Soviet Women Research Articles

Gender Identity and the Myth of the “Great Patriotic War” in Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War

Abstract Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich’s first book U voiny ne zhenskoe litso (The Unwomanly Face of War), a “novel in voices” based on oral histories, challenges the heroic narratives of the late Soviet myth of the Great Patriotic War by depicting the ordinary lives of Soviet women soldiers. Alexievich contends that war is “unwomanly” and downplays the overt challenges to traditional gender roles that women soldiers posed. Nevertheless, she includes episodes that undermine her own assertions about women’s difference from men and their desire to preserve life, creating ambiguity in her message and offering glimpses of an alternative gender order lurking under the surface. These alternative possibilities of understanding gender threaten both the war myth and the norms of Soviet gender relations.

The Impact of the Soviet Heritage on Women’s Political Leadership in Modern Russia

The study analyzes the specifics of women’s political leadership in the USSR and identifies the factors that predetermined the secondary role of women in Soviet, and later modern Russian politics. The purpose of this study is to identify the features of women’s activities as political leaders in the Soviet state and compare them with the features of women’s participation in political power in modern Russia. To achieve the goal, historical-chronological and comparative analysis are used as research methods. The unique experience of the women’s departments is considered in detail, as well as the personal factor of Soviet women leaders as the reason for political success. It is concluded that during the entire existence of the Soviet Union, the parity ratio of men and women at any level of power was not achieved even despite attempts to introduce various measures, such as a quota system, to achieve this goal. However, among the reasons for this situation, it was highlighted that attempts to achieve gender parity in government were primarily ideological in nature and aimed not at achieving real equality, but at demonstrating the ideology of the USSR on the world stage. The presence of women in the highest government positions in the USSR was an extremely rare phenomenon, since, in order to meet practical needs, the state, as a rule, preferred to involve women in politics at the lowest levels of the political hierarchy. A comparative analysis of women’s political leadership in the Soviet period with the present has shown that the same trend persists in modern Russia.

Fashion issues in the columns of the magazine «Selianka Ukrainy» / «Kolhospnytsia Ukrainy» (1924–1941)

Introduction. The invasion of Ukraine by an aggressor country has emphasized the importance of Ukrainian identity and prompted a reassessment of Soviet Ukrainian fashion journalism, highlighting its distinctiveness and value globally. Relevance of the study. This article examines Soviet women’s press, focusing on fashion, through Ukrainocentric and anti-Bolshevik perspectives. It aims to showcase Ukrainian fashion journalism during the early years of totalitarianism using «Selianka Ukrainy» / «Kolhospnytsia Ukrainy» [«Peasant woman of Ukraine» / «Collective farmer of Ukraine»] as an example and identify unique features in fashion media. Methodology. The study analyzes «Selianka Ukrainy» / «Kolhospnytsia Ukrainy» from 1924 to 1941 using historicism, systematicity, socio-cultural analysis, and historical-anthropological approaches. Results. It has been investigated that materials on fashion in «Selianka Ukrainy» / «Kolhospnytsia Ukrainy» from 1924 to 1941 (52 issues out of 407) were categorized into genres including photo reports, articles, reviews, and practical guides. Topics covered: (1) standards of female beauty in the Ukrainian SSR; (2) handicraft production of clothing/fabrics; (3) clothing models and their manufacturing technology; (4) advice on dressing and caring for clothing; (5) cutting and sewing guides; (6) industrial clothing / fabric production; (7) propaganda of totalitarian fashion; (8) advertising of sewing equipment; (9) schemes for manual embellishment of clothing; (10) schools / courses of cutting and sewing. Conclusions. The peculiarities of fashion coverage in «Selianka Ukrainy» / «Kolhospnytsia Ukrainy» during the period of indigenization, collectivization, and at the beginning of World War II have been clarified. It has been revealed that despite «Selianka Ukrainy» / «Kolhospnytsia Ukrainy» primarily being a party tribune and the most ideologically engaged magazine among other press publications for women in Soviet Ukraine, the fashion issue aimed at the readership of rural areas was covered in small concentrations and filtered through the Bolshevik censorship in the columns of the magazine.

