Bolshevik Women

An informative look at the history of Bolshevik women in the early 1900s.

Barbara Evans Clements (Author)

9780521599207, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 13 August 1997

356 pages, 36 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.585 kg

'A richly nuanced collective portrait of the female membership of the Bolshevik party. The book's vivid and engaging personal details are set against a textured background and gain resonance and depth from the careful quantitative work that Clements has carried out. The book captures all the complexities of radical women's lives. It represents an important contribution to both Soviet history and the history of European women.' Barbara Alpern Engel, University of Colorado

Bolshevik Women is a history of the women who joined the Soviet Communist Party before 1921. The book examines the reasons these women became revolutionaries, the work they did in the underground before 1917, their participation in the revolution and civil war, and their service in the building of the USSR. Drawing on a database of more than five hundred individuals as well as on intensive research into the lives of the most prominent female Bolsheviks, the study argues that women were important members of the Communist Party at its lower levels during its formative years. They were lieutenants, printing leaflets, speaking to crowds, and running party operations in the cities. They also created one of the most remarkable efforts to emancipate women from traditional society of the twentieth century. This book traces their fascinating lives from the earliest years of the revolutionary movement through to their old age in the time of Khrushchev and Brezhnev.

1. Becoming a revolutionary
2. The underground
3. The revolution
4. The civil war
5. The ruling class
6. Recessional.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]