Deviant women

by Sharon A. Kowalsky

"After seizing power in 1917, the Bolsheviks initiated reforms aimed at abolishing the old way of life in Russia. A new Family Code liberalized marriage procedures, promoted communal living arrangements, and abolished the concept of illegitimacy ... The problem of female crime occupied a prominent position in criminologists' studies. In explaining 'traditional' female crimes of the domestic sphere - infanticide, spouse murder, and petty theft, among others - criminologists pointed to the offenders' backwardness and ignorance ... Deviant Women looks at the emergence of criminology in early Soviet Russia ... and highlighting the ways in which criminologists were able to conduct innovative social science research under the constraints of Bolshevik ideology ... Concluding with a close study of infanticide, the most 'typical' crime committed by women, Kowalsky discusses the social attitudes that were revealed in the professional discussion of this crime. Historians of modern Russia and the