Author(s): Kristen Ghodsee

Politics | History | Feminism | Eastern Europe | Women's Histories

The overlooked revolutionary women of Eastern Europe and their contribution to socialist feminist history, from the author of Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism.

Through a series of lively and accessible biographical essays, Red Valkyries explores the history of socialist feminism by examining the revolutionary careers of five prominent socialist women active in the 19th and 20th centuries.

- Alexandra Kollontai, the aristocratic Bolshevik
- Nadezhda Krupskaya, the radical pedagogue
- Inessa Armand, the polyamorous firebrand
- Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the deadly sniper
- Elena Lagadinova, the partisan turned scientist turned global women's rights activist

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 fought for social change with important lessons for feminist activists today.

In brief conversational chapters Ghodsee tells the story of the personal challenges faced by earlier generations of socialist and communist women and renders the big ideas of socialist feminism accessible to those newly inspired by the emancipatory politics of left feminist movements around the globe.

Review: 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. -- Jodi Dean, author of Comrade
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. -- Sheila Rowbotham
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? -- Slavoj Zizek
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. -- Grace Blakeley
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. -- Vijay Prashad
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. -- Elizabeth Armstrong, Smith College

Author Biography: Kristen R. Ghodsee is professor of Russian and East European Studies and a member of the graduate group in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of ten books and her articles and essay have been translated into over 25 languages and have appeared in The New Republic, The Baffler, Dissent, Jacobin, The Lancet, Le Monde Diplomatique, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.