Beyond ‘A Male Dominated Society’: Interrogating the Concept of Patriarchy in Russia and the USSR

Big words with big meanings are powerful – if you know how to use them.

Among the biggest, and most frequently used, of these words I’ve found students using is ‘patriarchy’. Behind the word lies a highly complex concept, which students tend to reduce to the startling simple formula of ‘a male dominated society’.

Like all simple formulas, this has a very large element of truth to it. Like all simple formulas, it also overlooks the inherent complexity of the concept.

From the perspective of Russian and Soviet history, what did patriarchy look like in practice? Here, I’ll pick up on three elements of a dynamic patriarchal society that come through clearly in this context.

Spoken Dictionary and Pronunciation Guide

“Saying it right” is a particular challenge for teachers of Russian and Soviet History.

However familiar we are with the content and concepts of this area of study, the language – from people and places to the names of individuals and organisations, belief systems, and ideas – can often seem alien.

The purpose of this spoken dictionary and pronunciation guide is to provide teachers with accessible and accurate pronunciations for that language.

It comprises over 200 words, giving a brief definition and anglicised and Russian pronunciations for each.

The Substantive Concepts of Modern Russian and Soviet History

A few years ago, Michael Fordham led an online project to quantify the substantive concepts students should know by the end of KS2 and KS3. The result was a list of several dozen recurring concepts, ranging from Absolute Monarchy to Working Class.

Fordham’s approach to substantive concepts, which he subsequently developed in a brilliant chapter in MasterClass in History Education: Transforming Teaching and Learning (eds. Counsell, Burn, and Chapman, 2016), focused on terms that describe recurring phenomena across and through periods of history. These, he argued, quoting Ashby and Lee, make up “the content of history, what history is ‘about’.”