Revolution and Gender in Russia & China:
A Comparative Perspective
http://www.history.neu.edu/women/chstu313.htm
History 313
Spring 2006

Monday, Thursday 11:45-1:25

Kasimir Malevich, "The Reaper" 1913

Instructors:

Prof. Christina Gilmartin, c.gilmartin@neu.edu
207 Meserve Hall
Phone: 373-4449
Office Hours: Thursday 4:00-5:00, or by. appt.

Prof. Jeffrey Burds, jburds@aya.yale.edu
269 Holmes Hall
Phone: 373-2079
Office Hours: Thursdays 1:30-3:30, or by appt.

Course Description

In this comparative study of women and gender in two socialist societies, we will survey the complex interrelationships between socialist ideology, gender, and ethnicity in Russia and China during the twentieth century. Our aim is to examine the ways in which Communist revolutionaries confronted national traditions of subordination in their efforts to transform women's conditions in Russia and China. Although vast differences exist between the two countries, there are several important points of comparison which provide critical material for this undertaking: both societies entered the twentieth century deeply imbedded in their own brands of patriarchal traditions; both were governed by large imperial bureaucracies; both societies consisted primarily of peasants; both societies experienced the tumultuous upheavals of war and revolution; and both experienced a Communist revolution which specifically identified women's emancipation as an important goal of the new socialist state. Throughout the course we will be looking for the tensions between theory and practice as Communist revolutionaries endeavored to re-engineer gender relations and women's roles in the construction of a new society, and the effects these efforts had on sexual relations, women's reproductive rights, and a whole host of social and cultural practices. In the last section of the course, we will follow the impact of recent changes on the status of women in both societies.

Required Readings

The following books are available at the University bookstore:

Kay Ann Johnson, Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

Rae Yang, Spider Eaters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).

Lydia Chukovskaia, Sofia Petrovna (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994).

Sheila Fitzpatrick and Yuri Slezkine, eds. In the Shadow of the Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

In addition, readings marked with an asterisk icon are available on line at the course WEBsite at http://www.history.neu.edu/women/women.htm Access to readings and some other materials requires a password.

Bibliography and Resource Page

The Bibliography and Resource Page provides links to numerous materials that might be useful for further study.

Course Requirements

10 percent of the final grade: Each student is expected to complete all of the assigned readings (averaging about 100 pages weekly) and to attend lectures and discussions regularly. Regular attendance is required.

30 percent of the final grade: Students will be required to take two written exams, corresponding to two of three sections of the course. The first is set for Monday, January 31. The second is set for finals week, scheduled for Tuesday March 14 at 8:00 a.m. The two examinations will each account for 20 percent of the final grade for the course.

60 percent of the final grade: Two short papers, each 4-6 pages (double-spaced), which conform to the History Style Guide to be handed out in class. Each paper will draw on course readings, and will

Honors Adjunct: All Honors Adjunct students will write one longer paper, 6-10 pages, in lieu of one of the two short papers. This paper will be written on a theme and readings to be agreed upon with the course instructors. In addition, the Honors Adjunct student will take a short oral examination in lieu of the final exam. This oral exam is pass/fail: the student's grade will be based on written work in the written exam and two papers only. NOTE: Any student may elect to do an alternative to the final examination and paper in this course. All students are encouraged to see the course instructor(s) for advice.

Week 1 Approaches to the Social Construction of Gender & Comparative History

Monday, 9 January. Introduction.

Thursday, 12 January. DISCUSSION: Gender Analysis and Comparative Methodology

Readings
Gerda Lerner, "Origins," in The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 15-35.

Raymond Grew, "The Case for Comparing Histories," American Historical Review Volume 85, Number 4 (October 1980): 763-778.

Part I. Women in Prerevolutionary Times

Week 2 Women in Late Imperial China

Monday, 16 January. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. No classes.

Thursday, 19 January. Classic Patriarchy and Gender Relations in Imperial China

Handout: "Chaste Women"

Handout: Ban Zhao's "Lessons for Women"

Week 3 Women in Late Imperial China, Part 2

Monday, 23 January. Tuesday, 9 January. Female Agency in Imperial China

Handout: "Mulan"

Thursday, 26 January. Women Radicals in the 1911 Revolution and the May Fourth Era

Readings
Kay Johnson, "Women and the Traditional Chinese Society," in Women, the Family and Peasant Revolution in China, pp. 7-26.

Hsiao Hung, "The Child Bride," in Tales of Hulan River (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 19??), pp. xv-xxvi [Goldblatt Introduction], and 227-275.

Rae Yang, "Nainai Failed Her Ancestors," in Spider Eaters (Chapter 4, pp. 24-30).

Mary Backus Rankin, "The Emergence of Women at the End of Ch'ing: The Case of Ch'iu Chin," pp. 39-66.

Week 4 'Traditional' Women in Imperial Russia: Myths of the Russian 'Baba'

Monday, 30 January. Traditional Russian Women: Social Roles & Superstitions

Handout: "Olga's Vengeance"--a traditional bedtime story from the Russian Primary Chronicles

Handout: The Domostroi—"Rules Governing Household Management" (mid-16th century)

Handout: "Russian 'Harem' Culture: Patriarchalism Adapts 'Western' Models

Thursday, 2 February. Women & Social Mobility: The Changing Structure of Russian Society

Readings: Struggling With Patriarchy
Jeffrey Burds, "The Economics of Russian Patriarchalism," in Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861-1905 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), pp. 17-19.

Jeffrey Burds, "Social Control in Old Regime Russia," in Peasant Dreams and Market Politics: Labor Migration and the Russian Village, 1861-1905 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), pp. 9-10, 197-204, 212-214.

Laura Engelstein, "Power & Crime in the Domestic Order," in The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia (Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 96-127.

Russian Feminism Under the Old Regime

Richard Stites, "Women and the Russian Tradition," in Women's Liberation Movement in Russia, pp. 3-25.

Barbara Alpern Engel, "Mothers and Daughters: Family Patterns and the Female Intelligentsia," pp. 44-59.

Vera Figner, Excerpts from her memoirs in Five Sisters, pp. 57.

Recommended
Praskovia Ivanovskaia, Excerpts from her memoirs.

Stephen P. Frank, "Narratives within Numbers: Women, Crime and Judicial Statistics in Imperial Russia, 1834-1913," The Russian Review Volume 55 (October 1996): 541-566.

Part II. Theoretical and Methodological Issues

Week 5 Feminism and Socialism: Theory & Practice

Monday, 6 February. Conceptual Framework.

Thursday, 9 February. Marxist Traditions. The Tensions Between Class and Gender

Readings

Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert, "Introduction: Restoring Women to History," in Marilyn J. Boxer and Jean H. Quataert, eds Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World, 1500-to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 3-16.

Vogel, "Socialist Feminism and the Women Question,"

Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, "The Bourgeois Family," in The Communist Manifesto (1848).

Frederick Engels, Chapter Two. "The Family" in The Origin of the Family (1884), pp. 94-146.

V. I. Lenin, "A Conversation with Klara Zetkin"

Part III. Gender and Revolution

Week 6 Women & the Russian Revolution

Monday, 13 February. First exam

Thursday, 16 February. Women & the Revolution

Lecture: The Women's Liberation Movement in Old Regime Russia

Handout: Political Activity as Theater. Walter Benjamin, Moscow Diary (Dec 6 1926 to end of January 1927), in October Volume 35 (Winter 1985), pp. 49-50.

Handout: The Transformation of Everyday Life. M. F. Filipenko, "My Life (The Story of Maria Fedotovna Filipenko)," (1924) William Rosenberg, ed. Bolshevik Visions, pp. 139-141.

Readings
Barbara Evans Clements, "Baba and Bolshevik: Russian Women and Revolutionary Change," Soviet Union/Union Sovietique Volume 12, Pt. 2 (1985): 161-184.

Fannina W. Halle, Selections from "Woman Takes Possession of Her New Realm," and "The New Byt," in Woman in Soviet Russia (Originally published in German in 1932). (Routledge, 1933), pp. 267-279, 284-292, 294-309, 316-337, 338-340, 351-377.

Sheila Fitzpatrick and Yuri Slezkine, eds. In the Shadow of the Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 31-48, 73-81. 118-122, 167-251.

Recommended
Laurie Bernstein, "The Evolution of Soviet Adoption Law," Journal of Family History, Apr97, Vol. 22 Issue 2, pp. 204-226.

Beatrice Farnsworth, "Bolshevism, the Woman Question, and Aleksandra Kollontai," pp. 182-207.

A. Kollontai, "Towards a History of the Working Women's Movement in Russia," pp. 39-57.

A. Kollontai, "The Social Basis of the Woman Question," pp. 58-73.

Barbara Evans Clements, "Baba and Bolshevik: Russian Women and Revolutionary Change," Soviet Union/Union Sovietique Volume 12, Pt. 2 (1985): 161-184.

Christine Ruane, "Clothes Make the Comrade: A History of the Russian Fashion Industry," Russian History/Histoire Russe 23, Nos. 1-4 (1996): 311-344.

Elizabeth Wood, The Baba and the Comrade: Gender & Politics in Revolutionary Russia, pp. 13-120.

Week 7 Women & the Russian Revolution, 2

Monday, 20 February. Presidents' Day. No class.

Thursday, 23 February. Case Study: Women's Reproductive Rights in Early Soviet Society

Week 8 Women and the Chinese Revolution

Monday, 27 February. Gender & Urban Revolution in the 1920s

Gender & Rural Revolution in the 1930s

***Evening, Dinner & Film: Bed and Sofa (Abram Room) (1927) (73 minutes)

Thursday, 2 March. Impact of the Communist Revolution of 1949 on Gender Relations

Readings
Andrea McElderry, "Woman Revolutionary: Xiang Jingyu"

Christina Gilmartin, "Gender in the Formation of a Communist Body Politic"

Mary Sheridan, Yenan Women in Revolution: Ch'en Min: In the army and the Shoe Factory; Old Lady Liu: Heroine of Spinning and Weaving; Li Feng-lien: A comrade in the Tunic Factory

Lily Lee, "Kang Keqing"

Recommended
Christina Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Women, Communist Politics, and Social Mobilization in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

Week 9 Women in Soviet Society During the Stalin Era, 1924-1953

Monday, 6 March. Case Study: Soviet Power & Sex

Handout: Aleksandra Kollontai's Make Way for the Winged Eros [1923]; Lenin's Conversation with Klara Zetkin [1920]; Aaron Zalkind's Twelve Sexual Commandments for the Revolutionary Proletariat

Stalin's 'New Soviet Woman'

Handout: The 'New Soviet Woman' of the 1930s

Handout: Stalinism Through A Woman's Eyes: The Diaries of Lyubov Shaporina (1935-1939)

Tuesday, 13 February.

Thursday, 9 March. Women in the Great Patriotic War: Heroic Women/Conquered Women

Handout: Memories of Soviet Rape

Readings

Wendy Z. Goldman, "Working-Class Women and the 'Withering Away' of the Family: Popular Responses to Family Policy;" in Fitzpatrick, Rabinowitch, and Stites, eds. Russia in the Era of NEP, pp. 125-143; and Jeffrey Burds and Andrei Sokolov, Golos naroda: Voice of the People (New Haven: Yale Universirty Press, forthcoming in 2002).

Richard Stites, "Life Without Control" and "The Sexual Thermidor," in Women's Liberation Movement in Russia, pp. 358-391.

Lynne Viola, "'We Let the Women Do the Talking': Bab'i Bunty and the Anatomy of Peasant Revolt," in Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 181-204.

Transforming Women's Lives in Revolutionary Russia: Autobiographies

Galleries
HEROIC WOMEN: The 'Night Witches': Soviet Women Pilots in the Great Patriotic War [An On-Line Museum]

Soviet Women & Nazi Violence in World War II: Women as Hero-Victims
[POWERPOINT SLIDE PRESENTATION]
These photographs are high-quality scans, and VERY slow unless you are using a highspeed internet connection. I will work on a no-frills version over the weekend.

Recommended
Kazimiera J. Cottam, Women in War and Resistance: Selected Biographies of Soviet Women Soldiers (Nepean, Canada: New Military Publishing, 1998).

Vera Dunham, "Women's Liberation Confused," pp. 214-224.

Barbara Engel and Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck, eds. A Revolution of Their Own: Voices of Women in Soviet History (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 1-16, 47-84, 175-218.

Beatrice Brodsky Farnsworth, "Bolshevik Alternatives and the Soviet Family: The 1926 Marriage Law Debate," pp. 139-165.

Wendy Z. Goldman, "Industrial Politics, Peasant Rebellion, and the Death of the Proletarian Women's Movement in the USSR," Slavic Review Volume 55, Number 1 (Spring 1996): 46-77. Includes translated documents from working women's letters of the 1930s.

Carol Eubanks Hayden, "The Zhenotdel and the Bolshevik Party," Russian History Volume 3, Number 2 (1976): 150-173.

David L. Hoffman, "Mothers in the Motherland: Stalinist Pronatalism in Its Pan-European Context," Journal of Social History 34.1 (2000) 35-54.

Shoshana Keller, "Trapped Between State and Society: Women's Liberation and Islam in Soviet Uzbekistan, 1926-1941," Journal of Women's History, 10 (1), Spring 1998.

A. Kollontai, "Working Woman and Mother," pp. 127-139.

A. Kollontai, "Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Relations," pp. 225-236.

A. Kollontai, "Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle," pp. 237-260.

Igor S. Kon, "Freedom for What?" and "Sexophobia in Action," in The Sexual Revolution in Russia (New York: The Free Press, 1995), pp. 51-84.

Bruce Myles, Night Witches: The Untold Story of Soviet Women in Combat [in World War II] (Chicago: Academy, 1990).

Thomas G. Schrand, "The Five-Year Plan for Women's Labour: Constructing Socialism and the 'Double Burden,' 1930-1932," Europe-Asia Studies Volume 51, Number 8 (December 1999): 1455-1478.

Robert Thurston, "The Soviet Family During the Great Terror, 1935-1941," Soviet Studies 1991 (Volume 43, Number 3), pp. 553-574.

Nina Tumarkin, "No Sea Without Water, No War Without Blood," in The Living & the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York: Basic Books, 1994), pp. 52-94.

Spring Break March 13-17

Week 10 Women in Mao's China

Monday, 20 March. Overview of the Impact of the Communist Revolution. Reproductive Rights

Thursday, 23 March. The Lived Experience: The Autobiography of a Chinese Girl--Rae Yang

FILM: Small Happiness (Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon) (57 minutes)

The Rape of Nanjing: A Photo Essay (WARNING: Explicit gender violence is displayed)

Readings
Tyrene White, "The Origins of China's Birth Planning Policy," in Gilmartin, et. al. Engendering China: Women, Culture and the State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994).

Kay Johnson, "The 1950 Marriage Law: Popular Resistance and Organizational Neglect," in Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

Rae Yang, Spider Eaters, pp. 66-145, 217-260.

Recommended Readings
Janet Salaff and Judith Merkle, "Women and Revolution: The Lessons of the Soviet Union and China," in Marilyn Young, ed. Women in China: Studies in Social Change and Feminism (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1973).

Part IV. Legacies: Women in Russia and China Today

Week 11 Marriage and Divorce

Monday, 27 March. The Public Health Crisis in Post-Soviet Zones

First paper due: FIRST PAPER TOPIC

SAMPLE PAPER 1: Look here to see the sort of paper we expect for an "A" effort

SAMPLE PAPER 2: Look here to see the sort of paper we expect for an "A" effort

"The Sick Man of Eurasia," Economist, 9/22/90, Vol. 316 Issue 7673, pp.19-21.

Thursday, 30 March. Post-Soviet Rollback in Women's Rights

Igor S. Kon, "Sexless Sexism", "Abortion or Contraception," and "Dangerous Sex: Rape, Prostitution, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases," in The Sexual Revolution in Russia (New York: The Free Press, 1995), pp. 129-157, 178-193, 210-238.

Recommended Readings
Deborah A. Field, "Irreconcilable Differences: Divorce and Conceptions of Private Life in the Khrushchev Era," Russian Review, 57 (October 1998): 599-613.

Andrea Stevenson Sanjian, "Social Problems, Political Issues: Marriage and Divorce in the USSR," Soviet Studies, 1991, Vol. 43 Issue 4, pp. 629-650.

Edward W. Gondolf and Dmitri Shestakov, "Spousal Homicide in [Post-Soviet] Russia," Women (October 1997).

Lora Velikanova and Nils H. Wessel, "Women Are Being Beaten," Russian Social Science Review (Sep/Oct96) Vol. 37 Issue 5: 17-24

Week 12 Health Care and Reproduction

Monday, 3 April. Family, Marriage & Divorce in China

Elizabeth Croll, Changing Identities of Chinese Women, pp. 117-144, 158-160.

Thursday, 6 April. Russian Experiences

The International Traffic in Ukrainian Women Forced into Sexual Bondage

Michael Specter, "Traffickers' New Cargo: Naive Slavic Women," New York Times January 11, 1998

Affidavit of a 21-year old woman abducted for work in the sex slave trade

"What it Means to Disorganize a Woman's Identity During Protracted Interrogation"

National Public Radio's Morning Edition, [August 14, 2000]

Sex Slave Trade in Eastern Europe (14.4 | 28.8) [Requires RealAudio or a Windows/MAC Media Player]-- NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports that many unsuspecting women from former Communist countries in Eastern Europe are being sold like slaves and forced into prostitution in Western Europe by organized crime rings. Albanian gangs run the highly lucrative and extremely brutal sex slave trade in Italy. Poggioli talks to some women who were rescued and freed by Italian police. (8:16)

Week 13 Comparing the Russian & Chinese Experiences

Monday, 10 April. Chinese Experiences

Elizabeth Croll, Changing Identities of Chinese Women, pp. 109-117, 164-179.

FILM & Dinner: 6:00-8:00 p.m. Frost Lounge

Thursday, 13 April. Last Impressions

Recommended
If you take a trip to Russia today, the odds are you will sit on the plane next to an American couple going overseas to "adopt" a baby. The Russian orphanage system is a euphemism for two phenomena: (1) the place where the majority of unwanted children with birth defects are sent to die; and (2) a clearing house for the sale of white infant children to "wealthy" western buyers seeking white infant babies. Just as there is a market for the young attractive white women of the former Soviet Union in international sex-slave rings, there is also a market for Russia's rejected children. No wonder that Russian newspapers often depict Westerners as "vultures" ready to "pick at the rotting carcass" of the Soviet empire. Often missed are two key aspects: both the tragic mistreatment of a nation's children, and the joy and love among families who adopt.

Take a devastatingly vivid on-line tour of a Russian orphanage [Newsweek]

Another tour of Russian orphanges from Human Rights Watch

Tour Chinese orphanages

Recommended Readings
Global Survival Network, Crime and Servitude: An Expose of the Traffic in Women for Prostitution from the Newly Independent States [3 November 1997], and documentary film: Bought and Sold

Donna M. Hughes, "The 'Natasha' Trade: The Transnational Shadow Market of Trafficking in Women," Journal of International Affairs Vol. 53, No. 2 (Spring 2000): 625-652.

A CIA Monograph (November 1999): Amy O'Neill Richard, International Trafficking in Women to the United States: A contemporary Manifestation of Slavery and Organized Crime

Coalition Against Trafficking in Women - Asia, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific

Human Rights Watch, Abandoned to the State: Cruelty and Neglect in Russian Orphanages (New York: Human Rights Watch, December 1998).

Week 14 Final Paper

Monday, 17 April. Patriots' Day. No classes. NU Classes end 19 April.

Second paper due in 249 Meserve by noon Wednesday, April 19.

SECOND PAPER TOPIC