"A Sophisticated, detailed account of the lives of Russian factory women during the formative years of Russian industrial capitalism. Glickman examines the interaction of class and gender that shaped the lives of women during this period of great, often tumultuous social, political, and economic change. Following women from the countryside into Russia's workshops and factories and describing their daily li9ves at work, in the family, and insociety, the author suggests that women's habits, aspirations, and expectations were scarcely altered in the transition from agrarian to industrial life."--Back cover

Choi Chatterjee analyzes both Bolshevik attitudes towards women and the invented state rituals surrounding Women's Day to demonstrate the ways these celebrations helped construct gender notions in the Soviet Union.

This ambitious study provides a sweeping overview of the position of women in England, France, Germany, and Russia/USSR from 1860-1939. The book illustrates their struggles to realize their dreams and their resourcefulness in coping with often dreary, hard, even horrifying lives. Deftly combining statistical data to underscore collective experiences and belles lettres to highlight the texture of individual women's lives, the book assesses the significance of gender, class, nationality, and religion. This richly researched work traces common patterns and unique experiences in women's lives by showing how they defined themselves, coped with daily life, and confronted disaster with courage and resourcefulness.

This study considers the impact of industrialisation, revolution and world war on women's working lives in Russia. Unlike existing studies this new text looks at women from all social classes. In the process the authors reveal how the stereotypical portrayal of Russian women's work as a struggle of endurance and sacrifice distorts and oversimplifies the reality of their experience between 1880 and 1930.

The author traces the major developments in the history of women in Russia and their impact on the history of the nation. Sketching lived experiences across the centuries, she demonstrates the key roles that women played in shaping Russia's political, economic, social, and cultural development for over a millennium, starting in 900.

A definitive new history of Russia from early Rus' to the collapse of the Soviet Union

Table of contents

Asked shortly after the revolution about how she viewed the new government, Tatiana Varsher replied, "With the wide-open eyes of a historian." Her countrywoman, Zinaida Zhemchuzhnaia, expressed a similar need to take note: "I want to write about the way those events were perceived and reflected in the humble and distant corner of Russia that was the Cossack town of Korenovskaia." What these women witnessed and experienced, and what they were moved to describe, is part of the extraordinary portrait of life in revolutionary Russia presented in this book. A collection of life stories of Russian women in the first half of the twentieth century, In the Shadow of Revolution brings together the testimony of Soviet citizens and émigrés, intellectuals of aristocratic birth and Soviet milkmaids, housewives and engineers, Bolshevik activists and dedicated opponents of the Soviet regime. In literary memoirs, oral interviews, personal dossiers, public speeches, and letters to the editor, these women document their diverse experience of the upheavals that reshaped Russia in the first half of this century. As is characteristic of twentieth-century Russian women's autobiographies, these life stories take their structure not so much from private events like childbirth or marriage as from great public events. Accordingly the collection is structured around the events these women see as touchstones: the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War of 1918-20; the switch to the New Economic Policy in the 1920s and collectivization; and the Stalinist society of the 1930s, including the Great Terror. Edited by two preeminent historians of Russia and the Soviet Union, the volume includes introductions that investigate the social historical context of these women's lives as well as the structure of their autobiographical narratives.

Here, for the first time in English translation, are contemporary accounts of working-class life during the final decades of the Russian Empire. Written by workers and other close observers of their milieu, these five selections recreate the world of Russian labor during a period of rapid industrialization and social change, a world far more complex and varied than has often been assumed. The accounts in The Russian Worker explore the daily experiences, social relations, and aspirations of factory, artisanal, and sales-clerical workers, both in and outside the place of employment. Through the eyes of contemporaries we see the routine, the organization of work, and authority relations on the shop floor as well as conditions that workers encountered in providing for food and lodging and their experiences in the areas of religion, recreation, cultural activities, family ties, and links with the countryside. With its vivid and detailed descriptions of working-class life, The Russian Worker provides new material on such important topics as the formation of workers' social identities, the position of women, patterns of stratification, and workers' concepts of status differentiation. An introductory essay by Victoria Bonnell places the selections in an historical context and examines some of the central issues in the study of Russian labor. The collection will be of value not only to specialists in the Russian field, but also to historians, sociologists, economists, and others with an interest in the sociology of work, and the history of working women.

By ignoring gender issues, historians have failed to understand how efforts to control women—and women's reactions to these efforts—have shaped political and social institutions and thus influenced the course of Russian and Soviet history. These original essays challenge a host of traditional assumptions by integrating women into the Russian past. Using recent advances in the study of gender, the family, class, and the status of women, the authors examine various roles of Russian women and offer a broad overview of a vibrant and growing field.