Yulia Gradskova

Educating Parents : Public Preschools and Parenting in Soviet Pedagogical Publications, 1945-1989

This article explores the role preschools played in state politics aimed at the family in Soviet Russia. The study is inspired by Foucault’s theory on governmentality and is based on an analysis of Doshkolnoe vospitanie, the largest Soviet magazine on preschool education. This article shows that Soviet children were analyzed scientifically and that parents in Soviet Russia were not freed from the responsibilities of bringing up and educating their children. The central function of preschools was to remind the parents of their responsibilities and to control their performance of them.

Regional Ombudsmen, Human Rights and Women - Gender Aspects of the Social and Legal Transformation in North-West Russia (Based on Ombudsman Reports)

In the center of the article is the new regional ombudsman institution in Russia and its activities vis-a-vis the protection of women’s rights. The article seeks to analyze how complaints filed by women are presented and how the status of women’s rights within the context of human rights is described in the ombudsmen’s annual reports. The analysis of the reports proves ambiguities of interpretations of human rights; it also shows that many of those filing complaints do it because of the violations of social and civil rights, and that the majority of those experiencing discrimination are women. However, in most of the cases the ombudspersons do not pay attention to the gender-specific dimensions of the discrimination nor have they identified this as an important problem in contemporary Russian society. This situation is connected with the absence of a legal or political mechanism for gender equality in Russia as well as a displacement of women’s rights issues in favor of a focus on family issues and demography in the Russian public discourse of the late 2000s.

‘We were very upset if we didn’t look fashionable’ : Women’s beauty practices in post-war Russia

‘Beauty’ has attracted considerably less academic attention amongst scholars concerned with the Soviet gender order, than questions of gender ideology and gendered divisions of public and private sphere roles.1 Where beauty has been discussed, it is usually treated as something of ‘secondary importance’, an aspect of broader studies of private life, intimacy, sexuality and consumption.2 However, feminist researchers have noted that concepts of ‘beauty’ are extremely important to the production of femininity in any society, and can shed light on less overt mechanisms of domination which, due to their invisibility, may easily survive and/or adjust to transformations of the ‘visible’ political and social order.3 From this perspective the Soviet case is particularly interesting. Although the majority of women were employed outside of the home and in spite of constant shortages of fashionable clothes and other beauty products, Soviet women continued to show an interest in ‘looking nice’ throughout the Soviet period. Indeed, during the perestroika years western visitors were often impressed by Soviet women’s attempts to look ‘as feminine as possible’.

Introduction. Gender Equality on a Grand Tour: Politics and Institutions – The Nordic Council, Sweden, Lithuania and Russia

Gender Equality on a Grand Tour. Politics and Institutions – the Nordic Council, Sweden, Lithuania and Russia explores the establishment, development and transformation of gender equality institutions in Sweden, Lithuania and Russia. It pays special attention to the role of the Nordic Council in gender equality institutionalization.

Gender Equality on a Grand Tour

Gender Equality on a Grand Tour. Politics and Institutions – the Nordic Council, Sweden, Lithuania and Russia explores the establishment, development and transformation of gender equality institutions in Sweden, Lithuania and Russia. It pays special attention to the role of the Nordic Council in gender equality institutionalization.

Soviet Emancipation in the Post-Soviet Present

What happened with the Soviet emancipation of natsionalka after the “Soviet empire” came to an end? And what happens to the memory of that Soviet campaign? How is it approached in the Russian center and in its borderlands? In this chapter I look more closely at several post-Soviet revisions and evaluations of the emancipation’s results, as well as at the post-Soviet changes in categories of “Othering.” First, I discuss the place that the history of emancipation of natsionalka had in the reevaluation of the Soviet past by the post-1991 Russian state and some non-state actors. I also analyze challenges to the Soviet narrative coming from within Russia, in particular, from the new Russian nationalism and ideologists of the “Russian civilization”. In the second part I deal with the issues of national and religious rebirth in the Volga-Ural region and the challenges they pose with respect to evaluating the results of the Soviet modernization and emancipation. Finally, in the third section I explore how the Soviet emancipation, coloniality, and post-Soviet gender order are questioned and subverted in the artistic productions of female filmmakers and scriptwriters from the Volga-Ural region.

