In Defense of Their Families: Working-Class Women, Alcohol, and Politics in Revolutionary Russia

By focusing on drink as a central feature of working-class culture in early-twentieth-century Russia, this article provides a new context in which to examine Temma Kaplan's assertion that collective protest by women is motivated by "female consciousness." Finding support for Kaplan's thesis, this study emphasizes that, whether in their daily lives or during more unusual moments of collective protest, women's actions toward drink were rooted in their assessment of alcohol's impact on the family economy. The limited, individualistic methods working women normally used to ensure their families' economic health were transformed into overt, collective action during revolutionary upheavals, but the character that women's day-to-day struggles to defend the family economy assumed both before and after 1917 suggests that women's family concerns were not substantively incorporated into the agenda of the new state.