Reviews
from Social History:
“In Citizen Countess, Adele Lindenmeyr centres this fascinating character in the history of late imperial and revolutionary Russia, as well as within broader histories of philanthropy and women’s political activism. In this exceptionally well-researched monograph, Lindenmeyr draws on correspondence, personal papers, newspapers, and police and institutional records from archives and libraries in Russia, France, Great Britain and the United States, as well as a wealth of published and unpublished autobiographical manuscripts, to provide a rigorous, sensitive and highly engaging study of her subject… Overall, Citizen Countess provides a fresh and vital perspective on late imperial and revolutionary Russia told through the eyes of a witness and participant. This important book will be enjoyed by students, scholars and anybody with an interest in the history of this turbulent period.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epub/10.1080/03071022.2021.1851525?needAccess=true&
from The Russian Review:
"Adele Lindenmeyr has produced an excellent biography of Sofia Panina. Her dedication to uncovering sources about Panina, whose name tends to be mentioned only in passing in histories of the Revolution, led to a discovery of caches of personal materials belonging to the countess which until this point were unknown…. Lindenmeyr’s biography has brought Panina’s sun out from the clouds of historical obscurity, but has also shone its on light on numerous other impressive figures who inhabited Panina’s world and deserve further historical study in their own right."
from The Moscow Times:
"Dr. Adele Lindenmeyr Brings This Amazing Story to Life"
"As an advocate for the working class, the world’s first female cabinet minister and an unapologetic feminist in revolutionary Russia, Countess Sofia Panina was a trailblazing figure in a time of dramatic social upheaval. Now, 100 years after her adopted home of the United States gave women the right to vote, the fascinating life story of "Russia's Jane Addams" has been told in full detail for the first time.
“Citizen Countess” follows Panina’s journey from her upbringing in an aristocratic Russian family to her philanthropy and political office to eventual imprisonment as a “class enemy” and forced emigration abroad. The book weaves through the many contradictions of her life, painting a nuanced portrait of a woman who was at once an aristocrat and a progressive; the first woman in the world to hold a cabinet position and the first political prisoner to face the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary tribunal.
“Her life documents the successful struggle of so many women in the modern era to emancipate themselves from restrictive class and gender norms,” says Dr. Adele Lindenmeyr, Panina’s biographer, an expert in Russian history and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Villanova University. The Moscow Times spoke with Dr. Lindenmeyr about the citizen countess herself and what women of today can learn from her story."
from Jeff Fleischer of Forward Reviews:
"Sofia Panina’s life was full of interesting intersections. A countess born into wealth, she became a popular political figure, only to run afoul of the Bolshevik government. Adele Lindenmeyr’s biography of Sofia Panina, Citizen Countess, focuses on how Panina was often torn between competing forces.
In her childhood, Panina’s grandmother made an effort to separate Panina and her inherited fortune from her politically active mother, educating her at a top boarding school. Her education and connections led her to open the Ligovsky People’s House, the hub for various charity efforts on behalf of the working class, from promoting education to fighting prostitution.
That work brought Panina into political circles. As socialist and liberal groups held meetings and rallies at the People’s House, she earned the nickname “The Red Countess” for her opposition to the tsar. After the February Revolution toppled the monarchy and aristocracy, Panina was a logical candidate for political office. Appointed to the center-left Kadet Party’s central committee, she soon became the first woman in history—Russian or otherwise—to serve as a cabinet minister.
But Panina’s high profile and efforts to keep the provisional government going made her a target of the Bolshevik coup. The most gripping parts of the book cover Panina’s arrest and trial, in which the countess’s own accounts and dialogue from the courtroom illustrate the precariousness of her position. Even those sympathetic to her were willing to treat her as collateral damage for the revolution. Still, her reputation meant that she received minor punishment and was able to flee abroad.
Along with copious research, Lindenmeyr makes good use of Panina’s writings in exile to help tell her important story. Citizen Countess is a valuable biography about a woman who embodied the divides of revolutionary Russia."
New Books Network Podcast
Author Adele Lindenmeyr is interviewed about her work on "Citizen Countess" and answers questions about the life and times of Countess Sofia Panina.
Press Releases
Dean Adele Lindenmeyr’s Book Recognized by National Endowment for the Humanities
VILLANOVA, Pa. – Citizen Countess: Sofia Panina and the Fate of Revolutionary Russia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019), by Adele Lindenmeyr, PhD, Dean of Villanova University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships Open Book Award.
NEH’s Fellowships Open Book Program, administered by the agency’s Division of Research Programs and Office of Digital Humanities, is a special initiative for scholarly presses to make recent NEH-supported books and monographs freely available for scholars, students and the public. The program was launched in June 2020 in recognition of the fact that the global pandemic has heightened the need for scholars to be able to conduct serious research remotely.
