Feminist Publications and Publishers Inst. Petersburg, 1899-1917 (original) (raw)

Abstract

Editing and publishing periodicals by women was not unusual in Russia. Between 1860 and 1905, over two hundred thirty women received government approval for such activity.' As the numbers of literate women grew, so did publications addressing their interests, but for the most part these focused on traditionally accepted subjects, such as fashion, food, charity, and childrearing.2 Several more "serious" journals for women attempted to move beyond socially prescribed realms, but they proved short-lived, financially precarious, and unable to attract subscribers. Thick journals, appealing to both men and women of the progressive intelligentsia, did publish articles by and about women. Indeed in the 1890s, with Liubov' Gurevich at its helm, Severnyi vestnik (Northern H:erald), filled with women's writing, was dubbed "Zhenskii vestnik" (Women's Herald).3 But it was not until the turn of the twentieth century, spurred by social and political upheavals in Russian society and the rise of the international women's movement, that a longer-lasting and more visible feminist press emerged. By this I mean publications promoting full equality for women and projecting their vision of the emancipated woman. Feminist publishing was nowhere easy, even in countries without censorship. The U.S. suffragist leaders Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Revolution survived two and a half years under a constant cloud of debt and a struggle for advertisers, subscribers and backers 4 French feminist physician Madeleine Pelletier's La Suffragiste (The Suffragist) remained in print from

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References (17)

  1. Rhonda Clark, "Women's Periodical Publishing in Late Imperial Russia," in Encyclopedia of Russian Women's Movements, Norma Corigliano Noonan and Carol Nechemias, eds. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), p. 108.
  2. Carolyn R. Marks, "providing] Amusement for the Ladies": The Rise of the Russian Women's Magazine in the 1880s," in An Improper Profession: Women, Gender, and Journalism in Late Imperial Russia, Barbara T. Norton and Jehanne M. Ghcith, eds. (Durham, NC and London: Duke Univ. Press, 2001), pp. 93-119, and Christine Ruane, "The Development of a Fashion Press in Late Imperial Russia: Moda: Zhurnal dlia svetskikh liudei," ibid., pp. 74-92.
  3. Stanley Rabinowitz, "No Room of Her Own: The Early Life and Career of Liubov' Gure- vich." The Russian Review, 57, no. 2 (April 1998), 248.
  4. Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The 4i'oman's Rights Movement in the United States, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 155-56.
  5. M. A. Chekhova, G1AMO, f. 2251, op. 1, d. 163, s. 23.
  6. Ibid., s. 23-24.
  7. Ibid., f. 2251, op. I, d. 163, s. 34.
  8. A collection of Gurevich's critical essays may be found in Literatura i estetika: kriticheskie opyty i ètiudy (Moscow: Russkaia mysl', 1912). After the October Revolution, Gurevich became known primarily for her work with Stanislavskii. See Liubov' Gurevich, 0 Stanislavskom; sbornik vospominanii,1863-1938, Sostrrvlen i otredaktirovan L. Ia. Gurevich, Peresmotren i dopolnen N. D. Volkovym, kommentarii E. N. Semianovskoi (Moscow: Vserossiiskoe teatral'noe obshchestvo, 1948), which also contains an autobiographical essay ("Vospominaniia L. Ia Gurevich"), pp. 1 7-76.
  9. Pokrovskaia, "Provintsiia otkliknulas'," ibid., no. 9 (i909), p. 165. 61. Ibid.
  10. The Menshevik effort, Golos rabotnitsy, lasted for two issues.
  11. Rochelle Goldberg (Ruthchild), "The Russian Women's Movement, 1859-191'7." (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Rochester, 1976), pp. 342-45; Choi Chatterjee, Celebrating Women: Gender, Festival Culture, and Bolshevik Ideology, 191 D-1939 (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2002), pp. 30-33;
  12. Jane McDermid and Anna Hillyar, Midwives of the Itevolution: Female Bolsheviks and Women Workers in 1917 (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1999), pp. 132-33.
  13. Mariia Ivanovna Pokrovskaia, Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Sankt- Peterburga (TsGIASPb), f. 2114.
  14. GIAMO, f. 2251. Besides her husband and daughters, Chekhova was survived by four grand- children, Vladimir and Liudmila Dervis, and Elena and Natat' ia Stefanovich 70. IRLI, f. 117, op. 1, delo 13, s. 1-2.
  15. IRLI, f. 117, op. 1, "Doklad N. P. Sushkova."
  16. RGALI, f. 1018, op. 3, delo 3, s. 1. Some sources date her death as 1944, but her death certifi- cate, located in RGALI, gives the date cited above.
  17. Both Linda Edmondson and Richard Stites have in their excellent works demonstrated the diversity of the feminist movement, but the notion that the movement was monolithically liberal, up- per class and/or bourgeois, persists, with little or no discussion of the role of the female intelligent- sia. See for example Barbara Alpem Engel, Women in Russia, 1700-2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2004), pp. 134-35; McDermid and Hillyar, Midwives of the Revolution, p. 45, Anna Hillyar and Jane McDermid, Revolutionary Women in Russia, 1870-1917: A Study in Collective Bi- ography (Manchester and New York: Manchester Univ. Press, 2000), p. 157; Rex A. Wade, The Russian Revolution, 1917 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), pp.116-17. This is despite the research of scholars like Beate Fieseler, who has shown that the class origins of feminist and party- affiliated socialist women were quite similar. See Beate Fieseler, Frauen auf dem weg in die rus- sische Sozialdemokr(itie. 1890-1917: Eine kollektive Biographie (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995), pp. 108-09.