Gender in Russian history: review of the latest researches

Abstract

The article reviews the works of gender studies published over the past 30 years, with the aim to show and generalize what is proposed in historiography and special literature about the relationship between historical sciences and gender studies. Firstly, the paper offers an updated concept of gender in relation to the different periods of the country’s history - tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet. Secondly, the paper discusses the formation and gradual development of gender studies and gender discourse. The study reveals an uneven growth in the number of descriptive and empirical gender studies, which can be explained in correlation with socio-economic and political changes throughout Russia’s historical path. The correlation between the dynamic evolution of gender and the peculiarities of the historical path of the country has not been sufficiently studied; its analysis offers historians the opportunity to describe and explain the unique models of male/female (gender) relations and their evolution. So far gender studies have little to offer that would help identify, describe and explain the national specificity of gender, correlated with the specifics of national history in chronological and spatial-territorial terms. Future historians should also focus on developing methodological tools and a language that can foster interaction between historical, post-structuralist and feminist approaches. This will require a drastic transition in historical research to previously ignored topics and to more innovative, in-depth and qualitative research methods, such as the history of the life of ethnic groups and peoples of Russia at different stages of development of state and society next to case studies of gender and discourse analysis.