Evolution of a Feminist Consciousness in Ukraine and Russia

02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 149

In Search of a Model

Marian J. Rubchak VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY, INDIANA

ABSTRACT Unlike Russia, one of the most potent forces in reinterpretations of Ukraine’s cultural legacy is its matriarchal myth. This article explores the ways in which that myth has been reconfigured to conform to the requirements of Ukraine’s contemporary historical circumstances. It also examines how a cult figure, known variously as the great goddess, domestic madonna, hearth mother and today as the nation’s mother, and widely portrayed in the media as such, can be transformed into an instrument of women’s subjugation. Although in her original incarnation Berehynia conveyed a message of female empowerment, today she represents nothing more than a free-floating symbol of an allegedly unchanging Ukranian reality, and the woman’s essential status within it, without any real connection to the society in which she once flourished. The idea of female empowerment which she embodies, however, seduces contemporary Ukranian women into a false sense of their own centrality even as it consigns them to inferior status.

KEY WORDS Berehynia deconstructing feminism gender speciﬁc matriarchal rituals superwoman

In discussions with Ukrainian activists on the nature of women’s ‘proper’ place in the family and society, I am reminded of the ways in which an enduring myth of ideal Ukrainian womanhood – encapsulated either in the term ‘feminine myth’ or ‘matriarchal myth’ – in all of its manifes- tations, can illuminate the forces that have shaped the country’s cultural legacy. To study what is, in this case, an echo of prehistoric beliefs, oper- ating in changing historical circumstances, is to gain an insight into the construction and reconstruction of gender identity in Ukraine, and the

The European Journal of Women’s Studies Copyright © 2001 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi), Vol. 8(2): 149–160 [1350-5068(200105)8:2;149–160;016881] 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 150

150 The European Journal of Women’s Studies 8(2)

attendant discursive practices. My first step is to speculate on the emer- gence of the myth of female empowerment in ancient Ukraine. Then I refer briefly to its survival throughout the course of that people’s history, and note ways in which it is being reinscribed in the cultural text of contemporary Ukraine. I also propose to illustrate some of the differences between the cultures of Ukraine and Russia, with references to their respective attitudes toward women, and their divergent approaches to feminism. Any analysis of the vicissitudes of Ukraine’s matriarchal myth presumes some reflection on the meaning of the term ‘myth’ itself. Roland Barthes refers to it as a type of speech, a metalanguage, a message chosen by history, but under no circumstances something that emanates from nature. ‘Myth’, Barthes explains, ‘is a pure ideographic system, where the forms are still motivated by the concept which they represent, while not yet covering the sum of possibilities for representation’ (Barthes, 1972: 127). Put another way, myth finds its expression in forms that are pre- figured in past experience, and its essentials are preserved. As a people passes from one stage of its historical evolution to another, society creates new interpretations and forms of representation. This is true of Ukraine today, where the current matriarchal mythology has formed around an ancient cultural stereotype – a pagan goddess known as Berehynia, represented variously as domestic madonna, hearth mother and mother of the nation. She is depicted as ‘the perfect Ukrain- ian woman, the spirit of the Ukrainian home, the ideal mother . . . the pre- server of language and national identity’ (Pavlychko, 1996: 311). Although the origins of this pagan goddess cannot be established with any pre- cision, material evidence indicates a widespread cult of the hearth mother, or protectress (Berehynia) in pre-Christian Ukraine (Barber, 1997: 11). She is portrayed in ancient stone and ceramic figurines, followed by later representations in metal, which continue to be excavated in Ukraine. She also is reflected in such folk arts as embroidered ritual towels (Barber, 1997: 11, 35–8), painted Easter eggs, textiles, ritualistic texts, in literature and the newer arts. In pagan Ukraine, Berehynia appears as the earth mother, but there is some confusion regarding the etymology of her name. The name ‘Berehynia’ was also associated with the nymph rusalka – one among many river and woodland sprites charged with protecting river banks (berehy). As late as the 12th century in Kyivan Rus’ (ancestral home of modern Ukrainians), documents still recorded pagan rusalky festivals (rusalii), with women at the heart of ritual celebrations (Barber, 1997: 18, 20). Rusalky left their imprint on Russian culture as well, but they appeared to have differed from the ones in Ukraine. The further north one went, it is said, the meaner and more cantankerous the rusalky became, and were often considered lethal to passersby (Barber, 1997: 21). Irrespective of the origin of the term ‘Berehynia’, in Ukraine she became 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 151

