Equality & Revolution: Womens Rights in the Russian Empire,

19051917 (review)
Laurie Bernstein

Journal of Social History, Volume 45, Number 2, Winter 2011, pp. 539-541
(Article)
Published by Oxford University Press

For additional information about this article

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society; she also suggests that such views pervaded Bolshevik ideology, part of a
constant tension between the rhetoric of emancipation and traditional patriarchy. Thus, the example of criminology illustrates the unevenness of the Soviet
project from the very beginning and the challenges of truly bringing equality to
all citizens.
While much work since the 1980s and 1990s has been done on the Stalin
period, this study constitutes part of a new body of research that investigates
early Soviet society, professions, and gender order. Kowalsky argues for an extension of what Sheila Fitzpatrick calls the cultural revolution back to the early
1920s. Moreover, this book is a compelling example of using the category of
gender to expose ideological tensions rooted in the tsarist era that continued
after 1917.
Elizabeth Jones Hemenway
Loyola University Chicago
doi:10.1093/jsh/shr070

Equality & Revolution: Women's Rights in the Russian Empire, 19051917.

By Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2010. xviii plus 356 pp.).
In Equality & Revolution Rochelle Ruthchild forcefully and persuasively argues
that we need to pay more attention to Russian women's success at gaining the
vote in 1917. Their achievement has been minimized not only by historians
who have overlooked questions of gender, but also by those still in the thrall of
Soviet disdain for so-called bourgeois feminism and those whose vision has
been distorted by the short-lived existence of Russian democracy. This oversight,
points out Ruthchild, obscures that fact that women in the tsarist empire beat
their Western sisters to the electoral punch by several years and got the job
done in a much shorter time span.
Ruthchild introduces some of the leading figures in Russia's women's
movement, drawing lines of continuity between their activities in philanthropic organizations and publishing, and their foremothers' efforts to open
doors to women's education in the mid-nineteenth century. Ruthchild challenges the conventional wisdom about Russian female activism that had
radical women abandoning feminism for broader liberation concerns; many
women on the left remained committed to women's rights, just as connections
of friendship and family often bound together women of different political
stripes. Generally speaking, women in the opposition helped develop a
framework for the specifically woman-centered political activism (13) that
surfaced during the Revolution of 1905. Ruthchild demonstrates how swiftly a
women's political movement coalesced alongside the overall challenge to
tsarist authority during that revolutionary year. In Finland defiance of Russia's
imperial rule opened the door to voting rights for women over the age of
twenty-four. Disputing prevailing narratives of strict polarization between
women in Russia's feminist and radical movements, Ruthchild shows how
friendships and organizational experiences linked ideological opponents. Even

