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interpretations,
women are
generally
noted either
by
their
absence,
or
by
the
support
roles
they filled, mostly
in the
background.
For
my
study
I
have used
a
variety
of
sources:
autobiographies
and
biographies,
memoirs,
document
collections, books,
periodicals
as
well
as
archival
material. The
great
majority
of these
sources were
in Russian with
a
substantial
amount
of
English language
material and
a
few works in German. Some
primary
and
many
secondary
sources
are
available in British
libraries,
such the British
Library
in
London,
the Bodleian
Library
in Oxford and
Glasgow University Library.
Access
to
the
majority
of
primary
sources was
done either
through
the
inter-library
loan service
or
by
personal
visits
to
for
example
the
Rossisskaia
Gosudarstvennaia Biblioteka
(the
former State Lenin
Library)
in
Moscow
and the Tomsk State
University Library
in
Western Siberia.

Right
from the
beginning
I decided
to
record
every
name
I
came across
during
my
research. The initial
plan
was
to enter
the
data into
a
computer
programme
called
Idealist. For
a
number of
reasons
beyond
my
control
I
had
to
abandon the
use
of
Idealist and concentrated instead
on
keeping
record cards.
At
that
stage
of its
development,
Idealist could
not
cope
with the
disparate
nature
of the
data,
and
was
too
cumbersome
to
work with
on screen.
In
addition,
it
was
not
sophisticated enough
to
identify
patterns.
I
have amassed about
one
and
a
half thousand
cards,
some
containing only
a
name,
occasionally
with
one or
two
minor facts about the
women.
From the
cards,
I
drew
up
a
number of files.
Into the first file I added women's dates of birth and/or death when available. I
proceeded
by creating
two
new
files,
one
holding
names
of
women
whose
professions
were
known
to
me.
This
yielded
over
1,500
individuals.
My
final file consisted of
women
for whom
I
had information about their
party
allegiance
and/or
revolutionary
activities.
This file numbered
approximately
1,200
individuals. After
comparing
the
three files I selected
women
whom
I
entered into
a
database of Russian
revolutionary
women
between 1870 and 1917.1 looked for the
women on
whom I had sufficient
biographical
information
to
be used in
my
statistical
analysis.
In order
to
present
a
broader
picture
of female revolutionaries
I
selected
women
from all
periods
under
study
representing
different
political parties
or
organisations.
For the final
period,
between 1905 and
1917,1
limited the selection
to
the three
major parties:
two
factions
(Bolsheviks
and
Mensheviks)
of the Russian Social Democratic Labour
Party
(RSDRP)
and the Socialist
Revolutionary
Party
(PSR).
Thereafter
I
concentrated
my
research
on
the
women
from the database.
The search for relevant literature
began by
looking
at
published
secondary
works
on
the
subjects
of Russian
women
and of the Russian
revolutionary
movement
in
general,
as
well
as more
specific
studies of Russian
women
in the
revolutionary
movement.
Among
scholars
specialising
in the
history
of the Russian revolution
or
Russian women's
history
whose books I used
are
contemporary
Russian and
prominent
Soviet historians like
V.Balukov,
N.Karpetskaia,
A.Konstantinov,
V.Nevskii, A.Pankratova,
and
leading
Western historians like Barbara Evans
Clements,
Linda
Edmondson,
Barbara
Alpern Engel,
Beatte
Fieseler,
Richard Stites
(mentioned above)
and
many
others.
Though
over
the
years
Soviet and Western
historians
have addressed the issue of women's involvement in radical activities
most
of them either focused
on
the lives of
a
very
few individuals
or
spoke
of
women as
'a

group'.
There have been
biographies
of
a
few
prominent
women,
such
as
those
by,
for
example, Jay Bergman
on
Vera Zasulich
(1983),
R
C Elwood
on
Armand
(1992),
Robert McNeal
on
Krupskaia
(1972)
and Barbara Clements
(1979),
Beatrice
Farnsworth
(1980)
and
Cathy
Porter
(1979)
on
Kollontai.
