This book focuses exclusively on women in Soviet dissident movements and their contributions to calling for change in the Soviet Union from the 1960s until the regime’s collapse in 1991.

Through compelling case studies, vivid snapshots, and detailed individual profiles, this book explores women’s public activism as well as their less frequently discussed supportive roles that underpinned and sustained dissident movements. It draws extensively on the Chronicle of Current Events, and similar documentation from Ukraine and Lithuania, as well as investigative reports, anthologies of dissident writings, and contemporary newspaper accounts. Additionally, it incorporates published interviews, and testimonies of several prominent women dissidents, alongside the more extensive memoirs of their better-known male colleagues, offering a nuanced perspective on the often-overlooked contributions of Soviet women and the reasons for their neglect in the historiography of dissent.

Women in the Soviet Dissident Movements is essential reading for students and scholars of Soviet history, women’s history, and political activism.