259 REVIEWS Rossii...
New Subjects, Social Transformations: Caroline Humphrey. Post-sovetskie transformatsii v aziatskoi chasti Rossii: Antropologicheskii ocherk [Post-Soviet Transformations in Asiatic Russia. Anthropological Studies]. Moscow: Natalis, 2010. 382 p.
Caroline Humphrey is a truly remarkable per- son, and a remarkable scholar. She belongs to a very select group of Western researchers who in the Brezhnev era managed to carry out genuine anthropological field research in the USSR, and not in Moscow or Leningrad, but far away from these more or less socially advanced centres — in Buryatia, deep in the countryside. It is hard to say how she managed to do this (Humphrey herself speaks about this issue briefly in the foreword of the book reviewed here). A possible contributing factor was the short-lived international lessening of political tension (‘dйtente’) — the alleviation of the Cold War at the end of the 1960’s and beginning of the 1970’s, or the fact that Humphrey’s parents were connected, albeit in the past, to the
Sergei Abashin. A Review of The Remaking Russia in Asia: Caroline Humphrey. Post-sovetskie transformatsii v aziatskoi chasti Communist movement. But in any case this research resulted in the voluminous book that was published in English in 1983, Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm [Humphrey 1983], which is almost the only anthropological work written about the USSR and the ‘era of de- veloped socialism’ by a foreign (‘bourgeois’!) author on the basis of field-research materials Sergei Abashin collected by the author herself. Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the The collapse of the USSR in 1991 opened the Russian Academy of Sciences, doors of the former Soviet Union for Western Moscow anthropologists, and Humphrey’s book instantly [email protected] No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 260
went from being a work on hard-to-find Soviet ‘exoticism’ to being a popular and important starting point, even a unique point of reference, for understanding how Soviet society was organised on a local, micro-social level, and what subsequently began to happen to these institutes, relations and notions once the Soviet ideology had ceased to be their straitjacket. Caroline Humphrey herself, in- cidentally, wrote a follow-up to her book about the ‘Karl Marx Collective’ and gave her work, which was republished in 1998, the resounding title Marx Went Away — but Karl Stayed Behind [Humphrey 1998]. The collection of articles which is the subject of this review, the first by Humphrey to be published in Russian, is a development and an expansion (thematically, geographically and conceptually) of the issues that were initially posed in the first book about the Soviet- Buryatia collective farm and which were then examined more deeply in the second aforementioned monograph. Anthropological (or ethnographic, in this case it is not important) studies of (post) socialism encountered a number of significant dilemmas.1 After 1991 it very quickly transpired that post-communist societies do not develop in accordance with the ‘Western’ (liberal) trajectory, but instead follow some completely unexpected and not always comprehensible or predictable zigzags. The temptation arose to explain this as ‘socialist heritage’ which was formed in the Soviet era and which now determines the specifics of ‘post-Soviet trans- formations’. This was an attractive stance as it allowed one to criticise such universalistic (or Europe-centric) concepts as ‘transition’, ‘modernisation’, ‘development’, and the deterministic historical scenarios that had been written using them. Socialism/Marxism, which itself was invented as an ‘alternative’ universalistic (and even Europe-centric) concept, always was, and has remained, a powerful weapon in the struggle against European liberal-modernist univer- salism.2 Writing an ‘anthropology of (post-)socialism’ also allowed one to criticise the essentialist concept of ‘national (ethnic) culture’, pointing out that national peculiarities take shape under the influence of certain social and political conditions. However, from such an anthropological point of view, ‘socialism’ itself turned into a particular ‘culture’ with specific practices and identities. And such an interpretation looked, on the one hand, like a continuation of an apparently dead or dying Sovietological tradition (which reduced all explanations of society to the strict structural
1 Incidentally, Humphrey herself formulated these dilemmas in one small note [Humphrey 2002]. 2 It is not by accident that the anthropologist Katherine Verdery, one of the most consistent advocates of the study of ‘(post-)socialism’ as a separate ‘fi eld’, tries to fi nd overlaps with the concept of ‘post- colonialism’ (see [Chari, Verdery 2009]). 261 REVIEWS
peculiarities of totalitarianism), and on the other like a unique essentialisation of ‘Sovietness’, a conversion of the ‘(post-)Soviet/ Rossii... (post-)Socialist’ into a cultural ‘other’ (in relation to the ‘West’), and the amalgamation under this term of very different historical and biographical destinies. In this way both approaches have their limitations, and neither is satisfactory from a methodological point of view. This dilemma is one of the inner narratives, at first not very noticeable, which I found it interesting to observe when reading Humphrey’s book. In the text we do not see an entire, systematically expounded and logically constructed concept of ‘(post-) socialism’. The British researcher knows only too well the dangers of such a generalisation and therefore, avoiding categorical judgements, she writes an em- pirical ethnography of individual subjects and issues. However, the fact that the collection has been divided into sections encompassing the subjects of social order, the economy, infrastructure and spiritual life leaves one with the feeling of a claim precisely to a voluminous analysis of ‘(post-)socialism’. The dangers that I mentioned do not disappear even if they are cloaked in empiricism; they inevitably remain, and in many respects they determine the reader’s under- standing of the text. The first section, which is entitled ‘Sotsialnoe ustroistvo’ [Social Order],1 includes two articles. In one of these articles, ‘Sudby tradi- tsionnykh sotsialnykh ierarkhii v kommunisticheskikh Rossii i Kitae’ [The Fate of Traditional Social Hierarchies in Communist Russia and China], Humphrey carries out a comparative analysis of what became of the traditional social hierarchies of the Buryats, the ‘i’ people, and the Chinese Mongols during the transformations in the USSR and the PRC. Humphrey tries to show that the changes were influenced by both the nature of the hierarchy itself that the society had before this, and the nature of the reforms that were carried out. The scholar thinks that in the case of the Buryats the former, quite
Sergei Abashin. A Review of The Remaking Russia in Asia: Caroline Humphrey. Post-sovetskie transformatsii v aziatskoi chasti amorphous social hierarchies could not resist the repressive policy of the destruction of the elite and the forceful interspersion of social groups. Sovietisation and Russification, in Humphrey’s opinion, had a very profound effect: they tore down the social barriers instead of conserving them as in the case of the Chinese reforms which just recoded the former social statuses into new hierarchies. In the second article, ‘Neravenstvo i isklyuchennost: emotsionalnyi komponent rossiiskoi politicheskoi kultury’ [Inequality and Ex- clusion: the Emotional Component of Russian Political Culture], the question is asked why some forms of inequality are not noticed
1 Here and below, we have back-translated from the Russian, since the ways in which the original titles have been interpreted is of analytical interest. [Editor]. No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 262
and become a problem for people while others, conversely, are loaded with a lot of emotion. Humphrey positions herself against the domination of the economic and rational interpretation of ine- quality, switching her attention to a subjective interpretation of the latter which is formed, for example, through political culture. In Soviet Russia there arose, in her opinion, a notion of ‘unity’, sup- ported by the dichotomy of ‘we’ and ‘they’ and at the same time by the constant exclusion of various people and groups from this ‘unity’ (‘collective’). In the post-Soviet era economic inequality became rampant, but people kept the previous Soviet notions of ‘inequality’, the former practices of excluding ‘foreigners’, and the ways of creating the discursive space of inequality (access to some or other symbolic blessings, a symbolic shared ‘body’). The second section, ‘Preobrazovaniya v ekonomike’ [Transformations in the Economy], consists of three articles. The first article, ‘Tor- govlya, “besporyadok” i “rezhimy grazhdanstva” v rossiiskoi pro- vintsii 1990-kh gg.’ [Trade, ‘Disorder’ and ‘Modes of Citizenship’ in the Russian Provinces of the 1990s], starts with a rejection of the liberal-modernist theory of ‘transition’ and the Marxist ‘stadial’ theory for explaining the phenomenon of post-Soviet trade. Instead of this Humphrey separates and analyses individually the various categories of traders (businessmen, brokers, dealers, shuttle traders,1 entrepreneurs, merchants, the ‘trading minorities’ — people from the Caucasus, middle-Asia and China). She describes trade as relationships of trust in which all types of personal connections are activated. Humphrey is also interested in the nature of the struggle between ‘modes of citizenship’ (the complex hierarchies of local allegiances) which formed in the Soviet era and divide society into the ‘deep-rooted’ and ‘people from outside’, and traders who cross over boundaries and endanger the ‘social body’ which is attached to a certain territory. In the article ‘Gryaznyi biznes, “normalnaya zhizn” i mechty o za- kone’ [Dirty Business, ‘Normal Life’ and Dreams of Legal Control], the actors of the post-Soviet economy continue to be analysed. Humphrey rejects the dichotomous model in which there are only the ‘old’ Soviet personnel with the former corporate practices, and the new market entrepreneurs. Instead of this, she distinguishes between many different economic actors who are distinct in terms of their particular practices and who operate their own ‘rules of play’. The last article of the section is called ‘Krestyanstvo i naturalnoe khozyaistvo kak ideologemy sovremennoi Rossii’ [Peasantry and Subsistence Farming as Ideologemes of Modern Russia]. Humphrey
