Feminist Search for Alternatives

For this interview, we asked our social media followers to send in the questions they would most like to ask Ella. We will start with those.

Readers’ Question №1: Ella, you’re a historian working on Soviet history, yet you now live abroad. How do you manage to conduct your research from outside Russia when so many historical sources are still there?

— The Soviet Union was never limited to Russia. It was a multinational state that included what are now independent republics such as Georgia, Armenia, and Ukraine. As a result, archival materials on the USSR are spread across many countries beyond the Russian Federation. Now that access to Russian archives has become difficult or impossible for many researchers, there is a growing interest in archives in other former Soviet states. In some of these countries, archives are relatively open and scholars can work freely there; in others, especially in Central Asia, access remains heavily restricted. There is, in fact, an enormous amount of material available. Because Soviet history has long been written from a strongly Russia-centric perspective, non-Russian archives have been comparatively underexplored, which means there is still a great deal of important work to be done in these collections.

There are also numerous archives in former socialist countries, particularly in the former Eastern Bloc, that hold Soviet-era materials. The Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and others maintained intensive exchanges with the Soviet Union, so their libraries and archives contain Russian-language documents and other sources on Soviet history. Important archival collections can also be found in countries that were never part of the Eastern Bloc but nonetheless built up substantial holdings on state socialism. The city of Bremen in Germany, for example, hosts a large archive on the history of the Soviet dissident movement, with extensive samizdat and tamizdat collections — underground publications produced clandestinely or issued abroad to evade censorship — as well as many personal archives donated by dissidents and their families. 

It’s a misconception that all archives relevant to Soviet history are located in Russia.

Many important, and still unexplored, sources are indeed there, but by no means all of them. Contemporary historians also use a range of methods that make it possible to work even without direct access to archives. One of these is oral history: collecting the memories and testimonies of people who witnessed historical events. This approach opens up new ways of studying the Soviet past when some archives are inaccessible. In short, there are more than enough archives and sources to keep me busy for a lifetime.

Readers’ Question №2: How can granting full rights to gender minorities benefit a country economically? 

— Such rights can help build a freer society that makes room for different people and different ways of life. Why is that valuable? First, it means people who differ from the majority can actually stay in the country: they don’t have to leave and look for a better life elsewhere just because their homeland refuses to accept them. Second, they can take an active part in the country’s economic life. Put simply, if minorities are not discriminated against in hiring or fired for reasons unrelated to their performance at work, they can contribute to society like anyone else.

That said, I don’t like framing these discussions as if all social and political decisions should be guided solely by economic logic. We also have ethical principles and morality, don’t we? Sometimes we make decisions that are not particularly advantageous economically but are important from an ethical standpoint.

In this case, however, things are quite simple. When you have rigid, exclusionary laws that persecute certain groups, those groups tend to leave. They leave the country, the labor market, and public life; they go underground.

Often, these are precisely the people who could have contributed to the economy.

The war in Ukraine is a vivid example of this. What have we seen as repression has intensified? A mass exodus from Russia. The true scale of this outflow is still unknown, but I’ve seen estimates ranging from 300,000 to one million people. Demographer Alexey Raksha has calculated that around one million working-age, economically active young adults have effectively exited the economy, including both those who have left the country and those who have gone to the front. This is a huge number, and it helps explain current negative economic trends, such as a slowing economy and rising inflation alongside very low unemployment. I’m not an economist, but you don’t need to be an expert to see the connection. 

— What role does gender play in Russia’s ideology of “traditional values” today?

— In Russia, the ideology of “traditional values” focuses heavily on family, masculinity, femininity, and sexuality. Gender and sexuality sit at the very core of this ideology. It now shapes not only public discourse but also, as we can see, legal practice and politics — precisely those spheres of life that the Russian authorities seek to control. This makes it crucial for us to talk about the role gender plays in our work today and to consider how we can respond to the Russian state’s gender policies.

There are many ways to show that the so-called “traditional values” promoted by the authorities do not actually exist. You can demonstrate that this ideology is little more than an empty shell: an imposed norm and a model of life that presents itself as ideal and quintessentially “Russian,” yet in reality is not all that common for most Russians. Exposing this gap between rhetoric and everyday life reveals how unsuccessful and detached from reality this ideology is. At the same time, it’s important to recognize one thing it does achieve: it has real shock value.

How does the ideology of traditional values actually work? Different officials and public figures each construct their own version of what these “traditional values” supposedly are. The same familiar tropes keep coming up, but the details often vary significantly. From time to time, various Russian politicians engage in what I would call shock therapy, putting forward deliberately provocative proposals meant to anger or deeply unsettle the public. For example, a politician might propose banning women who haven’t given birth from attending university, as Senator Margarita Pavlova did in 2023, claiming that promoting higher education for women undermines their reproductive function. Another politician might propose benefits for pregnant schoolgirls. Others call for restricting women’s participation in public life. Sometimes officials don’t propose anything concrete; they simply repeat the most archaic, stereotypical views imaginable.

