Women with a Thirst for Destruction

In Russian culture, the archetypal mother is noble and self-sacrificing. In "Women with a Thirst for Destruction, " however, Jenny Kaminer shows how this image is destabilized during periods of dramatic rupture in Russian society, examining in detail the aftermath of three key moments in the country's history: the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the fall of the Communist regime in 1991. She explores works both familiar and relatively unexamined: Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina, " Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin's "The Golovlev Family, " Fyodor Gladkov's "Cement, " and Liudmila Petrushevskaia's "The Time: Night, " as well as a late Soviet film (Vyacheslav "Krishtofovich"'"s Adam's Rib, " 1990) and media coverage of the Chechen conflict. Kaminer's book speaks broadly to the mutability of seemingly established cultural norms in the face of political and social upheaval.