Feminism and the Soviet State
The Soviet state never filed charges against the women although they were frequently taken into custody. Goritscheva said she was detained about 10 times last year. "Do you know why we were not arrested?" she asked. "Because we had great support here among European feminists. Without that support we would have been arrested in November".
On 20th of July, 1980, the date of the opening of the Olympic Games, Tatiana Mamonova, her husband and son, Tatiana Goritcheva, and Natalia Malakhovskaia and her son boarded an airplane bound for Vienna. They had been expelled from the U.S.S.R. The week before they had been given an ultimatum - emigration or prison. Who are these women, and what had they done to be expelled? One answer will perhaps suffice for both questions. In a country which, constitutionally, affirms the social, political, and cultural equality of men and women, and which claims, thanks to socialism, to have realized the liberation of women, a group of women got together to describe and denounce their condition, their oppression in work, the family, motherhood, and sexuality. The result of their efforts was The Almanac: Women and Russia, the first issue of which appeared in September 1979. The articles, poems, and fiction discussed women giving birth in harsh conditions, a typical Russian abortion centre called by local women "the butchery", the drunkenness of the men and their lack of contribution to the home, the double burden of working mothers and the long waits "in endless lines to buy vegetables, fruit and other rare items" after a full day at work.
Printed here are excerpts from The Almanac: Women and Russia
"Officially equality for women has long been established, but in fact the rights of women are regarded as presumptuous".
A statement of Aims
Attention!
Dear Sisters!
We have scarcely begun living when we become conscious that all the burdens of life are kept for our shoulders. At first, everything which is painful and harmful to us — containing us in a dense circle — seems to happen by chance. It is impossible to believe that life can punish completely innocent individuals just because they are born female. All suffering is felt to be unbearable to human life, and its immediate removal urgent - except for the suffering of women. Our situation is so unbearable that it surely must disappear of itself, dissolve as would a nightmare. But nothing changes of itself. And we are convinced that no-one will help us except we ourselves. Only when we write, to talk about our sufferings, our bitterness, only when we have made our experiences known to each other, made politicized, can we find a way through, can we help ourselves and thousands of women suffering as much as ourselves.
Precisely for these reasons we have decided - in our free country — to put out a magazine for women. On the pages of this magazine, we are reporting on the situation of women in the family, at work, in the hospital, in childbirth, on the situation of our children, on the position of our theoretical reflections. We will publish the artistic and journalistic work of women. We will write realistically of the fate of our contemporaries. We ask of you: write to us of everything which disturbs and moves you. Send us your work, stories about your sisters, mothers, friends. If it is necessary, the correspondents of the magazine will go to you to help you with this as much as possible. We hope that we will, with our strength united, set ourselves in motion and, with that, the liberation of women.
"When that which is concealed is revealed, then it will become clear".
Excerpts from the Editorial
In these times, reason should actively prevail. Because of this, we are compelled to take up an urgent issue: the situation of women in society is the most important question of our time.
The old ways of thinking, the rigidities of consciousness, make women prisoners in their own milieu — more precisely speaking, in communal living.
And the woman cannot defend herself against an intangible force. For if she lets slip her supporting energy, the household collapses. Meanwhile the myth of her weakness is still, incredibly, alive. And if the woman departs from the confines of the household, she must pay for it. For the obligation and the responsibility of reproducing actual life lies with her, as well as doing her share of society's work, and the housework (which is still known as "women's work"); thus she is hugely overworked. It is to be expected that such an overload causes tensions for women, the more so as she is always being pushed into a secondary position. Her lower status is a concept which has been cultivated by patriarchy and invented for women. Officially equality for women has long been established, but in fact the rights of women are regarded as presumptuous. The fear of competition — which is especially found in high positions, from which women are so obviously excluded — the fear of losing prestige causes men to
praise the roles of wife and mother.
These Pharisees do so as if they do not notice that it is women who pull the carriage they sit in, women who provide the power to drive it on. The fever of an incessant productionline existence makes for a concealed oppression of the woman's personality. Her slave-psyche has not disappeared, withered away, it simply appears in covert and distorted forms. The degrading conditions of childbirth, of abortion, and in the communal household, etc, prevents her development as a human being. Values remain male-oriented; the woman is appraised by the society she lives in and she is forced to measure herself by those values. Her worth is dependent on how much like a man she has become. The falseness of this position always demands a sacrifice from the woman but it is society which has caused this; what is known as the "woman question" is one of the most important elements in the common struggle for the revolutionising of the world.
