Woman and Russia

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Ann Evans reviews the samizdat publication "Woman and Russia" published by the Women in Eastern Europe Group, price £1.30 Stalinist propaganda boosts ideal of motherhood The dissident movements in the USSR communicate with each other and propagate their ideas through the samizdat-documents and magazines circulated in manuscript form.

All sections of the dissidents publish • sumizdat-from. lettwing opponents of Stalinist bureaucracy to extreme rightwing religious nationalists.

Yet it wasn't until December 1979 that an explicitly feminist samizdat journal was produced. under the title "Woman and Russia"

Banned There is, of course, no women's movement in the Soviet Union. All political activity not directly controlled by the party is banned. while the party women's sections, the zhenoidel. were abolished by Stalin in 1930 on the grounds that since women's equality was now achieved; they were no longer necessary.

Official ‚women's magazines are published. but "Woman and Russia" is the first publication which addressed itself to the oppression that women experience in their everyday lives, that lies behind the regime's complacent claims.

Like most: samizdat. "Woman and Russia" is not exclusively or even prunarly, a polemical or 'theoretical' publication.

It is a mixture of personal accounts, short stories and poetry, together with broader statements about femininity and women's place in Soviet society.

The result is a powerful and emotional account of the every day suffering of Soviet women in a society where the means of production remain nationalised, but political power is in the hands ot a reactionary, parasitic The labour shortage in the Soviet Union, and the bureaucracy's reliance on the family as a stable. social unit has led to a glorification of motherhood in Soviet ideology.

The hollowness of this ideology is relentlessly exposed throughout this journal.

Is the election of President Reagan really part of an elaborate Kremlin plot to conquer the USA? • Has the KGB been secretly For one thing, the editors point out that far from there being a general respect for women and mothers, the worst obscenities in the. Russian language all revolve around the word for 'mother' R. Batalova's "Human birth" describes the appalling conditions faced by women in maternity clinics-where women in labour are put on trestle tables ten to a room and their agonies ignored, until the time comes, for them to be moved, dripping blood over the floor, to the delivery room.

V. Golubeva's account in "The Other Side of the Medal" (a reference to the Soviet practice of giving medals to productive mothers) of abortion clinics is even more gruesome.

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Abortion is the only reliable means of birth control available in the Soviet Union, and abortions are now, performed in assembly-line fashion, : as Golubach wara Contains ten to fifteen curtained-off beds, piled with flanellette blankets. There are never enough sheets and a woman has to make do with one ...

Abortions are carried out on two, even on six women simultaneously in the same theatre. The tables are placed so that a woman can see everything that goes on opposite her: the face distorted in pain, the bloody mass extracted from the womb..."

Anaesthetics are skimped or dispensed with altogether and the woman discharged the following day whatever her cond dition.

More horrendous accounts follow of Soviet kindergartens, where the staff are so overworked and under-paid that they steal the children's food and women are afraid to leave their children in their care.

As the authors bitterly comment, these conditions arise because the regime is not orientated towards the needs of women and children and is more interested in buying new weaponry than building hospitals and clinics.

Like the reactionary and broader dissident movement. "Woman and Russia" contains reactionary and religious inflúences. Religion plays a prominent role in the dissident movement, perhaps because it seems to provide an alternative to the barren philistinism of bureau• An extreme example of this is Tatyana Goricheva's article in this collection "ReJoice, redemption trom the tears. of Eve"

Her conclusion is that Christianity and following the chaste example of the Virgin Mary is the highest expression of womanhood!

Such influences can only hold back the dissident movement and the working class from creating aneffective challenge to the bureaucracy.

A detailed critique of the editorial statement of "Woman and Russia" could easily be written.

No analysis The editors, for instance, consider the increasing numbers of women in positions of importance in the West (e.g. Margaret Thatcher) to be evidence that the woman question is close to being resolved"

They nave no analysis of Stalinism or wny women's oppression exists in Soviet Russia, other than a vague antimen feeling.

However, the magazine does not set out to resolve great theoretical issues, but to draw together experiences. In doing this it paints a picture of Soviet life that is immensely valuable because it is so rare. 1 The introduction by the Women. and Eastern Europe group points out that KGB harassment has made the editors decide not to produce a second issue, so this publication may well remain unique.