In these informative if somewhat dry biographical sketches, Ghodsee, a professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, describes the careers of five socialist women who fought for revolutionary change in Russia and Bulgaria in the first half 20th century and influenced women’s movements abroad...Ghodsee is careful to distinguish these women from many of their counterparts in the West, noting that 'liberal feminism supports a worldview wherein everything is just fine as long as women have better access to wealth and power,' whereas her heroines 'imagined a political project that challenged the exploitation of unpaid labor in the private sphere as part of a wider program to overcome the injustices perpetuated by a free market system that produces systemic forms of discrimination'...Though Ghodsee lucidly explains the era’s revolutionary politics, she struggles to convey these women’s lives beyond their résumés...Still, this is an eye-opening deep dive into an underexamined aspect of feminist history.
Ghodsee packs a punch in her short volume focusing on five different Red Valkyries...Resistant to the label 'feminist' because of its close association with the western liberal feminist agenda, Ghodsee explores her socialist women activists one by one, tracing their lives and work as they respond to some of the most significant Russian and world events of the 20th century...As an expert in her field, she deftly covers vast amounts of history, political theory, and complicated personal relationships in an accessible way for all levels of informed readers...Ghodsee ends the book with nine overarching lessons to take from the women’s lives, which helps reframe their efforts for today’s activists...A timely and fascinating volume for those interested in Russian and socialist history.
Despite 'the many troubles with central planning, the massive human costs of the collectivization of agriculture, and the brutal decades of Stalinist rule,' the Soviet Union made considerable advances: life expectancy and literacy rates increased significantly and infant mortality decreased significantly...These developments may not seem important to people who have always been confident their children will survive childhood and learn to read, but they illustrate what could be achieved...The five women Ghodsee represents attempted to use the possibilities of the new state to overturn long-standing injustices...They were not wrong to do so just because they were sometimes defeated; the big battalions are always on the side of the established order...Their ideas and actions not only deserve recognition but serious critical attention...Red Valkyries is a compelling book, a call for a broader understanding of the history of women’s political practice, the ideas that informed it, and its implications for our own time...It reminds us that there were always loftier goals than getting more women into middle and upper corporate management.
