I decided to teach free of charge a short online course on gender, intersectionality and Soviet history for students of the Russian Free University5 (Rossiiskii Svobodni Universitet). Since April 2023, the NGO-driven university has the status of an undesirable organization in Russia. More than 80 people registered for my course; however, from the beginning there was a lot of uncertainty on both sides due to fear that students could be accused by the Russian authorities of collaboration with an “undesirable organization”. In order not to be detected while participating in the online course, many students did not use their real names; some never spoke, merely writing down some comments. Indeed, the university introduced a new security protocol that allowed the students not to disclose their identity to other course participants if they did not want to.
By
Yulia Gradskova
September 18, 2024
In the ongoing protests in Belarus against Alexander Lukashenka and the sitting regime, the LGBTQ+ community walks alongside other demonstrators, with a common wish to see a regime change.
By
Marina Henrikson
April 22, 2021
Gendering postsocialism: old legacies and new hierarchies, Yulia Gradskova and Ildikó Asztalos Morell, Eds.. 2018. London ; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
By
Réka Geambașu
March 26, 2019
The oral history archive of the non-profit organization Nenápadní hrdinovia (The Inconspicous Heroes) is considered as an example of a wider trend in Slovakia to exploit women’s memories for the purposes of conservative or nationalist interpretations of history, placing women in the traditional roles and discourses of victims, auxiliaries, and self-sacrifice. Using the concrete oral history project as a vehicle and a case study for the argument, the article contributes to the understanding of the current discursive landscape of memory of state socialism and of gender in Slovakia.
By
Zuzana Maďarová
March 8, 2018
This article discusses the main narratives employed by conservatives at the beginning of the 20th century to explain the political violence committed by women, and it shows how these narratives have been employed in the scholarly analysis of the topic. The article provides an answer to the question why progovernmental conservative views on the female terrorists and terrorism in prerevolutionary Russia have never been influential in the historiography.
By
Nadezda Petrusenko
March 8, 2018
This paper examines women’s contribution to war and the perceptions of that contribution by comparing experiences of women in the Red Army during the Second World War and in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the conflict in the Donbas region. Here it is argued that in both cases structural gender discrimination was ingrained in the military, which accepted women’s contribution to war in times of need, but treated that contribution as subsidiary, thereby distorting men’s and women’s experiences of warfare and facilitating the instrumentalized militarization of women.
Essay by
Olesya Khromeychuk
March 8, 2018
Agnieszka Mrozik analyzes the portrayals of women communists in the Stalinist period in Poland, produced in the framework of nationalist history during the illiberal turn. She argues that biographies of women dignitaries served the broader political function of delivering a cautionary tale against “excessive” liberation of women, so that female communists were often presented as beasts and demons rather than political agents.
Essay by
Agnieszka Mrozik
March 8, 2018
This paper discusses the current “herstorical turn” in professional and popular historiography and memory of WWII in Poland: a growing interest in women and the distinctiveness of their wartime experiences. Focusing on one dominant strand of this “herstorical turn” – nationalist herstory – the article reflects on the ways in which women’s history has become one of the platforms a broader illiberal political shift that is currently ongoing in Central Europe.
By
Weronika Grzebalska
March 8, 2018
In 2016, commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution brought new conflicts in memory politics. This article analyzes the reasons for women’s absence from the historiography of the 1956 Revolution and discusses how the polypore state is using the populist turn to introduce hegemonic narratives and to include women in the narrative of “national feminism”.
By
Andrea Petö
March 8, 2018
As the articles in this issue demonstrate, the revisionist strand of nationalist herstory has certainly made some women visible in narratives about historical events, but it is also highly problematic as it often reproduces traditionalist notions of femininity, masculinity and ideas about women’s “proper” place in history and society.
By
Weronika Grzebalska
March 7, 2018
Issue 2024, 3: 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.