Rubchak: Feminist Consciousness in Ukraine and Russia 151

ideologized as the earth mother.1 Contemporary Ukrainians have adapted her ancient representations to their own needs; today she is a popular cult figure, appearing in titles of music festivals, radio programs, the popular press, names of women’s organizations and schools, and as the subject of popular and scholarly works.2 During Women’s Day on 8 March 1999, I observed examples of the widespread appropriation of the Berehynia image in campaign literature, business advertisements and statements to the press. All such texts extolled the allegedly natural female attributes – beauty, gentleness, patience, motherhood, dedication to family values and capacity for nurture. Encoded in the term ‘Berehynia’ was the venerated, overinvested image of ‘guardian of the hearth’ and ‘mother of the nation’. A case in point was a leaflet distributed on Women’s Day by deputy Valery Babych, who was effusive in his praise of women, to whom he referred as ‘bewitching, beloved, our own Berehyni’. Such extravagant praise and expressions of devotion contrasted starkly with the daily sight of bent, workworn old women – someone’s mothers and grandmothers – begging on city streets, or rifling through garbage for scraps of food. In September 1994 the magazine Ukrainia published an article by an anony- mous author, who mused: ‘And one thinks, oughtn’t we to return to those timeless national traditions, to behold our women as Berehyni?’ On 6 March 1999, the newspaper Holos Ukrainy featured two Women’s Day greetings from male politicians on its front page. The first, from President Kuchma, was titled ‘To the Berehyni of our people. Greetings to Ukrain- ian women on March 8th’; the second was a message from the then speaker of the House, Oleksandr Tkachenko, who addressed his female constituents as ‘Woman–mother, Woman–wife, Berehynia of our people’. Both resonated with an earlier greeting from a female writer, Kateryna Motrych. Her words: ‘Woman–mother is the salvation of our nation . . . hence we must return to . . . Berehynia her sacred mission, that of mother of the nation’ (Motrych, 1992: 1, 15) highlighted the fact that women themselves are prepared to concur in the legitimacy of the ancient goddess as a suitable role model for them. Yet, in its latest embodiment her myth represents nothing more than a free-floating concept of a purportedly changeless Ukrainian cultural reality, with no connection, other than form, either to the historical age in which it ostensibly once flourished, or the contemporary life which allegedly it now represents.

In his Myth, Religion and Mother Right, J.J. Bachofen (1967) produced a paradigm of a matriarchal society, structured around the centrality of women. He posited his concept of matriarchy as the middle phase in the process of human evolution which, he argued, begins with a state of 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 152

152 The European Journal of Women’s Studies 8(2)

barbarism and progresses teleologically toward patriarchy as the highest level of a people’s development. Conversely, Marija Gimbutas rejected the premise of an all but worldwide distribution of a pre-patriarchal order of communal life, exemplifying either matriarchal rule or a matrilineal society. Instead she proposed three coexisting, simultaneous tracks of social organization – female-dominated, gynocratic (egalitarian) and patriarchal (Gimbutas, 1989). Although still not without its detractors, her scheme increasingly is ﬁnding favor among scholars. Extrapolating what we know of other agricultural societies, a persua- sive argument can be advanced for the central role of women in the clan stage of Ukraine’s historical formation, consistent with Gimbutas’s female-dominated track. Because the male body provided no evidence of paternity, and the female did not necessarily mate for life, it is unlikely that the role of fatherhood was highly valued in any clan society. Hence the mother, quite naturally, became head of the family and its extended clan (Gimbutas, 1999: 112–13). Its members deliberated around a genera- tional ﬁre over which, as matriarch, the woman presided.3 When such ancestors moved to a more outwardly directed existence, their private realm was deinstitutionalized; they began to conduct their affairs in a more public setting, which encompassed several clans. Accordingly, the matriarch’s ‘public’ function receded, although much compelling evidence suggests that she retained considerable status and residual auth- ority. Notwithstanding that the clan stage of human evolution also characterized other societies, what set Ukrainians apart was the indelible imprint that the overdetermined ideal of empowered womanhood left on their psyche. It was handed down in ritual and mythic contexts, and transformed along the way into an enduring ideological legacy, to be con- tinuously reinvented without the loss of its fundamentals. Throughout Ukraine’s history, representations of female empowerment were to be found in proverbs, rituals, epic songs, folk tales, historical artifacts, ethnography and visual and literary representations of myths. The resilience of the matriarchal myth, with its ability to survive and adapt to the vagaries of Ukraine’s historical fortunes, thus became its most remarkable attribute. Despite changing representations, rhetoric and numerous reinventions, even with the debasement of the original meaning, the myth never lost its connotation of women’s centrality. Contemporary sources – the media, literature, political speeches and popular parlance – testify to its persis- tence. Ever mindful of the advantages of applying traditional symbolism to reinscribe a national identity suppressed through centuries of foreign domination, Ukraine’s political leaders now invoke the image of Berehy- nia as a way of validating and disseminating the idea of an age-old Ukrainian reality. By stressing the matriarchal/feminine myth as an integral component of the people’s cultural legacy, they are helping to 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 153