Other
scholars,
such
as
Barbara
Alpern Engel
(1994)
and Rose Glickman
(1984)
examined the condition of
working-class
women,
with the
general
conclusion that
politics played
little,
if
any,
part
in their lives. As far
as
the
revolutionary
movement
was
concerned,
the
impression
was
that little effort has been made
to trace
thousands of
others,
the
so-
called rank-and-file
women
revolutionaries who
are
invariably
referred
to
as
'foot
soldiers' with the few female 'officers'
coming overwhelmingly
from the
intelligentsia.
Even when the titles of books sounded
extremely
promising,
in
my
opinion they
failed
to
go
beyond
presenting
familiar
biographical
information of
a
few
well-known
personalities,
like for
example Margaret
Maxwell's Narodniki Women
(Russian
Women Who
Sacrificed
Themselves
for
the
Dream
ofFreedom)
or
E.
Pavliuchenko's
Zhenshchiny
v
russkom osvoboditel'nom dvizhenii
(otMarii
Volkonskoi do
Very Figner).
When the work
on
my
PhD
was
coming
to
an
end
two
new
works
came
out,
which
immediately
attracted
my
attention. I
am
first of all
referring
to
the work
by
the
German historian
Beatte
Fieseier
Frauen
auf
dem
Weg
in
die russische
Sozialdemokratie,
1890-1917
(eine
kollektive
Biografie) published
in 1995 and
secondly
to
Barbara Evans Clements' 1997 book Bolshevik Women. Both authors
looked
at
several hundred individual
women
and
though
both
applied
prosopographical
methods,
they
used different
approaches
in
presenting
their
findings
and
analyses
and the historical
periods
under their consideration
were
partially
different
to
mine.
As
the title of her book
suggests,
Fieseler,
a
well-known German
expert
on
Russian
history,
wrote
a
collective
biography
of Russian
women
active in
the social democratic
movement
of 1890-1917.
Using
quantitative analysis
she
studied
patterns
of work
performed by
female revolutionaries and their
positions
in
the
party
hierarchy,
age,
political experience,
social
origins, education,
profession,
and
nationality.
She also studied the
process
of radicalisation of Russian women's
consciousness and motives that made them
turn to
social-democratic ideas. This
collective
portrait approach
left Fieseler
concentrating
on
the
study
of female
revolutionaries
as
representatives
of
large
groups
and failed
to
present
them
as
individuals,
often with
unique
life histories and
personalities.
Understandably,
she

wanted
to
shift attention from
a
few
outstanding figures
to
the
general
female
membership.
Clements looked
only
at
members of
one
political
party,
the
Bolsheviks,
thus
excluding significant
number of female revolutionaries from other
parties
or
movements.
Though
she included
biographies
of
seven
individual
Bolshevichki,
their
number is in
my
view
insufficient,
given
the fact that
they
came
from her database of
545
women.
Unlike
Clements
I
did
not want to
create
a
'pantheon'
of Russian
women
revolutionaries.
My
aim
was
to
throw
light
on
the
development
of
Russian
female
revolutionaries
by
incorporating prosopographical
data
in
one
work
on as
many
female
revolutionaries
as
possible.
Clements included Zemliachka
as one
of her
representative
Bolshevik
women,
even
while
acknowledging
that Zemliachka's
violent
nature
rendered her
unique
among
the
sample.
However,
by
placing
Bolshevik
women
in the wider
revolutionary
context
of female
terrorism,
that violence
may
be
better understood.
Nevertheless,
the
two
studies
were
not
only
of
great
interest
to
me
but also of
significant help
in
forcing
me
to
clarify
my
analysis
in the ultimate
stages
of
my
work. I will be
making
references
to
both works
throughout
the dissertation.
Among
recently published
Russian
language
studies it is
necessary
to
mention
here several books
on
the histories of the
Socialist
Revolutionary
and the Menshevik
parties.
