#009 - Service and Domesticity in the Soviet Union with Alissa Klots

In this episode of The Long View, historian Alissa Klots discusses her book Domestic Service in the Soviet Union: Women’s Emancipation and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor.

Rather than portraying domestic labor simply as a vestige of inequality, Klots explores how it functioned differently within the Soviet system. Women were not confined to service roles. They could and often did move between domestic work, factory employment, and other sectors of the socialist economy. Domestic labor could offer income, mobility, and forms of agency within a broader framework of state-driven emancipation.

This conversation examines:

• How domestic service operated under socialism

• Women’s labor mobility and economic opportunity

• The gendered hierarchy of work in Soviet society

• What everyday labor reveals about power and social structure

A nuanced discussion of gender, work, and agency in the Soviet Union.