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Dancing on the Volcano. The (Anti)heroic Femininity of Agnessa Mironova

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2021

Abstract

The memories of Agnessa Mironova, wife of Sergei Mironov, a high-ranking Stalin's officer, oscillate between prose and autobiography. Recorded by the oral historian Mira Yakovenko, they show a specific, apolitical strategy of femininity that allowed Mironova to rise among the regime's elite as well as to survive in the Karaganda gulag.

This essay on forms of (anti)heroic testimony is accompanied by an extensive excerpt from the forthcoming book Agnessa, which the author of the essay has editorially prepared.