This tactic works precisely because we keep talking about it.

We keep trying to piece these statements together into a coherent picture of what today’s authorities want and where they intend to take society.

— In what ways is this prolonged discussion dangerous, and what should our next step be? 

— Exiled Russian journalists and foreign reporters often get in touch with me about this topic. The more I comment on it, the more I realize that, by endlessly discussing these issues, we are, in a sense, helping the Russian authorities. We are playing right into their hands:we keep repeating and circulating these ideological tropes. There is a certain logic to this strategy. The authorities want us to keep talking about these contradictory and shocking statements and initiatives, and to feel constantly confused and unsettled by them.

By now it’s fairly clear that the Russian authorities have been using gender issues as part of their agenda for a long time and are now steadily escalating this line of attack. It’s time to talk about how we respond. What do we actually want for ourselves when it comes to gender relations, social norms, and the coexistence of different ways of life? How do we envision this, and what can we strive for, both as individuals and as a society? This crucial conversation keeps getting drowned out by the constant noise of the information war. All too often it doesn’t even happen within feminist circles, even though those spaces exist precisely for this kind of dialogue.

— In your academic work, you study how women in the late Soviet Union constructed their identities and sought freedom under ideological pressure. Since February 24, 2022, ideological pressure on people in Russia has only intensified. What can we learn from Soviet women in this regard?

— Today, people are finally starting to talk more actively about the women who were part of the dissident movement. For example, in Leningrad dissident circles there were women who directly raised the very issues we still discuss today: family, women’s rights, and what women’s liberation might look like beyond the Soviet, state-imposed version of emancipation. What we can learn from them, I think, is this: instead of endlessly discussing Soviet ideology, whose contours were fairly clear by the late Soviet period, we should turn our attention to our personal experiences, our ways of living, and our search for alternatives.

Within women’s dissident circles, ideas about possible alternatives were strikingly diverse. Some of these women — perhaps surprisingly from today’s perspective — sought inspiration in Christianity. For example, contributors to the samizdat journals Woman and Russia and Maria searched for an alternative to the Soviet model of emancipation in Christian moral philosophy and in a Christian understanding of womanhood and virtue. They were remarkably inventive in this regard.

We can learn from their creativity and from their ability to direct their gaze away from the ideology that constantly attempted to claim their attention.

From my research, I see that even women who were not involved in oppositional or dissident groups sought their own ways of living within the system. On the one hand, it was a system that offered new professional opportunities, access to education, and greater economic independence. On the other hand, it imposed rigid gender roles and sharply narrowed the boundaries of what counted as “normal” in that society. Many forms of sexual behavior, family arrangements, and partnerships fell outside these norms. When working with diaries, mostly from the late Soviet period, I encountered a wide range of strategies that women developed to navigate these tensions. In my view, the most successful strategies were those that brought together a critical examination of the ideology surrounding women in Soviet society with a search for alternatives and a deliberate broadening of social imagination. These are the examples I find most compelling. 

— In my view, public feminism in Russia was flourishing up until around 2020–2021. Since then, however, war, repression, and censorship have radically reshaped the movement. How do you think today's realities will echo in the future?

— The experience of violence, including military violence, that now involves much of the country — directly or indirectly — cannot help but affect social life. This applies not only to those who are currently on the front lines but also to those who work in the military sector. The civilian sector keeps shrinking, while the military-industrial complex remains relatively stable despite the broader economic slowdown. We also know of many cases in which children and teenagers become involved in activities related to the military-industrial complex or various forms of “support for the front lines.” One way or another, a significant part of the country has become entangled in this system, at least indirectly.

Inevitably, such pervasive exposure to violence shapes social norms: it redefines what counts as “acceptable” and influences how much violence society will tolerate in the future.

There is, in fact, extensive research on this topic. For example, at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, where I currently work, there is a research group called After Violence that focuses on these questions. It examines how societies process experiences of war and major social upheavals involving political and direct physical violence against civilians. The group studies how these experiences shape a society’s subsequent development, including the ways it copes with trauma (or fails to cope, as so often happens), the strategies it adopts, and the long-term consequences of different approaches to political transition. 

If Russia were to embark on a process of democratization, it would face a major question: what should be done about the latest wave of political violence and its legacy? What should happen to the vast state apparatus and the many people who helped to sustain it? How should society deal with them? There are several possible approaches. One of them is transitional justice: the idea that those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and political repression must be held accountable. This involves investigations and trials to establish individual responsibility, with the most culpable brought to justice.