They
are
O.Budnitskii's Istoriia
terrorisma
v
Rossii
v
dokumentakh,
biografiakh
i
issledovaniiakh from
1996,
R.
Gorodnitskii's Boevaia
organizatsiia
partii
sotsialistov-revoliutsionerov
v
1901-11
g.g.
from 1998 and S.Tiutiukin's
Men 'sheviki.
Dokumenty
i
materialy.
1903-fevraV
1917
from 1996. Unlike the books
by
Clements and Fieseler
on
female
Bolsheviks,
these works fail
to
present
a
fuller
picture
of
women
SRs
and Mensheviks and their role in the
party,
or
to
include much
biographical
material
on
them.
The
most
valuable information for
my
study
came
from
primary
sources,
from
which I
was
able
to extract
biographical
data
on
hundreds of
women
socialists,
who
have been omitted
or
excluded from definitive studies into the
history
of the Russian
revolutionary
movement.
This
was a
mixture of
memoirs,
autobiographical
accounts
and
biographical
dictionaries. No
matter
how
brief,
these
sources
contributed
enormously
to
the overall volume of data
on
which
I
could
construct
a
collective
portrait.
Some of them threw
light
on
the
more
intimate details of women's lives.
Among
such works
I
want to
single
out
Eva Broido's Vriadakh RSDRP and Memoirs
of
a
Revolutionary.
Collections of
autobiographies
or
short
biographies,
like Na
zare

rabochego
dvizheniia
v
Moskve and
Zhenshchiny
v
revoliutsii,
were
of
equal
value in
adding
to
my
biographical
and statistical information. Of
course,
there
are
limitations
to accounts
written
after the Bolsheviks
came
to
power
and
particularly
after the late
1920s,
which
were
primarily
due
to
constraints of
a
political
nature.
All works
published
in the Soviet Union
were
subjected
to
severe
censorship,
and,
with
a
few
exceptions
(such
as
Vera
Figner)
dealt
only
with
female
Bolsheviks. Those written
by
emigre
revolutionaries
were rare
and
many
were
influenced
by
the authors'
personal
experiences
at
the hands of the
new
Communist
regime.
Two
biographical
dictionaries/encyclopaedias
were
of
special significance
to
the
present
study
-
Deiateli
revoliutsionnogo
dvizheniia
v
Rossii,
edited
by
V.Nevskii and Vsesoiuznoe
obshchestvopoliticheskikh
katorzhan
i
ssyl'no-poselentsev.
The first work
came
out
in several volumes between 1927 and 1933 and contains
biographical
data
on
thousands of Russian individuals who
participated
in the
revolutionary
movement
starting
from the 1820s
through
to
the
beginning
of the twentieth
century.
Its
major
drawback
stems
from the feet that the work
was never
completed. Only people
whose
names
begin
with the first six letters of the Russian
alphabet
appear in the volumes
with direct relevance
to
this
study.
Personal reminiscences and
published
memoirs
used in
my
study
came
mainly
from such
journals
as
Krasnaia
Letopis',
Minuvshie
gody,
Proletarskaia revoliutsiia and Rabotnitsa.
Many
books
containing
biographies
of Russian
revolutionary figures appeared
at
the times of various anniversaries of the
1905 and 1917
revolutions,
especially commemorating
the fiftieth
anniversary
of the
latter. For the
reasons
stated above
special
caution and
care was
needed in the
processing
of information
presented
in those books.
Since the
collapse
of
communism,
new
biographical
accounts
have
begun
to
emerge, like for
example
T.
Kravchenko's semi-fictional
account
of the famous
woman
SR Mariia
Spiridonova,
Vozliublennaia
terrora.
Nevertheless,
by cross-referencing
facts taken from them
I
largely
succeeded in
deriving
reliable information for
my
database.
