Gender and choice after socialism ed. by Lynne Attwood, Elisabeth Schimpfössl, Marina Yusupova (review)

Correction:
One of the editor's name was mistakenly printed as Irina Yusupova. The correct spelling is Marina Yusupova.

Six of the eight chapters of this collective work are on Russia, the other two on Ukraine. The data used are primarily from qualitative surveys, especially interviews. The overarching issue is the limitations on the new 'freedoms' that appeared in the two countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It might have seemed that the end of the authoritarian socialist regime, the opening of borders, and the advent of market economies 'would usher in a new era of choice' in social life (p. xxiii). In fact, gender-based norms and inequalities (together with norms for age and social class) continue to exert their grip on these societies—in new ways and old.

Irina Roldugina's and Nadzeya Husakouskaya's chapters discuss the politicization of homosexuality and transgender status. Roldugina, a historian of homosexuality in Russia, notes that while her subject has been of interest to several foreign researchers (including Dan Healey and Arthur Clech), it has been largely ignored by historiographers in Russia. Working on this theme was of course impossible before the fall of the Soviet Union, as male homosexuality had been a criminal offense there since 1934. But why did research on the topic fail to develop after 1991? This issue is at the core of the chapter, which analyses Russian archive policy and the exclusion of homosexuals from commemorations of Soviet political repression.

Nadzeya Husakouskaya discusses how the legal framework for transgender transitioning (medical operations, ID documents) has evolved in Ukraine since 1991, together with the political battles around this issue. Transgender activism mainly developed in the wake of the 'Orange Revolution' of 2004. A 1996 state order had defined transitioning in deeply 'pathologizing', highly constrictive and restrictive terms. In 2011, a new ordinance was passed that only minimally relaxed the previous legislation, and it was only in 2016 that a new procedure was adopted, modelled on the British process. The question of transgender people's rights in Ukraine tends to be instrumentalized—used to show that Ukraine is 'behind' Western Europe on the issue—in connection with the conditions the country must meet to join the European Union. According to Husakouskaya, this perspective obscures the fact that the procedure in effect in other countries—Argentina, for example—may well offer a better model and that the laws in several EU countries are no more advanced than Ukraine's.

Olesya Khromeychuk's chapter is on the gender-specific division of activist labour during the occupation of Maidan Square (2013–2014) and of military labour during the conflict in Donbas, which began in 2014. Surveys show that whereas women represented 43% of participants in the early Maidan protests, that figure fell to 12% at the end, when the occupation was militarized. Women were generally assigned to cooking and treating injuries, and they were forbidden to enter zones considered dangerous. Many who were active on Maidan Square later tried to enlist to fight the separatists in the Donbas. But there again, many types of work were off limits to them. As the army has a long list of positions that women are prohibited from taking, many chose the easier course of joining a volunteer battalion.

Anna Shadrina discusses the situation of older single women in Russia, where premature mortality among men and high divorce rates have left many older women widows or divorcees. When the author asked single women of different social backgrounds aged 60 to 88 whether they wanted to repartner, most answered in the negative. Women respondents 'navigate between two gendered stereotypes: one that renders old age a period of life which is deprived of sexual and romantic desires and one that places marriage at the centre of women's lives' (p. 88). By saying they want to remain single, then, these women both align themselves with gender norms and contravene them...