Marginal REVOLUTION

My excellent Conversation with Julia Ioffe

2026-08-07 · 04:48 UTC ·Tyler Cowen ·4 min read

Brief

Julia Ioffe’s conversation with Tyler Cowen (posted on Marginal Revolution on 2026-08-07) links Russian gender culture to 19th- and 20th-century institutional and demographic forces. Ioffe traces continuities from the 1872 tsarist creation of women’s medical courses to Soviet-era prudishness and Khrushchev’s demographic policy to “replace the dead,” arguing those policies reshaped family structure (including increased single motherhood). She attributes modern male behavior—heavy drinking, smoking, recklessness, early death—to the massive male losses of the early 20th century and subsequent low social expectations, a dynamic she contrasts with the West’s 1968 sexual revolution. Ioffe also discusses Soviet Jewish demographics—more urban and educated—and explains why Jewish men became desirable marriage partners despite public antisemitism, and recommends themes from her book Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia.

Why it matters

On 2026-08-07 Tyler Cowen published a Marginal Revolution episode featuring Julia Ioffe that covers topics including why many Russian constructivist painters were women, the 1872 tsarist establishment of women’s medical courses, changing abortion and birth-control attitudes in the 20th century, and Khrushchev’s plan to “replace the dead,” which Ioffe says helped institutionalize single motherhood.

Key details

  • Ioffe argues that high male mortality in the first half of the 20th century left Soviet/Russian men culturally treated as an “endangered species,” producing low expectations: heavy alcohol use, widespread smoking, recklessness and early death—contrasted with the Western 1968 sexual revolution, when Soviets were instead focused on “saving the men.”
  • She notes a distinct pattern for Soviet Jews: more urban and better educated on average, and—despite pervasive antisemitism—Jewish men were culturally prized by many ethnic Russian and Ukrainian women for being family-focused, less likely to drink or be violent.
  • The episode also touches on cultural signifiers (flowers, enduring name patterns), gender–autocracy interactions, three underrated Russian novels, and promotes Ioffe’s book Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia.
Source evidence

Here is the audio, video, and transcript .  Here is from the episode summary: Julia joined Tyler to discuss why so many of Russia’s great constructivist painters were women, why the tsarist government established women’s medical courses in 1872, changing attitudes towards abortion and birth control in the 20 th century, why the Soviet regime turned prudish, how Khrushchev’s plan to “replace the dead” institutionalized single motherhood, Russian superwomen, why Jewish men were a prized commodity amid rampant antisemitism, the cultural significance of flowers, why a few Russian names still dominate, why Russian women think Western feminists have their priorities backwards, how gender attitudes and autocracy feed into each other, three underrated Russian novels, what she wants to write about next, and more. Excerpt: COWEN: I’m sure you’ve noticed that quite a few American men will marry Russian or Soviet women, but not so many American women want to marry Russian or Soviet men. It’s a kind of market test, right? Why exactly are the men so bad? Why are they such louts? Maybe that’s a rude way to put it, but surely in one’s mind, one asks that question, right? IOFFE: It’s a question that a lot of us who were living in Moscow in the late aughts and the teens were asking that all the time. I remember a friend of mine, a male Western TV correspondent, saying, “The women are so gorgeous here, but the men are so ugly and unfashionable.” He had lived all over the place and worked all over the place, and he said, “I’ve never seen such disparity,” and it was true. The women like me, Western women who were living and working in Moscow at the time, said, “We’ll just wait till we get home.” I think it’s because of what I talked about before, or what you and I talked about before, which is that so many men were killed in the first half of the 20th century, and so few demands were placed on them because they were seen as an endangered species, in general. They were a resource to be fought over and protected. In 1968, when the West was undergoing a sexual revolution, and women were fighting for more rights, more equality, the Soviets were talking about saving the men, protecting the men, and saying, “We’ve done enough for the women, but our men die young.” That’s after a lifetime of alcohol abuse, smoking, being largely irrelevant in the home, and obviously politically, because it’s a totalitarian system, so let’s work on protecting them. Soviet men, and then Russian men, became these coddled, spoiled children essentially, where on one hand, so little was asked of them that it’s the bigotry of low expectations. So little was asked of them, and very little was expected of them, and they rose to meet those very low expectations. On top of that, the idea of what made a man a manly man in Russia is he’s physically strong, but he dies a young death, or he dies an early death. He drinks a lot, he smokes a lot, he’s reckless, he’s careless, and takes a lot of risk, and that usually means an early death. If you have fewer men to begin with, and as a Russian woman, you see them dying early, and you’re fighting over them, what is the impetus for men to take care of themselves, to act better, be better, if there’s always going to be a beautiful, super competent woman to take him if you don’t want him? COWEN: These points you’re raising, historically, do you feel it’s been quite different for Soviet and Russian Jews or the same? IOFFE: I think it’s a little bit different. The caveat is, and I hate that I have to say this, Jews are people too, and subject to the same social forces that everybody else is, but culturally, Soviet Jews were more educated as a rule, more urban, and culturally came from a very family-centric tradition. Russian women, actually, for all the intense antisemitism in the Soviet Union, in Russia, Jewish men were actually a prized commodity for Russian women. COWEN: With ethnic Russian women? IOFFE: Yes. Ethnic Ukrainian women, you name it, because the cultural stereotype was that Jewish men don’t drink, they don’t hit you, they are family-focused, family-oriented, they’re involved fathers, they bring their money home, they don’t waste it at the bar or on bottles of vodka with their buddies. That’s the kind of man you would want as a husband. Ironically, the same polls that will tell you that Russians would want their daughters to marry a Jew will tell you that they don’t want their president to be a Jew. One of my favorite episodes of the year, interesting throughout, and I very much enjoyed Julia’s book Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia . The post My excellent Conversation with Julia Ioffe appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION .