Synthesizing decades of scholarship with her own work in primary and archival sources, Barbara Alpern Engel skillfully evokes the voices of individuals to enliven the account. The book captures the diversity of women’s lives, detailing how women of various social strata were affected by and shaped historical change. Adopting the perspective of women provides fresh interpretations of Russia’s past and important insights into the impact of gender on the ways that Russians defined themselves and others and imagined political change. Designed for a scholarly as well as popular readership, the book integrates women’s experience into broader developments in Russia’s social, economic, cultural and political history.