Women in Russia

Yeltsin is certainly not the Sakharov of the Democratic Movement. Russian people sarcastically call his burning the Parliament an "October Revolution" of 1993. In Women's Glasnost vs. Naglost we finally hear the voices of the Russian women on what it means to be female and Russian in the tumultuous climate that is modern Russia. The founder of the Russian women's movement, Tatyana Mamonova was the first Russian woman exiled from the Soviet Union for publishing the underground "samizdat," Woman and Russia. Now lauded as the Simone de Beauvoir of Russia, Mamonova has interviewed 17 Russian women on the subject of the C.A.S. as it relates to glasnost. Women from all walks of life are asked about changes with respect to their roles and expectations as women. Artists, professionals, dissidents, lesbians, doctors, writers, and civil servants tell their stories in candid terms showing that there is still a long road ahead. Revisions and elaborations of speeches delivered on Mamonova's American tours, poetry in her,own hand, and line drawings in her own eloquent and prolific style compliment her essays and the women's interviews.

An examination of women's roles in politics and society in the contemporary Russian Federation as it creates a new market economy and democratic course born of a millennium of history and nearly 75 years of authoritarian communist rule.

The stories of these eight Russian women offer an extremely rare perspective into personal life in the Soviet era. Some were from the poor peasantry & working class, groups in whose name the revolution was carried out & who sometimes gained unprecedented opportunities after the revolution. Others, born to "misfortune" as the daughters of nobles, parish priests, or those peasants termed well-to-do, suffered bitterly as enemies to a new government. The women interviewed here speak candidly about family life, work, sexual relations, marriage & divorce, childbirth & childbearing, & legalized abortion & the underground pursuit of such services after abortion was outlawed in 1936. As no previous book has done, A Revolution of Their Own illuminates the harsh reality of women's daily lives in the Soviet Union as well as reveals the accomplishments made possible by the expanded opportunities that the new Soviet government provided for women. Their stories show why many Russian women continue to take pride in the public achievements of the Soviet period despite, or perhaps because of, the painful price each was made to pay.

This book offers a rich and clearly-written analysis of the women's movement in contemporary Russia. It tells the engaging story of the women's movement's formation and development in a country undergoing a radical economic and political transition from communist rule. Based on extensive interviews with the activists themselves, the book vividly documents the specific challenges facing women's groups in Russia, including societal attitudes toward feminism, the difficulty of organizing in post-communist countries, and the ways that the international environment has affected the women's movement.

This collection of essays by leading western and Russian specialists contains new insights and updates previous research into the role of women in Russian culture in the 19th and 20th centuries.

..."For all readers interested in the fabric of women's literature and women in a literary society, this book represents the highest achievement to date in Russian studies." Choice

Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism asks whether societies caught in political or social transition provide new opportunities for women, or instead, create new burdens and obstacles for them. Using contemporary case-studies, each author looks at the interaction of gender ethnicity and class in a divided society. The varying experiences of women are discussed in the following countries: Northern Ireland; South Africa; the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia; Yemen; Lebanon and Malaysia.

This book explores the lives and expectations of young women in the new Russia, looking at the enormous changes that the new social and economic environment have brought. The authors draw on the growing literature on gender and generation in the West which has arisen as a result of the recognition that the experience of youth is classed, raced and gendered and that the experience of gender is mediated by class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and age. They consider the role of the media, state and social institutions in shaping opportunities and experiences in the post-Soviet environment, focusing on the strategies employed by individual women to reforge social identities in a society in which they have been dislocated more acutely than in any other `postmodern' society.

A comprehensive resource profiling individuals and organizations associated with Russian women's movements from the early 19th century to the post-Soviet era. Contributions by approximately fifty authors from the United States, Russia, Europe, and Canada focus upon the struggle of women to change their society and advance their gender interests. Women activists pursued improvement in educational opportunities, fought for suffrage, established journals, and sought to transform women's consciousness and establish women's studies programs and women's crisis centers. They were a strong voice against the tsarist regime and the oppression of communism. Their objectives were as diverse as their strategies, which ranged from incremental reform, to terrorism, to the establishment of women's electoral organizations.