“I WILL NO LONGER COME TO YOU AS A GIRL STUDENT, BUT AS A FREE CITIZEN OF MY MOTHERLAND”: A WOMAN IN THE SOCIO-POLITICAL CONTEXT OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract

The article examines letters by Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Sergeeva (Tanskaya), who was born in Verkhneudinsk (now Ulan-Ude), to her relatives and friends during her education at Troitskosavsk high school and, from 1903, the Bestuzhev Higher Women’s Courses. The post-reform development of the Russian Empire greatly diversified women’s living conditions. The introduction of the concept of personal freedom and the modernization of the educational system stimulated social emancipation in general, and women’s emancipation in particular. Social changes are reflected in private lives, particularly in personal correspondence. In her letters, Sergeeva goes beyond the female “domestic” narrative, enriching it with pictures of education, reflections on the books she read and on socio-political events, and a presentation of her inner self. Her correspondence can be roughly assigned to the period in Troitskosavsk, when she thought upon and wrote extensively about her desire to become independent, and to the time in Saint Petersburg when she actively implemented her new-found independence. In addition, the letters reveal the birth of a new kind of woman, whose life is not limited to her female duties. The study of Sergeeva (Tanskaya)’s letters leads to the conclusion that the circle of out-of-home interests of women began to form even in the outskirts of the Russian Empire. While this progress developed in the central regions of the empire during the nineteenth century, it was slow and limited in Transbaikalia. Sergeeva’s letters are a unique historical source for the region, allowing us to reconstruct history through the eyes of women, whose view of personal, social and state events was not examined by specialists in the social sciences and humanities until the late twentieth century.