Routledge Studies in the History of Russia and Eastern Europe

<p>Based on an extensive reading of a broad range of women’s accounts of their lives in the Soviet Union, this book focuses on many hidden aspects of Soviet women’s everyday lives, thereby revealing a great deal about how the Soviet Union operated on a day-to-day basis and about the place of the individual within it. </p><p>Including testimony from both celebrated literary and cultural figures</p><p>and from many ordinary people, and from both enthusiastic supporters of the</p><p>regime and dissidents, the book considers women’s daily routines, attitudes and</p><p>behaviours. It highlights some of the hidden inequalities of an ostensibly egalitarian</p><p>society, and considers many wider questions, including how extensive was</p><p>the ‘reach’ of the Soviet regime; how ‘modern’ was it; how far were there continuities</p><p>after 1917 between the new Bolshevik regime and Russia’s imperial</p><p>past; and how homogenous and how mobile was Soviet society?</p>