THE EMANCIPATION OF RUSSIAN WOMEN: A STRUGGLE FOR INTELLECTUAL EQUALITY

Abstract

The basic characteristics of the feminist movements during the second half of the nineteenth century in Europe and the United States could be summarized under two main headings: the struggle for complete political and social equality of women with men; and the struggle for equal educational opportunities which could eventually, with the fulfillment of the first demand, lead to the complete economic independence of women from men. In Russia, with the liberalizing laws and the great hopes of the 1860's, the question of political and social freedom was considered by most Russian women not as their own problem but as a common social problem. It was in the field of education that they felt separate and inferior and where they searched for special remedies.