Gender Studies of the Russian Twentieth Century

Abstract

The article reviews works of English-speaking authors collected in the form of “The Palgrave handbook of women and gender in twentieth-century Russia and the Soviet Union” edited by Professor Melani Ilic and published in London in 2018 by the international publishing house Palgrave Macmillan. This collection made it possible to evaluate the results of the development of W&GS in the Russian history over a quarter of a century. This article considers more than two dozens of articles in the field of women’s and gender histories in Russia during the Soviet and Post-Soviet periods, and assesses their contribution to the revival of the Russian historiography and the search for new approaches and research methods over the last twenty five years. The impact of these works is considered in the context of current debates about social and cultural approaches to the history of women and gender, and about the role of the individual and the collective, the peculiar and the universal in history. The authors underline the importance of the fruitful dialogue between Russian historians and representatives of the leading Western schools. The collection is valuable for the Russian-speaking reader since it represents a variety of contemporary opinions on the female history of Russia and the USSR over the past 100 years. Reviewers note the changes that occurred in the discipline after the collapse of the USSR and the opening of the country to foreign researchers; these events contributed to enriching the source base, including oral history, imagology, and everyday life history. The editor of the book, as well as reviewers of the collection, emphasize the importance of institutionalizing of women’s and gender studies, which was reflected in the creation of various NGOs that unite like-minded women who are passionate about women’s history.