Early Historical Accounts of the Russian Women's Movement: a political dialogue or a dispute?

Abstract

This article looks at contending narratives of the Russian women's movement which were published at the beginning of the twentieth century. It pays particular attention to a ‘dialogue’ among the respective authors and the manner in which these works began to inform Russian scholarship of a later period. The author explores the contrasting representations of the women's movement and the construction of different feminist political identities which are to be found in the political writings of women from this time. She argues that the women's movement in Russia was highly differentiated, and that feminists exploited contrasting historical interpretations in defence of political principles, convictions and expectations

Notes

Petr Kudryavtsev (1991) Lekzii i sochineniya. Izbrannoe [Lectures and essays. A selection] (Moscow: Nauka), p. 209.

Yefimenko was the first woman in Russia appointed to a professorship in history (Kharkov University, 1910). Among her works are: Aleksandra Yefimenko (1874) Narodnyye yuridicheskiye vozzreniya na brak [Popular legal attitudes towards marriage], Znanie, 1, pp. 1–45; Aleksandra Y. Yefimenko (1884) Issledovaniya narodnoi zhizni [Studies in people's life] (Moscow: unknown publisher).

Nadezhda Belozerskaya (1913) Avtobiographiya [Autobiography], Istoricheskii vestnik, June (6), p. 933. All translations in this article are made by the author.

Shchepkina's concise biography written by Rochelle Ruthchild can be found in Francisca de Haan, Krassimira Daskalova & Anna Loutfi (Eds) (2006) A Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms. Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries (Budapest and New York: CEU Press), pp. 507–509.

This educational institution was opened in 1872 in Moscow to provide female students with historical and philological education.

Ekaterina Shchepkina (1914) Iz storii zhenskoi lichnosti v Rossii [From the history of woman's personality in Russia] (St Petersburg: Tip. Vol). All quotations are made from the 2005 edition: Ekaterina Shchepkina (2005) Iz storii zhenskoi lichnosti v Rossii (Tver: Feminist Press).

Shchepkina, Iz storii, p. 260.

Ibid., pp. 297–298.

Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams (1952) Na putyakh k svobode [On the path to freedom] (New York: Izdatelstvo imeni Chekhova), p. 11. Sofia Tyurbert warned women about the risks of ‘group egoism’ and ‘separatism’ at the First All-Russian Women's Congress. See: Sofia Tyurbert (1909) Zhenskii vopros i politicheskii stroi [The woman's question and political formation], in Trudy I-go Vserossiiskogo Zhenskogo S'ezda pri Russkom zhenskom obshestve v S.-Peterburge, 10-16 dekabrya 1908 goda [Proceedings of the First All-Russian Women's Congress in St Petersburg, December 10–16, 1908) (St Petersburg), p. 511.

Shchepkina, Iz istorii, p. 312.

Their short biographies by Rochelle Ruthchild could be found in de Haan et al., A Biographical Dictionary, pp. 207–209 (for Kalmanovich) and pp. 344–347 (for Mirovich).

They both attended congresses of the International Council of Women (ICW) and International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA). See, for example: Anna Kalmanovich (1905) Otchet o mezhdunarodnom kongresse 1904 g. [Report on the international congress of 1904] (Saratov); N. Mirovich (1906) III Kongress Mezhdunarodnogo soyuza izbiratelnykh prav zhenshin v Kopengagene [The Third Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Copenhagen], Russkaya Mysl, 11, pp. 125–149; N. Mirovich (1908) Na zhenskom kongresse v Amsterdame [At the women's congress in Amsterdam], Soyuz zhenshin, 7–8, pp. 3–7.

Anna Kalmanovich (1908) Zhenskoe dvizhenie i ego zadachi [The women's movement and its tasks] (St Petersburg: Tip. Rabotnik); Anna Kalmanovich (1909) Zhenskoe dvizhenie i otnoshenie partii k nemu [The women's movement and attitudes of political parties to it], in Trudy I-go Vserossiiskogo Zhenskogo S'ezda pri Russkom zhenskom obshestve v S.-Peterburge, 10–16 dekabrya 1908 goda, pp. 779–791; N. Mirovich (1908) Iz istorii zhenskogo dvizheniya v Rossii [From the history of the women's movement in Russia] (Moscow: Tipografiya I. D. Sytina).

Zinaida Mirovich (1909) Zhenskii vopros na mezhdunarodnom kongresse v Amsterdame [The woman's question at the international congress in Amsterdam], in Trudy I-go Vserossiiskogo Zhenskogo S'ezda pri Russkom zhenskom obshestve v S.-Peterburge, 10–16 dekabrya 1908 goda, p. 466.

Kalmanovich, ‘Zhenskoe dvizhenie i otnoshenie partii k nemu’, p. 791.

Ibid.

