Women before, during and after the Russian Revolution

The history of Bolshevism from the very early days right up to the Russian revolution contains a wealth of lessons on how it is the class struggle that provides the final answer to the women’s question. In this article Marie Frederiksen looks at the approach of the Bolshevik Party to the women’s question from its early days, right through to the revolution and after taking power.

She looks at the measures taken by the party to involve women, the progressive measures introduced by the Bolsheviks once in power, but also the negative consequences for women of the later Stalinist degeneration.

Women are  involved in social struggles, and the question of women's oppression is on the agenda to a degree we have not seen in decades. Sexism and the oppression of women is an integral part of capitalism, and they can only be removed by uprooting the system. A socialist revolution is the precondition for women's liberation.

The Russian revolution and the revolutionary energy of Russian women show the powerful reserves of courage and determination which can be mobilised for a socialist revolution. The Bolsheviks in 1917 began the task of the emancipation of women. It is up to us to finish it.

Read entire article by Marie Frederiksen here @ In Defence of Marxism

FBI Files On Lana Peters

From the Huffington Post:

Newly declassified documents show the FBI kept close tabs on Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's only daughter after her high profile defection to the United States in 1967, gathering details from informants about how her arrival was affecting international relations.

The documents were released Monday to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act following Lana Peters' death last year at age 85 in a Wisconsin nursing home. Her defection to the West during the Cold War embarrassed the ruling communists and made her a best-selling author. And her move was a public relations coup for the U.S.

When she defected, Peters was known as Svetlana Alliluyeva, but she went by Lana Peters following her 1970 marriage to William Wesley Peters, an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright. Peters said her defection was partly motivated by the Soviet authorities' poor treatment of her late husband, Brijesh Singh, a prominent figure in the Indian Communist Party.

Where Is Lyudmila Putina?

From Mail Online:

She will soon become Russia's First Lady for an unprecedented third time - but mystery is surrounding exactly who, and where, is Lyudmila Putina.

As her Kremlin strongman husband Vladimir prepares to once more take up his nation's Presidency, speculation is mounting as to why she is never seen by his side.

Some say an affair with spy-turned-lingerie model Anna Chapman, which has been strongly denied, is the reason the former Aeroflot-hostess is now rarely seen out in public.

Other tongues say he is still seeing former Olympic gold medallist Alina Kabayeva, claims also heavily rebutted, but who he was alleged to have fathered a child with.

A third theory is his 54-year-old love is 'locked away' in a £1million state-built guest house in the grounds of the ancient Yelizarov monastery outside Pskov - close to Estonia's border.

Women Live in Fear During Chechnya's Islamic Revival

From VOA News:

Many Chechen women are the first in three generations to cover their heads. In the officially atheist Soviet Union, women in the Caucasus burnt their headscarves, in an effort to dissuade youth from falling under the sway of religion.

“The headscarf is a symbol of purity and worth,” says Malika Omarova, head of the Union of Chechen Women in Grozny. “When I was a student, I never wore a headscarf, not one person forced me. But, I want our women to wear them - it is in our blood. That is what makes us Chechen.”

The Russian republic of Chechnya has seen two of modern history’s most brutal separatist wars in the last two decades, with atrocities committed by both rebels and federal forces. But Mr. Kadyrov, a former rebel who changed sides after the first war, has brought a semblance of stability to Chechnya, which has seen massive investment by the Kremlin. But Mr. Kadryov’s reign has also seen a resurgence in Islamic belief and practice.

In today’s Chechnya of cafes and fashion boutiques, the mandatory headscarf symbolizes this Islamic revival.

“Chechnya is already among one of the world's most repressive societies, with the state controlling almost every aspect of daily life," wrote Jennifer Windsor of Freedom House in a report on Chechnya “With the Kremlin largely out of the picture, the culture of impunity we have seen develop under [Mr.] Kadyrov is likely to worsen, leaving the population more vulnerable to abuse.”

The battle is being played out in universities, state buildings and now in the street, where a wave of attacks last year took place on women for not wearing headscarves. Mr. Kadyrov denies his men were involved.

Euphrosyne of Polotsk

The daughter of Duke Svyatoslav (Wenceslaus) of Polotsk, Euphrosyne became a recluse at an early age at the Holy Wisdom Cathedral in Kiev. She copied books and gave her earnings to the poor; she founded a monastery at Seltse.

In the early 1170's, she took a pilgrimage to Constantinople and to the Holy Land. Patriarch Michael II gave her an icon of the Theotokos, which is now called the Virgin of Korsun. The Crusader king, Amaury I, received her in the Holy Land.

Euphrosyne died at Jerusalem (1173), and her body was returned to Kiev for burial.

Chechnya: Women Without Scarves Targetted During Ramadan

From Reuters:

Many women in Russia's volatile Chechnya region said on Friday they had been harassed and some physically harmed by bands of men for not wearing headscarves during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Against the backdrop of a spreading Islamist insurgency, many fear that growing interest in radical Islam could fuel separatism in the volatile North Caucasus, where the Kremlin watches uneasily as sharia law eclipses Russian.

