Overview

Women in the First World War and the Russian Civil War explores how Russian literature and autobiographical writing portrayed nurses, women soldiers, and commanders who served in the First World War and the Russian Civil War. Simonova’s research challenges the traditional perception of war as a masculine domain, introducing the concept of military femininities, particularly “expanded femininity,” which combines traditional feminine traits such as consolation, care, and inspiration with bravery, militancy, and leadership. The study focuses on lesser-known texts from the 1910s to the early 1930s, encompassing both well-known and underexplored writers like Boris Pilnyak, Boris Lavrenev, Eduard Bagritsky, Pavel Bliakhin, Veniamin Kaverin, Isaac Babel, Lidiia Charskaia, Zinaida Chalaia, Tatiana Dubinskaia, Sofia Fedorchenko, and Liusia Argutinskaia, as well as the diaries of sisters of mercy. With this comprehensive range of literary sources, this book demonstrates that representations of women are crucial in shaping and understanding the reception of these wars. Offering a fresh perspective on gender, war, and memory in early twentieth-century Russian literature, this monograph will appeal not only to scholars of literature and gender issues, but also to anyone interested in cultural and military history.

Full Product Details

9781041102083

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Reviews

“This book contributes significantly to our understanding of the female hero in the context of the revolutionary changes in Russia in the 1910s-20s. Its breadth and depth of research will be widely appreciated by everyone interested in Russian twentieth-century history and culture.” Alexandra Smith, University of Edinburgh “The book offers insightful analyses of the complex history of gender, war, and memory in early twentieth-century Russian culture and literature. It deepens our understanding of how the First World War and the Russian Civil War shaped representations of femininity that became foundational to later literary works.” Arja Rosenholm, Professor Emerita, Tampere University

Author Information

Olga Simonova is Researcher at the University of Turku, Finland. She is a specialist in early twentieth-century Russian literature, with a focus on mass-market literature, gender, and women’s magazines. She has extensively researched war propaganda and ideology during the imperial and Stalinist periods. She is the author of over eighty academic publications, and her current research explores the portrayal of women in fiction and autobiographical narratives with a focus on military identities and cultural memory in post-revolutionary Russia.

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