Comparative analysis is a mode of research, that due to its outstanding merits is widely used within many fields of scientific inquiry. Focusing on its application in historical research, this article aims to contribute to a more systematic discussion of some of the methodological strategies associated with this mode of analysis. For this purpose, this article presents first a few typologies regarding the functions and leverages of comparative analysis. In the next step different styles in which comparative method is applied are exemplified, with especial attention paid to the comparative studies of large-scale, macro-level societal changes. This article ends then with a critical discussion of the potentials and limitations of comparison as a methodological strategy of generating historical generalisations.

Recent research on the conservative turn of post-Soviet Russia has paid attention to the revival of the so-called ‘traditional values’ promoted through the government’s pro-natalist family policy. A patriarchal view of women, and their roles in society, is nothing new: pre-revolutionary Russia was a patriarchal society, where women were considered first of all as wives and mothers; even the Soviet society was patriarchal in its attitude towards women, with the burdens of both paid work, outside the home, and domestic responsibilities. The chapter introduces the mnemonic actors, the mnemonic signifiers, and their connections to the history of female participation in revolutionary struggle and to the post-Soviet female political activism. According to the Soviet mnemonic pattern, the revolutionaries, regardless of sex, were driven by the political beliefs that they cherished. All female revolutionaries are represented as women with ‘natural’ female desires, who ended up in the wrong place because of personal circumstances.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian authorities were facing serious problems because of systematic political terrorism, which was mostly connected to the activities of the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries (the PSR). The most striking feature of that terrorism was that many of the terrorists were women – a feature that makes it justified to maintain that by taking part in political terrorism women entered the domains that in patriarchal societies were considered to be exclusively male: the domain of violence and the domain of politics. Such intrusion to the male territory was especially shocking for the traditional patriarchal society of pre-revolutionary Russia.Despite this striking feature however, systematic historical research on gendered representations of the Russian female terrorists at the beginning of the 20^th century is still in short supply whereas in other academic disciplines portrayals of women as agents of political violence are a frequent topic in the research on contemporary terrorism. To help fill up this void, the purpose of the article is by using the case of Maria Spiridonova, the most famous female terrorist in pre-revolutionary Russia, to see whether the conclusions made by non-historians about gendered representations of contemporary female terrorists can be used for historical research in order to identify eventual distortions in the representations of violent female agency in the past and, thus, obtain deeper knowledge about gender order in historical perspective

The article addresses uses of revolutionary history in the Russian protest art created during Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency (2008–2012) and reception of these uses. Since the protest art is considered by many as an arena where dissatisfaction with the ruling regime, expressed in the mass protests of the winter 2011–2012, was fueled, the article seeks to define whether the uses of revolutionary history have played a role in consolidation of those dissatisfied with the regime. Focusing on the protest artworks created by collectives Vojna and Pussy Riot, the article answers the question by using and developing Klas-Göran Karlsson’s ideas on functionality of the uses of history. The results show that although many recipients understood the meaning conveyed by the artists, the uses of revolutionary history were most of the time dysfunctional due to the existence of “antirevolutionary consensus” in the Russian society. The article offers new answers to the question as to why the protest art failed to engage the Russian society.

Representing revolutionary terrorists as heroes and martyrs was a typical feature of the mythology of the Russian revolutionary underground at the beginning of the 20^th century. This mythology described Underground Russia, the world of the revolutionaries, as an ideal country inhabited by ideal people. The purpose of that epos was to represent the revolutionary struggle, and individual revolutionaries in such a way that they would gain sympathy from the wider public and become role models for other revolutionary fighters. Sympathetic representations of women who committed political violence seem to be especially shocking in the context of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, since female violent behavior contradicted the existing gender order.

Employing theoretical perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis, gender history and intersectionality, the dissertation analyzes the way narratives about the individual life paths of female terrorists of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (the PSR), the biggest socialist party in Russia at the beginning of the 20^th century, were constructed in their revolutionary auto/biographies. It analyzes how the lives of women from different social and ethnic origins, of different ages, with different life paths, who happened to be united only by their participation in the political terrorism of the PSR, were recounted with the help of narratives used in the Russian revolutionary underground.

The research findings demonstrate that the accounts of the lives of female PSR terrorists were constructed with the help of the dominant narrative that was formed as a conversion story. Within the framework of that narrative, the lives of individual women were adapted to the dominant discourse of heroism and martyrdom, and at the same time were contextualized within the dominant discourse on “good” femininity that existed in the Russian society, and even within the discourse on Jews as perpetual “Others” in the Russian empire in case of Jewish women. Social and ethnic backgrounds as well as individual circumstances of the terrorist women, however, transformed the dominant narrative, and thus created diversity of representations. The discursive practice of writing a revolutionary life accepted by Bolsheviks influenced the discursive practice employed in revolutionary auto/biographies of female terrorists written during the early Soviet period.

The protests against election fraud in Russia in winter 2011–2012 were the first in the post-Soviet period that were attended by a united opposition, and attracted hundreds of thousands of previously apolitical citizens. This article seeks to explain mass participation in the protests by focusing on uses of the history of revolution and dissent in Russian protest art. The article investigates whether a common historical consciousness, which could have made it possible to unify previously fragmented opposition and mobilize previously apolitical citizens, was manifested in protest artworks created by artists with differing political ideologies. The conclusion is that the official historical narrative promoted by the state – of a spiritual unity between a strong state and the people – was challenged and undermined by protest artists, who have characterized Russian history as a continuous struggle between an oppressive state and civil society. This finding indicates that a common historical consciousness was manifested in protest artworks.

Many contemporary researchers of female violence claim that gender stereotypes dominate works about militant women. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the historical works about the Russian female terrorists in order to find out whether those stereotypes influence its contents and the scholars’ conclusions. Typology of the gender stereotypes that exist in the works about women terrorists is constructed in the article and used for the analysis of the historical literature. The article is concluded with the discussion about what is to be done in order to avoid the gender stereotypes and write a new balanced research on the topic.