We devote this entire issue of the Russian Social Science Review to topics in women's studies. It should be noted that all of the contributions were written for Russian professional audiences and all have been drawn from mainline scholarly publications—Problems of Philosophy (Voprosy filosofii), Sociological Research (Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia), Literary Gazette (Literaturnaia gazeta), and Society and Economy (Obshchestvo i ekonomika). Each demonstrates a general sensitivity to Russia's past, the characteristics of its social order, and the tremendous stresses visited on Russian society in the last decade. Thus, these contributions to women's studies emerge from a distinctive social, political, intellectual, and cultural context. These qualities should not go unexamined by readers well-versed in Western feminist literature and women's history who might be perusing this issue in search of factual information about the situation of women in Russia today. Of interest, too, will be some of the assumptions our authors make about the situation of women in the West.