This selection of essays provides an overview of key issues in Russian women's writing and of important representations of women by men, between 1600 and the present. The book has two main aims. Firstly, it hopes to make a contribution to the contemporary feminist project of rediscovering the ‘lost continent of the female tradition’ of Russian literature, which forms part of the wider interdisciplinary initiative by social historians, political scientists, psychologists, art and film historians to reconstruct the political, social and cultural experience of Russian women as a whole. Secondly, it incorporates some new thinking on gender issues in the works of Russian male writers, in order to shed further light on the patriarchal Russian literary tradition. Unlike most previous feminist studies of Russian literature, which, to borrow Elaine Showalter's terms, have tended to concentrate on either ‘the feminist critique’ (‘revisionary readings’ of masculine texts and criticism) or ‘gynocritics’ (the rediscovery and analysis of literature by Russian women), it is hoped that this comparative study will facilitate an exploration of the historical and cultural context of women's writing, and the differences, if any, between writing can achieve.

Many of the essays presented below are revised versions of papers first presented at a conference on ‘Women and the Former USSR’, held in the University of Bath in March–April 1993, but others have been offered specially for inclusion in this book.