1 ‘Shuttle traders’ [chelnoki] were a widespread phenomenon of the 1990s: they were highly mobile deal- ers who imported scarce or sought-after goods into Russia, carried in personal luggage. [Editor]. 263 REVIEWS
lists and examines post-Soviet agrarian practices (small holdings, dachas, farming) and asks the question: why, despite the growth Rossii... in their significance for people’s self-sufficiency, do those involved in such practices not call themselves ‘peasants’. She seeks the answer in the Soviet era, when people formed notions according to which a backward, lowly nature was attributed to ‘the peasant way of life’. The ‘Soviet heritage’ again predetermined the strategies for forming social preferences, names and statuses. The third section, ‘Infrastruktura i arkhitektura’ [Infrastructure and Architecture], begins with the article ‘Villy “novykh russkikh”: Ocherk postsovetskikh modelei potrebleniya i kulturnoi identichnosti’ [The Villas of the ‘New Russians’. A Study of Post-Soviet Models of Consumption and Cultural Identity]. Humphrey investigates the identity of the ‘new Russian’, and how this identity is imposed from outside and formed from within. The identity is built up from disparate elements that contradict one another and therefore look awkward. These elements do not mark membership of some or other social group as much as they define one’s life ambitions. The villa remains just a symbol and not a real life space, an eclectic symbol that includes the resources of both Russian history and European culture, and also takes its bearings in contradictory and amorphous social notions and attitudes. ‘New Russians’, Humphrey writes, are not the full masters of their cultural identity; as before they adapt to the Russian tastes and limitations that formed in the Soviet era. The section’s other article is, in my opinion, somewhat artificially grouped with the previous one — ‘Novyi vzglyad na infrastrukturu: Sibirskie goroda i “bolshoi yanvarskii moroz” 2001 goda’ [A New Way of Looking at Infrastructure: Siberian Towns and the ‘Great January Freeze’ of 2001]. The explosion at thermal power plant no.1 in Ulan-Ude in 2001, Humphrey writes, showed that the existence of the (post-) Soviet town depends completely on infrastructure — public transport, the communal electricity and heating system, and
Sergei Abashin. A Review of The Remaking Russia in Asia: Caroline Humphrey. Post-sovetskie transformatsii v aziatskoi chasti so on. The post-Soviet reforms that ostensibly put Ulan-Ude on the global map in actual fact resulted in an infrastructural crisis, and this turned into a source of problems and unrest. The practices of getting about the city and using [communal] services changed (the space increased in size, time became compressed, contrary to expectations); there was more of a loss of modernity than a transition to ‘modern society’. The majority of the book’s articles deal with Buryatia, but only on one occasion is this indicated in the names of the sections — ‘Ulan- Ude — post-sovetskii opyt gorodskikh transformatsii’ [Ulan-Ude: the Post-Soviet Experience of Urban Transformations]. This section consists of two articles. In the first, ‘Suverenitet i povsednevnost’: “sistema” marshrutnykh taksi v stolitse Buryatii’ [Sovereignty and No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 264
Daily Routine: the ‘System’ of Fixed-Route Taxis in the Capital of Buryatia], the author analyses the ‘localised forms of sovereignty’ (as opposed to the global and national forms thereof), and ‘previously inconceivable social spaces’ which came into being in the chaos and uncertainty of the post-Soviet era. The ‘everyday forms and practices of sovereignty’ on the streets of Ulan-Ude in the form of fixed-route taxis, which are an illegal system, ensure that the city can function. This micro-world has its own form of sovereignty: it can exclude, kill, punish, it collects tolls, and so on. The mafia turned out to be more effective than the state, and Humphrey traces its roots in the Soviet era, recalling how the official Soviet collectives and unofficial youth groups were organised at the time. The second article in the section, ‘Novye subyekty i situativnaya vzaimozavisimost — posledstviya privatizatsii v Ulan-Ude’ [New [Federal] Subjects and Situational Interdependence — the Con- sequences of Privatisation in Ulan-Ude], acts as a continuation of the group of texts on the new space of the small Siberian town. Humphrey here turns to pre-Soviet history and traces back the for- mation of Ulan-Ude. In her opinion the post-Soviet era is cha- racterised by the fragmentation of space into various autonomous — social and cultural — segments which settle in anew with the help of various symbols and rituals and various social networks. In the concluding section entitled ‘Dukhovnaya zhizn’ [Spiritual Life] the reader will find the article ‘Stalin kak Sinii Slon: problema paranoii i souchastiya v (post)kommunisticheskh metaistoriyakh’ [Stalin as a Blue Elephant: the Problem of Paranoia and Complicity in (post-)Communist Meta-Histories], which talks about the interpretation of the history of Stalin’s Purges through a special Buddhist language of allegories and metaphors. According to local legends, Stalin is turning into the reincarnation of the Blue Elephant who a long time ago pledged to destroy Buddhism. In this legend Humphrey sees a ‘paranoidal discourse’ where contradictions produced by one’s own subconscious mind are transferred/projected onto other people and the surrounding world; a paranoiac lives in a distorted supernatural reality that constantly needs to be interpreted and decoded. And the legend, the scholar thinks, lays bare the problem of personal responsibility: exculpating Stalin for the Purges equates to lifting the personal guilt from every person who participated in them. The last article in the book, ‘Shamany i shamanstvo kak novyi fenomen gorodskoi zhizni’ [Shamans and Shamanism as a New Phenomenon of Urban Life], examines how the current Buryatia shamans view the everyday urban routine and which additional meanings they see in it. Humphrey returns to her thought that Ulan- Ude, a modernist city, broke up, after the collapse of the Soviet 265 REVIEWS
order, into fragments out of which it is not possible to piece together any meaningful order: everywhere one can see chaos, frightening Rossii... and unknown spheres, explosions, violence. In their imagination the shamans, mixing together various cultural images, create their own town and see it as a part of their own personal world. Thus the work that I am reviewing presents a collection of quite diverse studies that reflect Caroline Humphrey’s very broad research interests. They are brought together as a logical collection by the constant upfront references to the Soviet era — the social practices and notions that formed in it which, if they cannot be said to pre- determine post-Soviet identities and actions, have at least left a noticeable impression on these. At the same time, one’s attention is arrested by the fact that the majority of the articles in the original book were published in 1998– 2004, and the latest one — about the ‘consequences of privatisation’ in Ulan-Ude — as long ago as 2007. This means that most of the time they speak of what was happening in Russia (and in its ‘Asiatic’ parts at that) during the 1990’s. It goes without saying that this in many respects influenced the choice of topics to be analysed (privatisation, shuttle trade, ‘new Russians’, dacha economy, the ‘mafia’, and so on), as well as the way in which they are examined: emphasis on col- lapse, chaos, uncertainty, the formation of unofficial networks, an intensification of local allegiances, etc. It is beyond doubt that in the 1990’s the ‘(post-)Soviet heritage’ was alive and — this is generally agreed — it sculpted people’s actions and thoughts. But, reading these articles in 2010, we can see that a lot of the topics have already lost their topicality, and many phenomena that were typical of the Yeltsin era have already almost disappeared or have undergone substantial changes (Humphrey herself acknowledges this in her opening word); different realia, social groups, dividing lines, notions and identities have arisen. Various components of the former space which 30–50 years ago were following, as it seemed, converging and
Sergei Abashin. A Review of The Remaking Russia in Asia: Caroline Humphrey. Post-sovetskie transformatsii v aziatskoi chasti intersecting trajectories, today move further and further apart, are less and less similar to one another and have different reference points/guiding lines and prospects in the future. The extent to which one can explain these transformations with reference to the socialist past is diminishing all the time. The researchers of these new processes try to place them in broader, more comparative contexts in which they become just an instance of more general tendencies for change in ‘Europe’, ‘the West’, ‘the East’, ‘the South’, ‘Eurasia’, ‘the post-colonial world’, ‘the global world’, ‘the global periphery and semi-periphery’, and so on. It is probably too early to predict the end of ‘the anthropology of (post-)socialism’. One can still observe how, for example, socialist China, occupying the geopolitical position of the former USSR, is No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 266
resisting ‘normalisation’ (although it seems that China is also ready to give in to this). What is more, ‘the anthropology of socialism’ retains its historical value. Many historians and anthropologists refuse to slot the Soviet epoch into the universalising framework that has all too obviously been created in accordance with the templates of a single history written in American and European universities (although one can also observe an ever-intensifying desire to explain socialism using more general principles1). Humphrey’s book is not dictated by just one way of theoretical thinking. In the genre of not very binding studies, the researcher maintains a distance from big concepts, speaks about local examples and does not clearly state her position in respect of the viability of any ‘anthropology of socialism’. This cautious standpoint may, on the one hand, be attractive for its flexibility, but on the other hand may bemuse the reader due to the incompleteness of the conclusions. In any case, Humphrey puts readers in a position where they themselves must decide which conceptual framework should house what they have read. The reader becomes an unwitting co-author, completing the thoughts and text contained in Humphrey’s book and deciding for him- or herself whether or not ‘the anthropology of socialism’ still has a right to exist.
