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The Kitchen Maid That Will Rule the State: Domestic THE KITCHEN MAID THAT WILL RULE THE STATE: DOMESTIC SERVICE AND THE SOVIET REVOLUTIONARY PROJECT, 1917-1941 by ALISSA KLOTS A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in History Written under the direction of Jochen Hellbeck And approved by ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey January, 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Kitchen Maid That Will Rule the State: Domestic Service and the Soviet Revolutionary Project, 1917-1941 By ALISSA KLOTS Dissertation Director: Jochen Hellbeck This dissertation examines domestic service during the first two decades of the Soviet regime as a symbol of revolutionary transformation, as gendered politics of labor, and as experience. In spite of the strong association between domestic service and exploitation, the Soviet regime did not ban or shun paid domestic labor; it turned domestic service into a laboratory of revolutionary politics, to ultimately embrace it as an essential part of socialist economy. At the center of the study lies the trope of the kitchen maid that will rule the state – a misquote from Lenin that turned into a call for transformation addressed to “victims of tsarist oppression,” particularly women. During the first decade after the revolution, transformation implied gaining proletarian consciousness. Domestic servants were to overcome their servile mentality and become workers by developing awareness of their labor rights, engaging in union activities and inscribing themselves into the revolutionary narrative. With the onset of the ii industrialization campaign in the late 1920s, domestic workers were to be transformed once again, this time to join the ranks of industrial workers. The state mobilized domestic workers along with housewives into production, and it nurtured an expectation that paid domestic labor would disappear in the near socialist future. However, once the foundations of socialism were announced to have been laid in 1934, paid domestic labor was proclaimed an important part of socialist economy. Domestic workers were to become skillful and reliable executors of state goals in the home: raising Soviet children, attending to socialist households, and providing workers with rest. At the same time, the older, emancipatory rhetoric of a domestic worker reinventing herself as a production worker retained strong resonances in popular culture. The ambiguous position of domestic service in the Soviet Union stemmed from the contradiction between the rhetoric of women’s emancipation and the gendered vision of labor that defined housework as women’s work. Beyond charting the history of domestic service in the Soviet Union, this dissertation seeks to question widespread assumptions about the inherent connection between modern domestic service and capitalism, and contribute to a global conversation about the place of paid domestic labor under socialism. iii Acknowledgements I owe this Ph.D. dissertation to the help and support of many individuals, communities, and institutions. This projected started as a kandidatskaia dissertation at the Department of History and Political Science at Perm State University (Russia) - in many ways a unique department for post-Soviet Russia. Under the supervision of Galina Aleskandrovna Yankovskaya I first got interested in the question of paid domestic labor in the Soviet Union. Not only did she share her expertise in Soviet history with me, she carefully guided me through all the endless administrative hoops the Russian graduate system has in store for anyone who wants a degree. Once I got close to defending my kandidatskaia dissertation, I came to realize that there was a lot more I could do with the topic if only I could get more training. I was very lucky to meet Maria Cristina Galmarini-Kabala who helped me navigate the dark waters of the US graduate school admission process and who has been a friend and a role model (starshyi tovarishch) ever since. I was extremely fortunate to be accepted into the history program at Rutgers University. The diversity of courses offered by leading historians in a variety of fields forced me to get out of my Russianist shell, while the sense of academic community at the Department of History helped me develop confidence in my work. I enjoyed the camaraderie of fellow graduate students. I am particularly grateful to Courtney Doucette and Hilary Buxton for taking the time to read my chapter drafts and give me their invaluable feedback. Courtney has also been my cherished archive and conference iv companion, from Philadelphia to Cologne. Dina Fainberg was always ready to give advice or just have a