Rheta Dorr: Inspired and Sobered by the Russian Revolution

This article is devoted to the perception of the 1917 Russian revolution as it evolved from February to October by Rheta Dorr, a famous US journalist, feminist, and political activist. Unlike other American observers of the events in the far-away Russia, Dorr did not merit any major studies, and her personal papers did not survive in any archive. And yet, in her activities and writings, this woman embodied the pro-reform spirit of the Progressive era in the United States that manifested in many phenomena from muckraking journalism and suffragism to the settlement house movement and “highbrow socialism”. Dorr’s articles and her travelogue “Inside the Russian revolution” also demonstrated the increased interest in the Revolutionary Russia that was typical for many Americans of various political views. The author appeals to the constructivist approach and demonstrates that Dorr’s narrative about the Russian revolution was tied into her gender identity and into her vision of the ways of reforming the American society itself. This also fitted into several discourses of viewing the prospects Russia’s renewal that existed in the American society in the early 20th century and related to constructing the national identity in the United States. All of them were incorporated into the works of American Slavists, political writings, and journalism and remain relevant even now as they formed the foundations of what can be termed the American phenomenology of the Russian revolution.