THE RUSSIAN FRONT

Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe. Eds. Nancy M. Wingfield and Maria Bucur. Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies, eds. Alexander Rabinowitch and William G. Rosenberg. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006. vii, 251 pp. Select Bibliography. Contributors. Index. Paper.

This collection of articles examines the variety of gendered experiences during the first and second world wars in Eastern Europe. The essays cover a wide spectrum of experiences and effects of war, exploring both military and civilian aspects (with emphasis on the latter). They seek to reevaluate traditional war narratives that focus heavily on men, particularly combatant men, and thus, “gender the front” (1). The book is divided into thematic sections: “challenging gender/resorting order,” “gendered collaborating and resisting,” and “remembering war: gendered bodies, gendered stories.”

Alon Rachamimov’s “’Female Generals’ and ‘Siberian Angels’: Aristocratic Nurses and the Austro-Hungarian POW Relief” demonstrates that women administrative nurses did not enjoy the positive reception of nurses who served in purely medical capacities. These women were not in auxiliary medical positions subordinate to male personnel, but rather in positions of authority assigned with the task of reporting on the conditions of the POWs within the camps and ensuring their loyalty to the Austro-Hungarian government. Rachamimov reveals the considerable gendered tension between male POWs and female administrative nurses. The men often found it difficult to accept women in positions of power over them and reacted to their presence with indifference, sullenness, and even hostility. This stands in stark contrast to the views male POWs had of women serving in purely nursing capacities, who were seen as a source of solace and comfort in their more traditional roles of caregivers and nurturers, and who held little to no authority over male personnel.

In “Civilizing the Soldier in Postwar Austria” Maureen Healy discusses the important correlation between attempts to reintroduce soldiers into civilian life after the end of hostilities in Austria, to reestablish their roles as patriarchal heads of families, and to restore traditional gender roles as part of the postwar “return to normalcy.” Healy finds numerous difficulties encountered in this process as men attempted to regain authority over their domestic lives after their long absences which required a shift of authority to women. “Between the Red Army and White Guard: Women in Budapest, 1919,” by Eliza Ablovatski, looks at the gendered aspects of the attempt to create a conservative order after World War I and two failed revolutions in Hungary. Ablovatski asserts that the forces of Admiral Horthy often gained support because they promoted traditional gender roles and values disrupted by war and revolution. And while the behavior of the White forces was not always consistent with the chivalric image fostered by the Horthy government (for example, in its attacks against women), the right wing was able to justify this violence by labeling the women they attacked as dangerous and unfeminine, and therefore not deserving of male protection.

Melissa Feinberg, in “Dumplings and Domesticity: Women, Collaboration, and Resistance in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,” finds that during Nazi occupation of the Czech lands the “kitchen also became a site of struggle” (95). She argues that efforts of a group of right wing Czech women to teach others how to cook traditional Czech cuisine without traditional ingredients (unavailable during the war) constituted a form of resistance to Nazi occupation. This argument is undermined, however, by the fact that the Nazis had an interest in allowing these kinds of activities, to keep the population of Czech workers healthy. Moreover, preparing dishes that resembled traditional Czech foods actually contributed to a sense of normalcy (even if false) and thus helped to stabilize the occupational order, which benefited the Nazis. In “Denouncers and Fraternizers: Gender, Collaboration and Resistance in Bohemia and Moravia during World War II and After,” Benjamin Frommer examines why denunciation was most often associated with women despite the fact that in absolute numbers, women were much less frequently tried for this collaborative act than men. Stereotypes about women and gender roles played a part in creating this association, but the gendered nature of collaboration with the Nazis was also important, because it excluded women from more public acts. Mara Lazda’s “Family, Gender, and Ideology in World War II Latvia” explores ways family and gender were used by the two occupying powers of Latvia during World War II, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, to legitimize their regimes. The Soviets promoted women’s emancipation and contrasted their gender and family policies with the restrictive, “medieval” policies of the independent interwar Latvian government. The Nazis sought to identify themselves with the interwar government by espousing similar conservative gender roles and family policies. At the same time, the family was a space in which Latvians living under both occupying powers could retain at least some degree of autonomy.

“Kosovo Maiden(s): Serbian Women Commemorate the Wars of National Liberation, 1912-1918,” by Melissa Bokovy, investigates how women’s war experiences were not celebrated, but the act of honoring the fallen was seen as a female responsibility. This not only gave women a special role (although not an active one), it also had a nationalist component, for it promoted Serbians as those who sacrificed most for the state and therefore gave them rights to primacy over other nationalities in Yugoslavia. Maria Bucur, in “Women’s Stories as Sites of Memory: Gender and Remembering Romania’s World Wars,” finds that despite evidence in wartime testimonies of great courage and sacrifice on the part of women, such experiences were not incorporated into the collective memory of the world wars in Romania. Bucur contends that silence about women’s participation in the war effort in World War II was something of an anomaly for a Communist state, contrasting it to the Soviet Union, where she claims a “great deal of attention” was paid to women’s contributions, even in combat (183). This is not altogether accurate, however, as official Soviet sources tried to significantly downplay the role of women, particularly in combat, after the war. (See Reina Pennington, “Do Not Speak of the Services You Rendered” in Gerard DeGroot and Corina Peniston-Bird, eds., A Soldier and a Woman: Sexual Integration in the Military, 2000.) In “The Nation’s Pain and Women’s Shame: Polish Women and Wartime Violence,” Katherine Jolluck finds that Polish women were able to cope better with the extremely poor treatment and living conditions they faced in Soviet exile during World War II by incorporating their non-gendered suffering (hunger, illness, beatings) into the general struggle for Polish independence. The women exiles were unable to assimilate gender-specific acts of sexual exploitation and violence into the national struggle, or even to speak about them on a personal level. Lisa A. Kirschenbaum’s “’The Alienated Body’: Gender Identity and the Memory of the Siege of Leningrad,” looks at one of the best examples of where the lines between the front and the rear were blurred: the “city front.” Most narratives of the siege center on violent acts perpetrated by the Germans, i.e. bombing and artillery fire, rather than the much more prevalent starvation that plagued Leningraders. The relative silence about starvation is often attributed to Soviet censorship that would not allow discussion of something that could be blamed on the state (for failure to stockpile food or evacuate civilians). Kirschenbaum finds, however, that even narratives produced outside of the control of Soviet censors usually did not discuss starvation and its effects to a great extent because such self-censorship helped survivors cope with the tragedy of the siege. Thus, many survivors themselves framed their experiences by emphasizing heroism, sacrifice, and courage, giving themselves agency rather than portraying themselves as helpless victims.

This volume is an impressive collection of articles that will appeal to those interested in the history of eastern Europe, war and the war experience, both world wars, and gender and women’s studies. The articles successfully reassess the traditional dichotomy of war historiography that separates male and female experiences based on front line and home front divisions, respectively. Thus, the contributors to this collection aspire to do more than just “gender the front” but to gender the entire war experience. This is an important task for general understanding of war, especially in Eastern Europe, where there is a significant dearth of such scholarship.

Laurie Stoff
Louisiana Tech University

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