Slavic Review,
Volume 64 Number 1 Spring 2005

Zhenshchiny na kraiu Evropy. Ed. Elena Gapova. Minsk: Evropeiskii
Gumanotarnyi Universitet, 2003. 433pp. Notes. Illustrations. Plates. Hard
bound.

This collection of articles presents multifaceted look at the history and
culture of women in Belarus and Western Poland. Editor Elena Gapova
establishes the purpose of the collection as an exploration of women and
gender in the context of a multiethnic society, where national borders and
dominant political systems changed frequently. The territories of eastern
Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus were, to outsiders, borderlands, and
nationalist movements within these areas struggled to define themselves
through reflection on their relations with lands to the west, that is,
Europe, or lands to the east, specifically Russia. Organized by time period
and by theme, the collection includes such topics as images of women
warriors in Polish-Lithuanian confederation, women in World War II partisan
movements, and women's images in songs. As often happens in collections that
aspire description of a multiethnic society, each article focuses on women
of one ethnic or national group, whether Belarusian, Polish, Jewish, or (in
one article each) , Tatar and Gypsy, while discussion of comparison or
interaction is found only in a few pieces. Most of the articles are
original, but several are translations from English work published
elsewhere.

Elena Gapova's article on the women's and national questions in interwar
Belarus stands out as an excellent synthesis of western gender theory and
reflection on Soviet gender ideas. She compares the Soviet project of women'
s liberation in eastern Belarus with nationalist approaches to women's to
women's equality among Belarusians in eastern Poland and Lithuania,
concluding that in both cases, women's projects were placed within a larger,
male social project, either building socialism or building the nation.
In a work focused on the sixteenth-century Kingdom of Lithuania, Galina
Derbina uses legal codes and documents from court cases reflecting the
experiences of aristocratic women to show the significance of changes from
customary to either canon or secular law in shaping marriage, divorce, and
inheritance. She suggests that the new formal codes of law, enforced by
church or state, made divorce easier for Orthodox women but almost
impossible for Roman Catholics. Authors for all articles concerning
pre-twentieth-century issues complain about a lack of sources and rely
heavily on the archives of the Radziwill estate.

Several articles focus on cultural artifacts and symbols. Rozaliia
Alexandrovich explores Tatar-Muslim identity in Belarus through personal
attachment to an artistic rendering of a selection from the Qur'an (called a
mugir), a familiar cultural object in many Tatar homes, and through memories
of her grandmother's food, spirituality and worldview. Ol'ga Lobachevskaiia
discusses Belarusian women's weaving, examining its connection to life cycle
rituals and women's shared experiences, using a gendered approach to
aesthetics, and describing changes that have reduced this once widespread
production to a relatively rare pastime. A colored plate of a mugir, as well
as one of a painted rug, the subject of another article, in a collection of
women's artworks at the end of the book, gives the reader a visual
impression of these cultural objects; a plate showing a weaving would have
been a valuable addition.

There are quite a few articles about individuals, including those on the
playwright Frantishka Radziwill (by Ol'ga Bazhenova), and political actors
Esfir' Frumkina (by Rochelle Rutchild), and Poluta Bodunova (by Valentina
Lebedeva), all of which ask complex questions about identity and agency and
about seemingly feminist actions within larger political and social
frameworks.

As a whole, the volume is rich in its variety of subject material, and many
articles should prove valuable to researchers interested in women and gender
in eastern Europe. Article authors assume a basic acquaintance with the
region and provide no glossary of region-specific vocabulary, making some
sections difficult for the reader who does not have this background. The
introductory chapter, by Gapova, is oriented toward an audience that knows
the area; she seeks to introduce those readers to ideas about the
construction of gender and national identities. The lack of a concluding
chapter renders the collection less coherent than it could be. The book's
length does not begin to suggest its density. Published in almost annoyingly
fine print, it contains enough material for two volumes.

Marianne Kamp,
University of Wyoming