Rubchak: Feminist Consciousness in Ukraine and Russia 153

shape the collective postcolonial memory, and building, thereby, legitimacy for a new Ukrainian state. In the Kyivan Rus’ phase of Ukraine’s historical development, the concept of empowered women was reﬂected in numerous ways. Perhaps most illuminating was the determined female resistance to the introduc- tion of Christianity in 988. Women were disaffected by this fundamentally masculine-oriented faith, founded on the principle of patriarchal auth- ority, preferring instead the pagan beliefs which reinforced female cen- tricity in ancient Ukraine. Drawing upon a part of Russkaia Pravda, which was compiled by Volodymyr Monomakh in the 11th century, Joanna Hubbs (1993: 91) discusses the matrilineal, matrilocal nature of Kyivan society, and the women’s opposition to Christianity.4

III

During the 12th century, while the Ukrainian ethnos was evolving on Kyivan territory, the earliest contours of a Muscovite state – and the beginnings of a Russian ethnos – emerged to the northeast. Princely feuding in Rus’ (known as the appanage period) drove some of the junior members northeastward, to Finnish-held territory, in a bid to establish new centers of power. One such princeling, Andrei Bogoliubsky, attempt- ing to forestall rival claims to rule over the East Slavic world, sacked Kyiv in 1169, and established a stronghold in a tiny ﬁshing village known as Moscow. Bogoliubsky’s descendants inherited his absolutist tendencies; by the 14th century they had become rulers of an absolutist state known as Muscovy, organized in the nearby Vladimir-Suzdal provinces (Presni- akov, 1970; Subtelny, 1988). Initially, upper-class Muscovite women enjoyed a measure of the equality which their Kyivan counterparts took for granted. Gradually, however, the impact of a despotic political center, characterizing the Muscovite state from its inception, and the ‘growth of misogyny as pro- pounded by the Orthodox Church’ (Christian Orthodoxy accompanied uncontested the formation of Muscovy), eroded the status of Muscovite women (Pushkareva, 1997: 92). Dramatic examples of their subordinate status can be found in a 16th-century handbook titled Domostroi, purportedly written by an Orthodox monk, Sylvestr. It reﬂects the misogyny of Eastern Orthodoxy, portraying elite Muscovite women with no more rights than children. Recommended forms of chastisement, including corporal punishment, kept them in line with their husband’s wishes.5 The status of peasant women was lower still, although their public role was, of necessity, less constricted. To illustrate, I refer to two popular Russian folk sayings of a kind not found in Ukrainian lore: ‘A husband is the law for his wife’ and ‘There is no court for women or cattle’ (Worobec, 1995: 188). 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 154

