Conclusion

This concluding chapter synthesizes the study&s;s findings on how the representation of women in wartime transformed—from patriarchal, male-authored constructs to self-fashioned identities in women&s;s fiction and autobiographical writing. The chapter emphasizes the development of military femininity as one of the most radical and unstable gender identities in Russian cultural history, emerging in times of crisis and fading with the restoration of patriarchal order. The study traces multiple forms of wartime femininity, from self-sacrificing nurses to women soldiers embodying “female masculinity.” The revolution of 1917 enabled the fusion of conventional femininity with features of masculinity resulting in an expanded femininity that postwar culture ultimately could not sustain. Instead, real female soldiers were symbolically erased or replaced by stylized, ideologically safe figures. The study concludes that military femininity, though suppressed in peacetime, remains a crucial lens for understanding gender disruptions in Russian cultural history.