Melanie Ilic

This handbook brings together recent and emerging research in the broad areas of women and gender studies focusing on pre-revolutionary Russia, the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet Russian Federation. For the Soviet period in particular, individual chapters extend the geographic coverage of the book beyond Russia itself to examine women and gender relations in the Soviet ‘East’ (Tatarstan), Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). Within the boundaries of the Russian Federation, the scope moves beyond the typically studied urban centres of Moscow and St Petersburg to examine the regions (Krasnodar, Novosibirsk), rural societies and village life. Its chapters examine the construction of gender identities and shifts in gender roles during the twentieth century, as well as the changing status and roles of women vis-a-vis men in Soviet political institutions, the workplace and society more generally. This volume draws on a broad range of disciplinary and methodological approaches currently being employed in the academic field of Russian studies. The origins of the individual contributions can be identified in a range of conventional subject disciplines – history, literature, sociology, political science, cultural studies – but the chapters also adopt a cross- and inter-disciplinary approach to the topic of study. This handbook therefore builds on and extends the foundations of Russian women’s and gender studies as it has emerged and developed in recent decades, and demonstrate the international, indeed global, reach of such research

The Palgrave Handbook of Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century Russia and the Soviet Union

Dalia Leinarte

This collection examines practical and ethical issues inherent in the application of oral history and memory studies to research about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Case studies highlight the importance of ethical good practice, including the reflexive interrogation of the interviewer and researcher, and aspects of gender and national identity. Researchers use oral history to analyze present-day recollections of the Soviet past, thereby extending our understanding beyond archival records, official rhetoric and popular mythology. Oral history explores individual life stories, but this has sometimes resulted in rather incomplete, incoherent, inconsistent or illogical narratives. Oral history, therefore, presents the researcher with a number of methodological and ethical dilemmas, including the interpretation of "silence" in biographical accounts. This collection links the discussion of oral history ethics with that of memory studies. Memories are shaped by factors that may be, simultaneously, both consecutive and disrupted. In written accounts and responses to interview questions, respondents sometimes display nostalgia for the Soviet past, or, conversely, may seek to de-mythologize the realities of Soviet rule. Case studies explore what to do when interview subjects and memoirists consciously, sub-consciously or unconsciously "forget" aspects of their own past, or themselves seek to take control of the research process.

Methodology and Ethics in Russian, Baltic and Central European Oral History and Memory Studies

The Soviet Past in the Post-Socialist Present

Jeremy Smith

This book examines the social and cultural impact of the 'thaw' in Cold War relations, decision-making and policy formation in the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev. It highlights the fact that many of the reform initiatives generally associated with Khrushchev personally, and with his period of office more generally, often had their roots in the Stalin period both in their content and in the ways in which they were implemented. Individual case studies explore key aspects of Khrushchev's period of office, including the introduction of the 1961 Communist Party Programme and popular responses to it, housing policy, the opening up of the Soviet Union to the West during the 1957 youth festival, public consultation campaigns and policy implementation in education and family law, the boost given to voluntary organisations such as women's councils and the trade unions, the reshaping of the internal Soviet security apparatus, the emergence of political dissent and the nature of civil-military relations as reflected in the events of the workers' uprising in Novocherkassk in 1962. The findings offer an important new perspective on the Khrushchev era.

Soviet State and Society Under Nikita Khrushchev

Kelly Hignett

Corina Snitar

Based on extensive original research, including studies of autobiographies and biographies, reminiscences and memoirs, archived oral history data and interviews conducted by the authors, this book provides a rich picture of how women experienced repression in the former Soviet bloc. Although focusing on key years when repression was at its height - 1937 for the Soviet Union, 1941 for Lithuania and Poland, 1948 for Czechoslovakia and 1956 for Romania - the book ranges more widely. It demonstrates that although far fewer women than men were the direct victims of repression, women experienced severe repression in many ways, including exile, deportation and as family members of those arrested, imprisoned and executed.

Women's Experiences of Repression in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

Katalin Miklóssy

This book explores how the concept of "competition", which is usually associated with market economies, operated under state socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where the socialist system, based on command economic planning and state-centred control over society, was supposed to emphasise "co-operation", rather than competitive mechanisms. The book considers competition in a wider range of industries and social fields across the Soviet bloc, and shows how the gradual adoption and adaptation of Western practices led to the emergence of more open competitiveness in socialist society. The book includes discussion of the state’s view of competition, and focuses especially on how competition operated at the grassroots level. It covers politico-economic reforms and their impact, both overall and at the enterprise level; competition in the cultural sphere; and the huge effect of increasing competition on socialist ways of thinking.

Melanie Ilic

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