Intelligence Squared

Julia Ioffe and Clarissa Ward on Putin, Russia and the Women Fighting For A Better Future (Part One)

January 11, 2026

Key Takeaways Copied to clipboard!

  • The Soviet emancipation of women, while granting access to education and professions like medicine, resulted in women being burdened with a second full-time job due to the state failing to collectivize domestic labor as promised. 
  • Key early Soviet feminist figures like Alexandra Kollontai, who championed revolutionary rights such as legal abortion (1920) and paid maternity leave, were quickly written out of official history by male Bolshevik leaders who discredited her ideas. 
  • The current Russian regime benefits from ignoring indigenous Russian feminist history, allowing them to frame feminism as a 'Western import' that threatens traditional Russian values, despite historical evidence of Soviet women serving in combat roles (e.g., fighter pilots and snipers) during WWII. 

Segments

Podcast Introduction and Book Context
Copied to clipboard!
(00:01:31)
  • Key Takeaway: Julia Ioffe’s book, Motherland, examines modern Russian history through the lives of its women, from revolutionaries to Pussy Riot members.
  • Summary: The episode of Intelligence Squared features Julia Ioffe discussing her book, Motherland, which was longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Non-Fiction. The book focuses on the women who shaped modern Russia, offering a different perspective on the country’s history. Clarissa Ward hosts the discussion, noting Ioffe’s 15 years of reporting on Putin’s regime.
Origin of the Book Concept
Copied to clipboard!
(00:04:02)
  • Key Takeaway: The book evolved from answering personal questions about ordinary yet extraordinary Soviet women and the shift toward hyper-femininity in modern Russian society.
  • Summary: Ioffe initially resisted writing a ‘women’s history,’ preferring a ‘serious’ topic, but was prompted by her agent to explore the extraordinary nature of her female relatives’ professional lives. She sought to understand the historical context behind the modern Russian phenomenon of women prioritizing extreme beauty standards and trophy wife status.
Soviet Women’s Professional Gains
Copied to clipboard!
(00:08:36)
  • Key Takeaway: Post-Bolshevik reforms, influenced by theorists like Alexandra Kollontai, provided unprecedented educational and professional access for women, including Jewish women from the Pale of Settlement.
  • Summary: Socialist theory advocated for women’s emancipation through economic independence and state support for childbearing. Kollontai pushed for revolutionary 1918 reforms including paid maternity leave and no-fault divorce, enabling women like Ioffe’s great-grandmothers to become doctors and chemists for free.
Researching Family History
Copied to clipboard!
(00:12:27)
  • Key Takeaway: Ioffe’s research relied on interviewing her surviving grandmothers and discovering hidden family documents, despite one grandmother being an unreliable narrator focused on painting an overly positive past.
  • Summary: Ioffe was able to interview both her grandmothers, who provided primary source material, including a diary and letters from a soldier killed at the front. She noted the challenge of reconciling her grandmother’s sanitized recollections of difficult periods, like wartime in Novosibirsk, with documented facts.
Kollontai’s Historical Erasure
Copied to clipboard!
(00:15:29)
  • Key Takeaway: Alexandra Kollontai, despite pioneering early women’s rights legislation, was quickly marginalized and her theories distorted by male Bolsheviks after Lenin’s death.
  • Summary: Kollontai is not celebrated in modern Russia because she was pushed out of power and her ideas were twisted; for example, her nuanced views on sex were reframed as the ‘glass of water theory’ to paint her as promiscuous. This erasure serves the current regime by allowing them to claim feminism is an alien Western import.
Indigenous Russian Feminism and WWII
Copied to clipboard!
(00:25:03)
  • Key Takeaway: Pre-Putin Soviet society fostered an indigenous form of female empowerment, evidenced by young women receiving paramilitary training and serving in combat roles during WWII.
  • Summary: Due to co-educational schooling emphasizing marksmanship and aviation, tens of thousands of young women volunteered for the military in 1941, serving as snipers, pilots, and artillery gunners. After the war, their contributions were suppressed, and their memoirs were not published, contrasting sharply with the West’s current debates over women in combat roles.
Femininity Shift Post-Soviet Era
Copied to clipboard!
(00:29:27)
  • Key Takeaway: The collapse of Soviet support systems led to a regression where women, still expected to work, reverted to prioritizing finding a wealthy man, exemplified by extreme beauty standards and specialized ‘husband-snaring’ academies.
  • Summary: Ioffe describes feeling like a ’third gender’ in Moscow due to the intense pressure on women to look like supermodels to secure a rich partner, a stark contrast to the Soviet era’s professional focus. This shift occurred because the state failed to deliver on promises of collectivized domestic support, leaving educated women exhausted by a second full-time job of housework.
Feminization of Professions
Copied to clipboard!
(00:38:00)
  • Key Takeaway: The feminization of a profession, such as medicine where 70% of Soviet doctors were women, resulted in lower prestige and remuneration compared to male-dominated tertiary care specialties.
  • Summary: While 70% of Soviet doctors were women, they were concentrated in lower-paid, less glamorous primary care roles like pediatrics and family medicine. Men dominated tertiary care specialties like surgery and oncology, earning commensurately more, illustrating that increased female participation does not automatically equate to equal status or pay.