In the Life and Works of Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin Makarova, Olga
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"The women question" in the life and works of Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin Makarova, Olga The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/502 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] ‘THE WOMAN QUESTION’ IN THE LIFE AND WORKS OF ALEKSEI SERGEEVICH SUVORIN Olga Makarova PhD Thesis QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY OF LONDON April 2010 ABSTRACT This thesis traces the influence of ‘the woman question’ on the life and writings of Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin (1834–1912), an eminent journalist, publisher and editor of the newspaper Novoe vremia. My research is based on Suvorin’s previously unexamined contribution to public debate on this question and also includes an overview of his fictional work. The thesis represents a case study and brings to light material critical to Suvorin’s biography. This is important because Suvorin’s personal case exemplifies the difficulties which up-and-coming men of the intelligentsia encountered in responding to the rapid and drastic social changes to which they were exposed, and in particular to the redistribution of influence and authority between men and women. Based on documentary sources and in particular on new archival material the thesis analyses the extent to which Suvorin’s life was affected by his relationship with strong and domineering women and examines the impact of these biographical factors on his writings. This case study provides an important insight into the development of the Russian liberal idea commonly referred to as the ‘emancipation of women’. The thesis is organized into an Introduction followed by three chapters, a Conclusion, a Bibliography, and an Appendix. Developing my argument, I apply a chronological principle, dividing Suvorin’s life and works into three periods presented in chapters 1–3; these periods can be matched up in approximate terms with the three stages of the women’s movement in Russia. The first period starts in 1858 and ends in 1873, the turning point in Suvorin’s life and career; within this period the women’s movement in Russia had worked out its ideology and some tactical moves. The second period (1874–1890) covers Suvorin’s career successes and his concomitant midlife crisis; during this time, the women’s movement was also experiencing a crisis of its own. The third period (1891–1912) marks Suvorin’s personal decline against the rapid politicization of the Russian women’s movement. In the Conclusion section I develop an overview of the contribution which Suvorin made to the emergence of ‘public opinion’ in late Imperial Russia and I end by attempting a definition of his ideological position within the context of Russian liberal thought. The material analysed in the thesis makes it possible to place Suvorin amongst the so-called conservative liberals, at least as regards his views on the emancipation of women. The Appendix includes translations of the Russian quotes used in the main text of the thesis. 2 CONTENTS Acknowledgments .........................................................4 Abbreviations ................................................................5 INTRODUCTION ........................................................6 § 1 ........................................................................6 § 2 ........................................................................19 CHAPTER I .................................................................33 § 1 ........................................................................34 § 2 ........................................................................40 § 3 ........................................................................48 § 4 ........................................................................57 § 5 ........................................................................71 § 6 ........................................................................79 CHAPTER II ................................................................88 § 1 ........................................................................89 § 2 ........................................................................94 § 3 ........................................................................102 § 4 ........................................................................111 § 5 ........................................................................117 § 6 ........................................................................125 § 7 ........................................................................135 § 8 ........................................................................143 CHAPTER III ..............................................................154 § 1 ........................................................................156 § 2 ........................................................................166 § 3 ........................................................................175 § 4 ........................................................................187 § 5 ........................................................................196 § 6 ........................................................................203 § 7 ........................................................................212 CONCLUSION .............................................................226 Bibliography ..................................................................234 Appendix ........................................................................244 3 Acknowledgments This thesis was made possible by my two supervisors, Professor Donald Rayfield and Professor Andreas Schönle. Professor Rayfield has been my guide from the start and his influence and inspiration are present in all of my own endeavours. When Professor Schönle took up his Chair at Queen Mary University of London, he joined Professor Rayfield in supervising my work. He has been my detailed reader and advisor and has influenced me profoundly. I count myself fortunate beyond measure to have worked with both and to continue as a colleague in research and teaching, and I express my deepest gratitude. I also thank my colleagues in the Department of Russian at Queen Mary who have created the stimulating intellectual environment in which I work and to those friends and colleagues who have read and commented upon sections of text. I mention Dr David Leslie (London) in particular for careful reading of my texts and for useful discussion. I would also like to thank Abram Reitblat and Mariia Maiofis for their constructive editorial help with my publications in the journal Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie , Professor Oleg Lasunskii (Voronezh) for valuable encouragement, and Dr Alevtina Kuzicheva (Moscow) for her generous support. 4 Abbreviations ed. — edinitsa khranenia (storage unit) F. — fond (fund) IRLI — Institut russkoi literatury (Institute of Russian Literature, SPb) L., l. — list (folio) L. — Leningrad (in bibliography) M. — Moscow (in bibliography) op. — opis ′ (inventory) OR — otdel rukopisei (manuscript department) NLO — Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie (magazine New Literary Review) P. — pis ′ma (letters) PSS — polnoe sobranie cochinenii (complete works) PSSP — polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (complete collection of works and letters) RGALI — Rossiiskii arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (Russian State Archive for Literature and Arts) RGB — Rossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka (State Russian Library, Moscow) RNB — Rossiiskaia natsional ′naia biblioteka (National Russian Library, Saint Petersburg) SPb — Saint Petersburg (in bibliography) In transliterating Russian titles and names, I use the Library of Congress system, except in the cases of well known persons (e. g. Dostoevsky), and I change the old-style orthography to conform to modern usage. 5 INTRODUCTION § 1 The work of this thesis and the subject which it addresses — ‘ The Woman Question’ in the Life and Works of Aleksei Sergeevich Suvorin 1 — has its origins in extensive archival research which I carried out as an assistant to Professor Donald Rayfield while we prepared Suvorin’s Diary for publication.2 In the absence of a full documented biography of Suvorin, our attempts to fill the biographical gaps had revealed a series of intriguing woman-related episodes in his life which I found impossible to ignore. On the face of it, their regularity seemed to indicate that key moments in Suvorin’s life were profoundly influenced, even determined, by women; and yet Suvorin had the reputation of a self- made man. Pursuing enquiry and wishing to discover what lay behind this to my mind salient influence, I came to review Suvorin’s life through the lens of ‘the woman question’. This angle proved relevant and rewarding, in part because Suvorin’s life overlapped chronologically with the onset and massive development of the emancipation of women in Russia (from mid 19 th — to the beginning of the 20 th century). The data obtained and analysed has allowed me to formulate my thesis which I intend to support in the present work. In exploring ‘the woman question’ in Russia I will use the terminology suggested by historian Irina Iukina in her fundamental study Russkii feminizm kak vyzov