Women’s Social Activism: Terminology and Methodology for the Study of the Women’s Movement in Russia in the Second Half of the 19th – Early 20th Century

The article deals with the historiography of the women’s movement in the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century. It addresses the terms related to this historical phenomenon, classification of women-members of the movement, and research methodology. The main sources are the publications of the most significant modern Russian and foreign researchers working on this rahge of problems. Based on the analysis of the historiography presented in the text, we can conclude that in historical retrospect, researchers used such terms as feminism, women’s emancipation, the woman question, suffragism, and women’s movement. Nowadays, the most commonly used term is women’s movement. The most commonly used methodology rests upon the theories of social movement sociology. There is currently no well-established classification of female participants in social movements. The existing terminological and methodological tools do not allow us to comprehend the diversity of forms of social processes and real feminist strategies in the late imperial period. To analyze the problem of women’s activism in the second half of the 19th and early 20th century, we suggest using broader terms women’s social activism and the new woman, the concepts of J. Habermas and H. Arendt of the public and private spheres, and E. Goffman’s theory of gender display. At the same time, the slogan “The Personal is Political” coined by Carol Hanisch allows us to make certain “politicization” of the public sphere for women’s activism of a non-political and non-legal nature. In this regard, women’s social activism will be a “political” act in the public sphere because it transcends the existing patriarchal institutions and practices. The final part of the article concludes that the expansion of terminological and methodological framework due to the introduction of the concept of women’s social activism and the application of theories/concepts of J. Habermas, H. Arendt, and E. Goffman will make it possible to fill the gaps of regional and all-Russian women’s history by including in the historical memory those women who went out of the private sphere into the public space and fulfilled their potential through obtaining higher education, charity, entrepreneurship, and acquiring the professions that had been considered exclusively male earlier.

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