Residents and witnesses told Reuters that bearded men in traditional Islamic dress have been roaming the streets both on foot and in cars since Ramadan started on Aug. 11, demanding bare-headed women wear a headscarf.

Russia: Most Eligible List Angers Dads

From the Australian:

THEY are young, smart and fabulously wealthy but live largely in the shadows.

Now, to the fury of their billionaire fathers, they are exposed to scrutiny by the publication of Russia's first list of its most eligible women.

Compiled by the business magazine Finans, the list names the single daughters of Russia's richest tycoons.

The combined fortunes of the seven women identified total more than $17 billion.

The private lives of the rich and famous are generally considered taboo by the Russian press.

"Most (Russia's oligarchs) would be very unhappy to see their daughter's name on a list like this," said a businessman. "I know the fathers of two of the girls and they're very angry. The last thing they want is for their daughters to be viewed as commodities."

Natalia Estemirova

From Mark Franchetti @ The Australia:

Human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, who was abducted from her Chechen home last week and murdered, had been forced to flee to Britain last year after the republic's President personally threatened her, according to colleagues.

Estemirova left Chechnya for four months because she no longer felt safe after a heated exchange with President Ramzan Kadyrov. He was angry that she had challenged his order that women should wear headscarves in public in the predominantly Muslim territory.

Estemirova, a former teacher, argued back but later felt vulnerable. Memorial, the Russian human rights organisation she had worked for since 1999, felt it was too dangerous for her to stay in Chechnya, so she moved to Britain in March last year but returned months later.

In the fortnight before her death, Estemirova reported on other abductions, the alleged murder of a Chechen woman suspected of links to rebels and an arson campaign that razed the homes of militants' relatives. "There was no one like Natalia in Chechnya," a friend said. "That's why they killed her. Now we won't hear of such crimes any more."

Handout for Russia's richest woman

From the Independent:
"She is Russia's richest woman, and one of its most despised. Now Yelena Baturina, who rose from life as a factory worker to become a construction magnate and wife of Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, is seeking a state bailout – to the joy and consternation of many.

Some are happy to see her suffer. Since Ms Baturina built her firm, Inteko, into a construction and real estate powerhouse, Moscow's landscape has been transformed. Cranes and gaudy buildings line streets that used to house centuries-old buildings and relics of Soviet architecture.

But many are up in arms that Ms Baturina, who has fallen off the Forbes list of billionaires after two years as Russia's first and only female billionaire, could be saved by the state as average Russians continue to see their quality of life deteriorate."

Olga Lepeshinskaya

From the Telegraph:
"Olga Lepeshinskaya, who died in Moscow on December 20 aged 92, was the Bolshoi Ballet's prima ballerina in the 1930s and 1940s and Josef Stalin's favourite performer – rumoured to be her lover, he would bring red roses to her dressing room after performances, and he decorated her four times with the Stalin Prize.

In 2000 Olga Lepeshinskaya was awarded a Soul of Dance prize by the Russian magazine Ballet. She also received various honours from Germany, Sweden, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Albania and the Philippines.

She was a deputy on the Committee of Soviet Women, and later chairman of the Central House of Art Workers. She regularly chaired the organising committee and jury of the celebrated Moscow International Ballet Competition and withdrew from her public activities only in the last decade of her life. "

The Tsar's Women

This article from The Independent is a couple of years' old now, but it is still of interest:

Resurrection of the tsars' women
By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Sunday, 20 August 2006

"500 years after their deaths, the imperial beauties are brought back to life by 'Gorky Park' forensic science.

Their remains have gathered dust in sealed sarcophagi for more than 500 years in the Kremlin, their appearance in life a mystery, the manner of their deaths the subject of intense speculation. But with modern forensic techniques usually employed to solve murder cases, the first ladies of medieval Russia - a catwalk of tsarinas and glamorous princesses - are being "brought back to life".

In a macabre and extraordinary scientific project, Sergei Nikitin, one of Russia's leading forensic scientists, has pieced together the appearances of the wives and mothers of Russia's rulers from the 15th to the 18th century.

He applied the latest forensic modelling techniques on the women's skulls that were controversially removed from tombs beneath the Archangel Cathedral in the Kremlin for the project.

Until now, the blue-blooded women were faceless; no portraits of them existed and details of their lives survived only in crumbling manuscripts. But thanks to Professor Nikitin and a team of scientists who have been working on the project for more than a decade, historians know for the first time what the women behind the tsars' thrones really looked like.

Other tests have revealed what they ate, what medicines they used, what they wore, what cosmetics they used, and even, in some cases, how they died.

Professor Nikitin's facial reconstruction technique is one that is more commonly employed to identify murder or accident victims whose appearances have been horrifically disfigured. The method was memorably featured in the 1983 film Gorky Park to reveal the identity of three faceless corpses. He has used his expertise to piece together the appearances of at least five women, including Marfa Sobakina, Ivan the Terrible's murdered third wife who won the first beauty contest to be held on Russian soil, in the 16th century.

The infamously harsh Tsar ordered 1,500 women to compete and made them to undergo strict medical tests. He chose the winner, Marfa, to be his third wife, but she fell ill shortly before the wedding and died two weeks after taking her vows. A jealous rival had poisoned the young beauty though who killed her remains a mystery. Forensic tests on her failed to detect traces of the poison.