154 The European Journal of Women’s Studies 8(2)

Contrary to their Russian counterparts, whose subjugation ‘had become part of the natural order’ in a male-dominated world which ‘depended upon an elaborate misogynist ideology’ (Worobec, 1995: 175–7), Ukrainian women continued to enjoy substantial freedom of action. When, in the 17th century, much of Ukraine passed to Muscovite- Russian jurisdiction, however, its people were incorporated into a ﬁrmly established patriarchal order, with its tradition of denigrating women. This necessitated a renegotiation of the ancient myth of empowered females. Judith Williamson describes such a process in another context as ‘what is taken away in reality. . . is re-presented in image and ideology so that it stands for itself after it has actually ceased to exist’ (Williamson, 1968: 112; emphasis in original). Differences continued to mark the two cultures nonetheless. An excel- lent example of Ukrainian reality can be found in the account of his 17th- century travels throughout Ukraine by Frenchman de Beauplan (Le Vasseur and de Beauplan, 1993). He registered his astonishment at the relatively unfettered existence of Ukrainian women. Premarital sex was not taboo in Ukraine, for example, nor did such sexual encounters jeop- ardize a woman’s marriageability. Indeed, in some regions of Ukraine they were considered an indispensable part of the marriage rituals. In the Polissya district of Ukraine, for instance, premarital sex was viewed as an honorable and necessary prelude to marriage (Denysiuk, 1993: 26). To facilitate this process, evening meetings (vechernytsi) of marriageable young people routinely led to couples pairing off for the night (Vovk, 1995: 195–211). Such liberal attitudes are traceable to Kyivan Rus’, where matrimonial law mandated that a marriage must occur once an agree- ment was sealed by a handclasp, even if the prospective bride was not a virgin.6 Conversely, Russian society considered female chastity a sine qua non for marriage. Ukrainian women also were known to seize the initiative in courtship, and no marriage was possible without the uncoerced consent of the bride. Up to the 18th century, Muscovite custom dictated that elite couples would not meet before the time came to consummate their marriage. Petrine law abolished this practice by mandating a decent period of acquaintance. Although the 19th century saw prospective couples routinely introduced to each other before marriage, the groom’s family still determined their marital future. A widespread custom of ‘bride price’, representing a father’s (bol’shak) payment for his son’s bride also existed. Perhaps to justify a legitimate return on his investment, the bol’shak might insist upon unwelcome illicit sex (snokhachestvo) with his son’s wife in return (Czap, 1978: 105, 109; Stscherbakiwskyj, 1952: 348–9; Worobec, 1995: 191). Bride price also existed in Ukraine, but there it functioned as pure ritual. The groom’s family ‘paid’ for the bride, and the proceeds went to her dowry without further repercussions. Finally, if a man 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 155

Rubchak: Feminist Consciousness in Ukraine and Russia 155

married into a family without male heirs, he joined the bride’s family, and demonstrated his subservience by ritually washing his mother-in-law’s feet on the wedding day. Headgear worn by brides represents another symbol of female status differentiating the two cultures. In Ukraine single women wore wreaths until the wedding eve, as a talisman against the evil eye and blandish- ments of the devil. To ensure the neutralization of the dangerous magical powers associated with virgins (which the wearing of wreathes symbol- ized), if the prospective bride still had not lost her innocence, she was ritually deﬂowered. On the day of the wedding, she exchanged her wreath for the innocuous married woman’s headdress (khustka or head- scarf). On their wedding day Russian brides wore blush veils (fata) to ward off the evil eye, but they also served as a validation shield against the outside (male) world (Stscherbakiwskyj, 1952: 333). This separation served much the same function as the custom of installing elite Muscovite women in the terem (women’s quarters), away from the prying eyes of men outside the family. I have chosen to dwell on such wedding rituals because they are among the most sensitive social indicators of the respective gender roles in Ukraine and Russia. Moreover, such evidence poses a challenge to some of our preconceived (and conditioned) assumptions about the cultural evolution of Ukraine and Russia as two parts of a single process. A case in point is the important work of Natalia Pushkareva (1997), who erroneously portrays the divergent status of women in the two countries as separate stages in the evolution of a single people.

Their differences aside, in many respects Ukrainian and Russian societies functioned in similar gender-determined spheres of activity. It was never more true than during the revolutionary years in the Russian Empire, where patriarchal values and laws governing women began to occupy the attention of the educated public in the 1850s. By 1905, a sustained, if far from homogeneous women’s movement evolved. Earlier feminist organizations were revitalized during the 1917 Revolution. The revolutionary ferment encompassed feminists, concentrating on women’s issues as such, and socialists, who saw themselves as part of a larger struggle of men and women for social transformation. Female Bolsheviks (Bol’shevichki) comprised the most prominent of the female radicals prior to and during the revolution (Clements, 1997: 19). One of their leading spokespersons was Alexandra Kollontai. Consistent with the views of her male colleagues, she rejected feminism as a self-referential agenda, insist- ing instead that the socialist system must facilitate the fulﬁllment of women’s public and domestic obligations. Paradoxically, while calling for 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 156

