Julia Ioffe

“I understood that you have to protect the male ego very, very carefully, she explained. It’s delusional to think that a man needs some kind of exceptional woman. He needs a woman with whom he feels exceptional.”
― Julia Ioffe, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy

“These nigilistki, the nihilist women of the 1860s, were deadly serious about living their convictions. They wore their hair short and their dresses dark and plain because they didn’t want to be decorative objects. They studied and developed their minds and personalities and demanded respect from their male peers—often successfully. Preaching total freedom in love and sex, they wed their radical brethren in sham marriages to escape their parents’ control.12”
― Julia Ioffe, Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy – A National Book Award Finalist