(Forgotten) Lives of Jewish Women in Stalin’s Soviet Union

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel examines the lives, works, and impact of Soviet Jewish women who endured Stalin’s Terror of the 1930s, World War II, and the postwar devastation and discrimination of the 1940s. Despite significant research on Soviet women’s history, remarkably little is known—and even less has been published—about Jewish women and their roles in Soviet society under Stalin’s rule.
Many of these women perished in the Gulag, sometimes after surviving the ghettos. Others made crucial contributions to science and historical knowledge, while some ensured their families’ survival in harsh conditions. What unites them all is that their experiences have largely vanished from public memory. This panel seeks to restore their names and stories to academic discourse.
Elissa Bemporad explores the work of Ester Frumkina, a Bundist ideologue who later became a leading figure among Communist Yiddish intellectuals. Her ideas shaped Soviet Jewish culture, yet she was arrested in 1938 and died in the Gulag in 1943. Anna Shternshis examines the careers of journalists Rakhil Kovnator and Mira Zheleznova. Kovnator, a key author of The Black Book, survived the purges of the 1930s, but she ultimately distanced herself from Jewish studies in the 1950s. Zheleznova documented the heroism of Jewish soldiers in the Red Army. She was arrested and executed in 1950. Diana Dumitru shifts the focus to everyday life, analyzing postwar Soviet Moldova through the lens of Jewish women’s experiences—their educational, professional, and political ambitions, as well as their survival strategies in a hostile society.

Sub Unit

• Jewish Studies

Chair

• Mayhill C. Fowler, Stetson U

Papers

• A Jewish Woman in Stalin’s Moscow: The Life and Work of Ester Frumkin in the 1930s - Elissa Bemporad, CUNY Queens College / CUNY Graduate Center

• Rakhil Kovnator and Mira Aizenshtadt (Zheleznova): (Forgotten) Soviet Jewish Women Who Documented Holocaust in the Soviet Union in the 1940s - Anna Shternshis, U of Toronto (Canada)

• 'Women’s Matters' in Postwar Stalinist Moldavia - Diana V. Dumitru, Georgetown U

Discussant

• Anika Walke, Carnegie Mellon U