Domestic Service in the Soviet Union
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- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Publication date:
- April 2024
- May 2024
- ISBN:
- 9781009467193
- 9781009467209
- 9781009467162
- Dimensions:
- (229 x 152 mm)
- Weight & Pages:
- 0.598kg, 318 Pages
- Dimensions:
- (229 x 152 mm)
- Weight & Pages:
- 0.446kg, 318 Pages
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Book description
This innovative study is the first to explore the evolution of domestic service in the Soviet Union, set against the background of changing discourses on women, labour, and socialist living. Even though domestic service conflicted with the Bolsheviks' egalitarian message, the regime embraced paid domestic labor as a temporary solution to the problem of housework. Analyzing sources ranging from court cases to oral interviews, Alissa Klots demonstrates how the regime both facilitated and thwarted domestic workers' efforts to reinvent themselves as equal members of Soviet society. Here, a desire to make maids and nannies equal participants in the building of socialism clashed with a gendered ideology where housework was women's work. This book serves not only as a window into class and gender inequality under socialism, but as a vantage point to examine the power of state initiatives to improve the lives of household workers in the modern world.
Awards
Winner, 2025 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in Women's History, American Historical Association
Reviews
‘Klots’s book offers an insightful analysis of how the Soviet state struggled with the issue of domestic service even as it pledged to do away with inequality and exploitation.’
Maria Lipman Source: Foreign Affairs
‘wonderful and illuminating’
Wendy Z. Goldman Source: The Russian Review
‘In this beautiful and emotional travelogue, gratitude and wonder alternate with alarm and exasperation.’
Maria Lipman Source: Foreign Affairs
‘… Alissa Klots’s book represents a landmark contribution to Soviet historiography, opening new analytical pathways for examining live-in domestic labor.’
Tamar Qeburia Source: H-Soz-Kult
Contents
Contents
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Introduction
pp 1-22 - A Kitchen Maid to Rule the State
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