Combining concepts and methodologies from anthropology, history, linguistics, literature, music, cultural studies, and film studies, this collection of ten original essays addresses issues crucial to gender and national identity in Russia from the October Revolution of 1917 to the present. Prefaced by an introduction on Russian cultural myths grounded in gender difference, the essays shed new light on such topics as national, cultural, and gender identity in the Russian language; typecasting of women revolutionaries; soviet masculinity in Stalin-era film; and prostitution during and after perestroika.

Collectively, these interdisciplinary essays explore how traditional gender inequities influenced the social processes of nation building in Russia and how men and women responded to those developments. Gender and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Russian Culture offers fresh insights to students and scholars in the fields of gender studies, nationhood studies, and Russian history, literature, and culture.