An annotated bibliography developed for an analysis of Bolshevik Feminism looking at
whether the legalization of abortion in 1920 had any real impact on the lives of Russian
women.
creator
Jensen, Talera.
Title
The Refusal of Russian Motherhood, Annotated Bibliography
supporting host
Grinnell College. History Department.
supporting host
Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity Symposium, 2017
advisor
Maynard, Kelly J.
Index Date
2016
Publisher
Grinnell College
Type of Resource
text
Genre
bibliography
Digital Origin
reformated digital
Digital Extent
18 pages
Media Type
application/pdf
note
Developed for History 100-03, submitted on 20 May 2016 to Professor Kelly Maynard.
description
I began this project as an analysis of Bolshevik Feminism and its interaction with Socialist ideologies during the Bolshevik Revolution. In a book about European women’s movements, I discovered that in 1920, Russia had become the first nation to legalize abortion. With my knowledge of feminist history, I was quite shocked to come upon this fact. I decided this would be a perfectly narrowed topic with which to begin my project. After reading secondary literature on the topic, I developed my primary question: was this legislation revolutionary for the women it affected? Was it revolutionary in its political context? The secondary literature available had not answered this question directly, so I pieced together various scholarly sources and four primary documents from translated Russian writers to deduce my conclusions. I found that the law was an attempt at a drastic social change, but it ultimately did not affect the lives of Russian women as a whole. I found that abortion has been historically perceived as the primary form of birth control in Russia, so the only way for it to disappear would be mass education on other forms of contraception. Whether the practice was legal or illegal, its frequency did not change. This legislation was politically revolutionary, albeit merely in the sense that its condition ended in the way it began: abortion was made illegal less than twenty years after its legalization.
Language
English
Topic
Abortion.
Topic
Women.
Topic
Birth control.
Geographic
Russia.
Geographic
Soviet Union.
Temporal
Nineteen thirties.
Temporal
Nineteen twenties.
Classification
DK
Related Item
Digital Grinnell
Related Item
Student Scholarship
Related Item
Undergraduate Student Symposium
Identifier (local)
grinnell:19507
Access Condition
Copyright to this work is held by the author(s), in accordance with United States copyright law (USC 17). Readers of this work have certain rights as defined by the law, including but not limited to fair use (17 USC 107 et seq.).
