Soviet Women Everyday Lives

Based on an extensive reading of a broad range of womens accounts of their lives in the Soviet Union, this book focuses on many hidden aspects of Soviet womens 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. Including testimony from both celebrated literary and cultural figures and from many ordinary people, and from both enthusiastic supporters of the regime and dissidents, the book considers womens daily routines, attitudes and behaviours. It highlights some of the hidden inequalities of an ostensibly egalitarian society, and considers many wider questions, including how extensive was the reach of the Soviet regime; how modern was it; how far were there continuities after 1917 between the new Bolshevik regime and Russias imperial past; and how homogenous and how mobile was Soviet society?