“The terrible burden of being a woman”: Childbirth and abortion in the late USSR through the prism of Leningrad feminists’ underground publications (1979-1982)

The present article offers an analysis of the problem of women being mistreated during childbirth and abortion in the late Soviet Union based on the material of the samizdat and tamizdat publications by the Leningrad independent women’s movement. The underground feminists were the first to bring to light the persisting, but taboo problem of the physical suffering, humiliation and indifference women had to face at the Soviet maternity hospitals and abortion clinics. Breaking of this taboo among others resulted in their persecution by the KGB, exile, and imprisonment of several of the group members. However, the same problems were openly revealed and acknowledged by the Soviet authorities only ten years later, in the era of glasnost. This paper examines the main issues raised in the Leningrad feminists’ publications by situating them in a broader political and discursive context of the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Finally, it offers several insights into the factors that may have contributed to the persistence of the problem of women’s mistreatment within the healthcare system in the USSR despite the official claims about the continuous improvement of Soviet women’s and children’s conditions.

“We Created Ourselves and the city”: Women's Contribution to the Development of Magnitogorsk in the 1950-1960s

The everyday life of Soviet women during the years of the Khrushchev thaw is one of the insufficiently studied issues of Soviet women's history. This article is devoted to its study using the methods of gender anthropology and multi-focal ethnography of urban life. Its analysis is based on: heterogeneous empirical material - published memoirs of contemporaries, their oral stories (recorded by the authors of the article), materials from periodicals, neglected works of fiction, and visual sources. Magnitogorsk was chosen as the main research locus due to it being a large non-administrative industrial center that had appeared even before the war, and in which demographic gender imbalance persisted even after 1945. After analyzing the features of the women’s contribution to the formation of a new image of the city, the authors completed the picture of the lifestyles of urban women, showing several social types that changed the face of the industrial giant: architects, housewives, social activists, workers of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. The collected material showed the success of the Soviet Union’s new social policy, which was an innovative transition of the Soviet state from the harsh methods of management of the 1930s - early 1950s to Soviet democracy, including recognition of the importance of private life, including of Soviet women. However, everyday life of Soviet women from a half a century ago also revealed a number of issues such as: gender inequality and has the exposed the difficulties of organizing everyday women's domestic (family) and industrial life. By proving the importance of gender anthropology as an approach that expands the ability to analyze social idealism and hopes of the political thaw, this approach helps frame the period by showing how gender interacted with the shifting value-normative structures of Soviet thinking and the social image of the female builders of socialism.

Everyday life of women in Dubna of the 1950s-1960s

The article analyzes the structures of women's everyday life in the “science city” of Dubna, designed to become a showcase of socialism in the USSR of the 1950s-60s. We believe that during the years of the “Khrushchev thaw” and the rise of scientific centers throughout the country, women in these new towns found themselves in non-trivial conditions for traditional Soviet women's everyday life, where they gained the opportunity to implement their own life strategies in science and related fields. Few took advantage of this opportunity, however. Residents of the closed town of Dubna had access to special supplies and social infrastructure that was exemplary for that time; they were able to contact foreigners and enjoyed many cultural privileges. Triangulation of the sequences of biographical stories conveyed by representatives of different social strata, comparing them with media materials and extracts from normative sources led us to the conclusion that the traditional gender contract, subjected to only slight erosion in the first decades of the Soviet power, did not disappear at all - in fact, it took root in the “city of the future” inhabited by designers, inventors, and scientists. Due to the rigidity of this contract, the majority of Dubna's residents did not succeed in becoming, and did not want to become, independent actors seeking to declare themselves and their professional ambitions in science or the public sphere. We attempt to reveal the social role of such women through the prism of everyday life and social memory. We argue that it boiled down to the fulfillment of social expectations, the readiness to remain in service roles and provide a reliable rear support for their husbands-scientists who worked on major Soviet projects in the field of nuclear physics.

