"Women can do everything, men can do the rest.""Between a woman's 'yes' and a woman's 'no,' it's hard to pass a needle.""What goes in with mother's milk goes out with the soul." --Russian proverbsThis rich anthology of source materials makes available for the first time in any language an extensive variety of primary sources on the lives of Russian women from the reign of Peter the Great to the Bolshevik revolution. The selections are drawn from a wide variety of sources, published and unpublished, including memoirs, diaries, legal codes, correspondence, short fiction, poetry, ethnographic observations, and folklore, with primacy given to sources produced by women and previously unavailable in English translation. Organised thematically, the documents focus on women's family life, work and schooling, public activism, creative self-expression, and sexuality and spirituality, as well as on the cultural ideals and legal framework which constrained women of all social classes. Introductions to chapters and to individual selections provide context for the sources and highlight both the continuities and changes that occurred in Russian women's lives over time. This compendium serves as a unique guide to the social, economic, political, and cultural history of women in Imperial Russia. The volume includes illustrations, a chronology, a glossary of Russian terms, a map, and a guide to further reading. Russian Women: Experience and Expression is an ideal collection for classroom use in Russian history, literature, and culture courses and in comparative courses in women's history.

As the first survey of the history of women in Russia to be published in any language, this book is itself an historic event -- the result of the collaboration of the leading Russian and American specialists on Russian women's history. The book is divided in to four chronological parts corresponding to eras of Russian history: (I) Kievan/Mongol (10th - 15th centuries); (II) Muscovite ( 16th - 17th centuries); (III) 18th century; and (IV) 19th - early 20th centuries. Each part gives coverage to four main topics: (1) The role of prominent women in public life, with biographical sketches of women who attained prominence in political or cultural life; (2) Women's daily life and family roles; (3) Women's status under the law; (4) Material culture and in particular women's dress as an expression of their place in society.

The stories of Russian educated women, peasants, prisoners, workers, wives, and mothers of the 1920s and 1930s show how work, marriage, family, religion, and even patriotism helped sustain them during harsh times. The Russian Revolution launched an eco-nomic and social upheaval that released peasant women from the control of traditional extended families. It promised urban women equality and created opportunities for employment and higher education. Yet, the revolution did little to eliminate Russian patriarchal culture, which continued to undermine women's social, sexual, eco-nomic, and political conditions. Divorce and abortion became more widespread, but birth control remained limited, and sexual liberation meant greater freedom for men than for women. The transformations that women needed to gain true equality were postponed by the pov-erty of the new state and the political agendas of leaders like Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin.

Five flamboyant, OC full-blooded women had a chance to rule Russia. How did it happen, and how did they do? In todayOCOs debates about male-female parity, much goes unsaid. TroyatOCOs book brings back the past, when women really had political power. A realisti"

The position of Russia has always been difficult. In spite of the Revolution in 1917, the legal, economic, social and political inequalities between men and women have remained severe. For more than seventy years the official propaganda of the Soviet system deliberately concealed from the public, in the West as well as the East, the actual position of women, presenting it in rose-colored hues and proclaiming that, under socialism, the issue of the position of women in society had been resolved once and for all. However, the opposite was true: women increasingly suffered from overt and covert discrimination. In fact, the discrepancy between the official and actual positioning of working women became so acute that it led to serious social problems. The democratic reforms of the mid-1980s brought some positive changes at last; for the first time, the "women's issue" was recognized as an urgent socio-political problem requiring serious investigation and practical measures. The authors of this collection of original essays, most of whom are social scientists at the Moscow Academy of Science, examine those aspects of life of women in Russia today which aremost pressing, not least those arising from the multi-ethnic composition of the Russian Federation that comprises more than one hundred different nationalities and in which women constitute fifty-three per cent of the population.

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.

Russian rural women have been depicted as victims of oppressive patriarchy, celebrated as symbols of inherent female strength, and extolled as the original source of a great world culture. Throughout the years of collectivization, industrialization, and World War II, women played major roles in the evolution of the Russian village. But how do they see themselves? What do their stories, songs, and customs reveal about their values, desires, and motivations? Based upon nearly three decades of fieldwork, from 1983 to 2010, The Worlds of Russian Rural Women follows three generations of Russian women and shows how they alternately preserve, discard, and rework the cultural traditions of their forebears to suit changing needs and self-conceptions. In a major contribution to the study of folklore, Laura J. Olson and Svetlana Adonyeva document the ways that women’s tales of traditional practices associated with marriage, childbirth, and death reflect both upholding and transgression of social norms. Their romance songs, satirical ditties, and healing and harmful magic reveal the complexity of power relations in the Russian villages.

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"This collection offers a treasure trove of primary sources of interest to students of women's history. Carefully introduced and annotated, these documents illustrate the diversity of Russian women's lives." -- Barbara Alpern Engel "There is no other work that offers such a wide variety of documents and such a successful combination of literary and historical materials." -- Ann Hibner Koblitz This rich anthology of source materials makes available for the first time in any language a multitude of primary sources on the lives of Russian women from the reign of Peter the Great to the Bolshevik revolution. The selections are drawn from a wide variety of documents, published and unpublished, including memoirs, diaries, legal codes, correspondence, short fiction, poetry, ethnographic observations, and folklore. Primacy is given to sources produced by women and previously unavailable in English translation. Organized thematically, the documents focus on women's family life, work and schooling, public activism, creative self-expression, and sexuality and spirituality, as well as on the cultural ideals and legal framework which constrained women of all social classes.

Grassroots Russian women's organizations faced multiple challenges in the early 1990s. Like their members, they were confronted with both potentially hostile attitudes and numerous practical difficulties. Post-Soviet ideologies of gender difference produced a gender climate which was particularly unsympathetic to female activism in support of other women. This book presents a detailed study of grassroots Russian women's organizations in 1991-96, against the background of a careful analysis of gender relations and attitudes to women's place in post-Soviet Russian society.