American girls in red Russia
Subtitle: chasing the Soviet dream
By: Julia L. Mickenberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2017
Place of publication: Chicago, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 427
ISBN-13: 9780226256122
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Americans; History; Women and socialism; Feminism; Women
Description: If you were an independent, adventurous, liberated American woman in the 1920s or '30s where might you have sought escape from the constraints and compromises of bourgeois living? Paris and the Left Bank quickly come to mind. But would you have ever thought of Russia and the wilds of Siberia? This choice was not as unusual as it seems now. As Julia Mickenberg uncovers in 'American Girls in Red Russia', there is a forgotten counterpoint to the story of the Lost Generation: beginning in the late nineteenth century, Russian revolutionary ideology attracted many women, including suffragists, reformers, educators, journalists, and artists, as well as curious travelers. Some were famous, like Isadora Duncan or Lillian Hellman; some were committed radicals, though many more were curious about the "Soviet experiment." But all came to Russia in search of social arrangements that would be more equitable, just, and satisfying. And most in the end were disillusioned, sometimes by the mundane realities, others by ugly truths too horrifying to even contemplate. Mickenberg reveals the complex motives that drew American women to Russia, which appeared to be the very embodiment of modern ideas and ways of living. American women saw in Russia the hope for a new era in which women would be not merely independent of men, but also equal builders of a new society. Russian women, after all, earned the right to vote in 1917, and they also had abortion rights, property rights, the right to divorce, maternity benefits, and state-supported childcare.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: label: Introduction
title: "American Girls in Red Russia"; label: Part I
title: Tender Revolutionaries and Child Savers.; label: 1
title: Dreaming in Red: Reformers, Rebels, and a Revolutionary Babushka; label: 2
title: Child Savers and Child Saviors; label: Part II
title: Living and Working in the New Russia: From Kuzbas to Moscow; label: 3
title: "A New Pennsylvania": Seeking Home in Siberia; label: 4
title: "Eyes on Russia": Gal Reporters on the Moscow News; label: Part III
title: Performing Revolution; label: 5
title: Dancing Revolution; label: 6
title: Black and White-and Yellow-in Red: Performing Race in Russia; label: Part IV
title: Trials, Tribulations, and Battles; label: 7
title: Heroines and Heretics on the Russian Front; label: Epilogue
title: Red spy queens?; title: Acknowledgments; title: Abbreviations; title: Notes; title: Index