Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy

“An enthralling narrative that is both sweeping and intimate.” – New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

“Already a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction, this is a vivid, personal, and piercing account of broken promises and resilient courage.” – Boston Globe

“A riveting new history.” – Washington Post

“Motherland offers a fresh take on Russia’s turbulent 20th century and the shifting gender politics of its present.” – New York Times (Editors’ Choice)

“[Ioffe is] superbly placed to tell this story…Interspersed with flashes of memoir, family stories and journalistic encounters, the book acts as a gender-inflected primer on the past hundred years of Russian history…[Ioffe] writes with warmth, charisma and exuberance and is adept at zooming in and out, mixing precise personal detail with broad historical insights. Motherland is packed with data…Cleverly conceived and brilliantly executed.” – The Guardian

“Wide-ranging…Complex yet swift-moving.” – The New York Review of Books

“Ioffe—whose family fled the Soviet Union when she was a child—brings a unique personal and political perspective to this new book, which tells the story of promises made and broken to [Russia’s] women.” – Boston Globe

“Ioffe was born in Moscow and knows firsthand that, for example, when her mother started medical school in the 1970s, 70% of doctors in the Soviet Union were women. But what that government claimed to be a great feminist emancipation has not been a lasting one, and the author finds parallels to and warnings of what might happen in this country if women’s rights continue to be diminished.” – Los Angeles Times, “10 Books to Read in October”

“Motherland traces the arc of Russian womanhood from revolutionary emancipation to Putin’s patriarchal restoration. Through a series of scintillating portraits, [Ioffe] shows how post-Soviet machismo, endorsed by the Orthodox church, has turned submissiveness into a virtue again. Beside Russia’s new breed of dutiful tradwives, Mad Men’s Betty Draper looks like a suffragette.” – The Guardian

“By drawing on the country’s progressive tradition when it comes to women’s empowerment, Julia Ioffe makes a refreshing argument that a different Russia is possible…What makes Motherland distinct amid most of the recently published works on Russia is that Ioffe’s feminist history allows us to divorce Russia from Putin, Stalin and co and to imagine that a different Russia is possible. And in the moment in which we are living this is a major achievement.” – Financial Times

“In this impassioned history of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, as seen through the lives of women, Ioffe weaves together secondary historical sources, her Jewish family memories, and her experience as an American reporter in Russia.” – Foreign Affairs

“Zippy and sharp…Offers important lessons for the West.” – Foreign Policy

“Heartbreaking…Highly readable…An intimate history.” – The Arts Fuse

“Engrossing…[Ioffe] insists that history is not only made by the premiers but also by the women who lived under them, survived them and carried on. These juxtapositions are what make Motherland feel alive and a necessary read…What makes Motherland more than an excavation of the past is the light it sheds on the present.” – Ms. Magazine

“Ioffe’s own family history acts like a tributary to the main narrative, constantly nourishing it with a personal quality… She has turned her homesickness into an original and impassioned work.” – Washington Monthly

“The veteran journalist’s first book is a mongrel mixed from memoir, history and reportage, in which Ioffe’s own memories mingle with archival dives and on-the-ground conversations. What emerges is a portrait of Russia’s past and present, viewed from the fluctuating social and legal positions of its women.” – GBH

“Julia Ioffe has produced an absorbing, evocative history of women in Soviet and post-Soviet times through the lens of her own family.” – Survival

“Moth­er­land is a mov­ing, inci­sive, and ulti­mate­ly heart­break­ing account of the first and most ambi­tious attempt to engi­neer gen­der equal­i­ty, an exper­i­ment that end­ed in famil­iar fash­ion: with women uphold­ing a soci­ety that refus­es to return the favor.” – Jewish Book Council

“This kaleidoscopic volume from Ioffe, a finalist for this year’s National Book Award, combines memoir, journalism, and history to paint a nuanced portrait of modern Russia, all through the lens of womanhood.” – The Millions

“Ioffe expertly weaves her family’s personal history into a tapestry filled with female figures who loom large and small in the public domain…The result is a compelling narrative…Ioffe’s prose—steady, straightforward and unflinching—lets the stories tell themselves, no matter how painful.” – New York Post

“Motherland is deeply informative, assiduously researched and beautifully written—an exhilarating read.” – BookPage (starred review)

“Piercing . . . A pensive account of a revolution betrayed.” – Kirkus

“Ioffe debuts with a sharp critique of Russia’s treatment of women…It’s a rich analysis of Russian women’s lives across a century of political upheaval.” – Publishers Weekly

“A tour de force account of Russia’s tumultuous history through a unique lens. Ioffe tells the story behind the story: the courageous women who shaped Russia’s future and how their lives tragically reflected their country’s fate.” – Catherine Belton, New York Times bestselling author of Putin’s People

“Julia Ioffe, in her magnificent new book, asks how Russia, which gave rise to some of the world’s most radical feminist ideas in the early twentieth century, ended up as a bastion of traditional gender roles a hundred years later. From the Bolshevik feminists to the wives of Soviet leaders to her own Jewish great-grandmothers and their improbable survival, her story crackles with revolutionary action, the tragedy of missed opportunity, and brave struggles against authoritarianism. It is an urgent book for all of us.”  – Sabrina Tavernise, writer at large and former Moscow correspondent for The New York Times and former host of “The Daily”

“Julia Ioffe tracks the transformation of Russia from dictatorship to democracy and back again in sharp, engaging prose, telling the stories left out by so many others.”  – Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gulag and Red Famine

“Motherland is the most brilliant survey of Russian and Soviet women ever written. Women, the ‘draft horses of the economy,’ have been abused in every patriarchal way possible and yet somehow remain the only slim hope for the world’s most hopeless country. Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, Ioffe has produced a page-turner full of bittersweetness and humor.”  – Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story

“Julia Ioffe’s Motherland is a fierce, intimate reckoning: a century of Russian history told through the women who lived it, shaped it, and survived it—revolutionaries, snipers, doctors, dissidents, artists—women trying to be happy and fulfilled in the long, turbulent century.”  – Nadya Tolokonnikova, founder of Pussy Riot

“A masterful blend of history, reportage, and family memoir. A fascinating, captivating, and unforgettable read.”  – Ada Ferrer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Cuba: An American History

“Julia Ioffe’s Motherland is a brilliant retelling of the last century of Russian history through the eyes of the women who made it—and suffered through it. It’s also a passionate family memoir that explains how the United States ended up with this gifted writer as one of our own. The best book I’ve read this year.”  – Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker and coauthor of Kremlin Rising

“Julia Ioffe has given us a masterpiece! Motherland is at once epic and intensely intimate, devastating, inspiring, and always riveting. Ioffe brilliantly interweaves the lives of four generations of remarkable women in her own family with those of some of the most iconic individuals in the history of the Soviet Union—male and female. I could not put this extraordinary book down.”  – Lynn Novick, documentary filmmaker and codirector of The U.S. and the Holocaust and The Vietnam War

“The book of a lifetime.” – David Remnick, Editor of The New Yorker

JULIA IOFFE is a Russian-born American journalist. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New Republic, Politico, and The Atlantic. Ioffe has appeared on television programs on MSNBC, CBS, PBS, and other news channels as a Russia expert. She is a founding partner and Washington correspondent at Puck.