However, other societies have taken different paths. Consider, for example, how Spain dealt with the legacy of Francoism. In many ways, Spanish society followed a strategy of forgetting: “We endured that chapter, we survived it, and now, if we want to live in peace and avoid another civil war, we have to move on, focus on the future, and make our peace with the past by leaving it behind.”

Another possible approach is lustration: barring those involved in acts of violence from holding positions of power and authority in the future. In this way, society tries to protect itself from repeating past mistakes.

There are many such strategies, and they are the subject of ongoing debate. Historical experience doesn’t give us a clear answer about which one works best, because the outcome in each case depends heavily on local conditions. In Russia’s case, much will ultimately depend on the strategy the country chooses to pursue.

In general, we can say that the experience of violence — whether it means attacking another country or living under a system of political repression — leaves deep and lasting marks on society, and it takes a long time to work through these effects. The same is true of censorship, which deprives people of access to knowledge, including knowledge about themselves. This concerns not only the individual stories that appear in the media, such as accounts of soldiers returning from the front with trauma, but also the broader, systemic effects of violence on society as a whole. Armed conflicts often increase a society’s tolerance for everyday and domestic violence. These are issues we need to examine in a far more comprehensive way.

— How successful are current attempts to control and enforce gender roles in Russia?

— This is a question that would require proper sociological data to answer. In my view, the Russian state simply doesn’t have the tools to impose a particular gender role or pattern of sexual behavior on people. Society is organically developing in a somewhat different direction from the one prescribed by official ideology, which, as I’ve already said, is itself internally contradictory. Polls show that norms and attitudes are evolving along their own, parallel trajectory that doesn’t necessarily match the ideological line. Surveys by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) and others reveal clear gaps between official rhetoric and public opinion on issues such as domestic violence, the war in Ukraine, and the need to end military action.

As I’ve mentioned, the authorities have been remarkably effective at distracting us from substantive conversations about issues that matter for our everyday lives and our collective future. Instead, we end up reacting to short-lived initiatives and scandalous statements. These tactics may not change people’s lifestyles, but they do succeed in controlling public discourse — what we talk about, what we think, and how we feel. Russian propagandists and officials are quite skilled at this. Their methods are simple, but they work.

— It’s been about three years since we last spoke for my book on Russian feminism. Since then, we’ve seen new restrictions introduced and repression against both the feminist movement and Russian women more broadly intensified. Yet feminist activists inside Russia are still doing their work. In your view, what can we now say about how the movement has resisted the state's “traditional values” narrative? What has it managed to achieve, and where has it run up against serious obstacles?

— The good news is that the feminist movement is still growing. Its public side is becoming more visible: people are doing advocacy work, spreading information, and creating spaces for discussion. All of this is crucial. This is happening in different regions across the country. I recently saw that activists from various regions had come together for an online conference to discuss future prospects and working methods and to share their experiences. They stressed that their public activity continues and that it’s wrong to say most activism has gone underground. For now, they’re managing to keep going and keep working. There’s even a sense of continuity emerging between different activist initiatives, with networks and exchanges of ideas and experiences taking shape. That’s a very positive sign.

In my view, what hasn’t worked so well is this: instead of joining forces to confront shared problems, we still keep looking for enemies within our own circles. In Russian feminist communities, for instance, the idea of a divide between those who left and those who stayed has taken a particularly deep root. I see this divide as artificial and harmful to civil society both inside and outside Russia. It serves only the interests of the ruling class and elites in Russia, who rely on the classic “divide and conquer” strategy. This division prevents an already fragmented civil society — split by forced emigration in some cases and repression in others — from supporting one another and sharing resources and knowledge. Those who have left can speak freely on certain topics, while those who remain have a close understanding of what is happening on the ground. These different experiences and perspectives could, in fact, be mutually reinforcing.

— What makes this divide so clearly artificial?

— A quick look at Russian history shows how shaky this divide really is. For the past three centuries, political emigration has been central to the country’s development. Think of Alexander Herzen, whom we all studied at school: he spent much of his life in exile, yet his journalism and intellectual work abroad were hugely important, and he was widely read inside Russia. Or think of the October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin, continued to organize and mobilize politically while living in exile outside the Russian Empire. History offers countless examples of this kind, showing that even under extremely difficult political conditions, those who leave and those who stay can support one another and sustain meaningful self-organization and political action.

Despite these historical examples, many people — including otherwise reflective ones — have surprisingly bought into the idea that anyone who leaves Russia instantly loses all connection to it, even though we grew up there and still speak and read Russian. I see these debates even within feminist circles. They often rest on crude simplifications that draw on a vulgarized version of feminist standpoint theory — for instance, the notion that people inside Russia have access to “real” knowledge about the country, while those who leave immediately lose it. Under this logic,

the state border turns into an essentialized, almost magical line that grants or strips away knowledge: crossing into supposedly gives you insight into the country, while leaving the country takes that insight away.