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Winter 2011

though some women in the feminist movement stood ready to sell out their
peasant and working-class sisters by limiting suffrage to propertied females,
many such bourgeois feminists supported and strove to organize and assist
women workers and peasants.
Ruthchild traces feminist strategies to gain support for female suffrage
from the male representatives in Russia's first three parliaments (dumas). She
analyzes the efforts of female activists as they struggled to engage in activities
similar to those of their European suffragist counterparts: circulating petitions,
organizing meetings, lobbying men in powerful positions, and publishing journalsalbeit within the constraints of tsarist censorship and post-1905 repression. Though their chance for an expanded electorate faded by the Third
Duma's 1907 convocation, women's efforts had not been in vain: by 1908 on
the liberal-left spectrum no significant opposition to women's rights
remained (101). Support for women's suffrage continued to expand. In her
discussion of the 1908 First All-Russian Women's Congress, Ruthchild reveals
that the question of suffrage had more relevance than other historians have
realized; the vote was in fact a central demand not only for women from privileged strata but for female workers. In turn, most of the congress resolutions
reflected progressive democratic and oppositional views similar to those in
the programs of the main left and liberal parties (136). By 1914 one had to
look all the way to the extreme right wing to find opponents to female
suffrage.
The repression of Russia's feminist movement by the Bolsheviks in late
1917 has dimmed the light that should shine on its tremendous achievement:
the right to vote. Ruthchild pays long overdue tribute to the women who
forced the hands of the Provisional Government, just as she illuminates
women's indispensable role in the downfall of Nicholas II. Although most
accounts disparage women's gatherings on March 8, 1917 as spontaneous,
characterizing men's subsequent actions as the real and conscious precipitant
to revolution, Ruthchild hails women's activities on that International
Women's Day as the true catalyst (219). Women did not only demonstrate
for bread on March 8; they persuaded male co-workers to leave factories and
their presence swayed soldiers from firing their guns (221) on demonstrators.
Ruthchild makes it clear that women's suffrage was not a priority for either of
the two powers that rose in the autocracy's wake. Only intense lobbying
efforts, mass demonstrations, and other dedicated actions by feminists and
their supporters compelled both the socialist Petrograd Soviet and Provisional
Government to endorse female voting rights. The overthrow of the tsar
opened the door to women in Russia winning full citizenship ahead of their
Western neighbors. But, Ruthchild explains, the path had been paved by the
still extant feminist cadre that had consistently advocated and struggled for
women's rights since 1905 (237).
Despite the fact that the author is treading on some ground that has been
covered by other historians, Ruthchild has made an important contribution to
the history of women's rights both in Russia and the larger world. As she
reminds us, the fact that women won the vote in Russian Finland in 1906 and
in the Russian Empire in 1917 credibly controverts the notion that democracy
was a prerequisite for women's suffrage (239). By revealing the contributions of
individual female activists whose tremendous work has been overlooked by

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historians and dismissed by socialist polemics, she has brought important historical actors to center stage where they belong.
Laurie Bernstein
Rutgers University, Camden
doi:10.1093/jsh/shr063

Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. By Tammy
M. Proctor (Santa Barbara: Praeger, ABC-CLIO, 2009. xxi plus 189
pp. $44.95).
Tammy Proctor's Scouting for Girls is the first nonofficial history of the worldwide Girl Guide and Girl Scout movements, from the organizations' beginnings
in the 1910s to the present day. Although much of the book focuses on British
and American material, it does make substantive forays into sources from a
dozen other countries on several continents. This vast geographic sweep paired
with a century-long time frame (all covered in fewer than 150 pages of text)
makes for a rather breathless introductory tour of one of the world's largest voluntary youth movements. It is no mean feat to wrest a coherent narrative from
all these disparate stories, yet Proctor mostly pulls it off with good grace. She
manages this by invoking International Friendshipa highly touted Girl
Guide/Girl Scout valueas the thematic glue to bind the work together.
The trickier needle for Proctor to thread is the question of audience.
Scouting for Girls was obviously written with a dual purpose: to rectify an egregious gap in the history of childhood and youth, and to capture the interest of
Girl Guide and Girl Scout partisans gearing up for their groups' centennial celebrations. All the names and dates, as well as the doings of major players such as
Sir Robert Baden-Powell, his sister Agnes, and wife Olave, founders of the
British Scout and Guide movements, will appeal to enthusiasts eager to learn
more of their own history. (And, truly, there is a lack of scholarship. For
example, Juliette Lowe, indomitable founder of U.S. Girl Scouting who died in
1927 is still waiting for her long-overdue biographical turn.) Social historians
might be put off by so much institutional history, but they shouldn't be. For
only in such detail can readers begin to get a feel for the vibrant, local manifestations of this diverse global organization. Scouting for Girls could not possibly
flesh out all of these variations, but it does offer tantalizing glimpses and,
perhaps even more importantly, suggests numerous avenues for future research.
The book is arranged chronologically with each chapter covering roughly a
decade and drawing on a wide array of sources. Published sources range from
small-town U.S. newspapers to a panoply of the British press. These public
materials are supported by Proctor's thorough reading of Girl Guide and Girl
Scout archival sources, from handbooks and newsletters to personal correspondence and organizational documents. Scattered oral histories make for charming
personal asides, while Guide fiction and Scout films from the 1910s and 1920s
enliven an especially interesting chapter entitled Transformations. Indeed,
Proctor attempts to give every chapter an organizing theme, but with somewhat
uneven results. The two chapters on the world wars hang together quite well.