Description
A debate about epistemic violence among feminist scholars and how it impedes genuine transnational feminist solidarity has been reinvigorated since Russia’s moral-conservative nationalism culminated in a full-scale invasion. Many scholars from Ukraine and Central Eastern Europe have addressed their feminist homologues in “the West” to point out that key feminist principles like anti-imperialism, intersectionality and centering the voices of those affected, were not applied in the case of Russia’s aggression.
For any potential future cross-border solidarity between Russian and Ukrainian feminists to have a chance, this reflection would also need to take place among Russian feminists. I thus ask in this paper whether this debate has travelled to Russia; I wonder whether Russian feminists have - as an extension of the usual West-East transnational feminist discussion - enquired East-East power relations and their imperial history.
As an empirical basis I compare two cases of Russian feminist activism: the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAS) and The Way Home. In particular, I look at manifestos they published (and their responses in the West and in Ukraine), the self-published FAS magazine “Woman’s Truth”, the groups’ telegram channels and triangulate this with six interviews with feminist activists I conducted in the first year of the full-scale invasion.
I find that while FAS shows a consciousness of the debate the attempts at critical self-reflection are limited, while The Way Home does not even acknowledge the issue. I finish with an assessment of the prospects of future transnational solidarity in the region.
