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Laurie S. Stoff, They Fought for the Motherland: Russia's Women Soldiers in World War I and the Revolution, Modern War Studies, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006, 294 pp. $34.95 (hb), ISBN 978-0-7006-1485-1
The field of gender and warfare has developed during the past two decades into one of the most innovative research areas in First World War studies. A large number of works has been published during this period on the subject of the 'home front', and ways in which manifold activities of women challenged - or not - the prevalent gendered divisions of society. Important work has been done also on the attempts to 'remasculinise' European societies after 1918. Yet, very little has been published so far on a group of Russian women soldiers (estimated at 6,000) who joined the army during the First World War and entered what was undoubtedly a most 'masculine' domain. Laurie Stoff's well-researched and thoughtfully-written monograph fills this historiographical lacuna and will undoubtedly become the standard work on Russia's women soldiers.
In contrast to other belligerent armies during the First World War, the Russian military permitted - albeit half-heartedly - a few thousand women to join combat units. During the first two years of the war an estimated four...