Networks of Mind in Transnational Intellectual Women’s History: The Case of the Circulation of Ellen Key’s Ideas in the Late Russian Empire and Early Soviet Union

• In Event: Looking for Women’s Voices in Masculine Spaces: Women’s Experiences of Philosophy, Law, and Religion in Modern Russia

Abstract

In the late 19th and the beginning of the 20th century the ideas of Swedish intellectual Ellen Key (1849-1926) about love, sexuality, motherhood, domesticity, upbringing and education became popular throughout Europe, including Russian Empire. Different pedagogues and public speakers in Russia discussed Key’s ideas in their lectures. She herself travelled to Petersburg in 1899 where she met Russian intellectuals and scholars with some of whom she kept ongoing friendly relationships for decades.
The paper focuses on how Ellen Key’s ideas which were crucial for development of “new pedagogy”, “new womanhood”, and later “new living (novyi byt)” that circulated through reformist publications in the Russian Empire and later in the early Soviet Union. Main questions addressed in the presentation are: Which of Ellen Key’s ideas (and why these specific ideas) were circulated in Russian Empire and Soviet Union during the analyzed period (1890-1930s)? Which actors and networks were involved in the dissemination and reformulation of Ellen Key’s ideas. The study is based on archival material which includes periodicals, translations (introductions to them), lectures and conferences reports, and correspondence. 

Author

• Yuliya Yurchuk, Södertörn U (Sweden)