Finally
I
want to
explain
my
use
of archival material. There
are
several
archives
holding
databases
or
documents that
can
be described
as
of relevance
to
this
research. The best known archives
are
located
in
Russia,
Holland and USA.
They
are
the International Institute of Social
History
in
Amsterdam,
Rossisiskii
tsentr
khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii
(RTsKhlDNI),
Gosudarstvennyi
istoricheskii arkhiv Moskovskoi
oblasti,
Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi
arkhiv
Okriabr'skoi revoliutsii i
sotsialisticheskogo
stroiteFstva
Moskvy
(TsGAORSSM),

8
Gosudarstvennyi
arkhiv
Rossiiskoi Federatsii
(GARF)
in
Moscow,
and the Hoover
Institute
Archives
in
Stanford,
California.
The archives based in Holland and the USA
have
been
widely
used
over a
long period
of time and their
documentary
materials
have
appeared
in
a
number of historical works. The Moscow archives
on
the other
hand contained documents that until
recently,
i.e. the last
eight-ten
years,
were
available
only
to
a
minority
of researchers
or
not
available
at
all. Faced
with
time and
financial
constraints,
I decided
to
concentrate
my effort
on
archival
work in the
Moscow archives. Like Barbara
Evans Clements
who also
used
it,
I
found the
material in RTsKhIDNI
most
valuable,
specifically
fond 124 with its hundreds of
autobiographies
written
by
Bolshevik
men
and
women
wishing
to
join
the AU-Union
Society
of Old Bolsheviks. But unlike Clements who
only
included
women
from
inventory
I
that contains
autobiographies
of Bolsheviks who had been
accepted
into
the
society,
I
looked
at
women
from
inventory
II
that in addition holds information
on
men
and
women
who had been refused
membership
or
expelled
from the
society.
The
first
inventory
includes
names
of
3,000
members,
326 of whom
are women.
The
second
one
has
1,638
names,
including
124 women's
ones.
The RTsKhIDNI also
holds archives of famous Bolshevik
individuals,
such
as
Armand,
Krupskaia
and
Samoilova,
but
they
turned
out to
be
only
of limited value
to
me.
The TsGAORSSM
has archival
material
from
municipal, police
and
gendarme
records. This is
a
recently
opened
establishment and
to
get
any
information,
no
matter
how
small,
a
researcher
has
to
allow five
days
for
delivery.
In
addition,
access
is limited
to
five
cases
per
request.
The work there turned
out to
be
very
slow and
frustrating.
Limited data from
it has been included into the
present
study.
Like
so
many
researchers before
me
I
found the lack of information about
women's
personal
lives
-
e.g.
whether
they
had been married
or
had
any
children
-
very
disappointing
and the search for
even
minor details time
consuming. However,
the
more
details I could
glean
on
individual
women,
the
more
representative
the
prosopographical
database would
be,
while the numbers of Bolsheviks could be
set
against
the numbers of
revolutionary
women as a
whole.
In
addition,
however
sparse,
information
on
particular
women
would
prevent
the individual from
being
subsumed
within the 'collective'
biography.
The
amount
of information
on
Bolshevik
women
is
more
abundant than
on
Narodniki,
SR,
Menshevik and unattached
women.
As
my
research
shows,
this is
explained
not
only by
the fact that the former
belonged
to
the

victorious
party
in the Revolution of 1917 but also
by
the fact that the Bolshevik
party
attracted
more women
into its ranks than any other.
I
support
the view
expressed
by
many scholars that official
accounts
of
women's
lives,
including autobiographical
accounts
which
were
approved by
the
censor,
have been
tremendously
affected
by
Communist control
over
the way the
history
of Russia had been
portrayed
in the Soviet Union. Like
any
work
published
since the
early
1930s and until the late 1980s memoirs and
biographies
were
subject
to
a
strict
state
censorship.
I
agree with Barbara Evans Clements who
suggests
that:
The
Bolshevichki,
as
loyal
party
members,
were
fully
acquainted
with
these