I picked this up because I was curious about this aspect of Russian history and Russia is all over our news, still. I was also a history major so it appealed to me. What I learned was very surprising, particularly with regard to one of Communist Russia's legacies.
Early in the Bolshevik Revolution, in 1917, women not only gained the right to vote, but they gained the right to no fault divorces, child support and free higher education. Abortion and birth control were also legalized within the same time frame. by 1920, women were required to work under the new regime. Journalist Julia Ioffe, a Russian born journalist, follows this history from its unique and optimistic beginning to the unraveling of this idealism at the hand of male leaders. Interspersed is a personal history of the women in her own family. She also tells of the history through female leaders, such as Alexandra Kollontai, the wives and daughters of Russian political leaders and the ordinary people. Ioffe and her family emigrate to the US in 1990, but when she returns to Russia as a journalist in 2009, she finds that the very stereotypes that the women in 1917 were trying to dismantle have returned.
This book was obviously widely and thoroughly researched and I learned so much that I hadn't known previously. I did find the parts about Ioffe's own story more interesting, however although I loved the parts about Putin and Navalny. It is incisive and illuminating in its history and I would highly recommend this to anyone seeking to better understand Russian.
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