ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses particularly on women's experiences of repression in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Early research into communist repression tended to adopt a 'top down' approach, analysing the causes, rationale, mechanisms, rise and decline of state-sponsored terror, and attempting to identify culpability for the actions of the various waves of the purges. Dalia Leinarte explores women's experiences arising from the deportation of more than 30,000 Lithuanian citizens initiated by the Soviet government in June 1941. Kelly Hignett sets out to challenge the under-representation in the existing historiography of women's experiences of repression in Czechoslovakia, drawing on published memoirs and oral testimonies to explore women's experiences in the years between 1948 and 1968. Corina Snitar explores the fate of Romanian female students and partisans who suffered repression through direct experiences of interrogation and detention, and through professional and social exclusion.