156 The European Journal of Women’s Studies 8(2)

women’s emancipation, she supported a program of making domestic duties a communal responsibility, with area mothers managing central kitchens and daycare facilities (Attwood, 1999: 10–11; Farnsworth, 1980: 26). Thus was the 19th-century concept of women’s traditional roles redrafted for compatibility with the new goal of female self-fulﬁllment. More recently, even the reformist-minded Soviet leader Gorbachev insisted that top priority must go to creating ‘work conditions and service provisions which would enable women successfully to combine motherhood with active participation in the work force’ (Gorbachev, 1987: 102–3; Pushkareva, 1997: 197). At no time did Bolsheviks, or the later Soviet leaders, make a genuine effort to restructure the gender-speciﬁc allocation of domestic responsibilities. Accordingly, revolutionary rhetoric notwithstanding, traditional Russian misogyny carried over into Soviet culture, and so thoroughly socialized were the women that they were unable to transcend entrenched male values.

The post-Soviet decades witnessed the formation of a new icon, to be shared by Ukrainian and Russian women alike, as members of a single Soviet state. Generally speaking, representations of Russian women, internalized over centuries as the humble, meek, deferential and submis- sive second sex, were reconceptualized to signify a larger-than-life Soviet superwoman, liberated from the constraints of the traditional patriarchal household, and celebrated as heroine of socialist labor. No longer sub- servient, all Soviet women allegedly would be free to realize themselves as full human beings. Seemingly they had broken the gender barrier, with socialism facilitating entry into the masculine space. The new images of women that permeated society – through ﬁlm, poster art, literature, the popular and scholarly press and political oratory – extolled their uniquely Soviet virtues, and exhorted women to support men in their struggle for a just, new society. Consistent with their changed message, the new female representations usually acquired masculine characteristics. They were depicted as virile, militant, determined, hard, fearless, muscular, courageous, overachieving and daring human beings – Soviet super- women proudly striding alongside their men in a spirit of egalitarianism. This portrayal of consummate womanhood with a masculinized face was employed to control and direct the changing possibilities that socialist ideology and the Communist system held out for women. Read as cultural text, the ‘new woman’ seemingly had loosened the traditional gender roles, blending masculine and feminine signs. Embedded in this new ‘icon’ and its accompanying discourse, however, were representa- tional strategies that, in point of fact, undermined the concept of women 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 157

Rubchak: Feminist Consciousness in Ukraine and Russia 157

as full human beings. The men’s world which had made room for them came with its own code of masculine values, and a value system that diminished women. As Barbara Evans Clements explained, male figures were chosen to personify the new Bolshevik reality (Clements, 1997: 19). When women were added to the pantheon, they were portrayed not as women, but as semi-masculine figures representing advancement to a higher state of being. All over the USSR, women accommodated themselves to such an updated iconographic portrayal, and valiantly strove to live up to its image. The process of deconstructing the traditional female stereotype, and mapping the contours of a revised idealized image, applies primarily to Russian women, whose traditional suffering and debasement were over- turned in the reinvented representation of quintessential womanhood. For its part, although the reinvented icon was intended to encompass all Soviet women, the permutation of the Ukrainian feminine myth into its Soviet equivalent necessarily followed a different path. It merged the ideology of the Russian radicals, who sought equal rights for women within a male-oriented world supported by an elaborate misogynist ideology, with the ancient matriarchal myth of empowered Ukrainian womanhood. Whereas females in both societies shared in the new portrayal of women as workers moving resolutely towards a utopian state of being, achievable only in an overdetermined Soviet future, in Ukraine, because its ancient legacy of empowered females merged so seamlessly with the new ideal, the reconfigured icon had a more complex signifi- cance. Its starting point was something to be conserved, not jettisoned in favor of women as heroines in a shiny new Soviet utopia.