In Community: Recovering Transnational Networks, International Movements, and Local Concerns

In Community: Recovering Transnational Networks, International Movements, and Local Concerns Jennifer J. Davis and Sandie Holguín How have women shaped communities to advance political objectives, cultivate shared interests, and protect vulnerable members? We profile nine expert responses to that broad question in the six research articles and three book reviews that comprise the Spring 2023 issue of the Journal of Women’s History. Research by Daria Dyakonova opens this issue, inviting readers to reflect on the collaborations across borders that mobilized communist and feminist movements in the 1920s. In “‘Through the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in all Countries, Onward to the Complete Emancipation of Women!’: The Transnational Networks of Communist Women’s Movements in the Early 1920s,” Dyakonova examines communist women’s efforts to pursue legislation and political practices that would promote gender equality. Relying on institutional documents produced by the Communist Women’s Movement (CWM) in the Soviet Union and across Europe, Dyakonova highlights the signal contribution these activists made to contemporary debates on women’s suffrage, gendered divisions of labor, reproductive care, childcare, gender relations within Communist party organizations, and relations with non-Communist feminists. In a 2020 interview, the historian Francisca de Haan observed that public memory of socialist women’s activism collapsed along with European state socialism even though “women in socialist countries had more rights and a better social status than women in many capitalist or Third World countries.”1 Dyakonova’s research represents a critical intervention, therefore, that weaves the story of Soviet women’s contributions to transnational communist and feminist movements into a broader conversation about the interwar period, which has focused more on western European and American women’s engagement with pacifist, anticolonial, and anti-vice movements.2 Dyakonova concludes that members of the CWM perceived their efforts to promote gender equality within socialist governments as essential in recruiting non-Party affiliated women to support “the revolutionary cause.” Jennifer Bond’s research moves our gaze from transnational communist networks across Europe to the international religious organization of the YWCA in China. In the article, “Inculcating a Gendered Christian Internationalism: The Chinese Student YWCA,” Bond contends that during the 1920s, the YWCA in Republican China gave female students access to new positions of responsibility and networks while the organization aimed to cultivate Chinese girls as members of a “gendered global Christian” [End Page 5] citizenry. Leadership within the student YWCAs enabled girls and young women to attend international conferences and partake in training opportunities that informed their later professional and political alliances. For this generation of women, to be Christian signified a commitment to internationalism, diplomacy, and egalitarianism. However, Bond observes, this identity proved to be remarkably flexible, accommodating a range of political regimes and international audiences. Chinese women adapted metaphors of a global “sisterhood” to navigate between local, national, and international concerns, while leveraging potential alliances with women outside of China. Following research insights published by scholars of internationalist feminisms, including Francisca de Haan and Leila Rupp, Bond documents how internationalist networks for women’s issues flourished in the years after the Great War, and how the women in these organizations conceptualized women’s issues beyond suffrage. Indeed, decades later, activists would make clear that women’s issues might include human rights abuses. Sara Kimble’s article, “Internationalist Women Against Nazi Atrocities in Occupied Europe, 1941–1947,” contextualizes the anti-atrocities campaign launched in 1942 by the members of the Liaison Committee of Women’s International Organisations (LCWIO). By examining the LCWIO records, Kimble finds that women refugees, including Wanda Grabińska and Emmy Freundlich, played particularly important roles in documenting Nazi atrocities including forced labor, mass starvation, systematic rape and sexual assault. Freundlich articulated a peculiar responsibility shared by refugees who had escaped the Nazi regime to testify to its horrors, “Women in occupied countries would have cause for deep reproach to their more fortunate sisters unless some repudiation of inhumanity… were made.” The anti-atrocity statement of 1942 was the first step in formalizing that repudiation: a woman-organized protest against the abuse of women. They build the case using evidence surreptitiously provided by dissidents within the occupied Polish government, citing international law, religious principles, property statutes, and family...

«ДОМА ТЕРПИМОСТИ» В РОСТОВСКОЙ И СТАЛИНСКОЙ ОБЛАСТЯХ В ПЕРИОД НЕМЕЦКОЙ ОККУПАЦИИ В 1942–1943 гг.

The article deals with the organization and functioning of the Nazi brothels in the occupied territory of the Rostov and Stalino (Donetsk) Oblasts during the Great Patriotic War. In the conditions of the “war of annihilation” and the “new order”, Soviet women found themselves in an exceptional situation of double gender discrimination: as “Untermensch” and as “trophies”. One of the forms of sexual collaboration was working in legal “brothel houses”. Formally “girls” were considered one of the most protected groups of the population in the occupation: they received significant income, rations, medical care, and a guarantee from being sent to Germany. In Soviet society, such women became outcasts. The authors analyze the opening of brothels in the Rostov region in and in the city of Stalino, their organizers, main and attendant staff, working conditions and venereal diseases of women. The study is based on the documents from two state archives: the State Archive of the Russian Federation (fund of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices and the Damage They Caused to Citizens, Collective Farms, Public Organizations, State Enterprises and Institutions of the USSR) and the State Archive of the Rostov Oblast (fund of the Commission for Accounting for Damage and Atrocities inflicted by the German Fascist Occupants on Institutions, Enterprises and Citizens of the City of Rostov-on-Don and the Rostov Oblast). These documents are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The authors relied on the approaches of gender history, military daily life and historical anthropology.

