LTIlgą laiką istorikai daugiausia dėmesio skyrė didiesiems naratyvams, viešiems įvykiams, politikos transformacijoms ir visai nepastebėjo moterų istorijos. Pastarųjų gyvenimas daugiausia buvo susijęs su namų ūkio, šeimos, santuokos ar motinystės sferomis, todėl mokslininkų dėmesio sulaukdavo tik iškilios istorijos moterys, o vykdomi tyrimai papildydavo romantizuotą praeities vaizdinį. Šiame straipsnyje siekiama parodyti, kad lytis ir ją lydintys socialinės ir kultūrinės organizacijos skirtumai formavo skirtingas vyrų ir moterų patirtis ir skirtingas atminties strategijas net ir gana kompleksiniuose procesuose, kuriems svarbu bendrumas. Tiriama moterų veikla 1905–1907 revoliucijos metais, siekiant išryškinti jų patirčių naratyvus, papildančius iki šiol istoriografijoje gana blankų XIX a. antros pusės – XX a. pradžios moters, net nebūtinai darbininkės, revoliucionierės ar skurdžiau gyvenančios, kultūrinį, socialinį ar politinį portretą. Pagrindiniai šio straipsnio šaltiniai yra darbininkių ir kairiųjų aktyvisčių 18 autobiografijų ir atsiminimų tekstų, kurie buvo parašyti, surinkti ir sukaupti sovietmečiu, dauguma 1950–1965 m., jie saugomi Lietuvos ypatingajame archyve. Raktažodžiai: moterų istorija, darbininkės, autobiografija, atsiminimai.
ENLithuanian historiography has long been dominated by a focus on grand narratives, public events, and political transformations, leaving women’s histories on the margins. Women’s lives were mainly related to the spheres of the household, family, marriage or motherhood, and therefore, only prominent women in history received attention. Moreover, the research carried out only added to the romanticized image of the past. This article shows that gender and the accompanying differences in social and cultural organization have shaped men’s and women’s different experiences and memory strategies even in quite complex processes where commonality matters. It examines women’s activities during the Russian revolution of 1905 in order to highlight the narratives of the experiences of women (Lithuanian, Polish, Jewish, and Russian), who lived in present-day Lithuania, adding to a rather bleak cultural, social and political portrait of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries women, who were not even necessarily workers, revolutionaries or poor, in historiography. The autobiographies of women workers (which were also written with specific political objectives in mind during the Soviet period) usually present their efforts to participate in public life. It is this very moment of political participation that overshadows aspects of gender or personal life. However, the autobiographies analyzed in this respect also allow to see the panorama of modernization and to consider differences in socio-economic stratification and the principles of identity formation. Although the women who entered the labor market and supported themselves at the end of the nineteenth century were part of a new economic reality, even then, according to their autobiographical accounts, they were often considered backward, uneducated and not to be reckoned with.Even more pain ful experiences—that of physical violence and suffering—often emerge in private texts and accompanying documents. The autobiographies of women workers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveal women’s conviction that the only way to change the situation is not to let others (even leftist activists) run their affairs and instead, to get involved in public life themselves. Keywords: women’s history, women workers, autobiography, memoirs.