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Book Review Marta Bohachevska. Duma Ukrainy — zhinochoho rodu. Kyiv: Vydavnytsvo "Voskresinnia," 1993. 110 pp. Marla Bohachevska (Bohachevsky- Chomiak) is a true pioneer in Ukrainian women's history. Her Feminists despite Themselves: Women in Ukrainian Community Life , 1884-1939 (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1988), upon which this shorter book is based, alerted Western historians of Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Russia/the Soviet Union and feminist scholars to the importance of the relationship between nationalism and feminism. In particular, she challenged scholars of Ukraine to abandon the negative preoccupation with Ukraine's statelessness for much of its history in favour of the positive ways in which nationalism empowered women, providing them with the opportunities to organize themselves and fight for basic human rights for both men and women. Writing much-needed compensatory history, Bohachevska has unearthed Ukrainian women activists who in the late nineteenth century and before World War II organized women for the promotion of Ukrainian culture, language, literacy, economic betterment, and civil and legal rights for all Ukrainian women and men. It is her characterization of such activities as examples of pragmatic feminism that is troubling to feminist scholars who are much more comfortable viewing these actions as reflective of pre-feminist political engagement. The beautifully written, slimmer Ukrainian volume under review has a variety of purposes, all of which are intended to raise the historical consciousness of Ukrainians in contemporary independent Ukraine. Bohachevska wishes not only to educate Ukrainians about the important role that women have played along the tortuous path to nation-building, but also to impress upon them that the history of Ukraine cannot be artificially separated from the experiences of half of the population. While invisible from official documents, activist women participated in all the political, economic and social changes of their nation, divided as it was among various powers. Cognizant of the detrimental effect of Marxism-Leninism on the historical discipline in Soviet Ukraine, Bohachevska continually reminds her readers of the distortions that ideology can create. More importantly, she uses the initial pages of this volume to present an accessible historiographical discussion of the value of social history in uncovering the layers of society that existed below the political and social elites. Since, according to Bohachevska, Ukraine owes its origins to its own communities and community organizations rather than to a government or bureaucracy, those entities merit study. The history of women's organizations, she convincingly argues, is an integral part of this history. At the same time, Bohachevska implicitly seeks to debunk the stigma that feminism has acquired in contemporary Ukraine because of its association with communism and the belief that feminist goals have been achieved through the double burden. In order to convince her suspicious readers of feminism's value, she plays down Western feminism's demands for women’s equality in all areas of life by arguing that feminism seeks to improve life for both men and women. Finally, in the conclusion, Bohachevska sets an agenda for historians to look at other women in Ukraine's history, including the princesses of ancient Rus' and prominent aristocratic women, and at such issues as women's historical and legal and marital rights and women's roles in religious philanthropy and education in the Cossack period. Using Ukrainian cutwork embroidery of white threads upon white cloth as a metaphor for the history of Ukrainian society, Bohachevska effectively illuminates the creative role that women played In the creation of community and ultimately a free nation state. While largely invisible in the historical record, their story can nevertheless be reconstructed from a patient digging through a variety of sources in the archives and published record. Thus Ukrainians will learn about the activities of the nationalist Olena Pchilka, the socialist feminist Nataliia Ozarkevych Kobrynska, and Milena Rudnytska, the founder of the Western Ukrainian Union of Women, among others. And they will be reminded that the nationalism of Ukrainian women's organizations between 1884 and 1939 was founded on democratic and tolerant principles. Reprinted from the Journal of Ukrainian Studies (Summer-Winter 1996, 256-257) ’’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛИСТОПАД 1997 17
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