From a practical standpoint, this raises a lot of questions. What about people who move back and forth, for example, those who spend half the year in Tbilisi and half in Russia? How does this supposed “knowledge mechanism” apply to them? And if we look only at Russia itself, how exactly are standpoints supposed to work there? If someone lives in Bashkortostan, do they somehow possess knowledge of Russia as a whole, or only of Bashkortostan? Do the boundaries of their knowledge then follow regional borders? There is a great deal of hidden epistemological inequality here. Even within Russia, people do not have equal access to knowledge about their own country. Yet this fact is rarely acknowledged in debates about “those who left” and “those who stayed.” The result is a crude oversimplification that produces categories which hinder mutual understanding rather than foster it.

These issues are rarely acknowledged in discussions about these two groups, and that is a serious problem. Even more troubling is that the same pattern is reproduced within our feminist circles. You would think that feminism, feminist theory, and gender studies — with their emphasis on reflexivity — would push us to question artificially constructed categories and the language of ideology, what some leftist theorists call false consciousness. Yet it keeps resurfacing, over and over again. 

I believe the distinction between “those who left” and “those who stayed” is a classic example of ideological language. It calls for critical scrutiny, not mindless repetition.

Today, as ever, our main challenge is to maintain a critical approach. The language of feminist discourse contains many unexamined categories that are not as innocent as they might seem. After all, these are the categories we use to describe the world, ourselves, and our relationships with other groups. We rely on them when shaping our political practice and strategies. As the saying goes, “As you name the ship, so it will sail.” In that sense, language really does matter.

— As feminists, what alternatives can we offer in wartime Russia and in the post-war period?

— This question is very important to me and is at the center of my thinking right now. I feel it’s time to shift our focus from analyzing what the authorities are doing to thinking about what we can still do now — and what we might be able to do when we have more opportunities.

Several questions are key here. The first is this: what does feminism offer — not only to women and feminists, but to Russian society as a whole?

To begin with, as I have already mentioned, it offers a reflexive way of thinking about language. Here it’s not just feminism that matters but also the broader field of critical studies, from queer theory to critiques of ideology. These areas are poorly developed in Russian academia and often meet with strong hostility. Gender studies in particular tend to provoke intense aggression; I saw this very clearly when I was working in the Russian academic world myself. It's a great pity, because public and intellectual life in Russia badly need a wider range of tools and approaches for analyzing language, ideology, inequality, and all the other issues at the heart of the country’s political, social, and public crises. I see this as one of feminism’s key contributions: it is not only a political movement but also a branch of philosophy and an intellectual tradition. Feminist methods have had a profound influence on contemporary social research and provide powerful tools for reflection and critique.

The second major contribution that feminism can offer is a rethinking of what we mean by violence itself, including how society perceives it and talks about it.

This is closely tied to my thoughts on what will happen in Russia after the war ends. As with any post-conflict society, Russia is likely to grow more tolerant of violence. The feminist critique of violence, with its focus on everyday forms of violence, domestic violence, and various forms of vulnerability, as well as the ways these vulnerabilities are socially produced and rendered invisible, is a vital part of feminist politics and theory. These questions lie at the heart of feminism. In this sense, feminism is essential for Russia, both now and in the future, because violence is one of the core problems of Russian politics and society and will remain so for a long time to come.

At the same time, feminism is not only about violence; it also offers alternatives. It points toward different ways of organizing social life and building communities and partnerships rooted in solidarity and care. Contemporary feminist thought and activism place great emphasis on care practices and collaborative, non-hierarchical, inclusive models that make space for multiple voices, perspectives, needs, and demands. This, too, seems to me to be an essential contribution of feminist thought and activism, one that Russia urgently needs, both today and in the future. Russian society is extraordinarily diverse, ethnically, economically, regionally, and socially.

Yet it lacks mechanisms to keep this diversity in view — to keep it visible and audible — while still finding compromises among different groups without silencing them. The ability to balance diversity and solidarity lies at the core of feminist politics, and other political movements concerned with Russia’s future could learn from this.

I am confident that, if we look more closely, we can uncover many more contributions like this one. Unfortunately, feminism is still often perceived as a form of political thought relevant only to a narrow audience: women, queer people, and those for whom gender is a central concern. It still tends to be seen as “niche,” even “exotic.” Yet in reality, feminism is a political movement that begins with the particular but offers insights and solutions of broader, even universal, relevance. I am convinced that Russia’s future will require precisely these kinds of political tools.

‍