In light of all that was said in the previous section, it is not difficult to understand how effortless was the passage from superwoman back to matriarch in post-Soviet Ukraine, as exemplified by the omnipresence of Berehynia. It is also instructive that even during the Soviet era, on occasion the all-Soviet masculinized images of women could differ dra- matically from those to be found in Ukraine. There, in the tradition of the ancient hearth mother, women were sometimes represented not as semi- masculine beings in the Soviet workforce, but as powerful, yet nurturing mothers of the Ukrainian nation. The contemporary cultural text reflects yet another reinvention of the ancient matriarchal myth, to be viewed as something which is not time-bound, not historically specific, but rather an essential representation of timeless Ukrainian womanhood, which res- onates with Ukraine’s current reality. In the course of restructuring contemporary society, when political 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 158

158 The European Journal of Women’s Studies 8(2)

leaders address the woman question, besides invoking Berehynia they tend to repeat certain formulas of their Soviet and Bolshevik predecessors. Consider, for example, the message of socialist politician and former Speaker of the House Oleksandr Moroz. On 12 June 1995, at the first parliamentary hearing on women’s issues in the history of Ukraine, I listened to his appeal for measures that would facilitate the performance of women in their contemporary roles as mothers and full participants in the public sector. As if to breathe new life into Ukraine’s ancient matriarchal myth, he noted that what the country needed most was ‘enlightened’ leaders who would ‘create the necessary conditions for allowing women to be women’. Seemingly encoded in this wish, which ran counter to his earlier stated objective of promoting gender parity, was an unspoken desire to return to some idealized past of ‘hearth mothers’. Today, the ancient image of female empowerment continues to beguile many women in Ukraine, seducing them into a false sense of their exalted position, while keeping them bound to their long-standing inferior status. The vast majority have yet to recognize that their identity is being recon- structed within the male matrices of power to reinforce a privileged male value system. Their widespread acceptance of subordinate roles, and failure to challenge the notion that domestic duties are a woman’s exclus- ive domain, testifies to the effectiveness of such socialization. On another note, some recognition of gender inequities has begun to penetrate the collective Ukrainian psyche. Notwithstanding the undeni- able progress – women’s studies programs and gender studies centers are being introduced all over the country, conferences on women’s issues have become routine occurrences,7 a significant body of scholarly work on feminism has appeared and feminism is acknowledged as an appropriate topic for television talk shows and articles in the popular press – the majority of Ukrainian women have yet to transcend the deeply ingrained image of themselves as the nation’s Berehynia. For their part, insofar as Russian women have resided within the center of political power for hundreds of years, they have no imperatives of state-building to distract them, and thus are not hampered by the need to link their feminist objectives to any but purely women’s issues. Addition- ally, no cultural legacy of highly valued female roles, one that raises false expectations or offers assurances of non-existent gender parity, diverts them from their cause. Moreover, as part of mainstream Soviet society, they were recipients of western feminist ideas well before these reached Ukraine, enabling them to develop a feminist frame of reference much earlier. In both societies, however, feminism remains largely an elite concern. In Ukraine, the lingering shadow of the now defunct Soviet icon of the ‘woman who can do it all’, as well as the ever-present overdetermined image of traditional Ukrainian womanhood, loom as continuing impediments to true equality. 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 159

Rubchak: Feminist Consciousness in Ukraine and Russia 159

NOTES

1. Joanna Hubbs (1993: 14–16) maintains that she predated the rusalka in East Slavic lore. 2. See Kosenko (1995) for a collection of radio programs titled Berehynia, aired in 1993–4. 3. References to Ukrainian matriarchy and the existence of a great goddess cult on the territory of present-day Ukraine in 5000 BC are to be found in Rybakov (1965–6: 33–52). 4. Joanna Hubbs (1993: 99) mistakenly attributes this to the Russian social order. 5. For details, see Pouncy (1994: 143–4). A vivid description of the terem is found in a dramatic poem by Lesia Ukrainka (1997). It portrays a freedom- loving girl, Oksana, who marries Stefan, a Ukrainian from an ennobled cossack family, headed for a brilliant career in Moscow, where Oksana joins him. As part of the ‘Russian’ elite, she is conﬁned to a terem. Driven to despair by her cloistered existence, Oksana wastes away, pining for her freedom-loving Ukraine. Conversely, her Ukrainian sister-in-law Hanna had lived in Moscow so long that she was habituated to her fate as a woman in an authoritarian society. 6. This is not to suggest that Ukrainian society encouraged promiscuity, although the absence of virginity did not condemn a young women to severe social censure. On virginity in Kyivan Rus’ see Pushkareva (1997: 107–9). 7. During my stay in Kyiv from February to July 1999, a new Gender Studies Center was established at the National Academy of Sciences. It hosted a successful conference on ‘Feminism as a Phenomenon of Culture’. Two seminars, including my own, preceded it. Also, a program of gender studies was approved at Kyiv’s Shevchenko State University, to be introduced in the fall of 2000.

