This book is the first English language, all-Russian book on women's history, and translates the knowledge, theories and methodologies in use within Russian national historiography to tackle gender and women's history. It represents the research results of Russian gender and women's historians who are devoted to advancing women's rights and gender sensitive agenda in the Russian academic community and Russian society in general. This book appears in the context of a deep backlash from the liberal ideology of Russian modernization. This backlash has manifested itself in the constant and persistent calls for traditional values and the rebuke of gender as a concept, allowing people to choose their sex. Women have been expected to return to their natural state as mothers and housekeepers; feminism once again became a pre-condition for bad motherhood and a general threat to family and was even held responsible to unnatural vices. Such an attack on gender and feminism as academic concepts and their further politicization makes women's history especially sound. It also prompts scholars to reflect on the reasons and roots of such hostility. Furthermore, it brings up the imminent question of what these traditional values are and where they come from. These are questions that this book answers.
About the Author: Marianna Muravyeva is a Professor and Marie Curie Senior Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, UK. She specializes in the history of crime, legal history, gender history, and the history of sexuality in early modern Europe. Her publications include the edited volumes Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (2013); Shame, Blame, and Culpability: Crime and Violence in the Modern State (2012); and Bytovoe nasilie v istorii rossiiskoi povsednevnosti [Violence in the history of Russian everyday life] (2012).Natalia Novikova is an independent scholar. She received her doctorate from Yaroslavl' State Pedagogical University, Yaroslavl, Russia, and worked as an Associate Professor of History for more than 15 years for this university. She has published a number of articles on Russian women's movements, including Early Historical Accounts of the Russian Women's Movement: a political dialogue or a dispute? in Women's History Review 20(4) (2011).