Village Mothers: Three Generations of Change in Russia and Tataria

Village Mothers describes the reception of modern medical ideas and practices by three generations of Russian and Tatar village women in the 20th century. Using the village mothers’ own words, David L. Ransel shows how the women mediated the inherited beliefs of their families and communities, the claims of the state to control reproduction, and their personal desires for a better life. David L. Ransel is Robert F. Byrnes Professor of History and Director of the Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is author of Mothers of Misery: Child Abandonment in Russia, editor and translator of Village Life in Late Tsarist Russia by Olga Semyonova Tian-Shanskaia, and coeditor (with Jane Burbank) of Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire.