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Myrsiades, Linda S. 2002. Splitting the Baby: The Culture of Abortion in Literature and Law, Rhetoric and Cartoons. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. $32.95 hc. xi + 203 pp.Few topics have generated more heated discussion in recent decades than abortion, a central polemical issue in contemporary United States culture. What Linda Myrsiades offers us in Splitting the Baby is not polemic but perspective, one that seeks to analyze and to contextualize the abortion debate by viewing it through the multiple lenses of literature, law, rhetoric, and cartoons. It is a new and illuminating approach to a subject of considerable moral, political, and social significance.Myrsiades's first chapter, "The History and Tradition of Abortion Law," treads some familiar ground in examining the historical evolution of legal and medical positions on abortion. Yet her survey of the conflicting efforts to protect both the individual and society humanizes the legal and medical discussions that have historically affected women's abortion options. Revealing the clash of individual and institutional needs and desires around abortion, this chapter well illustrates the Hegelian notion of tragedy as the conflict of right against right."Rosaries v. Ovaries: The Rhetorics of Abortion" focuses on the language of debate between defenders of "choice" and defenders of "life." The chapter begins with a profile of the abortion and anti-abortion movements of the twentieth century, giving particular attention to the legal and political issues and images in the rhetorical arsenal of each camp. Of special interest here is Myrsiades's examination of selected public relations advertising campaigns, employed to construct the ramparts of battle, and what they reveal as well as conceal about the abortion wars. Directing her attention to evolving technology's transformative impact on the combatants' rhetoric, she observes that a reduction of hostilities may be in the offing. In her view, "The greater flexibility demonstrated in contemporary public relations ad campaigns suggests, indeed, that we may have arrived at a place where there is at least as much light as there is heat. We may be at the beginning of an understanding on both sides-at least in the more populous mainstream of the debate-of both core and overlapping values that can be discussed, tolerated, or shared" (74).In "Cartooning Crisis: Visualizing the Abortion Wars," Myrsiades illustrates another important artistic weapon in the abortion debate.. Drawing on the creative images of some of the United States' most prominent cartoonists, she presents an array of visual commentary on abortion-related events and legal issues taken up by the Supreme Court in the final three decades of the twentieth century. (It is unfortunate that the actual cartoons are not included.) Viewing these cartoons as a mechanism for communication as well as combat, the author reiterates her assertion that there may, in fact, be a chance for accommodation between the two sides. In her assessment, the humor and irony of abortion wars cartoons ultimately serve to defuse tensions by helping to dislodge fixed notions on both sides of the conflict.In "The Poetry of Abortion," Myrsiades views abortion and its effects, issues of women's identity, and the male perspective in the mirror of contemporary poetry. …

Journalism has long been a major factor in defining the opinions of Russia’s literate classes. Although women participated in nearly every aspect of the journalistic process during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, female editors, publishers, and writers have been consistently omitted from the history of journalism in Imperial Russia. An Improper Profession offers a more complete and accurate picture of this history by examining the work of these under-appreciated professionals and showing how their involvement helped to formulate public opinion. In this collection, contributors explore how early women journalists contributed to changing cultural understandings of women’s roles, as well as how class and gender politics meshed in the work of particular individuals. They also examine how female journalists adapted to—or challenged—censorship as political structures in Russia shifted. Over the course of this volume, contributors discuss the attitudes of female Russian journalists toward socialism, Russian nationalism, anti-Semitism, women’s rights, and suffrage. Covering the period from the early 1800s to 1917, this collection includes essays that draw from archival as well as published materials and that range from biography to literary and historical analysis of journalistic diaries. By disrupting conventional ideas about journalism and gender in late Imperial Russia, An Improper Profession should be of vital interest to scholars of women’s history, journalism, and Russian history. Contributors. Linda Harriet Edmondson, June Pachuta Farris, Jehanne M Gheith, Adele Lindenmeyr, Carolyn Marks, Barbara T. Norton, Miranda Beaven Remnek, Christine Ruane, Rochelle Ruthchild, Mary Zirin

