This book will open up your political imagination in a way that brings new understanding of the private and public lives of women ageing in Russia.The Babushka Phenomenon is a term used to describe the post-professional and post-sexual older woman, "not simply a grandmother" who adopts, performatively, "the position of a socially old member of society" (Staiger & Zusi in Shadrina 2025: vii).By relying on the testimony of women who might fit this category, the book foregrounds the lived experience of one of the most socially marginalised groups in Russian society.The women's experiences of heading matrifocal families, and of living in a society which is constantly affected by war and the loss of men from family life, are eloquently expressed through seven chapters.At times, the book reads more like a novel than an academic text, luring the reader inside the homes of older women who, having survived Soviet Russia, now find themselves isolated and alone in an unrecognisable post-Soviet world.
Gemma M. Carney (Tue,) studied this question.