References Chari Sh., Verdery K. ‘Thinking between the Posts: Poscolonialism, Postsocialism, and Ethnography after the Cold War’ // Comparative Studies in Society and History. 2009. Vol. 51. No. 1. Pp. 6–34. Humphrey C. Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. ______. Marx Went Away — But Karl Stayed Behind. Updated Edition of Karl Marx Collective: Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1998. ______. ‘Does the Category ‘Postsocialist’ Still Make Sense?’ // Hann C. (ed.). Postsocialism: Ideals, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia. London: Routledge, 2002. Pp. 12–15. Kotkin S. ‘Modern Times: The Soviet Union and the Interwar Conjunc- ture’ // Kritika. Winter 2001. Vol. 2. No. 1. Pp. 111–64. Translated by Thomas Lorimer
1 Steven Kotkin is one of the clearest representatives of this tendency (see [Kotkin 2001]). 267 REVIEWS
The Shtetl Revisited: V.A. Dymshits, A.L. Lvov, A.V. Sokolova (comp.) Shtetl: XXI vek. Polevye issledovaniya [The Shtetl in the Twenty-First Century. Field Studies]. SPb.: Izdatelstvo Evropeiskogo universiteta v Sankt-Peterburge, 2008. 292 p. (Studia Ethnologica. Issue 5)
The book under review deals with an interesting phenomenon: the shtetl, or the Jewish hamlet. It focuses on the phenomenon of culture — the culture of the Jews of Eastern Europe (Eastern Ashkenazi), rather than being a history of spe- cific localities on a geographical map. Only a few works of this kind have been written in nearly a century. Furthermore, after the Second World War and the Holocaust, during which the culture of the shtetl was practically destroyed (together with the overwhelming majority of its bearers), there has hardly been any research on Elena Nosenko-Shtein. A Review of The Shtetl Revisited: V.A. Dymshits, A.L. Lvov, A.V. Sokolova (comp.)... this subject area. Studying the shtetl was hin- dered by the almost complete disappearance of not only the object of the research, but also the ‘subjects’ of that research — i.e. researchers and an entire scientific school (or indeed various schools). Several texts have been written on the origins of research on the subject with which this book (appearing as it does in the Studia Ethnologica series) is primarily concerned: the traditional ethnography and folklore of the Jews of Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth — beginning of the twentieth centuries in the Russian Empire, and on the gradual ‘suppression’ of such research in the USSR during the 1930s, followed by the almost complete abandonment of ‘Jewish Elena Nosenko-Shtein Institute of Oriental Studies studies’. Just a few examples of such texts that of the Russian Academy were published in Russian might include the of Sciences, following: [Lukin 1993; Ganelin, Kelner 1994; Moscow [email protected] Nosenko 2007; Nosenko-Shtein 2009]. No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 268
The foreword of the book under review, written by A. Lvov, focuses to a significant degree on this problem of a discontinuous historio- graphical tradition. Research on the shtetl recommenced in the 1990s, almost 100 years after the time of the well-known expeditions of S. An-sky in 1912–1914 to little villages located in the Pale of Settlement. It was precisely then that expeditions were made ‘in An-sky’s footsteps’, and not just in his footsteps. These trips were initiated by scholars from St Petersburg (which to this day remains the most significant centre of such research in Russia). They managed to release a series of works on the results of their expeditions [100 evreiskikh mestechek 1997; 100 evreiskikh mestechek 2000]. The organisation and conduct, starting in 2004, of summer student field-research schools served as a continuation of these field studies on a qualitatively different level. This is a joint project of the Interdepartmental Centre ‘Petersburg Judaica’ of the European Univer sity in St Petersburg and the Centre for University Teaching of Jewish Civilisation ‘Sefer’ (Moscow). The participants of these ‘schools on wheels’ — students and teachers alike — were given the unique opportunity to combine classes with trips around the former Jewish settlements of Ukraine and participate in gathering new field- research materials. The book under review is to a significant extent the result of all of these endeavours. The paradox is that the book is devoted to something that, as many people thought, no longer exists: destroyed, dead, irretrievably stuck in the past. However, the studies that made it into the book show us that this is not at all the case. It is not possible on the pages of one review to give a proper analysis of all of the articles in the collection (especially as some of them deserve extensive separate treatment). Therefore I will try to give an overall assessment of the entire work, and also those articles which seemed the most interesting to me. I found the structure of the book to be successful and completely logical. It includes a conceptual foreword (pp. 9–26); a section ‘Issledovaniya’ [Studies], which consists of seven articles devoted to the various aspects of the life and everyday culture of the shtetl; and a section entitled ‘Materialy ob etnografii i folklore evreev Podolii’ [Materials on the Ethnography and Folklore of the Jews of Podolia], in which three articles present the results of individual fieldwork. The collection ends with a list of the cited interviews, a list of the interviewees, and also an Acknowledgement and Summaries. I would like to go into a bit more detail about the aforementioned preface ‘Shtetl v XXI v. i etnografiya post-sovetskogo evreistva’ [The Shtetl in the Twenty-First Century and the Ethnography of Post- Soviet Jews]. Apart from a comprehensive overview of the work carried 269 REVIEWS
out at various points in time and in various countries in the field of traditional ethnography and the folklore of Eastern European Jews, it also contains a successful attempt to trace back the unique transformation of the ‘image of the shtetl’ in the minds of researchers. Apart from this, Alexander Lvov strives to answer the question of why shtetls — traditional Jewish local communities — are studied so actively in this day and age. The answer, in the author’s opinion, lies not just in the fact that these communities ‘because of the continuity of their local history can be viewed (and, what is more important, view themselves) as the direct heirs of the classical shtetl of the nineteenth century’ (p. 11). Lvov states at the outset that formulating the issue like this is likely to be controversial — mainly as a result of the marginal place allotted to anthropology in Jewish studies. And it is here that we encounter a dispute with several researchers (amongst them A. Shtern- shis [Shternshis 2006]) who are of the opinion that as a result of the anti-religious campaigns and the Holocaust only the urban Jewish culture and identity remained intact in the USSR (p. 18). Lvov tries to prove that the shtetl still lives and functions today — and this represents the second part of the answer to the question that he poses. As a matter of fact the entire book under review — the articles, notes and field-research materials — is a unique confirmation of the theory of the reality of the existence of the shtetl in our age. I found Alla Sokolova’s article one of the most interesting and enlightening texts in the book (‘Evreiskie mesta pamyati: lokalizatsya shtetla’ [Jewish Sites of Memory: Localisation of the shtetl], pp. 29– Elena Nosenko-Shtein. A Review of The Shtetl Revisited: V.A. Dymshits, A.L. Lvov, A.V. Sokolova (comp.)... 64). In the very name of the article one can clearly hear a reference to the famous ‘places of memory’ of Pierre Nora, and the researcher shows that the shtetl performs this function — being places of col- lective Jewish memory — in our age too. What is more, the memories ‘live’ not just in the synagogues and cemeteries (and also as memories about the synagogues and cemeteries), but also in ordinary buildings (and also as memories about them). Relying on a rich resource of fieldwork materials gathered by her over many years, Sokolova strives to delineate the structure of the shtetl, the typical trademarks of ‘Jewish homes’ and their subsequent ‘exoticisation’: the mytho- logisation of the ‘secrets of Jewish house-building’ in the con- sciousness of non-Jewish informants (pp. 60–62). Overall, Alla Sokolova’s writings are among a very small number of Russian studies to focus on Jewish material culture. To date, such research in Jewish studies has been slightly in the background, seen as less important than studying ‘high culture’ and even than research on Jewish folklore. Aside from its novelty, this article is important not just as an example of well-executed field research, but also as a successful attempt at rising above purely empirical material to a qualitatively new level of generalisations and conclusions. No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 270
If one looks at the contents of the book attentively, one is able to discern in it the ‘research cycles’ typical of traditional ethnography (although the articles and reports are not organised logically within the framework of these cycles). For instance, there are numerous works that relate to the life cycle: the birth of a child (Svetlana Amosova, Svetlana Nikolaeva ‘Chelovek rodilsya: zametki o evrei- skom rodilnom obryade’ [A Person Has Been Born: Observations on the Jewish Birth Ritual], pp. 83–98); weddings (Valentina Fed- chenko, Alexander Lvov ‘Svatovstvo, pomolvka, svadba’ [Match- making, Betrothal, Wedding], pp. 226–260); and burials (Valery Dymshits ‘Evreiskoe kladbishche: mesto, kuda ne khodyat’ [The Jewish Cemetery: a Place People Don’t Visit], pp. 135–158). Other items in the collection include interesting materials on Jewish folklore (Mariya Kaspina ‘Predstavleniya o durnom glaze’ [Notions of the Evil Eye], pp. 219–225; Dina Gidon, Valentina Fedchenko ‘Yiddish Songs’, pp. 261–278). Adjoining them — supplementing them, but also standing alone as a study precisely of Jewish urban culture — is ‘Slovar lokalnogo teksta kak metod opisaniya gorodskoi kulturnoi traditsii (na primere Mogylyova-Podolskogo)’ [The Dictionary of the Local Text as a Method of Describing the Urban Cultural Tradition (A Case Study of Mohyliv-Podilskyi)], edited by M. Lurye (pp. 186–215). This is one of relatively few attempts to ‘throw a bridge across the river’ separating the past from the present, relying on modern texts. This article is joined by the articles of Marina Hakkarainen, ‘Mes- techko vspominaet o proshlom: rasskazy o evreiskikh remeslenni- kakh i remeslakh’ [The Jewish Settlement Remembers the Past: Tales of Jewish Craftsmen and Handicrafts] (pp. 159–176) and Sonya Izard, ‘Ekonimika evreiskoi svadby v Mogileve-Podolskom sovet skogo perioda’ [The Economy of the Jewish Wedding in Mohyliv-Podilskyi in the Soviet period], (pp. 177–185). Here, the researchers have not only sourced new and interesting fieldwork material, but have also shown how traditional subjects function in a present-day context. My attention was also arrested by the article by Anna Kushkova entitled ‘Ponyatie “ikhes” i ego transformatsii v sovetskoe vremya’ [The Concept of ‘ikhes’ and Its Transformations in the Soviet Era] (pp. 99–134). The author analyses the concept of ‘ikhes’ which is important for traditional Jewish culture. Its original meaning, ‘noble born’, could not fail to undergo substantial changes in the Soviet era. In the opinion of Kushkova, it was precisely then that it gradually acquired the meaning ‘coming from a “respectable family”’. More- over, this status assumed the bearer had received a good, secular education. In the Soviet and post-Soviet era, the idea of the ‘respectable family’ and ‘a good education’ certainly prevailed, and 271 REVIEWS
this meaning currently prevails in the Jewish identity and self- identification over ‘noble lineage’ in its traditional sense (pp. 130–2). Kushkova’s article is one of the most successful in the collection, not only in terms of the wealth of material contained in it, which itself is well systematised (the diversity alone of the types and forms of ‘ikhes’ listed by the researcher is impressive), but also due to the serious nature of the interpretation of this cultural concept. I cannot fail to mention also an article by Alexander Lvov that deals with one of the aspects of the complex and often extremely unhealthy interethnic and inter-confessional relations between Jews and non- Jews: ‘Mezhetnicheskie otnosheniya: ugoshcheniya matsoi i “kro- vavyi navet”’ [Interethnic Relations: The Serving of Matzos and the ‘Blood Libel’], pp. 65–82). The article does not just offer rich and interesting field-research materials; the author shows us how the infamous ‘blood libel’, having survived for many centuries, has undergone transformations and still functions today. Furthermore, treating people to matzos, Alexander Lvov thinks, is a distinctive indicator of interethnic relations. For Jewish people it is a sort of ‘litmus test’ — and one that may even have provocative force — for their neighbours’ attitude to them. For non-Jewish people this type of ‘provocation’ can serve as grounds to reinforce rumours about blood being added to the matzos (p. 81), i.e., can work to revive an ancient negative stereotype. Once again I would stress that many of the articles deserve to be analysed at length individually, something there is no space to do Elena Nosenko-Shtein. A Review of The Shtetl Revisited: V.A. Dymshits, A.L. Lvov, A.V. Sokolova (comp.)... here. And in conclusion, I would say that Shtetl: XXI vek is a unique and successful attempt to address the traditional topics of Jewish ethnography and folklore, yet also to go beyond these. The book is important above all because its success in addressing the image of the shtetl, an image which is alive and living today. I categorically do not share the opinions of sceptics who think that this type of research ‘scrapes the bottom of the barrel’, studying the ‘remnants’ of a once very rich culture. Studying the residual elements of traditional cul- ture is one of the tasks of ethnography which strives to record, describe and preserve some or other phenomena and processes, i.e. allocate them a place in historical memory. In addition — and in this case this is very important — the book clearly and cogently traces the ‘temporal link’, since many phenomena are extensively examined in their current, present-day state. As a researcher whose interests are more focused on present-day issues, I would dare to assert that there has not been nearly enough research into precisely the mechanisms by which cultural information is transmitted from one generation to another. The majority of interviewees questioned by the book’s authors are elderly people. Therefore one can only guess if such transmission takes place and No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 272
how intensive it is. Do young people of Jewish descent live in modern shtetls and, if they do, are the residual elements of the traditional culture passed on to them? In other words, has the culture of the shtetl been preserved in the collective memory of Russian Jews today? Or is it only the image of the shtetl, as arduously re-created here by this talented band of scholars? One can only hope that in the future this void in our knowledge will be filled.