Professor Nikitin has also "resurrected" Ivan the Terrible's mother, Elena Glinskaya, who was also poisoned, something chemical testing has proved.

Other women to get the "Gorky Park treatment" include Princess Sofia Paleolog, the wife of Tsar Ivan III, Tsarina Irina Godunova, and Evdokia Dmitrievna, the wife of a medieval prince called Dmitri Donskoy. The professor is now working on a likeness of Tsar Peter the Great's mother, Natalia Kirillovna, and has at least four more heads to sculpt before an exhibition, provisionally entitled Kremlin Women, opens next year.

Chemical tests on the women's bones and hair have uncovered large quantities of toxic substances. These are probably traces of medieval medicine concocted using poisonous substances such as mercury, arsenic, and lead. Other tests have shown their cosmetics were not much better and that they painted their faces with the toxic materials used by artists to paint icons and frescos at the time, namely white lead and barium.

For centuries, the women lay untouched in a special necropolis in the Vosnesensky (Ascension) Convent within the Kremlin's walls in Moscow. Between 1407 and 1731, it filled up with the corpses of the great and the good. But the Bolsheviks demolished the convent in the 1930s on the orders of Josef Stalin who presided over the destruction of thousands of churches as part of a campaign to wean the masses off religion. Encased in their white stone sarcophagi, the Kremlin wives were moved to the nearby Archangel Cathedral in 1929 ahead of the demolition.

After scientists have finished studying, their bones will be put back where they were found and Professor Nikitin says they will probably not be disturbed again. "It was a unique opportunity to see their faces," he told the daily Izvestia. "But after our research is finished we will put them back in their sarcophagi and nobody will touch them again."

Professor Nikitin says he sometimes suffers the equivalent of writer's block. "Sometimes I can sit for two weeks opposite a head and stare at it. And then suddenly I understand what I need to do to really make the person 'live'. It's easier for sculptors; they work from living models but I just have a skull and empty eye sockets to go on." "


Websites:
The Archangel's Cathedral - Kremlin website
Discovering the Kremlin - Kremlin website
Cathedral of the Archangel - Scared Destinations
Ascension Convent - wikipedia

Irina Baronova

Yet another loss for Russian arts and culture with the passing of Irina Baronova.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:
" She came to fame at the age of 12 when Balanchine cast her in a 1931 Paris staging of composer Jacques Offenbach's operetta "Orpheus in the Underworld." French critic Andre Levinson wrote, "The sensation of the evening was the tiny child Baronova, who went through the final galop (gallop) like a whirlwind."

A year later, Balanchine recruited Ms. Baronova, Tamara Toumanova, 14, and Tatiana Riabouchinska, 15, to be the stars of a new Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, successor to the Ballets Russes de Diaghilev.

The three dancers were dubbed the "baby ballerinas" by British critic Arnold Haskell and promoted as such by impresario Sol Hurok for their first U.S. tour in 1933.

Toumanova died in 1996 in Santa Monica, and Riabouchinska in 2000 in Los Angeles.

Ms. Baronova, known for her beauty, grandeur and warm temperament, danced such classical and Romantic ballets as "The Sleeping Beauty," "Swan Lake," "Les Sylphides" and "Coppelia."

Her stage partners included Serge Lifar and Anton Dolin. In those heady times, artists Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Joan Miro, Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse often designed sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes.

During her career, Ms. Baronova also appeared in several films, including "Florian" (1940) and "Yolanda" (1943), and in musicals and plays, including "Follow the Girls," "Bullet in the Ballet" and "Dark Eyes."

In 2005, she wrote her autobiography, "Irina: Ballet, Life and Love."

Ms. Baronova moved to Byron Bay in 2000 to be near her daughter, Irina. Survivors include her three children, six grandchildren and a great-granddaughter."

Nonna Mordyukova

Famed Russian actress, Nonna Mordyukova, passed away this week, aged 82yo.

From Pravda:
"Throughout a career that spanned half a century, Mordyukova appeared in dozens of films, including some textbook examples of Soviet propaganda. Her characters often faced a tough choice between devotion to Communist dogma and the quiet happiness of family life.

Mordyukova first found fame at age 23 in "Young Guards," a 1948 epic about a group of young Communists that fought against Nazi Germans during World War II. She continued with versatile and critically acclaimed performances in adaptations of Russian classics, comedies and family dramas.

Mordyukova is to buried Wednesday at the Kuntsev cemetery in Moscow, the Union of Cinematographers said."


From RIA Novosti:
"Nonna Mordyukova, the legendary actress famous for creating the archetypal image of a Soviet woman, died at the age of 82 in a Moscow hospital late on Sunday.

The actress suffered from diabetes and dementia and was admitted to hospital for treatment several times in the past few years, most recently in March 2008. She lived alone after getting divorced from the popular Soviet actor, Vyacheslav Tikhonov, and the death of their only son Vladimir.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have expressed their condolences to the actress' family and friends. Mordyukova will be buried at the Kuntsevskoye cemetery in western Moscow on Wednesday."