The patriarchy has become a phallocracy. It is understandable that the educated woman seeks a way out and sees it in the refusal to bear children. A conscious motherhood cannot emerge from stony ground. The protest, by women, against the arbitrariness of men, though, is founded not only in this refusal but more frequently in the paradoxical refusal of her own personality. This flight into absurdity is legitimated because the downgrading of everything female, an unspoken, sexist attitude, is officially practised and is unfortunately not overcome by non-conforming. The sexist attitudes towards women leads to a complete denial of their personality. The age-old forbearance of women has become a disease in the sub-stratum of society, while the continual boozing of men makes them animals.
However, feudal conditions and the absence of fathers are also found in intellectual families, although here a competition also takes place, with the battle of egos. The women there are like men: they debate competently, smoke, drink, swear like men. Intellectual women do not feel as though they are making sacrifices, yet male culture excludes women, it is saturated with misogyny; while the concept of "man-hating" does not exist. The brutal pressures of a phallocratic culture represses everything female in the women and at the same time makes them misogynistic. This senselessness is flourishing here all the time. Woman, who cannot obtain true knowledge, who is filled with misinformation, cannot see her real enemy. While she turns away from herself, she must wander about in the dark corners of an alien culture.
This contempt of women leads to the disintegration of the family, to the division of humanity and to the isolation of women from each other. The common experiences of the women of society are not respected and new experiences do not develop. New ideas are prone to be discredited from the start. The voice of truth is difficult to hear in the middle of parade-ground music.
Here, there is much talk of military defense, but before someone is defended, the vitality of the whole society should be ensured. That is, the woman, who gives life, comes first, and then military defense, not the other way around.
Tatjana Mamanova
On Abortion
When a woman has decided to have an abortion, a narrow road to calvary lies in wait for her. It begins with the humiliation of having to go to the consultants to collect a heap of papers for the impending execution; there, she is spoken to with undisguised arrogance and contempt. The degradation continues along the road the woman must take to reach her aim. There is the waiting in the queue for registration: in a large room, without light and air, on benches placed against the wall, sit women with worried and depressed faces. They sit there for 11/2 to 2 hours.
With the passing of the hours, the torture of a mapped-out destiny comes closer. Finally they go to the abortion department of the Lermontowski-Prospekt. It is a monstrous institution, like a mincing-machine for women. This clinic takes in 200 to 300 people a day. Huge rooms with ten to fifteen beds, wire-wove beds with cotton covering them. There is always a lack of sheets. A woman has to be very lucky if she is to come by a sheet she can either lie on or cover herself with. And that is the medical institution in which surgical operations are carried out on women. But the women who come here pay no attention to this. They are fearful, apprehensive of the approaching humiliations. Then comes the deciding moment. The women sit in a queue in front of the operating room. The chairs are so placed that the women can see everything that is happening in the room opposite. They see the distorted faces, something bleeding, something being taken from the insides of a woman. In the theatre there are two doctors and one nurse. "Quickly, quickly" says the nurse. The woman, trembling with fear and nervousness climbs onto the operating bed. Her movements are awkward and uncertain. The doctor tells her, irritably, the position she should be in. Finally, she gets into the right position and the doctor begins the operation. Sometimes an injection is given, but its effects are slight because there is not enough Novocain and because they don't wait for it to take effect. And because of that the women suffer terrible pain. Some become unconscious. The nurse who must attend on two doctors, cannot help the "patient". With a great deal of difficulty, the woman is "revived" and led out. Then it is the turn of another woman who has been waiting. They take her to bed. There, for I to 1l/2 hours, the woman lies writhing with pain and shaking with nausea: sometimes she has to vomit. The next day she is sent home, irrespective of her condition, which would leave much to be desired. The medical care in the Soviet Union is based on the principle of self-treatment for the sick, and is considered beneficent. The sick receive basic care and everything else is left to them.
Vera Golubeva
On Childbirth
Pregnancy, undoubtedly a parasitic phenomenon, destroys your youth. Your faith. The meaning of your own existence. A l l for posterity which is preferably male! Patriarchy somehow or other always forces woman into a cage.
Man couldn't care less about your sacrifice, he is separated from you by a thick glass wall, which he relies on to protect him from the noise you occasionally create (in your few spare moments
Sometimes your voice reaches him from behind the glass wall (when you scream too loudly). 'Change the world'. 'Make the world just', but there's no reason for man to change the world. Such a system is comfortable and profitable for him. He would rather start a new war which will exterminate your children. He would rather invent a new rocket, than to take the heavy chains from you. What use is your emancipation to him? Your liberation only creates inconveniences for him.
