Authors

Discussion

Nostalgic longing for the Soviet past has been identified by scholars as a defining feature of Russia during Vladimir Putin’s presidency. While many studies have examined the post-Soviet nostalgia promoted by the regime and expressed by its supporters, less attention has been paid to the nostalgia articulated by groups with alternative values—particularly those who do not view themselves as heirs of the Soviet state. This presentation will focus on post-Soviet nostalgia expressed by some feminist activists in their search for independent, agentic historical women who can serve as role models for contemporary youth.

A central case study is Women’s Historical Night (WHN), an annual anarchist event organized across Russia by radical feminists. One of WHN’s key aims is to create feminist role models for younger generations. During these events, participants engage in memory work by producing posters that feature historical women they find inspiring, which are then displayed in public spaces. The presentation will focus on the posters depicting revolutionary women, considered to be desirable female role models during the Soviet period, but almost forgotten in contemporary Russia.

Drawing on Robert S. Jansen’s model of path-dependent memory work, this presentation conceptualizes feminist post-Soviet nostalgia as a form of reputational entrepreneurship. The analysis explores how the reputations of revolutionary women are constructed and reconstructed during WHN actions, situating these processes within the broader contexts of post-Soviet nostalgia in Russia and the Western “second-wave” feminist remembrance of female revolutionaries of the past as feminist heroines.