Public lecture “The female face of peasant resistance”

On Thursday, March 6, we invite you to a public lecture by the leading researcher of the Holodomor Museum, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Natalia Romanets, “The Female Face of Peasant Resistance: The Role of Women in Mass Peasant Protests of the Era of Total Collectivisation and the Holodomor.”

One of the forms of peasant resistance during the era of complete collectivisation and the Holodomor was mass riots, in which women played the key role. In documents of that time, they called them differently: “bab’i bunty” (eng. women’s riots), protests, mutinies. According to incomplete data from the ODPU, in 1930, over 3,700 women’s mass demonstrations were recorded in the USSR. In all other riots, women constituted most or a significant part of the participants.

In Ukraine, women’s resistance was the most extensive: during February-March 1930, 2 thousand mass women’s demonstrations took place. For the Stalinist regime, the active participation of the “weak element” in the actions of resistance to “socialist transformations in the village” was an unpleasant surprise, which led to a long silence on this phenomenon. Representatives of the authorities, contemptuously calling the mass demonstrations of peasant women “bab’i bunty” sought to downplay their significance as actions of anti-collective farm resistance, depoliticise their essence, and prove the irrationality of the actions of their participants – supposedly “dark,” backward women who were guided exclusively by emotions.

However, in reality, the reasons and content of women’s resistance were different. As Canadian researcher Lynne Viola rightly notes, “peasant women’s protest was a direct response to the destructive policy of the state,” which threatened not only their well-being but also the existence of their families, as evidenced by the events of 1932–1933.

On the eve of International Women’s Day, historian Natalia Romanets will tell about this.

When: Thursday, March 6, at 4:00 PM

Where: Holodomor Museum Memorial Hall (3 Lavrska St.)

Cost: admission is the same as the museum ticket (30 UAH, students and pensioners – 20 UAH)

Please register to participate