On the 8 March (once a year!) he dusts the sideboard. He declares 1975 women's year and invents various formalities to go with this.
From your first minute in the 'maternity home' (this is the respectful name for Golgotha) you freeze with fear. The groans, sobs and pleas of the women in labour have a traumatic effect on anyone the first time they go there. To
the question:
'How can you permit this?' The doctor answers: 'Our aim is children'. 'Women will put up with anything'.
Then trestles of beds, on which the unfortunate victims of patriarchy writhe. Bloody sheets. Eyes huge from pain. Bitten lips (they prudently cut your nails on your admission), soaking wet nightgowns, disheveled hair.
'Why all together?'
'There are so many of them'.
'But they are human beings'.
'Forget the philosophy. Lie down and get on with it'.
'You're being rude'.
'There's no alternative here'.
'On the contrary these women need attention and a kind
word like no one else'.
'We've got lots of work to do'.
You lie down. You close your eyes tight. For all these groans tear you to pieces. An unbearable sight for a normal mind. Delirium. Horror personified. A nightmare which shatters the nerves. Bloodstained trestlebeds. You clutch your head. You try to immerse yourself in oblivion. The contractions wake you. The contractions return you to this room, to this ceaseless groaning reality.
Your stomach is transformed into an alien body. It moves by its own will. It is no longer under your power. Your hands try to contain its jerks. You can hear again. One cry, then another pierces your brain: 'Doctor, you promised to help me. Doctor' — a skinny girl cries in a broken voice. 'Midwife dear, Klavochka, come to me please' - this is the voice of the woman in the next bed, who you try not to look at.
'I don't want to live, I don't want to' — a voice from the other corner ward. A voice which ends in a heart rending shriek. 'Mother, why?' gasped someone else.
Your heart stops. Your throat dries up. A thought as penetrating as a yell; run from here. But a new lot of contractions nails you to the bed. Minutes. Hours. The lights go on. The groans follow, one after the other. A trail of blood from the bed, from the prenatal to the labour ward. A trail of blood, which dried up before they have time to mop it up. You can lift yourself up and look out of the window. Your time still hasn't come. There below, through the branches of trees you see another world. You hear carefree laughter. They bring in a new patient. She wears glasses and is noticeably calm. In half an hour her glasses fall on the stone floor and she is terrified for her sight.
The foul face of patriarchy. Its convulsions. Agony. One of the prophets foretold its near speedy end. 'The power of woman will come on Earth'.
R. Batalo
Articles translated by Moira McGuiness, Jill Ranstead and Vera Slutskaya.
THE ALMANAC : WOMEN AND RUSSIA
Available in English f r o m : Sheba Feminist Publishers 183 Swaton Road London E3, U.K. price £1.75
en francais: des femmes en mouvements hebdo, n. 10 70 rue des Saints-Peres 75007 Paris France prix FF7
The Leningrad feminist group who wrote the Almanac "Women and Russia" (itself the subject of an article elsewhere in this Bulletin) is still alive and working . After splitting up into two different collectives — one religiously oriented, called " Club Maria " , the other more socially minded — and the forced departure of the principal leaders J .Vosnesenskaja, T. Goriceva, T. Mamonova, and N. Malashovskaja, three women are left.
A German journalist met them in a public park in Leningrad in order not to add more risk to their already difficult existence and reported on the meeting in the pages of the October 1980 issue of the German feminist periodical "Courage". They struggle t o preserve the values which are more meaningful to them and intend to go on claiming the right to a "human life " in a society which is not meant for them . Yet their daily lives and those of their families are shadowed by
fear; they are already virtually "prisoners" having little or no
contact with the Western world , and are under constant threat t o be imprisoned, put into a psychiatric asylum, or sent to some remote gulag. They request international feminist support and solidarity.The more letters they get from " abroad " , the less easy it would be for Soviet authorities to have them "disappear" and be forgotten.
Their addresses are:
Galina Valentinovna Grigorjeva 198302 Leningrad Prospekt marsala Zukova 3 4 , Korpus 1 kvartier 6 99
Lida Kucina 193015 Leningrad Tarpiceskaja uliza 2 , kvartier 156
Sofia Sokolova
Leningrad Tovarisceskij prospekt 22 korpus 2 , W 44