Women and Russia: feminist writings from the Soviet Union /

299 Pages·6.692 MB·English

by  Tatyana Mamonova, editor with the assistance of Sarah Matilsky , foreword by Robin Morgan , translated by Rebecca Park and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick.

Women and
R
ussia
о
Arkhangelsk
• Petrozavodsk
Leningrad
Tallinn
• Moscow • Sverdlovsk
Vilnius
Magnitogorsk
• Nezhin
; Donbas
, Anapa
Alma-Ata*
Samarkand •
Erevan
Feminist Writings from
the Soviet Union
Foreword by Robin Morgan
Translated by Rebecca Park and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick
R
ussia
Tatyana Mamonova, editor
with the assistance of Sarah Matilsky
BASIL BLACKWELL
© Tatyana Mamonova, 1984
First published in Great Britain in 1984 by
Basil Blackwell Publisher Ltd
108 Cowley Road, Oxford 0X4 1JF, UK
“The Other Side of the Coin” and “The Woman and Prison: A
Conversation with Galina Zlatkina and Valeriya N.” were originally
published in Freedom Appeals (May-June 1980). “The Poster Woman” and
“With the grandeur of Homer and the purity of Sappho ...” were
originally published in Woman and Russia (London: Sheba Feminist Press,
September 1980).
Frontispiece illustration © Genady and Tatyana Mamonova.
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the
purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Mamonova, Tatyana
Women and Russia
1. Women—Soviet Union—Social Conditions
I. Title
305.4'2'0947 HQ1663
ISBN 0-631-13389-7
ISBN 0-631-13891-9 Pbk
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Women and Russia.
1. Feminism—Soviet Union—Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Mamonova, Tatyana, 1943— . II. Park, Rebecca.
III. Fitzpatrick, Catherine A.
HQ1663.W63 1983 305.4'2'0947 82-73963
ISBN 0-8070-6708-3
ISBN 0-8070-6709-1 (pbk.)
Printed in Great Britain by Page Bros, Norwich.
Contents
Foreword Robin Morgan ix
Introduction
The Feminist Movement in the Soviet Union
Tatyana Mamonova xiii
Working Women 1
Woman Worker Valentina Dobrokhotova 5
Interview with a Career Woman
Galina Grigoryeva
Svetlana Sonova 11
The Poster Woman Irina Tishchenko 21
Everyday Life 23
In the Northern Provinces
Vera Golubeva 27
Why Soviet Women Want to Get Married
Ekaterina Alexandrova 31
Zinochka Expands Her Circle of Bohemian
Friends Ludmila Kuznetsova 51
Foremothers 59
My Grandmother Z. Sinaneft 63
I’m from Armenia Tsovinar Tsovinyan 67
Forty Maidens O. Kurbangaeva 73
vi Contents
Women, Birth, and the Family 89
An Uphill Battle Kari Unksova 93
A Few More Words on the Subject of Free
Medical Treatment Valentina Leftinova 107
The Other Side of the Coin
Natasha Maltseva 111
Upbringing 117
How We Learned about Tatyana Larina
Nadezhda Zotova 121
About the New Americans
Ekaterina Mironova 127
Between Women 133
Mistress of the High Mountain
Lyubov Razumovskaya 137
The Right to Be Myself Inessa Tominaite 145
Verses from the Cycle “To My Contemporary”
Yelena Lastenko 151
“With the grandeur of Homer and the purity
of Sappho . . Zhanna Ivina 155
Dropouts and Dissidents 165
A Day in the Life Zoya Galitskaya 169
Drug Addicts P. Z. Ahmedova 177
The Woman and Prison: A Conversation with
Galina Zlatkina and Valeriya N.
Galina Grigoryeva 193
Contents vii
Women and the State 201
The Soviet Woman: Support and Mainstay
of the Regime Alla Sariban 205
A Discussion with the KGB
Tatyana Mamonova 215
About the Almanac Nina Yarina 223
The Everyday Gulag The Editors 229
Actions and Counteractions
The Editors 235
Women and Peace 245
“We Need Peace and We Need the World”
Ekaterina Alexandrova 249
The Peace March: East and West
Tatyana Mamonova 261
Contributors9 Biographies 267

Foreword
ROBIN MORGAN
In 1979, a group of extraordinarily brave women in the Soviet
Union, knowing virtually nothing about the Women’s Move­
ment in the rest of the world, reinvented feminism. They
wrote, typed, and circulated ten copies of the first feminist
samizdat (underground publication), Women and Russia. After
months of interrogation and intimidation by the KGB (Com­
mittee for State Security), four of the feminist “ringleaders”
were finally sent into exile. Others still remain behind, writing
under pseudonyms, trying to organize women.
These women are unlike any dissidents you’ve read or heard
about before. They acted out of purely personal pain, rage,
commitment, and vision—and without the prestige, contacts,
or support available to such a major literary figure as Solzhenit­
syn. They faced down opposition not only from Soviet au­
thorities who accused them of treason and “counterrevolution,”
but also from many men of the dissident community itself, both
in the U.S.S.R. and abroad, who accused them of frivolity and
divisiveness. (It would appear that male supremacists every­
where have all read the same secret primer on How To Attack
Women, especially those women merely demanding their mini­
mal human rights.)
In August of 1980, I flew to Vienna for a week of intensive
meetings with four of these women; the result was a set of inter­
views—the first in-depth articles about their personal and pri­
vate lives—which I wrote for the cover story of Ms. magazine
(November 1980). The days in Vienna were alive with em­
braces, shared laughter and tears, and an inordinate amount of
strong tea. Tatyana Mamonova and I talked about everything