Revolution of Their Own » (1st Edition)

Barbara Alpern Engel is professor of history at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck is visiting fellow at the Center for Russian, Central, and East European Studies at Rutgers University.

This groundbreaking collection is the first book to present the history of women in the Soviet era by bringing together firsthand accounts of Russian women and their lives. The eight women interviewed for this book represent diverse social backgrounds and geographical regions—but all were born before the Bolshevik revolution, a generation intimately familiar with the world’s first attempt to create a socialist society and to promise full emancipation for women. Their narratives vividly illustrate both the difficulties posed by such extreme social instability and the vastly expanded opportunity for women in Soviet Russia.

Booknews

Interviews with eight Soviet women, some from the poor peasantry and working class in whose name the revolution was carried out, and others born to money and so enemies to the new government. They speak about family life, work, sexual relations, marriage and divorce, childbirth and child rearing, and legalized abortion and the underground pursuit of such services after abortion was outlawed in 1936. They reveal the new opportunities that opened for women and the reality of their daily lives. Paper edition (unseen), $20.00. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.