Authors

Discussion

Teenage girls are traditionally not seen as political actors — in general, and particularly in the context of Soviet history. Underrated as both adolescents and women, they were mostly ignored by those who explored the dissident movement and everyday dissent in the USSR. The diaries of teenage women who grew up in the 1950s-1980s univocally demonstrate that the lack of interest toward adolescent women in the studies of Soviet dissent is a mistake: these materials show that Soviet female teenagers were interested in politics and did not hesitate to share their keen observations of Soviet society and oppositional sentiments against the Soviet government. Some of them later participated in dissident activities and established independent women's organisations of the 1970s and 1980s. In the presentation, based on my PhD research, on the example of 4 diaries, I will discuss specific politicisation and female agency constructed in these ego documents. Using additional sources, such as official documents, expert discussions and publications in media, I will demonstrate that the type of women's agency we find in the diaries was partially built inside of the Soviet official discussion about youth and "women's issue:" the late Soviet norms and rules for girls and young women were strict, prudish and rigid; however, paradoxically, they at the same time created discursive conditions for girls' empowerment and resistance, and in the end, new pathways for female selfhood.