Revolutions of 1917 and the Bolshevik Reforms of the Status of Woman

This chapter focuses on the changes in women’s status in Volga-Ural region and in imperial borderlands as a result of the revolutionary changes in Russia in and in the aftermath of 1917. The first part of this chapter addresses radicalization of both question of women’s rights and the question on national self-determination as a result of the Russian liberal-democratic revolution in February of 1917. The second part addresses the Bolshevik politics in Volga-Ural region in the 1920s–1930s and their negative effect on the local and national projects of modernity and development. Disproving Russian perceptions about the supposed dependency, ignorance, and passivity of Muslim and, more generally, inorodtsy-women, women of the Volga-Ural region showed themselves to be agents of their own emancipation under the period of revolutionary changes in the society. While the “colonial wounds” of the nations from the borderlands including the Volga-Ural region were at first formally and publicly recognized by the Bolsheviks, the politics of the new government soon incorporated many elements of the former imperial governance. Indeed the Bolsheviks’ declarations advocated universal progress, development, and equality, but their political decisions in practice were guided by the principles of “keeping control” and, at the same time, finding allies among the colonized.

Informing Change: “Total Hopelessness” of the Past and the “Bright Future” of the “Woman of the East” in Soviet Pamphlets

This chapter analyzes Soviet representations of women from former imperial borderlands and representations of emancipation politics towards them in the 1920s. I show how the image of natsionalka, a “downtrodden woman” in need of emancipation, was constructed in early Soviet texts, and how this image was connected to the glorious story of Soviet modernity created later. I also explore what implications the story of the successful Soviet emancipation had for the imperial/colonial hierarchies that were inherited from the period before 1917 and for the respective identities of the Russian/European majority women and minority women. What was happening when the nations from the former imperial borderlands were approached by the new politics of culturalization? How were they gendered, and what conflicts did it lead to? I explore such gendering in the campaign to emancipate women of national minorities and transform the “backward peripheries” on example of a special series of 28 pamphlets aimed at those working for the emancipation of natsionalka and produced by the Institute for Protection of Maternity and Childhood.

“Documenting” and Visualizing Change in Soviet Silent Films

The power of cinematographic images was highly valued by the Bolshevik leaders and films were widely used for emancipation campaign. The films on the “woman’s question” and the “cultural revolution” were produced by different film studios, including those that were opened in the capitals of the national republics. My analysis in this chapter is focused on the documentary thematic films from the late 1920s to early 1930s dedicated to particular nations and to films dealing with Soviet nationality politics and “a new Soviet woman.” The analyzed films suggest that non-Russian people from former imperial borderlands were presented mainly as “backward” and in need of outside help for their emancipation. The gendered and racialized “Others” revealed their lower status through their connection to “cultural backwardness” shown in films by their non-European, non-modern, and religious clothing, by statistics and examples of those with social illnesses and illiteracy. Nevertheless, while the Soviet filmmakers were expected to show changes and explain the “new life” through visual stories, sometimes the visual images told their “own stories”—expressing the joy of traditional celebrations or showing the high skills of peasants and craftswomen.

Managing the Change and the People

In this chapter the special attention is paid to the relationships between the central Commission and the local ones. The first section discusses the special attention of the central Commission to the scientific organization of its work. In difference to work with the Russian and Slavic women whose status and main problems seem to be obvious, the work with the women of ethnic minorities had to be informed through the special investigations and made in cooperation with researchers. The next section analyses changing governance of the central Commission towards the local ones from the late 1920s to early 1930s. Finally, the last section discuses possibilities of the local Commissions to develop own initiatives with help of three letters of the secretaries of Commissions in Bashkortostan and Tatarstan preserved in the archive.