Scholars Explore New Approaches to Women’s History in Russia

This year, a group of Russian scholars, published Women's History in Russia: (Re)Establishing the Field, which through a series of essays explores Russian gender and women’s history. The book’s editor, Marianna Muravyeva,  Associate Professor, St. Petersburg School of Social Sciences  and Humanities recently spoke with the HSE news service about the book and the growing interest in women’s history among Russian scholars.

— What sparked your interest in the topic of gender and the subject of women in the history of Russia?

— Scholars have an obligation to society and people to examine and study those areas which are underrepresented, important and have further impact on societal development; they do that notwithstanding their personal inclinations and interests. Women’s history is one of these areas. Women constitute 53% of the Russian population (and about the same of world population) and yet they are treated as a minority. Their history is still written in the context of the so-called history of mankind, in which women are not visible or are not allowed their own identities. While this situation has been gradually changing in the past 50 years, Russia is quite behind in gender and women’s history due to its deep patriarchal nature, gender backlash and simple disrespect for women as human beings. I think, women (and men as well) deserve to have their own history written and they deserve to know their history.

— What is the general idea of this new book that so many researchers took part in? What brings everything together?

— This collection of essays, all by Russian scholars, is the first of its kind to address a broad English-speaking audience. It presents the theories and methodologies employed by Russian national historiography to make sense of Russian gender and women’s history. The essays in this volume discuss women’s and gender history in Russia, highlighting sensitive areas in the Russian academic community and in Russian society in general.

The book appears in the context of an intense backlash against the liberal ideology of Russian modernization. That backlash has manifested itself in constant and persistent calls for traditional values and the rejection of gender as a concept, which many Russians believe entails the ability to choose one’s sex. Women are expected to return to their “natural state” as mothers and housekeepers; feminism has once again become a perceived cause of bad motherhood, is seen as a general threat to the family, and is even held responsible for “unnatural vices.” These attacks on gender and feminism as academic concepts, together with their further politicization, underscore the importance of women’s history in Russia. They also force scholars to reflect on the reasons and roots of such hostility. Furthermore, they bring up immanent questions about the nature and origins of these traditional values. These are the questions this books answers.

This book also reflects some general developments within recent women’s and gender historical writing. The essays contained within manifest concerns about the discipline’s position within the Russian academic world and university curriculum, its progressive evolution, and its means of promotion among both specialists and the general public. Today, historians of women tend to think about the state of affairs within the growing group of researchers within women’s and gender history, which has turned out to be diverse, at times discrete and at other times combative. The first chapters provide important insights into the complicated process of the institutionalization of women’s history in contemporary Russia by Natalia Pushkareva and Irina Iukina.  

 The book appears in the context of an intense backlash against the liberal ideology of Russian modernization. That backlash has manifested itself in constant and persistent calls for traditional values and the rejection of gender as a concept, which many Russians believe entails the ability to choose one’s sex. The attacks on gender and feminism as academic concepts, together with their further politicization, underscore the importance of women’s history in Russia.

The second part of this collection is devoted to a relatively new area of historical research in Russia: the problem of constructing sexualities, sexual behavior, and sexual norms in the past. As the chapters presented in this book demonstrate, scholars apply different approaches and methodologies to these issues. It includes chapters I authored on sex crimes in 19^th-century Russia, Susanna Kradetskaia’s chapter on feminist organizations and prostitution in pre-revolutionary Russia, Irina Rebrova’s chapter on women partisans during WWII, Maksim Kail’s chapter on women’s piety during the 1917 Revolution and Alexander Kondakov’s chapter on sexual citizenship.

The third and final part of the book deals with women’s experiences at the crossroads of public and private discourses. It connects spheres of social relations, policymaking and women’s self-representations at different points in Russia’s distant and recent past. It includes Svetlana Filatova’s chapter on Russian women and entrepreneurial activities before 1917, Alexander Ermakov’s chapter on women’s participation in the labour force and Nazi criticism of the Soviet experiences, Natalia Kozlova’s chapter on the history of International Women’s Day, Olga Gromasheva’s chapter on food management and gender, and Natalia Sherstneva’s chapter on children’s rights, juvenile justice and conservative mobilization.

— What difficulties did you encounter in putting this collection together?

— Producing a collective volume of articles is always a challenge, but for this particular collection the major problem was the lack of resources. All the authors are non-English speakers and there was a need for financial support for proofreading. However, I received a lot of help from my colleagues in Russian women’s history and women’s studies from English-speaking countries, who gave valuable advice and did a lot of pro bono work on this book. My deep gratitude goes to them, all of whom are listed in the acknowledgements.

— The book was published in English. What was your target audience? Have you received any responses from foreign colleagues or readers? Are you planning to submit the publication to any professional conference?

— This collection of essays by Russian scholars alone is the first of its kind in addressing a broad English-speaking audience. We hope that the volume will further facilitate the exchange of scholarship and contribute to the de-marginalization of Russia and Russian women. We do not find it useful to assess the historical development of Russian gender experiences through the lens of binary oppositions such as East and West, and we hope that this book also demonstrates the importance of not reducing Russian women’s history and women’s experiences to the West/East paradigm.

The book is just out and the first reviews are yet to come. As far as I know, many of our foreign colleagues have already ordered the book for teaching and some professional journals have requested review copies from the publisher. We will have to wait and see.

This book will be presented at the next annual convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) in Philadelphia 2015 and annual conference of Russian Association of Researchers in Women’s History (RAIZhI).

— Apart from gender, what are some of your other academic interests?

— My current project is in the history of crime and, specifically, urban crime. I hope that by 2017 I will be able to publish a two-volume monograph on the history of Russian crime from 1600 to 2000, based on crime statistics and other specific criminological evidence. Some other projects I am involved in deal with violence against parents, conflict resolution, military law, human rights, social forensics and connected fields.

Anna Chernyakhovskaya, specially for HSE News Service