Women Memoirs of the Dissident Experience

• In Event: Memory of Human Rights Work in the USSR: Contemporary Testimonies and Legacy in Practice

Abstract

The Western feminist approach has had a major impact on understanding the structure of Russian society, offering new perspectives in seeing the categories of power, hierarchy, and the regime of (non-)visibility. This approach has proved important for understanding multiple identities and has made it possible to recognize the existence of oppressed groups where until recently they were in a blind spot, including for contemporary human rights work. Are the memories of women witnesses and participants able to see the history of Soviet dissident human rights groups in a new way? To what extent does their witness perspective resist the influence of the Western optics of gender studies?
The paper is based on an oral history project with women participants in the dissident movement in the USSR (held by Memorial and University of Sorbonne in 2021 - 2025). How did the universalist idea of human rights protection and the state modernization project of women's emancipation in the USSR influence dissident women's self-presentations and their experiences as participats in dissident work? What are the possibilities and limitations of the optics of gender studies in the study of Soviet human rights groups? How does attention to the differences and multiplicity of women's individual trajectories allow for a better consideration of the possibilities in which the dissident movement developed? How were these practices embodied and embedded in everyday reality of late Soviet communities?

Author

• Natalia Kolyagina, Sorbonne U (France)