Based on Dr. Lindenmeyr’s 20 years of detailed research in numerous archival collections, Citizen Countess is the first-ever biography of Countess Sofia Panina. Dubbed “Russia’s Jane Addams” for her passion for improving the lives of urban workers, she was the first woman in world history to hold a cabinet position and the first political prisoner to face the Bolsheviks’ terrifying revolutionary tribunal. Panina became an astute eyewitness to and passionate participant in the historical events that shaped her life.
“Lindenmeyr’s biography has brought Panina’s sun out from the clouds of historical obscurity but has also shone its light on numerous other impressive figures who inhabited Panina’s world and deserve further historical study in their own right,” notes the Russian Review.
All Open Book Program awardees will receive $5,500 per book to support digitization, marketing, and a stipend for the author.
“I am very grateful to both the University of Wisconsin Press and the NEH,” said Dr. Lindenmeyr. “This grant ensures that my story of one of the 20th century’s most remarkable women will reach a wider readership.”
An expert in Russian history, Dr. Lindenmeyr is the author of Poverty is not a Vice: Charity, Society and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton University Press, 1996) and coeditor of Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–1922 (Slavica Publications, 2018). She has presented her research at several international conferences, including the annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, (ASEEES), the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute Seminar on the 1917 Russian Revolution and the University of Notre Dame Workshop on the Russian Revolution of 1917. She received her doctorate in History from Princeton University.
Heiress, Political Prisoner, Reformer, Refugee:
Villanova Dean’s New Book Chronicles Russian Countess's Extraordinary Life
VILLANOVA, Pa. – She was born into a wealthy aristocratic family and dubbed “Russia’s Jane Addams” for her passion for improving the lives of urban workers. She became the first woman in world history to hold a cabinet position, and the first political prisoner to face the Bolsheviks’ terrifying revolutionary tribunal. Countess Sofia Panina was one of the most remarkable women of the generation that made the Russian Revolution, and now her life story has finally been fully told.
In Citizen Countess: Sofia Panina and the Fate of Revolutionary Russia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019), the first-ever biography of Panina, Adele Lindenmeyr, PhD, Dean of Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, brings her subject vividly to life. Readers today will connect with the story of a woman who was challenged to constantly reinvent herself, from her early years as one of Russia’s most eligible heiresses to her final decades devoted to humanitarian projects in Europe and the US assisting refugees whose lives—like her own—had been upended by war and revolution.
“Sofia Panina is one of most important women of the twentieth century that you’ve never heard of,” says Dr. Lindenmeyr. “Her life documents the successful struggle of so many women in the modern era to emancipate themselves from restrictive class and gender norms.”
Based on Dr. Lindenmeyr’s 20 years of detailed research in numerous archival collections, Citizen Countess establishes Sofia Panina as an astute eyewitness to and passionate participant in the historical events that shaped her life. Her experiences shed light on the evolution of the European nobility, women’s emancipation and political influence of the time, and the fate of Russian liberalism as an alternative to violent revolution.
“A compelling read!” notes reviewer Laura Engelstein, PhD, Henry S. McNeil Professor Emerita of Russian History at Yale University. “Feminist aristocrat, social-minded philanthropist, female cabinet minister, ‘class enemy,’ rootless émigré, US citizen, Sofia Panina’s story, embodying revolutionary Russia’s liberal dreams, abounds in contradictions. Its twists and turns and her own dramatic fate are vividly brought to life in Lindenmeyr’s brilliant feat of scholarly detective work.”
An expert in Russian history, Dr. Lindenmeyr is the author of Poverty is not a Vice: Charity, Society and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton University Press, 1996) and coeditor of Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–1922 (Slavica Publications, 2018). She has presented her research at several international conferences, including the annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, (ASEES), the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute Seminar on the 1917 Russian Revolution and the University of Notre Dame Workshop on the Russian Revolution of 1917. She received her PhD in History from Princeton University.
Citizen Countess will be the subject of a book discussion and roundtable on Sunday, November 24 at 10 a.m. at the 2019 ASEEES Convention in San Francisco. Dr. Lindenmeyr will offer a reading of Citizen Countess on Wednesday, February 5, 2020 at 4:30 p.m. at Falvey Memorial Library on Villanova’s campus. It is free and open to the public.
For more information on the book, please visit www.sofiapanina.com.
About Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: Since its founding in 1842, Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has cultivated knowledge, understanding and intellectual courage for a purposeful life in a challenging and changing world. With more than 40 majors across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences, it is the oldest and largest of Villanova’s colleges, serving more than 4,500 undergraduate and graduate students each year. The College is committed to a teacher-scholar model, offering outstanding undergraduate and graduate research opportunities and a rigorous core curriculum that prepares students to become critical thinkers, strong communicators and ethical leaders with a truly global perspective.
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