friendly chat. A special thank you (and a hug) goes to Matthew Mangold for still wanting to be my friend after spending hours? days? inserting definite articles into the numerous texts I have produced throughout my graduate student life. While Rutgers was an excellent place to broaden my horizons, the Slavist community at the University of Pennsylvania was a great place to reconnect with my Russianist roots. Graduate seminars with Benjamin Nathans and Peter Holquist shaped me as a historian of Russia. My dear kruzhkovtsy were the best company imaginable for sharing my thoughts about the idiosyncrasies of Soviet history and Russian life. Iullia Skubytska and Jacob Feygin were particularly generous with their friendship and hospitality. When I left the east coast to start my archival research I was welcomed by yet another community - those of scholars and good people of Moscow. Anna Ivanova, Oleg Zhuravlev, Timur Mukhamatulin, and Evgenia Misenzhnikova have generously shared their homes and ideas with me. A lot of great people - too numerous to name here - helped me collect material for my dissertation, commented on my presentations at conferences and generally expressed interest in my work. One more important community that I was lucky to find was the wonderful faculty of the Summer School in Social Sciences in Ukraine. Dominique Ariel, Anna Colin-Lebedev, Mayhill Fowler, Mikhail Minakov, Anna Muller, Ioulia Shukan, and Francois-Xavier Nerard were not only good company to spend summer vacations with, v but also great scholars that helped me develop a more complex understanding of the Soviet experience. While in Russia I was able to go back to my alma mater as a fellow at the Center for Comparative History and Political Studies. Vsevolod Bederson, Aleksei Gilev, Lyudmila Kuznetsova, Maria Romashova, Alexandr Reznik, Jesko Schmoller, Andrei Semenov, Irina Shevtsova, and Margarita Zavadskaya were great colleagues and friends. Several institutions provided financial support for this dissertation, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the German Historical Institute in Moscow and the Open Society Foundation. I am particularly grateful to the History Department for the grants for language training and conference travel as well as the Susman Dissertation Fellowship that gave me the opportunity to concentrate on writing during my final semester at Rutgers. I am deeply indebted to my dissertation committee members. Melissa Feinberg’s European History seminar and her comments on my drafts helped me think of my research as part of a global history of gender. Belinda Davis has always been there to help me with anything I needed, whether it was my dissertation prospectus or the German language examination. I am grateful to Yuri Slezkine for the interest in my work and finding time in his busy schedule to be an outside reader for my dissertation. My biggest thanks and gratitude go to my advisor, Jochen Hellbeck. It takes a special kind of vision to find a balance between guiding your student and letting her do her own thing (or at least making her believe that she is doing her own thing). I am forever grateful for his scholarly insights, encouragement, and friendship. vi Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………....ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………….iv List of Illustrations………………………………………………………………viii Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: Defining Domestic Service…………………………………………..22 Chapter 2: Regulating Paid Domestic Labor……………………………….……70 Chapter 3: Servants into Workers………………………………………………118 Chapter 4: Domestic Workers into “Real” Workers……………………………173 Chapter 5: In the Land of Victorious Socialism………………………………..213 Epilogue………………………………………………………………………...255 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………271 vii List of Illustrations Fig.1 Poster ‘Every Kitchen Maid Should Learn to Rule the State’, Il’ia P. Makarychev, 1925. www.neboltai.org...........................................................................................3 Fig.2 Lenin and the Female Worker (“In the Soviet Country Every Kitchen Maid Should Learn to Rule the State,” Lenin), artist unknown, 1926. After Perestroika: Kitchenmaids or Stateswomen (Independent Curators International, 1994), 8……………………………………………………………………………………4 Fig.3 “Domestic worker and the Doctor,” Rabochii Narodnogo Pitaniia 10 (1925):1…56 Fig.4 “Underground domestic workers,” Rabochii Narodnogo Pitaniia 12 (1925): 32...56 Fig.5 “Chairman of the state insurance company Lipatkin pays his domestic worker in installments,” Rabochii Narodnogo Pitaniia 12 (1925): 33……………………57 Fig.6 “How they Make Skeletons,” Rabochii Narodnogo
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