Christine D. Worobec

Russia's women : accommodation, resistance, transformation

Introduction, Barbara Evans Clements Accommodation and Resistance, Christine D. Worobec Women in the Medieval Russian Family of the Tenth through the Fifteenth Centuries, N.L. Pushkareva Childbirth in Pre-Petrine Russia: Canon Law and Popular Traditions, Eve Levin Womens Honor in Early Modern Russia, Nancy Shields Kollmann Through the Prism of Witchcraft: Gender and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy, Valerie A. Kivelson Widows and the Russian Serf Community, Rodney D. Bohac Infant-Care Cultures in the Russian Empire, David L. Ransel Transformation versus Tradition, Barbara Alpern Engel The Peasant Woman as Healer, Rose L. Glickman Womens Domestic Industries in Moscow Province, 1880-1900, Judith Pallot Abortion and the Civic Order: The Legal and Medical Debates, Laura Engelstein The Impact of World War I on Russian Womens Lives, Alfred G. Meyer The Female Form in Soviet Political Iconography, 1917-32, Elizabeth Waters Women, Abortion, and the State, 1917-36, Wendy Goldman Later Developments: Trends in Soviet Womens History, 1930 to the Present, Barbara Evans Clements

Peasant Russia : family and community in the post-emancipation period

Peasant Russia is a comprehensive examination of peasant life in central Russia in the decades immediately following serf emancipation. Using interdisciplinary methods of family history, anthropology, ethnography, and womens studies, Christine Worobec explores the world of peasant households and communities, elements of which live on in todays Soviet Union. In full detail she shows how peasant Russia retained its traditional institutions and customary practices in the face of the economic changes associated with industrialization and urbanization. The book draws on previously unexamined judicial, folklore, and household records to assess the durability of the extended Russian peasant family and the customs linking it to the community. The Russian peasants portrayed here actively shaped their society, developing a variety of economic and social strategies to cope with their harsh environment and the demands of the state. Discussing their efforts to safeguard their way of life through courtship and marriage rituals and through such social restrictions as property devolution practices, a misogynist patriarchalism, and severe penalties for deviant behavior, Worobec reveals that peasant traditionalism impeded the impact of modernization and cushioned its effects.

Religion and nationality in Western Ukraine : the Greek Catholic Church and the Ruthenian National Movement in Galicia, 1867-1900

Using Soviet archival materials declassified in the 1980s, John-Paul Himka examines a period during which the Greek Catholic church in Galicia was involved in a protracted, and at times bitter, struggle to maintain its distinctive, historically developed rites and customs. He focuses on the way differing concepts of Rutherian nationality affected the perception and course of church affairs while showing the influence of local ecclesiastical matters on the development and acceptance of these divergent concepts of nationality. The implications and complications of the Galician imbroglio are engagingly explained in this latest addition to Himkas work on nationality in late nineteenth-century Galicia. His analysis of the relationship between the church and the national movement is a valuable addition to the study of religion and national movements in East Europe and beyond.

Russian traditional culture : religion, gender, and customary law

In the wake of the USSRs collapse, more than 25 million Russians found themselves living outside Russian territory, their status ambiguous. Equally uncertain is the role they will play as a factor in Russian politics, local politics and relations among the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. This volume, prepared under the sponsorship of the Kennan Institute, offers a comprehensive and amply documented examination of these issues.

The 1850s Prosecution of Gerasim Fedotov for Witchcraft

The article examines a detailed case involving an accusation of witchcraft against the serf Gerasim Fedotov, which was heard before the Moscow Court of Equity in 1853. In comparison with other cases of witchcraft in the four decades between the 1820s and 1850s, the one involving Fedotov provides a window onto popular beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery intertwined with Russian Orthodox practices, the medical profession’s rationalist arguments against the power of quotidian magic, and the state’s intent on maintaining law and order without infringing upon serfowners’ rights. Ultimately, the autocratic state’s seemingly more enlightened prosecution of witchcraft as a superstition turned out to be unsuccessful in combating popular beliefs in sorcery, witchcraft, and divination.

The unintended consequences of a surge in orthodox pilgrimages in late imperial Russia

Based on archival materials, this article explores the ways in which the Holy Trinity St. Sergius Monastery and Solovetskii monasteries at the turn of the twentieth century dealt with the challenges of serving increasing numbers of pilgrims, which ranged from security to public relations. Intent upon maintaining the strict regimens of their communities and raising the spiritual and national identities of worshipers, the abbots unsuccessfully tried to control pilgrims and pilgrimages. Individuals continued to flock to monastic institutions to satisfy their own spiritual and physical needs, bringing with them their human flaws and frailties.