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Women, Protest, and Revolution: Soldiers' Wives in Russia During 1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2004

Sarah Badcock
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Abstract

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This study explores the role and political impact of soldiers' wives in three Volga provinces of Russia: Nizhnii Novgorod, Kazan, and Tambov between February and October 1917. Despite relatively low levels of formal organization, soldiers' wives made a significant mark on revolutionary politics at a local level. Common grievances, which centred on the inadequacy of state support in the context of rising food prices and shortages, were the defining feature of soldiers' wives as a group. Though they secured little direct representation in government, and did not affiliate with any political parties, they operated collectively to address their grievances, both in petitions and in public demonstrations. Their demands continued to escalate in 1917, and the government was unable to cushion them from Russia's profound economic crisis. Soldiers' wives rejected both Soviet and provisional government leadership as a result, and their alienation contributed to the sense of political crisis that pervaded 1917.

Type
ARTICLE
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , April 2004 , pp. 47 - 70
Copyright
© 2004 Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis

Footnotes

This paper was first presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies conference, Washington DC, in November 2001, and a subsequent version was presented to the Birmingham University SIPS seminar in March 2002. Thanks to participants on these panels for their valuable comments, and particularly to Boris Kolonitskii, Mike Hickey, Rex Wade, and Christopher Read, and to the anonymous referees and editorial board of this journal. Thanks also to Graham Tan for his incisive remarks. The research for this paper was made possible by the generous support of a Leverhulme Trust study abroad studentship.