REFLECTION OF THE MOBILIZATION OF SOVIET WOMEN IN THE RED ARMY AND THE WOMEN'S VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR IN THE DOCUMENTS OF THE FEDERAL AND REGIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

The article is devoted to the mobilization of soviet women in the ground forces of the Red Army as the most massive type of troops. We employed the method of essence-content analysis to study the documents of the federal and regional archives and found that the mobilization was of a voluntary-compulsory nature and was caused by state necessity. In general, the patriotism of soviet women caused their mass participation in the war, where they made a huge contribution to the defense of the Motherland and voluntarily sacrificed their lives and health for the sake of Victory.

"Life under the german": sexual violence in the occupied regions of the Ukrainian SSR (1941-1943)

The article deals with sexual violence and the policy of German and Romanian aggressors against Soviet women in 1941-1943 (on the example of the southern and eastern regions of the Ukrainian SSR). On the basis of archival eyewitness testimonies, the moral, medical and social aspects of sexual violence and other forms of sexual relations and their perception in society are considered.

Britain's Olympic Women: A History

In recent years, scholars have considered many facets of British sports. They have gone beyond the simple narrative of great moments and characters from the worlds of football, cricket, and rugby to consider the ways in which the British military used sports in its training programs. Other studies have introduced readers to the way that noncombatant British men used sport to validate their masculinity during World War II and to examine the role of sport in the expansion of the British Empire and how men from Trinidad and Nigeria used proficiency in sport to assert their refusal to acquiesce to their colonial status. Occasionally, those studies alluded to women's role, but only in rare cases have the experiences of female British athletes been used to elucidate such urgent matters as the Cold War in sports. Happily, those interested in a broader study of British women's sport have a new narrative examining women's sport by studying the biographies of significant equestriennes, swimmers, fencers, and football players and how those women dealt with the obstacles in the way of their success.In Britain's Olympic Women, Jean Williams has accomplished a remarkable feat in delving into publicly accessible information, family archives, oral histories, and even a particular episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus to tell individual women's stories and draw larger lessons from those stories. In doing so, Williams provides insights into the work scholars do to understand their subject. Sometimes the archives do not exist, sometimes they are inaccessible, and sometimes they exist only because families maintained them, but Williams does what she can to tell the reader what she has discovered and to offer suggestions to others wishing to learn more about the sporting experience of British women. For student readers of this book who want to find topics for research, the suggestions are invaluable.As Williams explains, opportunities for female athletes were limited by a variety of factors. For equestriennes, access to good horses and time to train them made their development possible. For swimmers, access to local swimming clubs was invaluable. For working-class women, the occasional support offered by their employers proved to be crucial. But even where women had access to these opportunities, their ability to play was limited both locally and internationally by the men who controlled the Olympics and similar organizations. For the first half of the twentieth century, for example, female athletes were effectively barred from eventing and show jumping because those disciplines were limited to uniformed officers. Likewise, women whose best running events were in the longer distances were essentially barred from the Olympics because of decisions to limit competition between female athletes to shorter distances. In this book, Williams shows the diverse efforts of women to get around those constraints.As she explains, there was an effort by the French feminist Alice Milliat to establish a separate but equal athletic tournament for women during the 1920s. In Britain, other women created the Women's Amateur Athletic Association, which endeavored to ensure female athletes received appropriate coaching and greater opportunities to compete. But it was only after World War II and the Soviet Union entered into world athletics that British women received the chance to show their patriotism (and commitment to their nonathletic housewife lives) on the field. British media endorsed those ideas, making the tale of encounters between British and Soviet women into the broader postwar narrative of plucky little Britain holding its own against the state-supported athletes of the Eastern Bloc. As the century progressed, British universities, most notably Loughborough, continued studies on the effect of sport on women's bodies, which also helped increase sporting opportunities, as it was established, incontrovertibly, that there were no ill health results from intense exercise.By the end of the Second Millennium, the British government stepped up to support athletes by providing money for coaching, travel, and equipment after the poor results achieved at the Olympics of 1992 and 1996. This support grew quickly after London was awarded the 2012 Games, as the men and women of “Team GB” grew into a force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, professional leagues modeled on men's leagues began to open up more opportunities, especially for female footballers. And, of course, any narrative such as this has to include the role of the British royal family, especially the Princess Royal, who cemented British enthusiasm for equestrian events.This is a fine book that should be of interest to both the general reader and specialist. It is organized by chapters with notes at the end of each and affords anyone interested in a particular time period excellent places to begin following their own threads to learn more.

