Authors
Irina Paert1; 1 University of Tartu, Estonia Discussion
Laurie Manchester has lamented that the wives and daughters of Russian clergymen have been overlooked because, unlike Russian noblewomen, they did not leave behind easily accessible personal texts. In this paper I would like to explore the world of the Russian Orthodox women (daughters of the Russian Orthodox priests) in the Baltic at the turn of the century. The shift from the social identity defined by estate to modern professional identities affected the clergy’s daughters in a similar, or even more profound, way that that of the sons. Their selfhood became defined through profession, friendship, and a search of sexual satisfaction. While the documents that shed the light on the life of these women are largely lacking, access to a family archive of the Baltic priests (Bezhanitskiis and Rajevskiis) gives us a rare opportunity. We will compare the generation of the clergy’s daughters born in the 1860-70s to the new generation born in the 1880s who came of age during the time of women’s access to higher education, professions, and radical politics. Not only we can trace professional careers of these women but also their personal stories. To what extent did the Orthodox background affect these women’s stories of personal and social emancipation? How did the relationship with their clerical fathers/brothers or husbands shape these women? 
