapters make clear, Soviet citizens were both the subjects and agents of change: some enthusiastically embraced the opportunities presented to them by the Soviet socialist regime, whilst others resisted the peculiar form of twentieth-century modernisation that was being presented to them and imposed upon them; others found themselves, for at least some part of their lives, with little or no choice whatsoever as they were drawn into the whirlwind of Sovie...