From Pugacheva to Pussy Riot

Abstract The officially sanctioned popular music genre of Soviet estrada has traditionally been an industry where both male and female performers have been able to achieve high levels of success and public exposure. Meanwhile, within the genres of underground and unofficial popular music – rock, punk, and rap – the male-dominated gender disparity has been much more pronounced. This article investigates the reasons behind this dynamic within a Russo-Soviet context. In dialogue with Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity as well as recent scholarship on gender in Western rock and punk movements, the present essay considers the evolution of performative strategies of female artists in Russo-Soviet popular culture. The discussion spans the Soviet, late-Soviet, and post-Soviet historical periods, focusing on the gendered performative dimensions in the musical careers of Alla Pugacheva, Yanka Diagileva, and the art-punk collective Pussy Riot, in an effort to account for the glaring dearth of female performers in traditionally “transgressive” popular genres. I present the argument that Russian and Soviet women performers working in rock, punk, and rap, or when forging new directions in estrada, have evolved to mitigate the genres’ prescriptive masculinity by relying on performing “otherness” as a conduit to mass appeal, celebrity status, and acclaim for artistic individuality.

Women in local wars and military conflicts in 1950–1991 (the example of the representatives of Belarus)

The author analyses main circumstances of the participation of women in local wars and military conflicts of the Cold War era, their way to the Soviet military missions and military units in Asia and Africa. We can see the detailed overview of historiography and sources on the topic. The article is supplemented by new unexplored aspects of the problem and vectors of its further research. The author indicates the primary options for Soviet women, ever military personnel and civilians, entering countries with an unfavorable military situation based on the example of the participants in the war in Afghanistan (women who were born in Belarus or lives here now), and highlights the main categories of professions that were in demand in the “hot spots” of the 1970s–1980s. Also the author specifies how many natives of Belarus died during military conflicts; the place of birth and burial of one of them was specified for the first time in historiography.

Spreading Intimacy and Influence: Women’s Correspondence across the Iron Curtain

Althea Grossman addressed her letter to no one in particular, just “a Friend, Russia.” “I am a citizen of the USA, just as you are a citizen of the USSR,” she began. “I am writing to you because I should like to assure you that I have a friendly feeling for you and that, though we come from different cultures and customs, I think that we are really much more alike than un-alike.” Confident their lives were similar, the sixty-six-year-old Missourian covered sheets of blue stationery with personal details about her daughters, her heart trouble, even the quirks of her twin-in-a-door beds. “Tell me of your life and ask me any questions,” she concluded.1 Grossman posted her letter in July 1946. When it reached the USSR, it was forwarded to the Soviet Women’s Anti-Fascist Committee (AKSZh), an agency in the Agitation and Propaganda section of the Communist Party.2 AKSZh was created during World War II to strengthen solidarity and cooperation between Allied women. It mounted various campaigns to achieve this, including a letter-writing initiative through which Soviet women implored British and U.S. women to send more supplies and troops to the Red Army. Britons, especially industrial workers, responded readily, but women in the United States did not reply until late 1943 when, saturated with messages about Soviet sacrifice and bravery at Stalingrad, their appreciation for their Soviet ally grew.3 By the war’s end, U.S. letters streamed into AKSZh’s Moscow headquarters. Some of those who wrote were war widows seeking solace from their Soviet sisters in mourning. Others wanted to thank the Soviet people for their sacrifices. All were curious about the USSR. Initially, AKSZh marked the letters as “warranting no reply.” After all, the war was over, and victory had been achieved. But by 1946, when Grossman penned her note, it was clear that U.S. women’s eagerness for contact was a golden opportunity to promote Soviet values and visions of postwar peace. AKSZh recruited Soviet women to reply, and by the late 1940s, some 300 pairs were corresponding. The letter-writing campaign peaked in 1949 and endured, diminished in form, until 1958.

