Section outline

  • Assigned reading:

    The woman worker's dayElizabeth Wood, "Paradoxes of gender in Soviet Communist Party women’s sections (the Zhenotdel), 1918–1930," in The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia (2021).  

    This section will have a more experimental character and require student collaboration. Although many topics in the seminar lend themselves to gender analysis, this is an intellectual problem at the methodological level, one which I hope will enter into our discussions, but not something that has driven the choice of subject in any given week. This week is no exception, in the sense that we are NOT going to foreground "the woman question" in Soviet political and social history, but rather discuss in a more concrete and biographical way the challenges facing Soviet intellectuals who happened to be female. Students should pair off and work together to identify one female intellectual to present briefly (10 minutes?) in class. But here's the catch: the figure presented must be known primarily for contributions to something other than politics or literature, e.g., no Aleksandra Kollontais, no Anna Akhmatovas, no Lesya Ukrainkas. When choosing someone to present, think about concrete pathways (and obstacles) to social and disciplinary advancement in a particular intellectual role, reaching beyond mere appeals to male chauvinism, Soviet bossism, and patriarchal cultures. 

    We will use the brief Wood essay simply to give us a common reference point regarding early Soviet aspirations, but it is not about intellectual history per se. Our aim will be to identify broader challenges to incorporating Soviet women into intellectual history. I will set the scene and then briefly present the case of Maria Petrashen. 

    Further resources:

    Also not intellectual history, but important for moving the conversation outside of Moscow and Leningrad: Douglas Northrop, "Subaltern voices," Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia (2004).