164 Reviews

depicts a heart enclosed by a hammer and sickle with the initials of

Townsend Warner and her partner Valentine Ackland (p91). For anyone
interested in how these symbolised concepts related to one another –
namely sexual and communist revolution – Queer Communism makes
for an engaging and rewarding read.

Maurice J. Casey, DFA Historian-in-Residence at EPIC,

The Irish Emigration Museum in Dublin.

Notes
1 Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, International Communism and the Spanish Civil
War: Solidarity and Suspicion, Cambridge 2015; and Brigitte Studer,
The Transnational World of the Cominternians, Basingstoke, 2015.

Kristen R. Ghodsee, Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism:

And Other Arguments for Economic Independence, Penguin Random
House, 2019, ISBN: 9781847925596, 240pp

The failed experiments of state socialism in Eastern Europe during the

twentieth century have provided a strong argument for the enthusiasts of
the free market economy, while they have inflicted a sense of culpability
on those who want to challenge neoliberalism. Three decades after the
fall of communism, this notion that those who support socialism are
somehow responsible for the atrocities committed under communism
remains popular. It has been masterfully and systematically culti-
vated by high school curricula and the media, especially in countries
where anti-communism remains a structural element of the official
state ideology, such as in the United States. In order to challenge anti-
communist narratives of twentieth-century history, Kristen R. Ghodsee,
professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of
Pennsylvania, has spent many years in countries that were behind the
Iron Curtain. She has studied the transition of Eastern European socie-
ties from state socialism to capitalism and, through this book, aims to

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 Anastasia Koukouna 165

challenge some of the hegemonic neoliberal arguments that perpetuate

women’s double burden. She prompts her readers to re-examine what
they learned in school about twentieth-century communism, to learn
from past mistakes, and to draw useful conclusions from the experiment
of state socialism in Eastern Europe.
With the catchy title Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism,
Kristen Ghodsee offers an accessible book on why ‘unregulated capi-
talism is bad for women’ and why socialism can lead ‘to economic
independence, better labour conditions, better work/family balance,
and, yes, even better sex’. Ghodsee compares the sexual life of women
in Eastern European countries with those of women in powerful capi-
talist countries such as the United States and West Germany. Based
on findings in previous research, the author argues that the massive
mobilisation of women into the labour force, and the creation of solid
networks protecting motherhood and childcare, to a great extent,
freed women living under state socialism. To gain material security,
women did not need to have sexual relations, or to find a husband. In
making her argument, Ghodsee does not embellish conditions in the
Soviet Union and the Eastern European people’s republics, or ignore
the setbacks that distorted the vision of female revolutionaries such as
Alexandra Kollontai or Nadezhda Krupskaya; instead, her point is, at
its most basic, that gender equality in emotional and sexual relations
cannot be achieved without the economic independence of women. To
support this argument, the author uses expressive examples familiar to
most of her readers, which she draws from her personal circle of friends
and acquaintances. Ghodsee also writes about how the transition to
a free-market economy worsened the position of women in Eastern
European countries. A typical example was the founding of so-called
‘gold digger’ academies in post-communist Russia, where young Russian
women learn the precise tactics of being a successful ‘gold digger’, which
has become a coveted career for Russia’s most beautiful women.
The book is mainly addressed to a younger generation of Americans
who experienced the resurgence of ultraconservative and misogynistic
views during the Trump administration. This explains also why Ghodsee
often moves beyond the historical experience of state socialism to the
subordinate and precarious position of women in the United States.

Twentieth Century Communism – Issue 20

166 Reviews

There, Ghodsee explains, as in most capitalist countries, various vicious

circles prevent women from claiming leadership positions in economics
and politics. Most of them are forced to submit their sexuality to the
dispositions of partners or husbands in exchange for material benefits
that would be provided for by the welfare state in other countries.
Ghodsee’s book has already been translated into several languages
and certainly fulfils its pedagogical goal. It is an introduction to the
women’s issue, enriched with eloquent quotes from intellectuals and
political figures who have linked women’s emancipation to socialism,
such as Friedrich Engels and Clara Zetkin. Nevertheless, sexual pleasure
is a complex question not merely related to economic and social issues,
but also connected to cultural and individual aspects. In this book, the
author largely overlooks the cultural realities – such as the role of reli-
gion and local traditions – that significantly influence both the sexual
behaviour of people and society’s prevailing views on female sexuality.
Like many other anti-neoliberal intellectuals, Ghodsee is unable to
present a concrete political and social model that would replace neolib-
eral capitalism. Although she convincingly describes the factors that
limit women to a subordinate position in modern capitalist societies, the
democratic socialism she invokes is rather vague. The author’s defini-
tion of democratic socialism is so loose that it includes everything from
Clement Attlee’s Labour Party that ruled Britain during the first years
of the Cold War, to the capitalist model of development with a strong
welfare state in the Nordic countries, the Syriza party that ruled Greece
between 2015 and 2019 and Podemos, which since November 2019 has,
in coalition with the Spanish Socialist Party, participated in the govern-
ment of Spain. Of course, for Ghodsee the forefront of democratic
socialism includes Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, but it could also
include Hillary Clinton when the logic of the lesser evil is applied. In
the last pages of her book, Ghodsee explains that certain economic and
social reforms within the existing economic system are much preferable
to an overthrow of capitalism, which ‘would have massive global reper-
cussions and cause widespread human suffering to many of the same
people who would ultimately benefit from its demise’. In this sense,
the title of Ghodsee’s book could also be Why Women Have Better Sex
Under a Better Capitalism. Considering the author’s vague ideas about

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 Barbara C. Allen 167

democratic socialism, it remains unclear what kind of reforms would put

an end to the unemployment, insecurity and inequality that are inherent
elements of capitalist development itself. Are the tools of liberal democ-
racies, such as quotas, as the author argues, capable of paving the way for
the emancipation of all women – including, for example, immigrants,
who, in many capitalist countries, constitute a large part of the most
savagely exploited working class?

Anastasia Koukouna, University of Lausanne

Maria Lafont, The Strange Comrade Balabanoff. The Life of a

Communist Rebel, Jefferson NC: McFarland & Co, 2016, 244 pp,
ISBN 978-0-78649878-9

Curiosity about Angelica Balabanoff’s adventurous life and her relation-

ships with prominent men such as Vladimir Lenin and Benito Mussolini
drove Maria Lafont to research and write this biography of her. Lafont is
not an academic historian and she does not pursue a political biography
of Balabanoff, nor does she place her life in historiographical context.
Nevertheless, her lively writing style creates a picture of people and
places that make her book an engaging read.
Although she left published memoirs, Balabanoff has not been
the subject of a scholarly biography. Starting with these, which have
large chronological gaps, Lafont traces Balabanoff’s life journey. She
compares her memories to sources from more than thirty archives and
libraries in eleven countries, as well as drawing on interviews. Lafont
visited some of these places, but did not personally conduct research in
all the archives from which she has acquired materials.
Balabanoff spoke thirteen languages. Most of Lafont’s sources are
in Italian, French, English, German and Russian. Sources include
Balabanoff’s unpublished memoirs of childhood, her correspondence,
police reports, newspaper articles and government documents. Some
parts of Balabanoff’s life, such as her childhood and youth, are docu-

Twentieth Century Communism – Issue 20