The past decade has seen tumultuous change. The Soviet empire in Eastern Europe came to an end after ‘revolutions’ in 1989, themselves the result of Gorbachev's encouragement of economic and political reforms in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic and Romania. Germany was reunified, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) disintegrated and a shaky Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) was born. The process of perestroika instigated ‘from above’ by Mikhail Gorbachev after he became general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1985 was far-reaching for Soviet citizens, for East Europeans and for the world. Gorbachev may not have intended many of its most far-reaching consequences, but once confronted by them he was forced by the weight of historical demands ‘from below’ to concede them.

Numerous textbooks have analysed the changes and continuities of the Soviet state. Likewise, the history of perestroika and glasnost has, by now, been well told. Their relevance to gender has received sufficient attention, although generally from female scholars still plugging the gaps left in conventional monographs. Quite what to make of gender in chaotic transitions, from state socialism to new systems trying to adopt market mechanisms, is more hazardous.

All former Soviet republics are in periods of state building, but despite changes in economic and political direction, institutions of the past have not been shattered. Indeed, charges have been made that old bureaucracies are as secure as before and mushrooming, even though fresh legislatures have been elected.