American girls in red Russia

427 pages

English language

Published Sept. 13, 2017 by University of Chicago Press.

ISBN:: 978-0-226-25612-2
OCLC Number:: 958422216

(2 reviews)

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 …

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.

1 edition

Shtakser reviewed American girls in red Russia by Julia L. Mickenberg

Review of 'American girls in red Russia' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This is a very good book on generation of US feminists who, at least for a while, perceived Soviet Union as a cultural alternative to the oppressed status of women in their own country. These women traveled to Soviet Union, worked for its people as charity workers, journalists, artists, or political activists, and went back in order to present an alternative of equality between the genders as well as, especially for these who were not white, intolerance towards any kind of racism. The author defends them from later accusations of betraying their country and cynically lying about the repression within Soviet Union. She claims, reasonably, that for them Soviet Union was an imaginary alternative and that their main concerns were in fact within the US. Sadly Soviet Union eventually proved to be too oppressive to defend even for these who wished to idealize it. Even more sadly, the former idealization …

This is a very good book on generation of US feminists who, at least for a while, perceived Soviet Union as a cultural alternative to the oppressed status of women in their own country. These women traveled to Soviet Union, worked for its people as charity workers, journalists, artists, or political activists, and went back in order to present an alternative of equality between the genders as well as, especially for these who were not white, intolerance towards any kind of racism. The author defends them from later accusations of betraying their country and cynically lying about the repression within Soviet Union. She claims, reasonably, that for them Soviet Union was an imaginary alternative and that their main concerns were in fact within the US. Sadly Soviet Union eventually proved to be too oppressive to defend even for these who wished to idealize it. Even more sadly, the former idealization of the country and connection between its policies and civil rights' struggles offered a basis for the 1950s conservatives to attack the civil rights activists as dishonest and disloyal. Still, the author claims that the existence of a Soviet alternative, even a somewhat imaginary one, created a tangible basis for feminist activism which affected a whole generation of young US women during the 1920s and 1930s, a generation which went on supporting later generations of feminists.
Indeed, there is something about these women's intentional blindness while in Soviet Union, as well as about the racism some of them managed to combine with alleged political radicalism which I found deeply annoying. Still, a history of radicalism of any kind involves people whose radicalism is limited. They are still an important part of the story.

Nerd Picnic

rated it

Nov. 25, 2018

Subjects

Americans
History
Women and socialism
Feminism
Women

Places

United States
Soviet Union