On 26 February, NYU Prague will host a talk by Julia Mickenberg on the Russian Revolution in American Feminism, 1905 – 1945.

Many of us have heard about the vogue of Paris and France after the First World War, but few know about the exodus to Moscow and the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, or the particular appeal of revolutionary Russia to American women in revolt. In fact, by the early 1930s, so many “American girls” had come “barging into the Red capital” in search of jobs, adventures, or husbands, that news articles were being published on the subject. This talk will provide an overview of American women’s love affair with Russia from 1905 to 1945: from their admiration and empathy for the female revolutionaries who challenged the Czar; to their attempts to re-envision domestic life, romantic relationships, and work using Soviet models; to their efforts to embody and perform revolutionary selves in a context supposedly free of racism and anti-Semitism. A century after the Russian Revolution, what does the forgotten story of “American Girls in Red Russia” tell us about where we’ve been and who we are now?