My Women's History, My Memory

I was still in school when I first learned about the existence of women's history from a colleague and friend of my father—my parents are also historians. A specialist in the history of Russian foreign policy in the medieval period and a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Professor Vladimir Pashuto spoke several languages and actually attended international scholarly conferences more than once in the 1970s. This was completely atypical for a Soviet scholar! It was from precisely such an international conference in the early 1970s that he returned with the news that the "woman's theme" had unexpectedly emerged out of the wave of youth protests that had swept Europe and North America. Indeed, by the mid-1970s, this topic had become one of the most debated at international historical conferences. Right at that time, I finished school and entered Moscow University. To my delight, Vladimir Pashuto suggested that I dedicate myself to the reconstruction of the history of women in medieval Rus´. The topic became my destiny: since 1976, I have been faithful to the "woman's theme."

I remember well even now how the history of women was not recognized as worthy of scholarly analysis. Nothing socially significant was seen in it. Given the title of my research, "The Social Status of Women in Medieval Rus´," not a single university professor was willing to take me on as a student. (Vladimir Pashuto worked at the Academy of Sciences and did not teach.) Only when I left history for archaeology did I find an adviser: in 1980, Valentin Ianin, then a professor and now a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, agreed to take me on as a student researching that topic.

A year later, Eve Levin also became his student when she arrived from the United States to conduct doctoral research on the topic "Women in Medieval Novgorod." She is now, of course, an internationally recognized professor at the University of Kansas and editor of the Russian Review. Beginning with that far-distant year of 1980, Eve and I became almost literal (or perhaps scholarly) sisters. Thanks to this acquaintance, which developed into a strong friendship, I gained entrance into the circle of American Russianists—and precisely those who were themselves interested in the history of women in Russia. Almost two decades later, Eve completed a brilliant translation of my Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century, for which she received the Heldt Prize for Best Translation from the Association for Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS).¹

Gender history was born before my very eyes, and if we talk about Russian scholarship in particular, then also with my active participation. The concept of "gender" entered Russian humanities in the 1990s, and I myself learned the term "gender" from the sociologists Anna Temkina and Elena Zdravomyslova, whom I met at a summer school on methodologies of the humanities. I did not simply learn about this new concept but was "infected" with it. Having started my scholarly career as a medievalist and archeologist and having defended by the mid-1990s my (second) doctoral dissertation (Habilitation), I did not feel that my colleagues at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, where I had been working since 1987, accorded me the recognition befitting my achievements. Although I had published four monographs and dozens of articles, defended my second dissertation, and received the title of full professor all by the age of 35—accomplishments that were unmatched among women scholars, my specialization was deemed unimportant; it simply did not exist. I was not even offered a place on the Academic Council of the institute, let alone an administrative position. Feminism as a theory helped explain the reasons for this indifference to my successes on the part of the administration: it showed that the personal is almost always political. Addressing the texts of feminist classics, which were mostly in English, I became stronger; without them it would have been impossible to understand the concept of "gender," which turned my scholarly life upside down.

I left medieval studies to study...