Remarkable Russian Women in Pictures, Prose and Poetry

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Zea E-Books Zea E-Books 11-2013 Remarkable Russian Women in Pictures, Prose and Poetry Marcelline Hutton [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook Part of the European History Commons, European Languages and Societies Commons, Slavic Languages and Societies Commons, Women's History Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Hutton, Marcelline, "Remarkable Russian Women in Pictures, Prose and Poetry" (2013). Zea E-Books. 21. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/21 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Zea E-Books at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Zea E-Books by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Remarkable Russian Women in Pictures, Prose and Poetry N Marcelline Hutton Many Russian women of the late 19th and early 20th centuries tried to find happy marriages, authentic religious life, liberal education, and fulfilling work as artists, doctors, teachers, and political activists. Some very remarkable ones found these things in varying degrees, while oth- ers sought unsuccessfully but no less desperately to transcend the genera- tions-old restrictions imposed by church, state, village, class, and gender. Like a Slavic “Downton Abbey,” this book tells the stories, not just of their outward lives, but of their hearts and minds, their voices and dreams, their amazing accomplishments against overwhelming odds, and their roles as feminists and avant-gardists in shaping modern Russia and, in- deed, the twentieth century in the West. It covers poets and writers such as Evdokiia Rostopchina, Nina Berberova, Nadezhda Sokhanskay, Karo- lina Pavlova, Elena Gan, Nadezhda Khvoshchinskaya, Anastasia Verbits- kaya, Anna Akhamatova, Maria Tsvetaeva, Mirra Lokhvitskaya, Olga Fre- idenberg; free-thinkers like Zinaida Gippius, Elena Blavatsky; diarists and memoirists like Countess Sofia and Tatiana Tolstoya, Anna Dostoevsky, Nadezhda Durova, Agrippina Korevanova, Ludmila Stahl, Elena Skrja- bina; artists Natalya Goncharova, Anna O. Lebedeva, Zinaida Serebria- kova, Olga Rozanova, Varvara Stepanova, Liubov Popova, and Aleksan- dra Ekster; adventuresses (military or sexual) Maria Botchkareva, Natalia Sheremetevskaya, Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna; doctors Anna Bek and Vera Figner; revolutionaries and reformers like Nadezhda Krupskaya, Ce- cilia Bobrovskaya, Vera Broido, Alexandra Kollontai, Catherine Bresh- kovsky, Konkordia Samoilova, Maria Golubeva, Tatyana Ludvinskaya, and Cecilia Bobrovskaya. In their own words and images, and each in their own unique way, these remarkable Russian women construct a fascinating tapestry of a culture at the crossroads of modernity and on the brink of catastrophe—a thrill- ing tour of an age when everything seemed possible and none could truly imagine what lay in store. Marcelline Hutton is the author of Russian and West European Women, 1860-1939: Dreams, Struggles, and Nightmares (2001) and Falling in Love with the Baltics: A Travel Memoir (2009). Cover: Zinaida Serebriakova, “Self Portrait: At the Dressing Table” (1909) ISBN 978-1-60962-045-5 ebook Zea Books, Lincoln, Nebraska Remarkable Russian Women in Pictures, Prose and Poetry N Marcelline Hutton Zea Books Lincoln, Nebraska 2013 AaAaAaAaAaAaAa Copyright © 2013 Marcelline Hutton. All rights reserved. isbn 978-1-60962-044-8 paperback isbn 978-1-60962-045-5 ebook Set in Palatino Linotype types. Design and composition by Paul Royster. Zea Books are published by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries Electronic (pdf) ebook edition available online at http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/ Print edition can be ordered from Lulu.com, at http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/unllib Preface I first fell in love with 19th century Russia as a teenager after see- ing the film “War and Peace,” starring Audrey Hepburn and Mel Fer- rer After reading Leo Tolstoy’s novel on which the movie was based, I was even more smitten with Russian culture. When I took a Russian history course in college, my lifelong love affair with Russian His- tory began and continued into graduate school and beyond. Part of the attraction of Russian History was its sense of “Other- ness.” It was grander than anything I had known living in the Mid- west. Moscow and St. Petersburg, as described by Leo Tolstoy and Fedor Dostoevsky, were more exotic than places I had ever known. Russian culture also attracted me because it was more expressive than the subdued Nordic culture in Northern Indiana where I grew up. Only years later did I realize that Russian History embodied not only great mercy, tenderness, and promise, but terrible sadness, suf- fering, and