Canadian Slavonic Papers

Feminism in Russia, 1900-1917 by Linda Harriet EdmondsonReview by: R. C. ElwoodCanadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 27, No. 3 (September 1985), pp.334-335Published by: Canadian Association of SlavistsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40868477 .

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334 I Canadian Slavonic Papers September 1985

did not. Then why emphasize tsekhovshchina? And is the fact that workers' clubs were set up to serve city districts necessarily evidence of "district patriotism" or was it just more practical?

A similar problem arises in relation to the 1905 demand for control over hiring and firing, which the author describes as a radical demand reflecting the workers' desire to turn the social order upside down. But what did this demand mean in practice? We are not told. Judging from 1917 when it arose again and was put into practice, one must conclude that it was not a radical social demand that hit at the core of the owners' prerogatives. It was rather a means to limit the arbitrary use of these prerogatives by forcing the owners to observe agreed upon rules. There was no intention of preventing them from dismissing workers for economic reasons. Control in the Russian sense means monitoring. In this regard it is surprising that a study of trade unions has so little to say about the workers' economic conditions and of worker-management relations in the factories. Surely these must be at the root of any aspiration to trade union organization.

Despite these shortcomings, this is a serious, richly documented study of workers' legal organizations and it will be read with interest by students of pre- revolutionary Russia and of the labour movement.

David Mandel, Université du Québec à Montréal

Linda Harriet Edmondson. Feminism in Russia, 1900-1917. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1984. xii, 197 pp. $25.00.

It is not surprising, given the recent upsurge of interest in women's studies and women's history in the Western world, that scholars have finally turned their attention to this aspect of Russia's past. In marked contrast to the 1950s and 1960s, when British and North American graduate schools virtually ignored the topic, more than a dozen theses on the Russian women's movement have appeared since 1970. The vast majority of these, as well as related books that have been published recently, have concerned the revolutionary activities of Russian women. In 1979 and 1980, for instance, no fewer than three biographies of Alexandra Kollontai appeared, not to mention studies of other female revolutionaries such as Vera Zasulich and Nadezhda Krupskaia. The history of the many non-Social Democratic women who sought social change and feminist goals through peaceful and con- stitutional means has been largely overlooked. In a sense, this parallels the earlier Western concentration on the Bolshevik Party and on "the three who made a revolution" at the expense of the Constitutional Democrats and other liberal reformers who failed to consolidate their gains in 1917. Like the Kadets, Russian feminists have also been ignored by Soviet historians, or else vilified as bourgeois suffragettes who tried to divert working women's attention from the true nature of the class struggle. Even Russian emigres, who after 1917 devoted considerable attention to justifying the actions of the liberal parties before the October Revolu- tion and to cataloguing their political contributions, had no interest in preserving the legacy of their female counterparts.

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Vol. XXVII, No. 3 Book Reviews | 335

This notable lacuna in Russian women's history has now been admirably filled by Linda Harriet Edmondson's Feminism in Russia, 1900-1917. Dr. Edmondson began with the intention of comparing the almost simultaneous rise of feminism in England and Russia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The fact that the origins of and inspiration for these two movements were markedly different - feminism in Russia was hardly a by-product of the Industrial Revolu- tion or of liberal individualism - soon caused her to concentrate solely on the Russian experience. Nevertheless, her knowledge of Western developments and her ability to place the evolution of Russian feminism within this broader context remains one of the strengths of the book.

The Revolution of 1905 marked the watershed in the development of Russian feminism just as it did for almost all opposition movements in the tsarist state. Prior to 1905 women's groups had concentrated with moderate success on "small deeds": expanding educational and employment opportunities for middle- and upper- class women, offering philanthropic assistance to their less fortunate sisters, and campaigning against prostitution and alcoholism. In 1905-1907 feminists turned their attention to more political matters, especially to securing the right to vote in Duma elections and participate in the deliberations of that body. While these objectives were never realized, women were at least successful in liberalizing the attitudes of the other opposition parties and in awakening an interest in women's issues among female factory workers. Even after Stolypin's coup in June 1907, feminist groups were able to secure modifications in inheritance law and internal passport restrictions for the benefit of Russian women. By 1914 public opinion had changed to the point that the "women's question" could no longer be ignored and in 1917 Russian women gained the right to vote before many of their Western counterparts. Dr. Edmondson is to be commended for calling attention to these long overlooked achievements of the Russian feminist movement. She is also to be commended for her objectivity. Unlike some who have written on women's themes, she has managed to remain both sympathetic and critical of her subject. The ultimate failure of the Russian feminists was a result not only of tsarist oppres- sion and Social Democratic hostility, but also, she contends, of the feminists' own internal bickering, lack of common organization, and inability to develop a "coherent theory of women's oppression."

Feminism in Russia was originally written as a doctoral dissertation at the University of London and still shares many of the usual strengths and weaknesses of that genre. It is based, as her excellent bibliography attests, on a wide reading of contemporary newspapers, memoirs, and unpublished doctoral dissertations. It is carefully argued and avoids attractive generalities unsupported by historical evidence, and it is written in a sparse and economical style. At the same time it is curiously lifeless and unable to convey the passion and the emotion which the feminist movement must have possessed during the first part of the twentieth century. Perhaps a little more attention to individuals like Anna Filosofova and Ariadna Tyrkova and a little less concentration on the organizations they tried to form might have turned this sound monograph into a more readable book.

R. C. Elwood, Carleton University

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