Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments While attending a conference celebrating women’s history in eastern Europe in Minsk, the capital of post-Soviet Belarus, in autumn 1999, we began contemplating projects worth pursuing as a group of committed gender historians. Taking a break from the conference, we visited the nearby museum dedicated to the Great Fatherland War that was replete with gender connotations. Together with several people who would later contribute to this volume,we walked through the exhibits, discussing ways in which the narratives contained there might be changed if we spread some gender pixie dust over the musty exhibits. These discussions materialized in a group of three panels at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) in Crystal City, Virginia, in 2001. The positive comments of our audiences and the enthusiasm of Janet Rabinowitch, herself a historian and now the director of Indiana University Press, encouraged us in our conviction that gender and war in twentieth-century eastern Europe was a subject deserving of further study. This volume is the result. We would like to thank our contributors for their ¤ne work. Their insightful articles have resulted in a volume that we believe makes an important contribution to the study of gender and war. We would also like to thank our referees for their excellent suggestions, and Janet Rabinowitch for her helpful advice in shepherding this volume through the publication process. We owe special thanks also to Krassimira Daskalova and Cynthia J. Paces for encouraging this project, to Marsha Rozenblit for her comments on one of our panels at the AAASS, and to Daniel Unowsky for stepping in and reading one of our presenter ’s papers at the same conference. Again, we dedicate this collection to the men in our lives, all of whom support us in our academic endeavors. Thank you, Codrut, Danny, David, Dylan, and Nick. Nancy M. Wing¤eld Maria Bucur Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe ...