Russian Orthodox Women in Unorthodox Times: Patterns of Female Agency and Authority in the Revolutionary Era, 1917-1927

Abstract

This paper examines various ways in which lay Orthodox women - as mothers, wives, workers, and daughters - navigated the challenges and opportunities they encountered with respect to their faith in the early Soviet period. It centers on two questions: How did women’s faith impact their experience of the Revolution under Bolshevik rule? And how did women’s religious beliefs, behaviors, and faith-based relationships influence how the Revolution was “lived”? Moving beyond the problematic category of “backwardness” traditionally assigned to female believers in the revolutionary context, it privileges women’s perspectives and highlights a diverse set of responses to socialist rule. And by encouraging a rethinking of the interrelationship between gender and faith in early Soviet society, it aims to open up new avenues of inquiry with respect to the experience of “lived socialism”.