Beliakova, N. and Dobson, M. (2016) Protestant women in the late Soviet era: gender, authority, and dissent. Canadian Slavonic Papers, 58 (2). pp. 117-140. ISSN 0008-5006
Abstract
At the peak of the anti-religious campaigns under Nikita Khrushchev, communist propaganda depicted women believers as either naïve dupes, tricked by the clergy, or as depraved fanatics; the Protestant “sektantka” (female sectarian) was a particularly prominent folk-devil. In fact, as this article shows, women’s position within Protestant communities was far more complex than either of these mythical figures would have one believe. The authors explore four important, but contested, female roles: women as leaders of worship, particularly in remote congregations where female believers vastly outnumbered their male counterparts; women as unofficial prophetesses, primarily within Pentecostal groups; women as mothers, replenishing congregations through high birth rates and commitment to their children’s religious upbringing; and women as political actors in the defence of religious rights. Using a wide range of sources, which include reports written by state officials, articles in the church journal, letters from church members to their ecclesiastical leaders in Moscow, samizdat texts, and oral history accounts, the authors probe women’s relationship with authority, in terms of both the authority of the (male) ministry within the church, and the authority of the Soviet state.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | religion; USSR; Protestants; Baptists; gender; dissent; women |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of History (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ARTS AND HUMANITIES RESEARCH COUNCIL (AHRC) AH/I025883/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 09 Mar 2017 14:54 |
Last Modified: | 09 Mar 2017 14:54 |
Published Version: | http://doi.org/10.1080/00085006.2016.1157923 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/00085006.2016.1157923 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:113070 |
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