References 100 evreiskikh mestechek Ukrainy [100 Jewish Settlements in Ukraine]. Issue 1. Podolia. SPb.: Jerusalem Centre for Documenting the Heritage of the Diaspora, NP1 ‘Petersburg Judaica’; Jerusalem: Ezro, 1997. 100 evreiskikh mestechek Ukrainy [100 Jewish Settlements in Ukraine]. Issue 2: Podolia / Comp. Lukin V., Sokolova A., Khaymovich B. SPb.: Jerusalem Centre for Documenting the Heritage of the Diaspora, NP ‘Petersburg Judaica’, 2000. Ganelin R. Sh., Kelner V. E. ‘Problemy istoriografii evreev v Rossii. Vtoraya polovina XIX — pervaya chetvert XX vv.’ [Problems of the Historiography of Jews in Russia, 1850–1925] // Evrei v Rossii: istoricheskie ocherki. M.; Jerusalem: Bridges of culture — Gesharim, 1994. Pp. 183–249. Lukin V. ‘K stoletiyu obrazovaniya peterburgskoi nauchnoi shkoly evreiskoi istorii’ [The ‘Petersburg School’ of Jewish History: A Centenary Portrait] // Istoriya evreev v Rossii: Trudy po iudaike. Seriya “Istoriya i etnografiya” / Ed. by Elyashevich D. SPb.: Petersburg Jewish University; Institute of Diaspora Research, 1993. Iss. 1. Nosenko-Shtein E. E. [as Nosenko E.] ‘Eshche raz ob antropologii, iudaike i ikh vzaimootnosheniyakh (otvet moim opponentam) [Once More on Anthropology, Jewish Studies, and their Interrelationship (Reply to My Critics)]’ // Diaspory. 2007. Nos. 1–2. Pp. 238–46. ______.’Antropologiya i iudaika: vozmozhen li simbioz? [Anthropology and Jewish Studies: Is Symbiosis Possible?]’ // Etnograficheskoe obozrenie. 2009. No. 6. Pp. 3–7. Shternshis A. Soviet and Kosher. Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Translated by Thomas Lorimer
1 Not-For-Profi t Organisation. [Trans] 273 REVIEWS
The New Soviet Man in the Feminine: Yulia Gradskova. Soviet People with Female Bodies. Performing Beauty and Maternity in Soviet Russia the mid 1930s–1960s. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2007.
The Soviet gender experiment — and its cont- radictory politics oscillating between the crea- tion of an androgynous ideal for women and biological conceptions of gender qualities — has aroused the interest of both Western and Russian researchers in the last three decades; and many books have been published that deal with the problems of gender, maternity and beauty in Soviet Russia. Historians, sociologists, and fe- mi nist scholars have been studying for example the politics and institutions on motherhood (see e.g. [Ashwin 2000; Engel 2004]), sexuality and abortions (e.g. [Engelstein 1992]), beauty and Alena Pfoser. A Review of The Soviet Man in the Feminine: Yulia Gradskova. People with Female Bodies... glamour (e.g. [Goscilo, Holmgren 1996]), Soviet advice literature [Kelly 2001] and family and welfare politics in the Soviet Union (e.g. [Goldman 1993]) — to name only a few im- portant studies. Yulia Gradskova’s dissertation, Soviet People with Female Bodies, focusing on the performance of beauty and maternity in the mid 1930–1960s, can be located within these studies of Soviet social history and history of everyday life. Gradskova’s interest lies especially in the enactment of femininity in the everyday practices of women. Concentrating on maternity and beauty — two areas that were usually interpreted in an essentialist way during the Soviet period — she provides an analysis of the everyday practices of women during the mid Alena Pfoser 1930s–1960s, the changes that occurred during Loughborough University in the UK this time, and the normativities that lie behind [email protected] the everyday practices. No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 274
Gradskova relates her study to works on gender studies (amongst others for example the intersectionality approach), as well as on Foucault’s understanding of ‘normality’ and de Certeau’s idea of everyday practices that stresses the active role of people in re- appropriating spaces, discourses, and their bodies. She assumes that the construction of normality is shaped by discursive practices, which are not only imposed by the state, but also exist as common sense knowledge in everyday routines. In their everyday practices people do not only reproduce normality, but are also engaged in practices of resistance and reinterpretation of dominant discourses. Gradskova applies a two-fold methodological approach, including a discourse analysis of publications on beauty and maternity and oral history interviews with women living in Russia. Doing so, she aims to relate the reported practices of women to the dominant discourses of the Soviet time, and tries to show how they were used for the presentation of personal experiences. The studied period, the mid 30s to the 60s, can be considered as the middle period in the history of the Soviet state, where, according to Victoria Semenova, ‘the only real Soviet generation’ was coming of age [Semenova 2002]. After introducing the theoretical and methodological background of the study, in the second part of the book (chapters 2–4), Gradskova tries to reconstruct the discursive fields of beauty and maternity in mass media publications and advice books between the 1920s and the 1960s: on the basis of a plentitude of material, she analyses the main characteristics of the two discourses, and their changes within the studied period: Regarding maternity, she contends that the discourse on the natural predestination of women to become a mother, and the social and medicalised treatments of motherhood, proved to be dominant, although different voices questioning the instinctual understanding of a child’s need and the naturalness of becoming a mother become apparent over time, especially by the end of the 1960s. Nevertheless Gradskova characterises the discursive field of maternity as rather stable. It was often addressed in the genre of authoritative medical advice and the state’s care. Beauty, in contrast, was a rather diverse field with a stress on hygiene, modesty, inner beauty and good taste; it was shaped by institutions with ‘less authoritarian ways of disciplining’, as beauty did not play a major role in Soviet politics. The discourse on beauty underwent significant changes in the period that Gradskova studies, due to the modernisation of the country, new production technologies for clothes and beauty accessories, and the influence of ‘Western’ beauty norms that caused changes in the construction of beauty, most obviously from the 1960s, when fashion started to gain importance. Gradskova’s analysis of Soviet discourses in some aspects reproduces the results of previous studies — especially in regard to maternity, where the official discourse has been already analysed by other 275 REVIEWS
researchers, who have written on the Soviet discourse on the natural predestination of women, the medicalisation of motherhood and the construct of the working mother (for example [Ashwin 2000]). Gradskova’s results are especially interesting when it comes to the comparison of the Soviet discourse with similar discourses in the ‘West’. Although she only secondarily refers to developments in the ‘West’, she convincingly argues that Soviet discourses on maternity and beauty were not radically different from discourses in many European countries. The stress on hygiene and physical exercise, the claim for state assistance for mothers, and the medi- calisation of motherhood are indications of similar developments, which are connected to the project(s) of modernisation in the West and in the Soviet Union. However, the following oral history study makes the particularities of the Soviet context clear: The third part of the book (chapters 5–7) is based on interviews that the author conducted with 21 women in three Russian cities, Moscow, Saratov and Ufa. It shows how the practices of the women were shaped by the shortages of goods, by official restrictions (i.e. abortion ban, medical control, school and work uniforms) and also ‘tacit disciplinary practices’ for example on the part of medical authorities and educational institutions, not to speak of within the family. Firstly, Gradskova gives an overview of maternity and beauty norms in an everyday context. She traces the institutional changes and changes in women’s practices between the 1930s and 1960s, and how the discourses were appropriated and modified by the women.
