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Red Valkyries:Feminist Lessons From Five Revolutionary Women
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Why the most radical feminists were also communists
Through a series of lively and accessible biographical essays, Red Valkyries explores the history of socialist feminism century Eastern Europe. By examining the revolutionary careers of five prominent socialist women active in the 19th and 20th centuries–the aristocratic Bolshevik, Alexandra Kollontai; the radical pedagogue, Nadezhda Krupskaya; the polyamorous firebrand, Inessa Armand; the deadly sniper, Lyudmila Pavlichenko; and the partisan turned scientist turned global women’s activist, Elena Lagadinova–Kristen Ghodsee tells the story of the personal challenges faced by earlier generations of socialist and communist women. None of these women were "perfect" leftists. Their lives were filled with inner conflicts, contradictions, and sometimes outrageous privilege, but they still managed to move forward their own political projects through perseverance and dedication to their cause. Always walking a fine line between the need for class solidarity and the desire to force their sometimes callous male colleagues to take women’s issues seriously, these five women pursued novel solutions with lessons for activists of today. In brief conversational chapters–with plenty of concrete examples from the history of the state socialist countries in Eastern Europe and contemporary reflections on the status of women in the world today–Ghodsee renders the big ideas of socialist feminism accessible to those newly inspired by the emancipatory politics of insurgent left feminist movements around the globe.
Reviews
We've needed this book longer than we know: celebrating and learning from revolutionary socialist women, Red Valkyries gifts us with models essential to today's struggles. Kristen Ghodsee breaks down the wall liberal feminism built in women's history, bringing to life a vision of emancipation that continues to be worth fighting for.
Written with clarity and zest, Red Valkyries is an illuminating introduction to the extraordinary lives of prominent socialist women in the Soviet Union and Bulgaria.
In our historical moment, quotas of women in power positions and correct manners or expressions are obfuscating the long historical link between feminism and radical politics. Ghodsee's Red Valkyries is exactly the book needed to correct this misperception and help feminism to rejoin its radical past. The five figures analyzed were fighters who pursued the feminist cause through their full engagement in revolutionary political struggle. Can we still imagine this, in our era obsessed with victimization?
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Red Valkyries is a fascinating alternative history of the feminist movement, told from the perspective of the east rather than the west. The women Ghodsee profiles are committed socialists who realise that women's liberation is incompatible with capitalism, and who also frequently struggle against the centralisation of power within their own countries. Required reading for anyone seeking out an alternative to #girlboss feminism.
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A beautiful book about the intimate lives and bold ideas of a range of Communist women, people who built their revolutionary dreams into reality. Ghodsee lifts up the immense contradiction between the future-oriented social hopes of these revolutionaries, these exiles from the future, and the grip of the social conventions of the present.
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Funny and politically illuminating, Ghodsee writes with the clear-sighted directness of the revolutionary women she describes. Women's sexual, political and daily emancipation were the eye of the socialist storm for Kollantai, Krupskaya, Armand and Lagadinova. Ghodsee's book breathes new life into their stories of how to create a world without patriarchy.
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Kristen Ghodsee's new book is a well-documented and immensely personal guide to the 20th-century East European socialist women's movement. The author extracts from silence and saves from oblivion five women who have made an attempt to change not only their own, personal history, but also political, social and cultural history of women in Europe and worldwide. It is a story about a communist revolution in which women played a significant role, creating and implementing the project of a better world for all people. Reflections on the past are not, however, used to celebrate it nostalgically, but to draw conclusions for the future - how to act to build an alternative to the hegemony of capitalism and nationalism. This well-written, passionate story about the "red Valkyries" shows that socialism is not a song of the past, but still valid and long-awaited response to the challenges of the present world. Ghodsee argues that the history is not over, but rushes forward. Speeding up, however, it needs signposts to avoid falling into the abyss. The Red Valkyries will be perfect for this role.
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Until the late 20th century, you could pay close attention in school, graduate from a prestigious university with a degree in history and still never find out who Harriet Tubman was. Outrageous, right? But due to capitalist ideology and Cold War hangover, you could still do all that and never learn about Alexandra Kollontai or Inessa Armand, or any of history’s great Communist women. Kristen Ghodsee's riveting account of these complicated, imperfect and inspiring lives is an outstanding corrective to our miseducation, one that’s long overdue.
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Compelling...by telling unfamiliar and forgotten stories, [Red Valkyries] suggests there are other fronts on which the battle can be fought than those favoured by western feminists.
, Northern Soul -
Illuminating...Ghodsee equips us with five extraordinary role models whose tenacity, perseverance and dedication to revolutionary politics should serve as inspiration to anyone seeking to build a better world for all.
, Red Pepper -
This is an eye-opening deep dive into an underexamined aspect of feminist history.
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As an expert in her field, [Ghodsee] deftly covers vast amounts of history, political theory, and complicated personal relationships....A timely and fascinating volume for those interested in Russian and socialist history.
, Library Journal -
Ghodsee weaves these women's ideologies and feminist views into the larger picture of a time, that of multiple world wars, open revolution, burgeoning socialist societies, and the knowledge that extreme change was needed in dire circumstances.
, Booklist -
A compelling book, a call for a broader understanding of the history of women's political practice, the ideas that informed it, and its implications for our own time.
, Chicago Review of Books -
Any utopia first needs to be imagined. For that endeavor, Ghodsee's gripping book, with its important ideas distilled (yet not made banal) for those who might be encountering them for the first time, is available.
, LIBER