Gendered Bodies on Trial: Exploring Litigation Strategies in the Early Soviet People’s Court

P. 213–226.

Vasilyev P.

Translator: M. Whittle

This chapter is based on relatively understudied criminal case files from the archive of the People’s Courts of the city of Petrograd from 1917 to 1922, which were transferred to the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg (TsGA SPb) from the Leningrad Region State Archive in Vyborg (LOGAV) during the second half of the 2000s. Focusing primarily on one especially notable criminal case in 1920, I seek to trace what role gender-coded emotions played in criminal procedure during the revolutionary period and how defendants used them for the affirmation, performance, and negotiation of their identities. Utilizing a case-study approach, I offer the reader a reconstruction of an early Soviet courtroom and emphasize the significance of physical mutilation, emotional suffering, and material deprivation for our understanding of gender and gender identity in Russia during the Civil War period.

Keywords: Russian Civil War, маскулинность, Гражданская война в России, masculinity, народный суд, people's court

In book

Volume 10: Women and Gender in Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914-22

Bloomington: Slavica, 2022.