Alena Pfoser. A Review of The Soviet Man in the Feminine: Yulia Gradskova. People with Female Bodies... ‘Normal femininity’, as Gradskova reconstructs it on the basis of the interviews with women, was defined by a set of rules commonly referred to by the women (‘common sense normativity’) and was composed of different elements of the dominant discourses on beauty and maternity. In everyday life, these different elements of the discourses could be misused, mixed up, combined and adjusted by the women in changing their internal logic. A special focus of the analysis lies on the description of the environments and technologies that shaped women’s practices, as well as on the skills and resources of the women. Already here the reader gets an impression of the diversities of the practices connected with beauty and maternity, and how they were used to create and reproduce social differences (for example through unequal access to beauty facilities and services). In the second part of her presentation of the results of the oral history study, Gradskova provides a deeper analysis of selected cases: She analyses the interconnections between different categories of social belonging and shows, which influences they have for example on the beauty skills of the women and their experience of becoming a mother. Here, the advantages of an intersectional approach become clear: Gradskova analyses in detail how the social status, age, place No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 276
of living and ethnic identity of the informant play a role in the construction of femininity and the everyday practices of women. Its richness in detail is one of the greatest merits of the study, as it shows the changing normativities in the diverse fields of beauty and maternity, common sense rules in different everyday practises, and individual appropriations of discourses. As with many other studies on everyday life in the Soviet Union, Gradskova concentrates her study in an urban context, but due to the fact that the informants included women from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, many of them born in rural environments, the reader gets a dif- ferentiated picture of the performance of femininity in Soviet everyday life. Gradskova shows, for example, that the modernisation project of the Soviet state and the new normativities connected to it were interpreted as a form of Russification and colonialisation by Bashkir women. Traditional ethnic, religious and rural practices, offering a different set of rules, could put dominant Soviet dis- courses under question, but could also be combined with them, as for example in the discourse on modesty: paying attention to inner beauty (modest appearance, limited use of cosmetics) the practices of Muslim Bashkirs could be adjusted to the Soviet discourse (p. 247). The analysis of the interviews also makes clear that — as has also been suggested by other studies on Soviet everyday life (see for example, [Fitzpatrick 1999]) — in the fields of beauty and maternity people used the system of privileges and semi-official resources to improve their lives. The discourses in the fields of beauty and maternity, with their sometimes conflicting normativities, could be used by the women for their personal goals, reaching from survival to self-realisation. Whether these individualised ways of dealing with discourses can be considered as ‘subversion’ of the Soviet order of discourse, as Gradskova argues, is questionable though. The practices of women should be, rather, characterised as small acts of resistance to dominant discourses and distinction from others than as sub- version taking its place in a radical political vocabulary. The richness in detail of the study also implies some limitations as it is sometimes difficult to get a clear picture of the studied objects and to link the results with each other — Gradskova analyses many different kinds of phenomena from the interactions between women and the medical stuff in maternity clinics, to the division of domestic work and childcare and the practices of sewing at home; she focuses on the characteristics of the discourses, their changes between the 1920s and 60s on one hand, and on the practices of the women in different environments, the normativities behind these practices and their changes over the time on the other hand, as well as the role of several categories of social belonging in the practices of women. This diversity is increased by analysing the everyday practices of both 277 REVIEWS
beauty and maternity — which are analysed in separated chapters throughout the book, but hardly linked in the final analyses. In concentrating only on one of these topics — beauty or maternity — the study would have been more compact and more integrated in terms of the results and the analysis of the discourses and the practices of the women could have been interlinked better. The tightly organised structure of the book to some extent outweighs the diverse images one gets, especially in the oral history part of the study.
References Ashwin S. (ed.). Gender, State and Society in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. New York: Routledge, 2000. Engel B. A. Women in Russia 1700–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Engelstein L. The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin- de-Siиcle Russia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. Fitzpatrick S. Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Goldman W. Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Goscilo H., Holmgren B. (eds.). Russia: Women: Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Kelly C. Refining Russia. Advice Literature, Politice Culture and Gender from Catherine to Yeltsin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Semenova V. V. ‘Two Cultural Worlds in One Family — the Historical
Alena Pfoser. A Review of The Soviet Man in the Feminine: Yulia Gradskova. People with Female Bodies... Context in Russian Society’ // History of the Family. 2002. Vol. 7. Pp. 259–80. No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 278
New Insights, Old Paradigms? Melanie Ilic and Jeremy Smith (eds.). Soviet State and Society under Nikita Khrushchev. London: Routledge, 2009.
Just as Stalinism was the focus of the most innovative historiography devoted to the Soviet era during the late 1990s and the early 2000s (see e.g. [Kotkin 1995; Fitzpatrick 2000]), the Thaw period, which owes its shape to the reformative policy of Nikita Sergeevich Khru- shchev between 1956 and 1964, has recently become the field of interest for Western historians to apply new theories and ground- breaking approaches to topics that were formerly left out in historical analysis. Two volumes by historians working at universities in the United Kingdom can serve as examples for this develop- ment. Melanie Ilic, Susan Reid and Lynne Attwood’s co-edited volume on Women in the Khrushchev Era brings together articles on all aspects of women’s lives, on their perception of the changing realities around them and on the cultural production of meaning that was to provide certain patterns of perception. The topics are wide-ranging, covering the work and housing situation, religion and space-flight as well as the self-conception of women in diaries and the construction of feminity in films [Ilic, Reid, Attwood 2004]. The volume on The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cul- tural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era edited by Polly Jones focuses on an equally broad Katharina Uhl scope of approaches to social and cultural life in St Antony’s College, the Thaw period, shedding light on ‘the ne go- Oxford [email protected] tiations of the Stalinist legacies bequeathed to 279 REVIEWS
Stalin’s successors’ [Jones 2006: 1]. The contributions to the volume reveal that de-Stalinisation of society and culture was not a process that followed immediately on from Khrushchev’s exposure of the ‘cult of personality’ but one that was initially rejected harshly by society as people were unable to think outside the Stalinist terms of perception of reality. The various articles take into account a broad Under Nikita Khrushchev scope of sources ranging from archival material and letters to the editor to examples of fiction and poetry as well as historiographic works. The volume’s major conclusion is that the Khrushchev period can by no means be viewed only as a time of liberalisation and thawing of the cultural atmosphere but it is rather the replacement of open terror by subtle means of social and moral engineering that is crucial for the years of Khrushchev’s reforms. This theme was further developed by Klaus Gestwa, professor of Eastern European history at Tьbingen University (Germany) and Susan Reid, professor of Russian Visual Studies at Sheffield Univer- sity (UK). Gestwa’s works focus on the topos of the malleability of the human being that dominated the minds of the Stalinist as well as the post-Stalinist leadership. Manifested at the ‘Stalinist Great Construction Sites’ since 1948, this notion underpinned the strong will of the communist leadership to shape the minds and souls of the Soviet people [Gestwa 2010; Gestwa 2009]. Susan Reid’s articles examine the scope of influence that the Party-state had on the individual via subtle discursive or visual strategies and how his or her perception of reality was shaped e.g. by guidelines and discourses regarding interior design, thus exerting a certain impact on the private sphere in the Soviet context [Reid 2005; Reid 2006a, 2006b]. Another topic that both academics and other historians working about the Thaw period are concerned with is the significance of the Cold War for the leadership as well as for ‘ordinary people’. Research focuses on battlefields other than the traditional historiography had examined: instead of an analysis of the arms race, recent studies on the Cold War focus on the symbolic meaning of the space flihts, the cultural significance of contacts between East and West as well as the symbolic importance of the conflict of systems for everyday life — e.g. when it comes to Western life as background for the perception of Soviet everyday life [Reid 2002; Gestwa 2009; Richmond 2003;
Katharina Uhl. A Review of The New Insights but Old Paradigms? Melanie Ilic and Jeremy Smith (eds.), Soviet State Society Gorsuch, Koenker 2006]. Given this historiographic background, it might seem to be an anachronistic undertaking to investigate the relationship between state and society. Nevertheless, Melanie Ilic states in the introduction to the volume Soviet State and Society Under Nikita Khrushchev that it is the explicit goal of the book to explore ‘the relationship between the Soviet state and society, between the CPSU and government at central, regional and local level on one side and ordinary Soviet citizens on the other’ during the period of Khrushchev’s government No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 280