Soviet Women and Internationalism in Socialist Travel Itineraries in the 1950s and 1960s*

Soviet Women and Internationalism in Socialist Travel Itineraries in the 1950s and 1960s*

Sexual Violence under Occupation during World War II: Soviet Women’s Experiences inside a German Military Brothel and Beyond

Sexual Violence under Occupation during World War II: Soviet Women’s Experiences inside a German Military Brothel and Beyond

Field Research of the Economic and Cultural Chinese Emigrants Activities in the Far East and Siberia (1949-2019)

The article is devoted to the study of labor migration in the system of Russian (Soviet)-Chinese relations 1949-2019. The article is based on unique previously unpublished archival data and field research. The authors consider the circumstances that had a significant impact on the migration policy of the USSR, which, in conditions of a small number of its own population, needed to attract immigrants from China to the Far East and the Siberian part of the USSR; analyze the reasons and benefits of the PRC, allowing the leadership of the republic to send its citizens to study and work in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. Using concrete examples and archival data, the authors studied the dynamics of Chinese migration, the reasons for their moving abroad and returning to their homeland, highlighting two periods of active Chinese migration to Russia: 1) 1949-1966; 2) 1990-2019. The authors studied the activities of Chinese communities in Russian (Soviet) territories in both periods and came to the conclusion that these two periods are radically different from each other. During the "Soviet period" of labor migration, Chinese workers, on the one hand, easily assimilated in the Far East and Siberia, easily made friends among the local population, married Soviet women, on the other hand, maintained contact with their native culture, transported their wives and children to the USSR, who had a specially created kindergarten and school program for them with the study of Chinese lingua and culture. The "Russian period" is distinguished by the isolation of the life of Chinese communities, many of whose members have illegal status and are engaged in corruption. Nevertheless, labor migrants from China feel very comfortable living in the Far East and Siberia. Most Chinese emigrants have the goal of improving their economic situation and getting an education, achieving which more than 99% of Chinese return to China.

Socialismo mulato: Soviet Fascination with Race in Cuba

In the Soviet imaginary, the Cuban mulato represented not only an exotic other but also the realization of another kind of socialism, possible in other conditions and at other coordinates, (almost) far from Soviet reach. In general terms, Cubans came to fulfill a multilevel imaginary aspiration of Soviet identity related to Black and exploited people, Latin America, the United States, and the dissemination of the socialist ideology around the world. The Soviet fascination with, commitment to, and admiration for people of color was reinforced in this case by the added bonus that Cubans were comrades from a socialist island just a few miles from the US coast. At the geopolitical level, that fascination translated into the election of the first Black man to be sent into the cosmos; at an aesthetic level, it is related to a specific kind of poetry produced by Soviet authors in which the emphasis was on Cubans as mulatos, as this article will demonstrate through the analysis of literary works by authors such as Mayakovski, Yevtushenko, Kovaliov, Smolnikov, and Gamzatov. The third aspect of this fascination was made manifest in the many interracial marriages between Soviet women and Black Cuban men.

From Missionaries of Socialism to Spies of Imperialism: The Shifting Position of Soviet Women in Communist Albania

After the establishment of the communist regime in Albania, many Albanian students, mainly males, went to study in the Mecca of Revolution—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Many of them fell in love there and married Soviet girls who returned with them to the tiny Balkan country to build socialism with their Albanian husbands. These women were considered as missionaries who were helping Albania to build a communist future. In 1960, however, their position changed when the Albanian leadership refused de-Stalinization and denounced the Soviet Union as an imperialist power. After Enver Hoxha’s split with Khrushchev, many Soviet women left Albania, but others decided to remain with their husbands in that country. Albanian authorities, considering Soviet women spies of the KGB (The Soviet Committee of State Security), persecuted many of them.

KeesBoterbloemLife in Stalin's Soviet Union. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 247 pp. £20.69 (pbk), £63 (hbk).

KeesBoterbloemLife in Stalin's Soviet Union. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 247 pp. £20.69 (pbk), £63 (hbk).