Bolshevik Intention to Soviet Oppression: Jewish Women's Impressions of Stalin's Reign
Sarah Gormady, an international affairs and political science dual major from Durham, NH, will spend the summer interviewing Jewish women in St. Petersburg, Russia, about their experiences living in Revolutionary and Stalinist Russia. With funding awarded by the International Research Opportunities Program (IROP), this Honors Program student will collect oral histories from women, whom, she describes, "...have had a peculiar path from oppression through realizations of international feminist dreams to being oppressed once again in the 1940s because of their status as Jews."
Through her interviews, Sarah will learn about these women's experiences by asking: What were Jewish women's roles in the Bolshevik Revolution and early Soviet government? What became to women as a population subgroup leading up to World War II? And, how were these women's lives affected by the emergence of official anti‐Semitism after World War II? She will explore issues of family life, opportunity for higher education, and gender trends in the professional work place.
With a solid history of coursework in Russian culture, history, and literature, and fluency in the Russian language, Sarah is prepared to conduct all of her interviews without the assistance of a translator. While abroad her home base will be the Memorial Scientific Information and Enlightenment Center. Sarah's UNH mentor is history professor Cathy Frierson. Her foreign mentor, Irina Flige, will arrange for Sarah to interview ten Jewish women living in St. Petersburg and will provide support while she is in Russia.
