Women and Power in Russia: History and Prospects

Abstract

In a country as patriarchal as ours, women's power has often been viewed with suspicion and mistrust even by those who favor the gender approach to history. Women in Russia's Historical Destiny [Zhenshchiny v istori-cheskikh sud'bakh Rossii], for example, includes the following remark about Catherine II: "Her problem was that the emotions of the fair sex all too often overcame her political intuition" [1]. The only clear exception was the image, shrouded in the mists of time, of Princess Ol'ga, who conquered the rival principality of the Drevliane, founded a system of local tax levies (pogosty), and introduced Orthodox Christianity among the Russian nobility. Assessments of the women who ruled the empire in the eighteenth century are by no means as positive. Some authors are convinced that women who ascended the throne had to assume a man's burden and conduct themselves accordingly [2]. In part, this relieves these women of blame for mistakes, for a historical role that has at times been dubious, and for any troubling memory that they have left among the people and among democratic historians.