They Fought for the Motherland: Russia's Women Soldiers in World War I and the Revolution by Laurie S. Stoff (review)

Abstract

142 SEER, 87, I, JANUARY 200g more than did Russians. Indeed, Stalin concluded that Russians were more reliable than other nationalities, and also supplied by far the greater reservoir of the technical skills his transformation of the Soviet Union required. In consequence a policy ofRussification was introduced, and certain nationalities were victimized, some being deported from theirhomelands. Yet theRussians did not feel a favoured nationality. During Stalin's collectivization 'the two strongholds of traditional Russia, the church and the village commune, were destroyed simultaneously' (p. 136).Russia's cultural memory was being erased and Russians were as likely to be victimized by the state as anyone else. In 1941,with the German invasion, theOrthodox Church was rehabili tated,Russia's heroic past was again celebrated and in the course of thewar 'German pressure soldered Russian and Soviet patriotism together' (p. 193). Victory in 1945 aroused great expectations for change at the same time as it further legitimized Soviet rule. There was an opportunity for Stalin to build a Soviet national identity in thewake of victory, but 'wise leadership was not forthcoming' (p. 227). Instead Stalin chose to promote a form of Russian Soviet patriotism and stifleall hopes of change. The opportunity was lost ? in the circumstances of theCold War as itdeveloped, a civil society beyond the control of the statewas unthinkable. When Gorbachev introduced perestroika and glasnost' seething resentments came to the surface. Non-Russians articu lated their anger at perceived Russian exploitation, to the astonishment and outrage ofRussians, 'who had long felt themselves increasinglymarginalized in everyday life' (p. 376). A perception that Russia needed to escape the burden of ungrateful nationalities was directly linked to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Hosking's argument is plausible, though he could perhaps have stressed more the grievances of the other nationalities, who certainly never felt favoured above theRussians and who also had a crucial role in the death of the Soviet Union. Some maps would have been useful to the reader, and the absence of a bibliography is a little odd. The book is, however, an informative and fresh approach, which with painstaking research and a highly accessible writing-style,make it a very enjoyable read to the serious student of Soviet history. Division of History and GeographyJohnSwift St Martin's College,Lancaster Stoff,Laurie S. They Fought for the Motherland: Russia's Women Soldiers inWorld War I and the Revolution. Modern War Studies. University ofKansas Press, Lawrence, KS, 2006. x + 294 pp. Illustrations. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $34.95: ?23.50. Gender and war has emerged as a flourishing field of study in recent decades. In themain, such literature has been concerned with recovering the hitherto hidden from history crucial role thatwomen on the home fronthave played in the prosecution of war, especially in the twentieth century. Increasingly, however, the focus has shifted to the role ofwomen on the frontline and here REVIEWS 143 studies ofwomen at war inRussia and the Soviet Union have come to the fore,with good reason: historically,Russian and Soviet women have played a much greater role in warfare than their sisters elsewhere, although Chinese and Vietnamese women were not too far behind. To date, however, the scholarship on Russian and Soviet women at war has focused on particular contributions made by women fighters,notably the famous Soviet women's air regiments of the Great Patriotic War, with occasional glimpses of their Russian precursors, particularly the notorious ist Petrograd Women's Battalion that defended the Winter Palace against the Bolshevik insurrection ofOctober 1917.Laurie Stott has now provided us with the firstcomprehen sive study of the firstsystematicmobilization ofwomen forwar by a modern government: thewomen's units raised by Aleksandr Kerenskii's Provisional Government in the summer of 1917. Stott shows thatwell before the FirstWorld War a significant number of individual women insinuated themselves into theTsar's army, often disguised as men because, like European armies everywhere, Russian military regula tions forbad women soldiers. There was a Russian tradition of the woman warrior stretching back at least to the Napoleonic wars, in part it seems because peasant egalitarianism amongst a male peasant soldiery allowed that women could endure military service just as they could onerous...