REFERENCES

Attwood, Lynne (1999) Creating the New Soviet Woman: Magazines as Engineers of Female Identity. New York: St Martin’s Press. Bachofen, J.J. (1967[1861]) Myth, Religion and Mother Right: Selected Writings of J.J. Bachofen, trans. Ralph Manheim. Bolingen Series LXXXIV. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Barber, E.J.W. (1997) ‘On the Origins of the vily/rusalki’, Varia on the Indo-European Past: Papers in Memory of Mariya Gimbutas. Journal of Indo-European Studies 19: 6–47. Barthes, Roland (1972) Mythologies, trans Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang. Clements, Barbara Evans (1997) Bolshevik Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Czap, Peter Jr (1978) ‘Marriage and the Peasant Joint Family in the Era of Serfdom’, The Family in Imperial Russia: New Lines of Historical Research. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Denysuik, Ivan (1993) Amazonky na Polissi. Lutsk: Nadstyr’ia. Farnsworth, Beatrice (1980) Alexandra Kollontai: Socialism, Feminism and the Bolshevik Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gimbutas, Marija (1989) The Language of the Goddess. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. 02 Rubchak (jk/d) 22/3/01 1:38 pm Page 160

160 The European Journal of Women’s Studies 8(2)

Gimbutas, Marija (1999) The Living Goddess, ed. Miriam Robbins Dexter. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press. Gorbachev, Mikhail (1987) Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World. New York: Harper & Row. Hubbs, Joanna (1993) Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture. Bloom- ington: Indiana University Press. Kosenko, Taisa (1995) Berehynia Ukrainy. Za Materialamy radio prohramy dlia zhinok ‘Berehyni’ Kyiva shcho zvuchaly v efiri ‘mystetstvo’ protiahom 1991–1994 rokiv. Kyiv: Mystetstvo. Le Vasseur, Guillaume and Sieur de Beauplan (1993[1660]) A Description of Ukraine, Which Consists of Several Provinces of the Kingdom of Poland, Lying Between the Borders of Muscovy, and the Frontiers of Transylvania, Together with Their Customs, Ways of Living, and of Making War, by the Sieur de Beauplan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Motrych, Kateryna (1992) ‘To You, the Women Who Stand Next to the Cradle of the Nation, My Message’, Zhinka. Ukraine. Pavlychko, Solomea (1996) ‘Between Feminism and Nationalism: New Women’s Groups in Ukraine’, Women of Russia and Ukraine. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pouncy, Carolyn Johnston, ed. (1994) The Domostroi: Rules for Russian Households in the Time of Ivan the Terrible. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press. Presniakov, A.E. (1970) The Formation of the Great Russian State. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press. Pushkareva, Natalia (1997) Women in Russian History: From the Tenth to the Twentieth Century, trans and ed. Eve Levin. Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe. Rybakov, B.A. (1965–6) ‘Cosmogony and Mythology of the Agriculturalists of the Eneolithic Period’, Soviet Anthropology and Archaeology 1:16–35; 3: 33–52. Stscherbakiwskyj, W. (1952) ‘The Early Ukrainian Social Order as Reflected in Ukrainian Wedding Customs’, The Slavonic and East European Review 31: 325–51. Subtelny, Orest (1988) Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Ukrainka, Lesia (1997) Boiarynia: Dramatychna poema. Kyiv: Naukova Dumka. Vovk, Khvedir (1995) Studii ukrains’koi etnohrafiyi ta antropolohiyi. Kyiv: Mystetstvo. Williamson, Judith (1968) ‘Woman is an Island: Femininity and Colonization’, in Tania Modleski (ed.) Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Worobec, Christine (1995) Peasant Russia: Family and Community in the Post-Emanci- pation Period. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press.

Marian J. Rubchak is Professor of History at Valparaiso University. She is a member of the national honor society Phi Beta Kappa and a Fulbright Fellow. In 1997 she was named University Research Professor at Valparaiso University. Professor Rubchak has authored numerous articles on women in Ukraine and Russia, which have been published in various countries in Western and Eastern Europe, as well as in North America. Currently, she is working on a monograph on feminism in Ukraine and Russia. Address: Department of History, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN 46383, USA. [email: [email protected]]