Suchergebnisse

Anthropology, sociology and female crime : the origins of criminology in Russia -- Professionals, social science, and the state : the organization of Soviet criminology -- The woman's sphere : the role of sexuality in female crime -- The geography of crime : city, countryside, and trends in female criminality -- A remnant of the old way of life : infanticide in theory and practice

As I write this introduction, Russia's war in Ukraine is well into its third year, voters in Russia returned Vladimir Putin to another presidential term, and the 2024 presidential election in the United States looms. Despite some electoral results that suggest a slight movement away from far-right ideologies, recent years have seen a resurgence of efforts to reassert patriarchal controls over societies around the world, often through attacks on women's reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ communities. Perhaps surprisingly, Central and Eastern European efforts are being used as models to be adapted in other places. For example, far-right politicians and commentators in the United States have embraced Hungarian President Viktor Orbán's conception of "illiberal democracy" and have sought to implement similar policies, notably in efforts to curtail access to abortion, in attacks on transgender medical treatments, and through bans on books deemed offensive to family values, among others. In addition, laws that criminalize homosexuality and near total abortion bans in Poland, Hungary, and Russia, among others, undermine citizenship rights for significant segments of the population in our region.

The ongoing tragedy of Russia's war on Ukraine, already well into its second year, has sparked a fundamental reassessment in the field of Slavic Studies and calls for its decolonization. Long dominated by studies of Russia, the various disciplinary fields within Slavic Studies have engaged in numerous discussions and debates over the past year about how to decenter Slavic Studies, how to balance scholarship about the region, and how to recognize voices from the region that have been marginalized, ignored, and diminished. To this end, the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of Pittsburg, in partnership with the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University and with the support of a long list of co-sponsors, organized a six-part virtual speakers series in Spring 2023 that brought together a diverse collection of professionals to discuss the need for and practical means to address the "outsized role Russia has played and continues to play in the field and what could and should be done about it."1 H-Russia, an H-Net online community, established a blog series on "Decolonizing Russian Studies" that has stimulated interesting conversations among scholars toward decentering Slavic Studies from multiple directions.2 The journal Russian History issued a call for contributions to address such problems in the study of Russian history, and the journal Kritika, in collaboration with the Harriman Institute of Columbia University, is planning a conference and special journal issue on "Eurasia Decentered" for 2024. Moreover, the major US-based professional organization for Slavic Studies, the Association for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies (ASEEES), has selected "Decolonization" as its 2023 conference theme, asking its members to engage in the "reassessment and transformation of Russo-centric relationships of power and hierarchy both in the region and in how we study it."3 Such interest among scholars to begin to reimagine scholarship about the region reflects the profound impact that Russia's war on Ukraine has had, even far from the front lines.

Abstract
This article examines the responses of early Soviet legal and juridical professionals to the 1926 group rape of seventeen-year-old Mariia N. as a starting point to discuss assumptions regarding women's sexuality, peasant consciousness, and revolutionary transformation. By 1926, anxiety over the slow pace of revolutionary change created what might be called a crisis of legitimacy among early Soviet legal professionals. This article examines how these juridical professionals perceived the limits and failures of efforts to transform Russian society along socialist lines, and highlights their explanations for those failures that rested on the persistent "backwardness" of the countryside and on traditional discourses of female sexuality. While they argued that the slow pace of transformation hindered rural development, and expected greater state intervention in the countryside to facilitate such change, they failed to challenge traditional patriarchal assumptions regarding women. The article argues that the legal system played a central role in the Soviet social transformation, and that through redefining the law, early Soviet professionals helped to construct a legal foundation for the state that ultimately facilitated the state's move away from its early emancipatory and communal impulses and toward the embrace of paternalism and individualism.