The events of February-March 1917 that ended the 300 year reign of the Romanov dynasty and brought democratic government to Russia have traditionally been viewed as a popular revolution. At the forefront of these events, according to this view, were the workers and soldiers of Petrograd, Russia’s capital, whose actions toppled the regime of Nicholas II and spurred the formation of the Provisional Government. Not yet confident of their ability to govern the nation, the workers and soldiers entrusted this task to representatives of the country’s propertied classes who organised the Provisional Government in a spontaneous response to the collapse of the monarchy. To ensure that the new government represented the will of the people, so this interpretation runs, the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies forced it to adopt a radically democratic program significantly at odds with the government’s own moderate inclinations.’ In the words of one adherent of this view, the members of the Provisional Government ‘were the creations of the Revolution rather than active participants in it’.2 In the more than seven decades that have passed since the February Revolution, few historians have challenged this interpretation of the establishment of democracy in Russia in 1917.3 Yet the traditional view is inadequate in a number of respects. This study will briefly examine the circumstances surrounding the formation of the Provisional Government to suggest, first, that this government was not a completely spontaneous creation of the Revolution and, second, that the politicians who constituted the government were themselves responsible for the formulation of its broadly democratic program.4 The history of Russia on the eve of the 1917 Revolution leaves no doubt that popular discontent, often expressed in spontaneous, public outbursts, was responsible for creating the situation that would give rise to the formation ofthe Provisional Government on 2 March 1917. Russia’s entry into World War I had placed severe strains on the country’s still backward economy. The patriotic support that greeted the outbreak of war in 1914 had quickly turned to generalised discontent in the face of mounting hardships and deprivations. Food shortgages were chronic, and rapid inflation compounded the country’s misery. By the summer of 1915, the war weariness, anger and despair of the masses had begun to manifest themselves in public demonstrations of popular discontent. Most frequently these took the form of workers’ strikes.s In the summer of 1916, the strikes had reached an intensity not seen since the tumultuous pre-war years and, despite a brief hiatus at the end of the year, by

SUMMARYHistorians have traditionally overlooked the role of women in Russian Social Democracy. This article, based on archival as well as published sources, examines the radicalization of E.D. Kuskova (1860–1958), a long neglected participant in the Russian Marxist movement during its formative years.Kuskova was attracted to radicalism by its promise of a fulfilling life of service to society, and as an escape from the traditional, confining roles for women in prerevo-lutionary Russia. She came to Social Democracy after concluding that it provided a more satisfactory Weltanschauung and a more accurate diagnosis of Russia's socio-economic ills than did its ideological alternatives.

Few problems in modern Russian history are more complex or more bewildering than that of political Masonry (politicheskoe masonstvo) and its contribution to early-twentieth-century oppositional politics. A decade and a half ago Nathan Smith observed that “Available firsthand evidence about the [political Masonic] movement […] is incredibly limited and raises as many questions as it answers.” That observation is still valid as the origins, structure, composition and activities of the conspiratorial political Masonic organization remain among the best-kept secrets of Russia's past. Indeed, political Masonry was first mentioned in the historiography on the February Revolution only in the early 1930's. Then, for nearly three decades, scholars simply ignored the problem altogether. This was partially due to a paucity of sources; but equally important was the fact that the subject conjured up images of that pernicious Jewish-Masonicconspiracy theory so popular among right-wing émigré circles. During the 1960's historians once again turned their attention to political Masonry, although infrequently and usually only in passing. Since that time a number of treatments have appeared, yet none takes account of all the available evidence. Moreover, many historians continue to reject out of hand all efforts to deal with political Masonry, dismissing them as attempts to perpetuate the Jewish-Masonic-conspiracy myth, while other scholars reject the suggestion that the political Masonic organization played a crucial role in the overthrow of the Russian Monarchy and the establishment of the Provisional Government in 1917.