Finding a voice: The emergence of a women’s movement

At the end of 1979, an unofficial almanac, Woman and Russia, began circulating in Leningrad. The journal was the work of a group of women who were part of the dissident movement but shared a dissatisfaction with what they saw as its failure to acknowledge problems specific to their sex. The members of the group differed in their views on how exactly women were disadvantaged and what precisely should be done about it, and soon went their separate ways. The editor of the almanac, Tatyana Mamonova, subscribed to an analysis of women’s position close to that of Western feminists and demanded equality and an end to stereotypes; most other members of the group affirmed their allegiance to Russian Orthodoxy and the central importance of the mothering experience for women. Tatyana Mamonova turned to the West for solutions to the wrongs of women (her editorial in the almanac assumed that in Europe, where women had already won prominent political positions, the “woman question” was largely solved); the majority believed salvation lay rather in the resurgence of Russian orthodox spirituality. 1 Debate in Russia between those looking outward and those looking inward has a history stretching back to the mid-nineteenth century, when Westerners and Slavophils first faced each other in the political arena. Debate about the biological or social origins of sexual identity and roles has an even longer history.