Bookvica

[WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY RUSSIA] Russkaya zhenshchina na gosudarstvennoy i obshchestvennoy sluzhbe: Sb. postanovleniy i rasporyazheniy pravitel’stva, opredelyayushchikh prava i obyazannosti rus. zhenshchin po sluzhbe, s pril. ustavov i polozheniy kazen. i chast. vspom. kass i o-v, uslugami kotorykh mozhet pol’zovat’sya zhenshchina [i.e. Russian Woman in the Civil and Public Service: A Collection of the Government Decrees and Orders Defining the Rights and Duties of the Russian Women in Service with the Charters and Regulations of the Treasury and Private Assistance Funds and Societies, the Services of which a Woman Can Use]

Polyansky, A.

Moscow: S. Skirmunt, 1901. Item #1180

Unofficial edition. VI, 264, 499 pp. 13x19.1 cm. In owner’s contemporary half-leather binding. General wear and rubbing, pre-revolutionary library stamp (“A Library of the Z. K. ZH. D. Employee Control”) on the front endpaper, title-page, p. III, rear endpaper, and the recto of the rear board. Otherwise internally clean copy.

Scarce. First unofficial edition.
This curious edition offers a rare insight into the history of women’s rights in Russia.
In the mid-19th century, Tsarist Russia was dominated by a conservative-patriarchal system that limited women (except the upper stratum) to weak social and legal protection, lack of political rights, and inability to actualize professional knowledge. This concept was the basis of legislation, supported by both the highest bodies of state power and significant part of the country’s population.
Interest in the study of women’s rights in Russia emerged at the end of the 19th century, when the share of female labor in factories and craft workshops increased as a result of the industrial production growth. Subsequently, the domestic historiography of the women’s movement had been enriched by a number of important works, among which Polyansky’s Russian Woman in the Civil and Public Service offers perhaps the most detailed insights into the early 20th century Russian women’s rights.
Printed in 1901, the edition houses a collection of government decrees and orders that define the rights and duties of Russian women workers. The publication consists of two sections. The first section features regulations concerning women in civil service, while the second section offers legislative acts applicable to the public system. Complemented by the statutes and regulations of the treasury and private assistance funds, the edition offers a unique vision of Tsarist legislative framework, which included such grotesque directives that prohibited female telegraphists from sorting letters and allowed women to work in the public control sector only in the field of railway stations.
Overall, an extremely rare evidence of the Russian women’s struggle in the early 20th century.

No copies found in Worldcat.

Price: $1,500.00