Women's Works in Stalin's Time: On Lidiia Chukovskaia and Nadezhda Mandelstam

by Beth Holmgren

Focusing on the works of Lidiia Chukovskaia and Nadezhda Mandelstam, this work reclaims the extraordinary roles that women writers played as conservators of culture and memory in Stalin's time. It argues that during the Stalin era, the domestic sphere offered a haven for dissident acts of resistance and cultural survival.

225 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1993

Reviews

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't read the 2 chapters on Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, but the bits on Chukovskaya were enlightening, both on Chukovskaya herself and on Akhmatova. I think the feminist/gender role reading the author tries to build into it is a bit of a stretch and not entirely well argued, but Holmgren nonetheless is able to provide a relatively clear and illuminating synthesis of Chukovskaya's early life and the whole of her oeuvre.