By the early twentieth century, far-reaching changes had begun to challengeRussia’s traditional gender hierarchies. Industrialisation and theproliferation of market relations, the growth of a consumer culture and theexpansion of education, among other processes, touched the lives ofRussia’s rural as well as urban population. Economic change expandedwomen’s employment opportunities, while new cultural trends encouraged thepursuit of pleasure in a populace long accustomed to subordinating individualneeds to family and community. At the same time, patriarchal relations served asboth metaphor and model for Russia’s political order. The law upheldpatriarchal family relations, as did the institutions and economies of thepeasantry, still the vast majority of Russia’s people. Religiousinstitutions governed marriage and divorce, which the Russian Orthodox Churchpermitted only for adultery, abandonment, sexual incapacity and penal exile, andthen only reluctantly. Marital law required a woman to cohabit with her husband,regardless of his behaviour.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, this system encountered a range ofchallenges. Liberal reformers sought to revise Russia’s laws, thosegoverning the family in particular, as a means to reconfigure the entire socialand political order. Among the challengers were women, who also strove to maketheir voices heard. Yet women were rarely in a position to influence decisivelythe discourse on women, or to exercise authority decisively on women’sbehalf. Instead, as a revolutionary wave mounted, broke and receded,women’s voices grew muted, and a gendered hierarchy re-emerged that echoedpre-revolutionary patterns while assuming novel forms.