Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy – A National Book Award Finalist

Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy – A National Book Award Finalist

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NAMED ONE OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2025 BY THE WASHINGTON POST NAMED ONE OF THE 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF 2025 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2025 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF FALL 2025 BY ELLE ONE OF CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY'S MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2025 Acclaimed journalist Julia Ioffe tells the story of modern Russia through the history of its women, from revolution to utopia to autocracy. In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow—only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up—doctors, engineers, scientists—seemed to have been replaced by women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to becoming a bastion of conservative Christian values? In Motherland , Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women. From her own physician great-grandmothers to Lenin’s lover, a feminist revolutionary; from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet girls who fought in World War II to the millions of single mothers who rebuilt and repopulated a devastated country; from the members of Pussy Riot to Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, Ioffe chronicles one of the most audacious social experiments in history and documents how it failed the very women it was meant to liberate—and how that failure paved the way for the revanche of Vladimir Putin. Part memoir, part journalistic exploration, part history, Motherland paints a portrait of modern Russia through the women who shaped it. With deep emotion, Ioffe reveals what it means to live through the cataclysms of revolution, war, idealism, and heartbreak—and how the story of Russia today is inextricably tied to the sacrifices of its women. “An enthralling narrative that is both sweeping and intimate.” - New York Times (Editors’ Choice) “Already a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction, this is a vivid, personal, and piercing account of broken promises and resilient courage." - Boston Globe “A riveting new history.” - Washington Post “ Motherland offers a fresh take on Russia’s turbulent 20th century and the shifting gender politics of its present.” - New York Times (Editors’ Choice) “[Ioffe is] superbly placed to tell this story...Interspersed with flashes of memoir, family stories and journalistic encounters, the book acts as a gender-inflected primer on the past hundred years of Russian history...[Ioffe] writes with warmth, charisma and exuberance and is adept at zooming in and out, mixing precise personal detail with broad historical insights. Motherland is packed with data...Cleverly conceived and brilliantly executed.” - The Guardian “Wide-ranging...Complex yet swift-moving.” - The New York Review of Books “Ioffe—whose family fled the Soviet Union when she was a child—brings a unique personal and political perspective to this new book, which tells the story of promises made and broken to [Russia’s] women.” - Boston Globe “Ioffe was born in Moscow and knows firsthand that, for example, when her mother started medical school in the 1970s, 70% of doctors in the Soviet Union were women. But what that government claimed to be a great feminist emancipation has not been a lasting one, and the author finds parallels to and warnings of what might happen in this country if women’s rights continue to be diminished.” - Los Angeles Times, “10 Books to Read in October” “ Motherland traces the arc of Russian womanhood from revolutionary emancipation to Putin’s patriarchal restoration. Through a series of scintillating portraits, [Ioffe] shows how post-Soviet machismo, endorsed by the Orthodox church, has turned submissiveness into a virtue again. Beside Russia’s new breed of dutiful tradwives, Mad Men ’s Betty Draper looks like a suffragette.” - The Guardian “By drawing on the country’s progressive tradition when it comes to women’s empowerment, Julia Ioffe makes a refreshing argument that a different Russia is possible...What makes Motherland distinct amid most of the recently published works on Russia is that Ioffe’s feminist history allows us to divorce Russia from Putin, Stalin and co and to imagine that a different Russia is possible. And in the moment in which we are living this is a major achievement.” - Financial Times “ Moth­er­land is a mov­ing, inci­sive, and ulti­mate­ly heart­break­ing account of the first and most ambi­tious attempt to engi­neer gen­der equal­i­ty, an exper­i­ment that end­ed in famil­iar fash­ion: with women uphold­ing a soci­ety that refus­es to return the favor.” - Jewish Book Council “This kaleidoscopic volume from Ioffe, a finalist for this year’s National Book Award, combines memoir, journalism, and history to pai