cruelty as well. During my studies at the University of Iowa from 1962-1987, I found Russian women, their writings, and history more and more fascinating. I was impressed by their social and political challenges to the status quo. Their personal achievements and troubles also attracted me. I wrote my Master’s Thesis on the “Woman Question” in the 1860s, following it with a dissertation entitled “Russian and Soviet Women, 1860-1939: Dreams, Struggles, and Nightmares.” My first book was entitled Russian and West European Women, 1860-1939: Dreams, Struggles and Nightmares. This book covered patterns in Russian women’s social, educational, political, and economic lives. However, it didn’t reveal a lot about their personal lives. In contrast, this book Remarkable Russian Women in Pictures, Prose and Poetry provides glimpses into women’s hearts and minds in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It reveals more about their quests for happy marriages, search for authentic religious life, and desire for education and fulfilling work serving poor peasants and workers as doctors, teachers, and political activists. In many ways, 19th century Russian women’s complaints about unhappy marriages resem- ble modern American women’s. Some experienced emptiness, alien- 3 remarkable russian women ation, and even the squandering of their fortunes by unscrupulous husbands. Female poets spoke of their lyrical loves as well as their romantic and marital failures. They criticized their society’s tradi- tion of arranged marriage. Several severely judged their country’s political oppression in their poems and were punished. The lives of these women writers as well as gentry-class women like Countess Sofia Tolstoy sometimes resembled the arranged marriages depicted in the recent PBS series “Downton Abbey.” Where possible, this book showcases the voices and art of women writers, painters, doctors, revolutionaries, peasants, workers, wives, and mothers across several decades, making them visible and their words heard. Middle and upper-class Russian women left many kinds of written records—novels, poetry, diaries, autobiographies, and inter- views. Some of their writings portray a Russian twist to idyllic Eng- lish gentry-class life depicted in “Downton Abbey.” Some of their critiques of marriage highlighted the pilfering of their dowries and the ruining of their personal lives by profligate, philandering husbands. Still, most women in all classes wanted the respectability that marriage offered, and most married. However, some rebelled and wanted different sorts of lives. Some from all classes sought the religious life as nuns or pilgrims. Some found fulfillment in careers such as writing, painting, teaching, medicine, even political activity. A gifted generation of late 19th and early 20th century women artists known as the Avant-Garde has left an impressive legacy of paintings and illustrations. They portray an array of self-portraits as well as paintings of peasants and working-class women. Much of their work featured abstract paintings, stage designs for innovative theatrical productions, even costume designs for modern ballets. Wedding laments and folk songs give us a look into illiterate peasant and working-class women’s lives, revealing some of their struggles in those epochs. From our perspective, many peasant and working-class women seemed to live lives of quiet desperation and drudgery. Yet, who knows the solace they found in respectable married life and motherhood or the pride they took in their hard work on family farms or in factories. Their survival during the dark days of the 1891 famine, the industrial revolution, WW I, the Rev- olutions of 1905 and 1917 attest to their remarkable endurance in 4 preface not merely existing, but even thriving and producing children during hard times. Women’s roles as wife, mother, and provider during the harsh circumstances of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were remarkable. The present book emerges from many influences. One was Ser- gei Prokudin-Gorsky’s impressive color photographs of Russian women prior to World War I. His dramatic pictures show strong peasant women working in the fields, charming peasant girls dressed in holiday frocks, and thoughtful women at rural chapels. Pictures from the Russian Film and Photo Archive in St. Petersburg also show women at home, work, and in society. Wikimedia also supplies some wonderful photographs of Russian icons, Russian religious and political processions, as well as pictures of famous Rus- sian women writers, artists, wives, and revolutionaries. Striking paintings in the Russian State Art Museum in St. Petersburg also in- fluenced me. Teaching at Lithuania Christian College in Klaipeda, Lithuania,

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