In Defense of Their Families: Working-Class Women, Alcohol, and Politics in Revolutionary Russia

In: Journal of women's history, Band 11, Heft 1, S. 97-120

Abstract

By focusing on drink as a central feature of working-class culture
in early-twentieth-century Russia, this article provides a new context
in which to examine Temma Kaplan's assertion that collective protest
by women is motivated by "female consciousness." Finding support for
Kaplan's thesis, this study emphasizes that, whether in their daily lives
or during more unusual moments of collective protest, women's actions
toward drink were rooted in their assessment of alcohol's impact on
the family economy. The limited, individualistic methods working women
normally used to ensure their families' economic health were transformed
into overt, collective action during revolutionary upheavals, but the
character that women's day-to-day struggles to defend the family economy
assumed both before and after 1917 suggests that women's family concerns
were not substantively incorporated into the agenda of the new state.