Review by Choice Review
Historians of the Russian revolutionary movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries have tended to acknowledge the presence of women in the populist and terrorist groups of the 1870s and 1880s. Generally, however, scholars have downplayed or ignored the participation of women in pre-1917 social democratic and social revolutionary parties. Exceptions have been Barbara Clements (Bolshevik Women, CH, Mar'98), Beate Fieseler (Frauen auf dem Weg in die russische Sozialdemokratie, 1995), and the authors of the present volume (Midwives of the Revolution, CH, Apr'00). This book is a prosopographical study of women revolutionaries, particularly those of working-class background, and there is some useful information here, especially in the second half and in a nice appendix containing short biographical entrees on almost 100 women revolutionaries. The authors argue that previous scholars of Russian revolutionary movements have underestimated the interest of the Bolsheviks in women workers, the success of female revolutionaries of working-class background in mobilizing women workers, and the importance of politicized working women for the Russian revolutions as a whole. However, the footnoting is spotty, the many tables do not contribute to the reader's understanding, and much of the first half of the volume is a not-always-accurate rehash of previous scholarship. Graduate students and faculty. A. H. Koblitz Arizona State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