For Kollontai's short biography by Natalia Gafizova, see de Haan et al., A Biographical Dictionary, pp. 253–257.

Aleksandra Kollontai (1909) Socialnyye osnovy zhenskogo voprosa [Social basis of the woman's question] (St Petersburg: Znanie).

Cited from: Valentina Uspenskaya (Ed.) (2003) Marksistskii feminism. Kollekziya tekstov A.M. Kollontai [Marxist feminism. A collection of texts by A. M. Kollontai] (Tver: Feminist Press), p. 26.

Aleksandra Kollontai (1989) Izbrannye pisma, 1901–1952 (Selected correspondence, 1901–1952] (Moscow: Nauka), p. 46.

Kollontai, Socialnyye osnovy zhenskogo voprosa.

A group of historians have demonstrated that the notion of ‘bourgeois feminism’ did not reflect a social or political reality but was an ideological construct. See: Françoise Picq (1986) ‘Bourgeois Feminism’ in France, a Theory Developed by Socialist Women before World War I, trans. Irene Ilton, in Judith Friedlander, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Alice Kessler-Harris & Carroll Smith-Rosenberg (Eds) Women in Culture and Politics: a century of change (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. 330–343; Jean Quataert (2001) Socialisms, Feminisms, and Agency: a long view, Journal of Modern History, 73, pp. 603–616; Marilyn J. Boxer (2007) Rethinking the Socialist Construction and International Career of the Concept ‘Bourgeois Feminism’, American Historical Review, 112(1), pp. 131–158; Rochelle Ruthchild (2006) ‘Bourgeois’ Feminism': gender, class, and the Women's Equal Rights Union in Russia, 1905–1908, paper presented at the European Social Science History Conference, Amsterdam, 22–25 March 2006.

Anna Kalmanovich (1910) Pretenzii k zhenscomu dvizheniyu voobshe i k I-mu Vserssiiskomy zhenskomu s'ezdu v chastnosti. Neskolko slov o knige g-zhi Kollontai ‘Socialnyye osnovy zhenskogo voprosa’ [Pretensions to the women's movement in general and to the First All-Russian Women's Congress in particular. Some words about the book of Mrs. Kollontai ‘Social basis of the woman's question’] (St Petersburg).

Ekaterina Shchekina (1900) Apologiya ‘burzhuazok’ v knige g-zhi Kollontai ‘Socialnyye osnovy zhenskogo voprosa’ [Apologia of ‘bourgeois women’ in the book of Mrs. Kollontai ‘Social basis of the woman's question’], Soyuz zhenshin, 4, pp. 11–14.

Cited from: Uspenskaya, Marksistskii feminism. Kollekziya tekstov A. M. Kollontai, p. 35.

Kalmanovich, ‘Zhenskoe dvizhenie i otnoshenie partii k nemu’, p. 790.

See Shabanova's biography by Natalia Novikova in de Haan et al., A Biographical Dictionary, pp. 498–502.

Anna Shabanova (1912) Ocherk zhenskogo dvizheniya v Rossii [An essay on the women's movement in Russia] (St Petersburg: Prosvesheniye), p. 4.

Ibid., p. 27.

Ibid.

Svetlana Aivazova (1998) Russkie zhenshiny v labirinte ravnopraviya. Ocherki politicheskoi istorii i teorii. Documentalnyye materialy [Russian women in the labyrinth of equality. Essays on political history and theory. Documents] (Moscow: RIK Rusanova), pp. 47–48, 49.

See, for example: Olga Shnyrova & Igor Shkolnikov (1998) Sufrazhizm v Velikobritanii i Rossii. Opyt sravnitelnogo analiza [Suffrage movement in Great Britain and Russia. An attempt at comparative analysis], We/My – Dialog zhenshin, 6(22), pp. 16–21.

See, for example: Olga Khasbulatova (1994) Opyt i tradizii zhenskogo dvizheniya v Rossii, 1860–1917 [Experience and traditions of the women's movement in Russia] (Ivanovo: Ivanovo State University); Olga Khasbulatova & Natalya Gafizova (2003) Zhenskoe dvizhenie v Rossii (vtoraya polovina XIX–nachalo XX vv) [Women's movement in Russia in the late XIXth–early XXth century] (Ivanovo: Ivanovo State University); Irina Yukina (2007) Russkii feminism kak vyzov sovremennosti [Russian feminism as the modernity challenge] (St Petersburg: Aleteia).

Boxer, ‘Rethinking’, para. 55. http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/112.1/boxer.html (accessed 1 April 2008).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natalia Novikova

Natalia Novikova is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of History, Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University, Yaroslavl, Russia where she also completed her Ph.D. in Modern History. As a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Science (Moscow), she is currently working on a project entitled ‘The Problem of National Culture and National Identity in Women's Movements in the Early 20th Century: British and Russian cases’.