As I prepare this volume's introduction, we are well into the third month of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The Aspasia editorial board joins the leaders of multiple scholarly organizations around the world in condemning Russian President Vladimir Putin's devastating attack not only on the Ukrainian people and their culture, but also on the very principles of national self-determination. As historians of and in the region, we particularly condemn the misinterpretations, distortions, and simplifications of Russian and Ukrainian history in the context of the current conflict. Such misinformation actively undermines open dialogue, democracy, and democratic regimes everywhere. In addition, we are deeply troubled by the growing militarization of our region that this war has legitimized. As women's and gender historians, we understand the consequences that ensue when military values and practices overshadow civilian ones, and the implications that result from propaganda, censorship, and the militarizing of society, particularly regarding violence toward women. We are also only just beginning to conceive of the long-term implications of the war in Ukraine for scholars and scholarship in our region. Beyond concerns for the immediate personal safety of individual scholars and colleagues, we are facing the probable destruction and loss of significant Ukrainian archival and other sources on all aspects of Ukrainian history. The probable impact on future research in our field is catastrophic and will require us to reconsider our research priorities, goals, and methods. At the same time, the war has added urgency to a growing recognition of the need to "decolonize" scholarship and to confront ethnocentrism—to move away from a traditionally Russocentric focus, to better recognize the complexities of the historical experiences in the region, and to place such experiences in their broader historical contexts, offering a more complete, nuanced, and holistic analysis to undermine simplistic, nationalistic, and distorted narratives. As the war in Ukraine amplifies calls for such a reorientation for the field, these shifts reinforce and complement the mission of Aspasia as a forum for the multiplicity of voices that speak in and about the region, on all topics related to women's and gender history.

When Peter Hallama approached the Aspasia editorial board about publishing the proceedings of a conference he was organizing on Socialist Masculinities, we jumped at the opportunity. It seemed that Aspasia, as a journal of women's and gender history, would be the perfect venue to showcase the innovative and important historical scholarship being conducted on masculinities in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. Although the COVID-19 pandemic delayed his plans and necessitated holding a virtual conference, the results that make up the contents of this volume do not disappoint. As Hallama mentions in his Introduction to the Special Forum articles, and as Marko Dumančić highlights in his concluding Comments, the works included here reflect a deep engagement with the lived experiences of men, assessed through memoirs, diaries, photographs, newspapers, and internal party documents. These articles explore some of the many and shifting masculinities constructed throughout the region during the socialist period, showing that individuals and the state constantly engaged in their negotiation and renegotiation.

This volume of Aspasia is dedicated to Ann Snitow, scholar, feminist, and activist, who passed away in August 2019. Although Snitow was not trained as a scholar of our region, she devoted much of her career and her activism to fostering transnational connections and providing tools for empowering women within the former socialist bloc. After helping to found the Network of East-West Women (NEWW) in 1990, Snitow worked tirelessly to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information among feminist scholars in the East and the West, supporting and encouraging an entire generation in their academic and activist pursuits. It is fitting, therefore, that Aspasia is able to honor Ann Snitow's legacy with this volume. As a yearbook of women's and gender history of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, Aspasia's mission is to make more accessible the scholarship being conducted within and about the region. By fostering transnational connections, Aspasia, like Snitow herself, encourages intellectual exchanges across boundaries, provides opportunities for academic engagement, and expands access to scholarship from regions where such access might be limited by language and other barriers.

As we begin Volume 13, Aspasia would like to take this opportunity to congratulate several of our contributors. First, congratulations to Rochelle Ruthchild on her receipt of the Association of Women in Slavic Studies Outstanding Achievement Award (see the citation "In Recognition: Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild" following this introduction). In addition, Emily Gioielli's article, "'Home Is Home No Longer': Political Struggle in the Domestic Sphere in Postarmistice Hungary, 1919–1922," which appeared in Volume 11 (2017), received an honorable mention for the 2018 Mark Pitt away Article Prize in Hungarian Studies by the Hungarian Studies Association. Aspasia is pleased to extend its congratulations to Rochelle and Emily.