between 1953 and 1964. The individual chapters figure as ‘case studies’ for this question (p. 1). This somewhat traditional approach seems all the more awkward given the state of the changing academic world that is shaped by decades of attempts from side of the cultural history to detect the influence of culture, discourse, patterns of perception and the like on the allegedly objective structures of society. But some ideas from both the recent historiography and the cultural history are, however, considered in the volume when its editor puts the question about the Thaw society as a ‘surveillance society’ (p. 3) which resulted in an increasing degree of social and moral engineering engendered by the new ideological outlook. This is also the case when exploring the meaning of the main characte- ristics of the period, the de-Stalinisation and the revived ideological impetus since the XX Party Congress in 1956, for the everyday lives of the citizens and for ‘the way people came to view the Soviet state’ as well as ‘the way in which individuals came to construct their relationships with one another’ (p. 1). Interestingly, rather than looking at more or less innovative ways of analysis provided by recent historiography, some contributions to the volume apply traditional approaches despite the fact that the authors are mostly young historians and doctoral students, and that the volume covers a broad scope of topics concerning the major interests of recent historiography on the Thaw period: the Third Party Programme and its ideological agenda, Khrushchev’s reforms, various social groups such as youth, women, and workers as well as political dissent and social unrest. At the same time, the methodo- logical approaches adopted by other contributions are quite diverse and inspired by recent research, some of them going beyond what Ilic anticipates in the introduction. A problematic aspect of the introduction as well as of the volume in whole can be seen in a certain vagueness of terminology regarding the terms ‘society’ and ‘state’ and the unclear distinction between governmental organs and public (obshchestvennye) organisations. It remains ambiguous which conception of society Ilic thinks that the authors are applying: the Soviet definition that regards state and society as merging to express the will of the party, as a system that is directed by the Communist Party expressing the will of the people — ‘society’ — and exerting power through particular ‘transmission belts’ or ‘levers’ — governmental organs as well as voluntary public organisations [Meissner 1966; Meissner 1982: 39– 40; Beyrau 2003; Hough in Fainsod, Hough 1979: 277–319]; or the classic Western liberal idea of society as something opposed to the state and worth protecting from the state’s grasp. Although recent studies on Stalinism and the relationship between the public and the private have argued that such distinctions are invalid for the Soviet context [Kotkin 1995; Siegelbaum 2006], the contributions 281 REVIEWS
to the volume seem to accept the split between state and society as a matter of fact. Accepting this distinction, the contributions examine the parti cipatory character of the Soviet state — through the analysis of the impact that mass organisations had on state affairs — as well as the influence that the state exerted on society, whether through ideological discourse or voluntary groups and Under Nikita Khrushchev organisations. The individual chapters thus mainly concentrate on the relationship between state and society and on the participation of the latter in the former. A common theme is the influence that various interest groups had on decision-making. In his article on the behaviour of the commanders of the Red Army during the public unrest in Novo- cherkassk in 1962, Joshua C. Andy argues that a newly acquired ‘professionalism’ (p. 181) among the leadership of the Red Army resulted in disobedience to party rule during the crisis — the com- manding staff refused to lead their troops against the uprising workers. A similar phenomenon is observed by Laurent Coumel in his article on the public discussion of the 1958 education reform, arguing that parts of the public, mainly the scientists and pedagogues, set out to form an ‘interest group’ (p. 73) that was able to express an opinion that differed significantly from that of Khrushchev; this process resulted finally in ‘the emergence of a pluralism that did not fit with the leadership’s understanding of ‘public opinion’’ (p. 82). The impact of this pluralism can be seen in the fact that ‘Khrushchev’s desire to mobilize opinion through a ‘general discussion’ was turned against him’ (ibid.). Helen Carlbдck examines the influence that the public discussion of the legal status of unmarried mothers and fatherless children had on the actual situation of the person con- cerned, concluding that ‘it is doubtful whether this [the discussion, KU] really affected thinking on a broader level’ (p. 100). Other organisations that are examined in the volume are the Women’s Committees, the zhensovety (in an article by Melanie Ilic), and the trade unions (inn an article by Junbae Jo) that both served as a forum where citizens could express their views or complaints on certain topics and that had an impact rather on an individual and local level than on a large-scale decision-making. Although the question about the impact of participation is a rather Katharina Uhl. A Review of The New Insights but Old Paradigms? Melanie Ilic and Jeremy Smith (eds.), Soviet State Society old one — Jerry Hough stated already in the 1970s that ‘(t)he crucial question is the impact of that participation’ [Hough, Fainsod 1979: 314] — the contributions provide an interesting overview of various ways in which the individual Soviet citizen could implement his or her own ideas in regard to state and society. Some of the articles represent the first studies on the organisations or the discussions in question, thus giving important empirical input to research on the Thaw period. They also underline the ambiguity of the Thaw period, pointing at the growing possibilities of the individual to influence No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 282
the state of affairs in his or her own surrounding, at the same time showing the increasingly applied subtle strategies of influencing the individual Soviet citizen and society in whole through discourse and social control. This ambiguous space opened up the possibility to express protest and dissatisfaction, a process that the case studies of the volume show convincingly for their particular area of interest. Thus the contributions on the participatory character of the Soviet state provide a broad scope of material to outline the tension between liberalisation and social control that was characteristic for the Khrushchev years. The contributors to the volume also set out to examine the interwoven nature of the concepts of de-Stalinisation and the revival of the ideological project which were both launched during the XX Party Congress in 1956. On the basis of the housing programme of the 1905s, Mark B. Smith demonstrates how the de- Stalinising notion of legal certainty and rationality was rhetorically connected with the ideological agenda of the communist future and that the common ground for the three themes was the revival of ‘Leninist principles’. Julie Elkner outlines the attempts of the security organs to restore their image, which had been seriously affected by the Stalinist purges, showing that the KGB actively linked its present legitimation to the Leninist past — mainly through the revival of the cult of secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky — and thus to the ideological agenda of the day. Another trend of society under Khrushchev that was engendered by both de- Stalinisation and the ideological re-launch was political dissent. As it is shown in the chapter by Robert Hornsby, initially supporting Khrushchev in his reforming energy and im pressed by the com- munist project, the emerging dissenters soon were disappointed with the actual outcome and turned their anger against the First Secretary. Alexander Titov dedicates his chapter completely to the new 1961 Party Programme that officially promised the communist future. He outlines the context of its emergence and the public reception which he evaluates as predominantly positive until it became obvious that the leadership would not be able to live up to its promises: serving as ‘official benchmark against which Soviet reality could be measured’ (p. 21), the Programme clearly showed ‘the increasing gap between official rhetoric and the increasingly grim reality of life in the Soviet Union’ (p. 21). The chapters on the ideological dimension of the Khrushchev period offer a good overview of this re-evaluation of the ideological impetus without providing a genuinely new insight on its significance for everyday life. Thus their findings rather than being innovative correspond in general with those of former studies on the topic, though they do take into account additional material and recognise a broader scope of areas in which the ideological impetus became 283 REVIEWS
effective during the period in question.1 Yet, despite this relative conservatism, the chapters do provide an important input to historio- graphy as their authors seem to pick up the call of historians who work on Stalinism and stretch the importance of ideology and language for the conception of the ‘Soviet self’, thus demanding an innovative perspective for historiography on the Soviet Union in Under Nikita Khrushchev general.2 Showing the close fit between this reassessment of ideology and de-Stalinisation, the chapters provide a novel view on the period in question and make a valuable contribution to research. Part of the ideological impetus was the emphasis that was put on ‘peaceful coexistence’. Thus a last theme that is present in some chapters of the volume is the growing importance of the international context in which the Soviet Union had to position itself. A major attempt to improve the image of the country abroad was the 1957 International Youth Festival. Pia Koivunen shows in her chapter (which is at some distance from the major themes of the volume) that the festival served as a means of improving the country’s image as well as testing the Soviet Union’s ability to serve as a host for tourists. The festival demonstrated, through the openness with which Soviet citizens could meet foreigners, the effects of de-Stalinisation on society, but on the other hand, it made it possible to set new limits of openness; it also showed the longevity of the Stalinist legacy in the deeply rooted xenophobia among the Soviet population. Judging from its title as well as the introductory remarks, the volume on Soviet State and Society under Nikita Khrushchev seems to follow a completely out-dated approach to the Thaw period and to cover rather well-known topics and questions. A second glance, however, reveals that the chapters provide a rather broad scope of topics and approaches that were applied in recent research on the period in question. Thus most of the contributions demonstrate clearly the ambivalent atmosphere of the Thaw period, ranging from a libe- ralising notion to tight social control. Also the impact of de-Stali- nisation receives significant attention in the volume as some of the chapters point at the negotiating processes about the borders of the acceptable that took place after the revelation of Stalin’s crimes. Pointing at the interwoven character of de-Stalinisation and the relaunch of the communist project, some of the contributions refer Katharina Uhl. A Review of The New Insights but Old Paradigms? Melanie Ilic and Jeremy Smith (eds.), Soviet State Society to recent input into historiography on the Soviet period to take the ideological dimension into account and pay tribute to its outstanding significance for people’s perception of reality. The volume there- fore provides solid albeit not completely innovative research into the major themes of historiography of the Khrushchev period,
1 Other studies on the infl uence on ideology during the Thaw period are e.g. [Beyrau 1993; Fürst 2006; Field 2007]. 2 See e.g. [Fitzpatrick 2008; Halfi n, Hellbeck 1996]. No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 284
summarising recent scholarship as well as filling some gaps in historiography such as the organisational history of the KGB or the trade unions. All in all, it will thus be quite a useful starting point for new studies on the relevant topics and questions.
References Beyrau D. Intelligenz und Dissens: Die russischen Bildungsschichten in der Sowjetunion 1917 bis 1985. Gцttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993. ______. ‘Das bolschewistische Projekt als Entwurf und soziale Praxis’ // Hardtwig W. (ed.). Utopie und politische Herrschaft im Europa der Zwischenkriegszeit. Mьnchen: Oldenbourg, 2003. Pp. 13–39. Field D. Private Life and Communist Morality in Khrushchev‘s Russia. New York: Lang, 2007. Fitzpatrick S. (ed.). Stalinism. New Directions. London: Routledge, 2000. ______. ‘Revisionism in Retrospect: A Personal View’ // Slavic Review. 2008. Vol. 67. Pp. 682–704. Fьrst J. ‘Friends in Private, Friends in Public. The Phenomenon of the Kompania among Soviet Youth in the 1950s and 1960s’ // Siegelbaum L. H. (ed.). Borders of Socialism: Private Spheres of Soviet Russia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. 229–49. Gestwa K. Die Stalinschen GroЯbauten des Kommunismus: Technik- und Umweltgeschichte der Sowjetunion, 1948–1967. Mьnchen: Olden- bourg, 2010. ______. 2009a. ‘Social und Soul Engineering unter Stalin und Chru- schtschow, 1928–1964‘ // Etzemьller T. (ed.). Die Ordnung der Moderne. Social Engineering im 20. Jahrhundert. Bielefeld: Trans- cript-Verlag, 2009. Pp. 241–77. ______. 2009b. ‘“Kolumbus des Kosmos”. Der Kult um Jurij Gagarin’ // Osteuropa. 2009. Vol. 59. Pp. 121–52. Gorsuch A. E., Koenker D. P. (eds.). Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist under Capitalism and Socialism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. Halfin I., Hellbeck J. Rethinking the Stalinist Subject: Stephen Kotkin’s “Magnetic Mountain” and the State of Soviet Historical Studies // Jahrbьcher fьr Geschichte Osteuropas. 1996. Vol. 44. Pp. 456–63. Hough J., Fainsod M. How the Soviet Union is Governed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. Pp. 277–319. Ilic M., Reid S., Attwood L. (eds.). Women in the Khrushchev Era. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Jones P. (ed.). The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era. London: Routledge, 2006. Kotkin S. Magnetic Mountain. Stalinism as Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Meissner B. Verhдltnis von Partei und Staat. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1982. 285 REVIEWS
______. ‘Wandlungen im Herrschaftssystem und Verfassungsrecht der Sowjetunion’ // E. Bцttcher (ed.). Bilanz der Дra Chruschtschow. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966. Pp. 141–71. Reid S. E. ‘Cold War in the Kitchen: Gender and the De-Stalinization of Consumer Taste in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev’ // Slavic Review. 2002. Vol. 61. Pp. 211–52.
Under Nikita Khrushchev ______. ‘The Khrushchev Kitchen: Domesticating the Scientific- Technological Revolution’ // Journal of Contemporary History. 2005. Vol. 40. Pp. 289–316. ______. 2006a. ‘Khrushchev Modern: Agency and Modernization in the Soviet Home’ // Cahier du monde russe. 2006. Vol. 47. Pp. 227–68. ______. 2006b. ‘The Meaning of Home. The Only Bit of the World You Can Have to Yourself’ // Siegelbaum L. H. (ed.). Borders of Socialism: Private Spheres of Soviet Russia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. 145–70. Richmond Y. Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Siegelbaum L.H. (ed.) Borders of Socialism: Private Spheres of Soviet Russia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Katharina Uhl. A Review of The New Insights but Old Paradigms? Melanie Ilic and Jeremy Smith (eds.), Soviet State Society No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 286
From Hygiene to Glamour: The (De)Sovietisation of Underwear Olga Gurova. Sovetskoe nizhnee belyo: mezhdu ideologiei i povsednevnostyu [Soviet Underwear: Between Ideology and the Everyday]. M.: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2008.
‘Every girl absolutely must have a couple of sets of sexy underwear in her wardrobe,’ announced a Ukrainian website in 2009. It went on to claim, with great confidence if scant plausibility, ‘Women who often change their underwear are less likely to have men cheat on them.’1 This ethos of compulsory glamour2 and desirability (though one might wonder how anything obli- gatory, even sex, could be the source of desire) sits, however, alongside a quite different ethos, as exemplified by another set of equally catego- rical instructions from the post-Soviet ether, ‘Intimate hygiene also embraces the choice of underwear: one has to change it every day, and it is also advisable to select underpants made of natural fibres (cotton, linen, silk). If you feel a nasty sensation in your crotch rather like an itch in the breasts, then you should immediately remove any underwear made of synthetic fibres — it could be that an ordinary allergy to synthetic fibres is to blame.’3 It is the contrast Catriona Kelly Oxford University between these two fundamentally different con- [email protected] ceptions of the primary purpose of underwear,
1
or to be more precise, the transition between the ‘hygiene’ con- ception — prevailing in the early Soviet period — and the ‘sexual attraction’ one, which started to dominate in the 1970s, which is the subject of Olga Gurova’s study. A pivotal point in this evolutionary narrative is Leonid Gaidai’s popular film Brilliantovaya ruka [The Diamond Hand] (1968), where the seductress Anna Sergeyevna, played by blond bombshell Svetlana Svetlichnaya, as Gurova describes, ‘at the moment of climax will be found wearing a bikini, the top half of which will later fall to the ground’ (p. 103). In itself, this set of binary oppositions between femininity as biology and femininity as performance, between beauty and utilitarianism, constructs a perfectly cogent, if not particularly innovative, frame- work for the examination of Soviet history.1 But Gurova has picked a particularly striking, not to say sensational, topic, and one with a vexed relationship to the idea of ‘Soviet identity’. The sheer awfulness of Soviet underwear was the subject of astonishment from visiting foreigners (Gйrard Philippe, the French actor, is cited here on p. 77), and was taken for granted by many Soviet citizens them- selves. At the same time, the idea that the defining feature of this culture was ‘bad underwear’ would seem absurdly frivolous. Gurova is thus faced with showing precisely what the topic illuminates about wider themes such as attitudes to the body, the relationship with material objects, consumption, fashion and self-display, and so on. The discussion is accordingly more in some respects more ambitious, if also less clearly focused, than the central montage of ‘glamour’ and ‘hygiene’ would suggest. The Introduction [Vvedenie],’Sovet skoe Catriona Kelly. A Review of The From Hygiene to Glamour: (De)Sovietisation Underwear: Olga Gurova... obshchestvo v gumanitarnykh naukakh’ [Soviet Society in the Humanities], begins by asserting the marginality of ‘private life’ topics, such as underwear, in academic discussions before the recent past, a situation that, Gurova argues, has been altered by the increasing recourse to material culture as evidence (p. 2). The exhibition ‘Pamyat tela: nizhnee belyo sovetskoi epokhi’ [Bodily Memory: The Underwear of the Soviet Era], held in 2000–2001, is mentioned as an inspiration for Gurova’s own interest in the topic. Gurova moves on to the separation of ideology and everyday practices in Soviet culture, and then alludes to three different approaches to Soviet culture — ‘totalitarian’ (which, she asserts, sees no distinction between ideology and private life), the ‘revisionist’ approach (re- presented here by Vera Dunham’s In Stalin’s Time: Middleclass Values in Soviet Fiction. Cambridge, 1979, and Sheila Fitzpatrick’s Everyday Stalinism, New York, 1999, Oleg Kharkhordin’s The Col- lective and the Individual in Russia, Berkeley, CA, 1999, and N. Le-
1 One might compare the binary contrast between ‘maternity’ and ‘glamour’ that underlies the recently- published dissertation by Julia Gradskova Female Bodies in the Soviet Union: Performing Beauty and Maternity in Soviet Russia in the mid 1930–1960s (Department of History, Stockholm University, 2007). No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 288
bina and A. Chistikov’s Obyvatel’ i reform. SPb., 2003); and a ‘third generation’ (no examples of which are given), where scholars are concerned with topics such as nationalism and gender issues, and have turned to methods such as discourse analysis and oral history, as well as the ‘close reading’ of texts and the examination of rituals.
Gurova’s outline sketch is a little approximate. Scholars belonging to the so-called ‘totalitarian’ school — Robert Conquest would be an example — often, on the contrary, were concerned to present Soviet ideology and public practices as a distortion of the private thoughts and feelings of significant sectors of the Russian population, and an interest in nationalism was characteristic of the ‘totalitarian’ orientation too. Equally, there are plenty of examples of studies dealing with gender issues and ritual going back to the 1970s and early 1980s (the work of Gail Lapidus, Dorothy Atkinson, and Elizabeth Waters, on the one hand, and Christel Lane or Caroline Humphrey on the other — and these are only a few of those one might mention). The description of the ‘third generation’ also papers over significant points of conceptual disagreement (particularly between ‘discourse analysts’ such as Jochen Hellbeck and Igal Halfin, and social historians) and gives no attention to the fact that oral history, for instance, can be used in very different ways. It would have been more helpful to give a more thorough examination of the recent trends in historiography that are most relevant to this particular study (a search of online journals could have provided some kind of a start). In addition, since Gurova’s comments in her analysis of Soviet underwear have often been inspired by precedents in studies of fashion history by Western writers, it would have been useful to have an outline of that material and its presuppositions as well, particularly given that on p. 10 of the Introduction she also stresses her com- mitment to examining Soviet culture in terms of its ‘emic categories’, rather than in comparative perspective.
