Introduction

Until the 1980s, Russian women's fiction often lacked bite: It tended to settle for politically safe themes, unmemorable character portrayal, plotlines that neither intrigued nor challenged the reader, and a rather flaccid style of fatigued realism. With a few memorable exceptions, such as Natalya Baranskaya's A Day Like Any Other (1969), I. Grekova's "Ladies Hairdresser" (1963), Galina Scherbakova's "Wall" (1979), and several mildly ironic stories by Viktoria Tokareva, that fiction coasted along largely unnoticed. Its docility paralleled women's tacit accommodation with their unacknowledged status as second-class citizens in a society falsely advertising itself as gender-democratic.