Deviant women
Subtitle: female crime and criminology in revolutionary Russia, 1880-1930
By: Sharon A. Kowalsky.
Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: DeKalb, IL
Language: eng
Number of pages: 314
ISBN-13: 9780875804064
Subjects: Female offenders -- Soviet Union -- History; Deviant behavior -- Soviet Union -- History; Women -- Soviet Union -- Social conditions; Crime -- Soviet Union -- History; Criminologists -- Soviet Union -- History
Description: "After seizing power in 1917, the Bolsheviks initiated reforms aimed at abolishing the old way of life in Russia. A new Family Code liberalized marriage procedures, promoted communal living arrangements, and abolished the concept of illegitimacy ... The problem of female crime occupied a prominent position in criminologists' studies. In explaining 'traditional' female crimes of the domestic sphere - infanticide, spouse murder, and petty theft, among others - criminologists pointed to the offenders' backwardness and ignorance ... Deviant Women looks at the emergence of criminology in early Soviet Russia ... and highlighting the ways in which criminologists were able to conduct innovative social science research under the constraints of Bolshevik ideology ... Concluding with a close study of infanticide, the most 'typical' crime committed by women, Kowalsky discusses the social attitudes that were revealed in the professional discussion of this crime. Historians of modern Russia and the USSR, scholars of gender studies, and those studying criminology will be fascinated by this original study."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Anthropology, sociology and female crime : the origins of criminology in Russia; title: Professionals, social science, and the state : the organization of Soviet criminology; title: The woman's sphere : the role of sexuality in female crime; title: The geography of crime : city, countryside, and trends in female criminality; title: A remnant of the old way of life : infanticide in theory and practice.