In the final pages of the Introduction, Gurova emphasises the main concerns in her book: with the association between proscriptions about underwear and the Soviet ethos of hygiene more generally, and the ‘civilising process’ in the USSR; and with the relationship between the ‘concealed’ or ‘secret’ area of everyday life and the regulation of personal identity. While the book, in the event, is concerned with more than this would suggest — another important thread is the discussion of Soviet consumerism — these topics are certainly central to the later narrative as well. This statement of ‘research questions’ is followed by some brief observations on sources (written documents, visual texts, material objects, and oral history), and then by a chapter outline. 289 REVIEWS
The remainder of the book is organised not as a narrative history, but as a series of ruminations on individual issues in the evolution of Soviet underwear. Chapter One consists of a terminological dis- cussion that addresses the history of the term belyo itself, as well as alternative words, such as ispodnee, and also names for individual garments, such as trusiki (here Gurova accepts the conventional derivation of the word from the French trousses, ‘korotkie shtany ili sharovary’ [short trousers or long wide trousers] (p. 25);1 one does wonder, however, whether a derivation from the English trunks, which were used to name the identical garment from the late nineteenth century, might not also be possible). The chapter finishes with a discussion of the sayings kopatsya v gryaznom belye [to rake through dirty linen] and svoya rubashka blizhe k telu [one’s own shirt is nearer to the body]2 (though the ‘underwear’ function of the word rubashka is not discussed anywhere else). Chapter Two uses a handful of texts from Soviet women’s magazines and other comparable sources to discuss the emergence of the ‘underwear-hygiene’ link; by contrast, Chapter Three opens with observations on the ‘glamour’ ethos portrayed in sources such as Soviet magazine advertisements, while the final part of the chapter explores the paradox of concealment versus display, asexuality ver sus eroticism, hygienic body versus aestheticised body that ran through popular understandings of underwear and ‘the boundaries of shame’ (grani styda). While there was nothing ‘indecent’ about sunbathing in your underwear in a public park, even in the late Soviet period, mass- market films such as Brilliantovaya ruka represented underwear in
Catriona Kelly. A Review of The From Hygiene to Glamour: (De)Sovietisation Underwear: Olga Gurova... a quite different way: to wear underwear because you had to was different from actually parading this. The chapter finishes with observations on the polarisation of ‘Soviet’ and ‘non-Soviet’ under- wear. In the words of one of Gurova’s informants, foreign films raised the question of what starlets such as Lolita Torres wore underneath their elegant clothes: ‘They all walked round beautifully dressed, and we realised that their underwear must be beautiful too. And when we compared it with the dreadful things we had to wear, it left a rather bad taste behind’ (p. 106). (One might add that the bikini scene in Brilliantovaya ruka is an indoor version of the famous scene of Ursula Andress wearing a similarly-styled, if different coloured, costume in the James Bond film Dr No (1962) — thus even the most ‘glamorous’ Soviet films had a ‘glamour referent’ outside the culture) .
1 French dictionaries make clear that this word has a restricted meaning: ‘Les chausses que portaient autrefois les pages’ (the word chausses itself being a much more widely-used term for what in English are called ‘breeches’). See e.g. Dict ionnaire de L’Académie française, 6th Edition (1832–5),
The three following chapters deal with underwear from a different point of view — issues of manufacture (both commercially, in Chapters Four and Five, which are concerned with the diversification of techniques and materials as Soviet history progressed, and by consumers themselves, in Chapter Six). Other issues considered are vending (in shops, but also on the black market), and the ‘make do and mend’ ethos that extended the life of undergarments and even provided an afterlife for them (stockings turned into rag rugs, old underpants into cleaning cloths...) The three final chapters deal with the classificatory principles applied to underwear (through binary oppositions such as old/young, male/female, elite/ordinary people); the relation of underwear to the public/private division (so that concern over whether it was appropriate to let one’s bra straps show existed alongside complete lack of embarrassment about walking round a communal flat in underwear or hanging items up to dry in the ‘public’ parts of the flat, such as bathrooms); and the emotional resonance of underwear. The danger of a thematic structure of this kind, for an author who is clearly at some level concerned with historical development, is that it makes chronology harder to grasp. Indeed, some eras of Soviet history come in for scant discussion. For instance, there is no consideration of how people coped with wartime shortages, and one is left simply assuming that Soviet women confected underwear out of parachute silk, as certainly happened elsewhere in Europe. The importance of underwear in the context of weddings (the recent exhibition Topografiya schastya [Topography of Happiness] at the Kremlin Museum filial in Tsaritsyno included a token made out for trusy [underpants]) is another topic that is omitted.1 Gurova’s discussion is also a little repetitive at times — for example, there is quite a lot of overlap between Chapter Two and Chapter Eight, and the material on manufacture and vending might have been clearer if the two activities had been separated out into discrete discussions. To give just one example: there was presumably a market for home- made or tailor-made underwear, as well as for factory-made goods; one suspects, indeed, that the most demanding Soviet consumers (certainly at eras when foreign-made clothes were hard to obtain) would have been more likely to have a seamstress run up some crepe- de-chine knickers and slips than to dress in what shops such as GUM were selling to less lucky consumers. A more important issue — since it is always possible to find individual topics which a writer could or should, in a reviewer’s eyes, have
1 When I returned to Britain for three weeks in the middle of my year as an undergraduate visiting student (stazhor) in Voronezh (during February 1981), my two room mates asked me to buy them each a bra as a gift. I carried out this assignment in Marks and Spencer (guessing at the sizes). The reaction of one of them was to exclaim: ‘Gosh, you could only wear a bra like that to get married in!’ 291 REVIEWS
addressed — is that Gurova never addresses the issue of exactly which garments should be classified as ‘underwear’. Thus, her remit in- cludes tights, stockings, nightwear, and dressing gowns, all of which are ‘on display’ to a much greater extent than bras, knickers, or indeed vests and singlets and might be seen as having a different relation to the issues of decency. While trunks are considered at some length, sportswear such as leotards, judo outfits, and tracksuits (the last of which were in widespread use by the late Soviet period as a substitute for pyjamas in some situations, e.g. when travelling on overnight trains) more or less escapes the field of view. Still more strikingly, an entire domain of underwear functionality — its role in terms of support and body-shaping — is left out. Certainly, there is some reference to the demise of the traditional corset, but substitutes such as basques and all-in-ones such as ‘bodies’ (com- bining bras and figure-hugging underpants in a single garment) are not discussed. Of course, perhaps the issue here is that such items simply didn’t figure in the Soviet wardrobe, but that cannot be the reason why Gurova has failed to say anything about jock straps. It is also interesting (though rather hair-raising) to wonder about what this hygiene and health-obsessed culture did about underwear for categories of Soviet citizen who did not fit the ‘ideal body’ stereotype so well. One wonders what was done about provision for patients who had undergone mastectomies, or who were suffering hernias or problems with continence. The woeful state of sanitary protection for ‘normal’ women in the Soviet era would suggest that people were left to their own devices in such unmentionable predicaments as well. Catriona Kelly. A Review of The From Hygiene to Glamour: (De)Sovietisation Underwear: Olga Gurova... In a sense, all this is beyond Gurova’s remit, since she is, as men- tioned, essentially concerned with the tension, in the official and popular view of Soviet underwear, between form and function, hygiene and glamour, concealment and display, and other such obviously relevant, if perhaps also somewhat predictable, binary oppositions. The book belongs to an emerging tradition of culturo- logical examinations of Soviet fashion history that has also been elaborated in the work of such scholars as Olga Vainshtein, whose work is cited in Gurova’s bibliography. Gurova shares with these observers a preoccupation with clothing as text, with its role as the expression of identity, above all among city-dwelling women belonging to what might, loosely speaking, be described as the Soviet middle classes. In this perspective, the entire absence of discussion of what the majority population of this (until the late 1950s) over- whelmingly peasant country wore under its outer clothing is no surprise, nor should it raise eyebrows that no evidence is presented at all about exactly what underwear was being produced when and where by which Soviet factories. The relative paucity of information about male underwear in the book is a side-effect, once again, of the glamour-hygiene opposition (though presumably fashionable actors No 7 FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE 292
and ballet dancers on foreign tours shopped for their Hom underpants alongside female colleagues reaching for Lejaby bras). None of Gurova’s informants — tellingly enough — were male, and one suspects that consultation with the other gender would have thrown up rather a different perspective, in which, for instance, comfort (a quality not mentioned in the book) would have figured much more strongly. Yet, given the discursive slant to the discussion, the most important omission is, surely, the absence of an extended discussion of the Pamyat tela [Bodily Memory] exhibition — the inspiration for the volume — in its own right. Gurova has mined the exhibition for primary material, but it might have been interesting to consider the rationale behind it, the principles of selection, and the reaction in the Russian press, not to speak of the exhibition comment books. Both this material, and Gurova’s interviews, raise intriguing questions about the function of Soviet underwear in the memory practices of the post-Soviet period. Garments such as semeinye trusy [‘family underpants’, i.e. baggy ones to the mid-thigh] provoke embarrassed sniggers rather than lyrical epiphanies about how everything was more attractive and more authentic back then. Soviet underwear has signally failed to inspire the sort of retrospective day-dreaming generated by boxes of sweets, old radio-sets, and vintage Volgas. But at the same time, commentators often slide sideways from the less promising terrain of ‘underwear’ in its own right on to the more comfortable terrain of recollections about the moral superiority of the past. In the words of a discussion on Radio Liberty quoted by Gurova on p. 239: ‘But when they were in bed, women of that era wound up men in a different way, it wasn’t underwear, it was… Innocence, lack of experience.’ In the context of the conviction that there was no ‘sex’ (in the sense of commercialised intimate relations) in the Soviet Union — the correlative of which was, of course, the idea that only in the Soviet Union did people really understand love — attractive underwear, it is remembered, could be a sign that you were not serious. One of Gurova’s informants remembers on p. 239 how several of her workmates reacted rather negatively to the sight of a slip edged with black lace which she had bought for her marriage: ‘One of them said, so how on earth are you ever going to get undressed? You’ve got a husband, after all. Won’t you be ashamed? And I said, so why should I be ashamed? It was such a lovely ship. She says, Oh I just couldn’t… But she could when it was those family underpants, I expect.’ While here, as at many other points of the book, one might wonder how much of what Gurova describes is actually specifically Soviet — urban women and men in other industrial, modernising cultures of the mid to late twentieth century were faced with very much the same practical issues and conflicts between different moral imperatives as their Soviet 293 REVIEWS
counterparts — Gurova does succeed in showing how the desire not to ‘stand out’ and the conviction that attitudes to decency were fundamental to your status as a fully-fledged member of society were, even in the relatively consumer-driven Brezhnev era, central to the relationship of many with the culture in which they lived. Catriona Kelly. A Review of The From Hygiene to Glamour: (De)Sovietisation Underwear: Olga Gurova...