Autorentext

Dr Olga Simonova is researcher at the University of Turku, Finland. She is a specialist in early 20th-century Russian literature, with a focus on mass literature, gender, and women's magazines. She has extensively researched war propaganda and ideology during the imperial and Stalinist periods. She is the author of over 80 academic publications, and her current research explores the portrayal of women in fiction and autobiographical narratives, with a focus on military identities and cultural memory in post-revolutionary Russia.

Klappentext

Women in the First World War and the Russian Civil War explores how Russian literature and autobiographical writing portrayed nurses, women soldiers, and commanders who served in the First World War and Russian Civil War.

Simonova's research challenges the traditional perception of war as a masculine domain, introducing the concept of military femininities, particularly 'expanded femininity', which combines traditional feminine traits such as consolation, care, and inspiration with bravery, militancy, and leadership. The study focuses on lesser-known texts from the 1910s to the early 1930s, encompassing both well-known and underexplored writers like Boris Pilnyak, Boris Lavrenev, Eduard Bagritsky, Veniamin Kaverin, Zinaida Chalaia, Tatiana Dubinskaia, Sofia Fedorchenko, and Liusia Argutinskaia, as well as the diaries of sisters of mercy. With this comprehensive range of literary sources, this book demonstrates that representations of women are crucial to shaping and understanding the reception of these wars.

Offering a fresh perspective on gender, war, and memory in early twentieth-century Russian literature, this monograph will appeal not only to scholars of literature and gender issues, but also to anyone interested in cultural and military history.

Inhalt

Introduction **Chapter 1. SISTERS OF MERCY IN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITING AND FICTION Chapter 2. MILITARY WOMEN: FEMININITY AND HEROISM Chapter 3. FEMALE COMMANDERS OF THE RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR: TRANSFORMATION OF IMAGES Chapter 4. WOMEN WRITERS WITNESSING THE WARS Conclusion