Bolshevik Wives A Study of Soviet Elite Society James Peter Young Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Government and International Relations SYDNEY UNIVERSITY 2008 A B S T R A C T Bolshevik Wives: A Study of Soviet Elite Society James Young University of Sydney This thesis explores the lives of key female members of the Bolshevik elite from the revolutionary movement’s beginnings to the time of Stalin’s death. Through analysing the attitudes and contributions of Bolshevik elite women – most particularly the wives of Lenin, Molotov, Voroshilov and Bukharin – it not only provides for a descriptive account of these individual lives, their changing attitudes and activities, but also a more broad-ranging, social handle on the evolution of elite society in the Soviet Union and the changing nature of the Bolshevik elite both physically and ideationally. Chapters one and two focus on the physical and ideological foundations of the Bolshevik marriage. Chapter one traces the ideological approach of the Bolsheviks towards marriage and the family, examining pre-revolutionary socialist positions in relation to women and the family and establishing a benchmark for how the Bolsheviks wished to approach the ‘woman question’. Chapter two examines the nature of the Bolshevik elite marriage from its inception to the coming of the revolution, dwelling particularly on the different pre-revolutionary experiences of Yekaterina Voroshilova and Nadezhda Krupskaya. Chapters three and four then analyse two key areas of wives’ everyday lives during the interwar years. Chapter three looks at the work that Bolshevik wives undertook and how the nature of their employment changed from the 1920s to the 1930s. Chapter four, through examining the writings of wives such as Voroshilova, Larina and Ordzhonikidze, focuses upon how wives viewed themselves, their responsibilities as members of the Bolshevik elite and the position of women in Soviet society. The final two chapters of this thesis explore the changing nature of elite society in this period and its relationship to Soviet society at large. Chapter five investigates the ii changing composition of the elite and the specific and general effects of the purges upon its nature. Directly, the chapter examines the lives of Zhemchuzhina, Larina and Pyatnitskaya as wives that were repressed during this period, while more broadly it considers the occupation of the House on the Embankment in the 1930s and the changing structure of Bolshevik elite society. Chapter six focuses on the evolution of Soviet society in the interwar period and how the experiences of Bolshevik elite wives differed from those of ‘mainstream’ Russian women. While previous studies of the Bolshevik elite have focussed upon men’s political lives and investigations of Soviet women’s policy and its shifts under Stalin have mainly concentrated upon describing changes in realist terms, this thesis demonstrates that not only is an evaluation of wives’ lives crucial to a fuller understanding of the Bolshevik elite, but that by comprehending the personal attitudes and values of members of the Bolshevik elite society, particularly with regards to women and the family, a more informed perspective on the reasons for changes in Soviet women’s policy during the interwar period may be arrived at. iii Declaration This is to certify that (i) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD, (ii) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, (iii) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, figures and bibliography. _____________________________ iv Preface The chief concern when rendering Russian words into transliterated and translated English throughout this thesis has been to maximise readability while preserving meaning. To this end in the text of the thesis Russian names and terms have been transliterated accurately, but with sympathy for the English-speaking reader and awareness that standard transliterations of many names diverge from the Library of Congress system. Russian names have also been kept consistent in the text, except in the cases of name changes (for example, Golda Gorbman to Yekaterina Voroshilova), although at times to avoid repetition the Russian form of first name and patronymic (Yekaterina Davidovna) has been used. To facilitate locating reference works, citations in the thesis as well as its bibliography are rendered in Library of Congress (ALA-LC) form omitting ties and diacritics and using name forms as they appear in the work being cited. This means that in a few select cases, the rendering of names in citations and the body of the thesis will diverge (for example, Yulia Pyatnitskaya in the text and Iuliia Piatnitskaia- Sokolova in citations). Where Russian texts are directly sourced, unless otherwise stated the translations that appear in the text are mine. v Acknowledgements Thanks firstly are due to my two honours supervisors, John Milfull and Ludmila Stern from the University of New South Wales who not only encouraged me through my first foray into Soviet history writing but also provided me the opportunity throughout this doctoral process of sharing my work with others and gaining feedback from scholars in the area. On that note, I should like to express my appreciation to those who helped me out throughout the thesis either through suggesting sources, providing contacts or simply responding to my requests, amongst them Derek Watson, Stephen Fortescue, Sheila Fitzpatrick and Stephen Cohen. Two bouts of researching in Russian archives could have proved considerably traumatic if it was not for the assistance and kindness of a number of people. The Praxis organisation, headed by Arch Getty in California and Elena Drozdova in Moscow was invaluable in navigating through Russian bureaucracy and finding me accommodation in Moscow. Olga Lagotska and her mother Anna Spiridonovna provided me much-needed support as well as an interesting perspective for my ideas when staying with them and I am particularly grateful to Olga for assisting me through the tasks of organising a meeting with Molotov’s grandson and even interrogating the FSB about access to their archival documents. Most directly helpful of all in Moscow, however, were the accommodating staff at RGASPI, particularly those in the reading room who have to negotiate through an awful load of bad Russian from visiting researchers, not least myself, for little reward. Back on the home front my thanks to friends and family for being so patient during the years of this PhD. Thankyou to colleagues for providing stimulating accounts of their own research as well as valuable feedback for mine through seminars and to the department’s PhD coordinators for facilitating those presentations. I should also like to acknowledge the valuable financial assistance in the form of a University Postgraduate Award and Faculty scholarship that extended my opportunities for research in Russia. Finally, and most of all, I extend my heartfelt thanks to my supervisor Graeme Gill for his wisdom, nous, patience and good humour. It would have been impossible to survive four years with a supervisor that did not possess such qualities, but he possesses them in abundance. vi Table of Contents Abstract...................................................................................................................... ii Declaration ................................................................................................................ iv Preface ....................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... vi Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One The Origins of Bolshevik Elite Society ...................................................................... 25 Chapter Two Bolshevik Elite Society in the Years of Revolution.................................................... 76 Chapter Three Bolshevik Elite Women and Work ............................................................................. 94 Chapter Four Bolshevik Elite Women as they Presented Themselves ............................................. 119 Chapter Five The Changing Structure of Bolshevik Elite Society................................................... 152 Chapter Six Bolshevik Elite Society and Society at Large ............................................................ 201 Conclusion................................................................................................................. 221 Bibliography.............................................................................................................. 230 vii Introduction The October Revolution of 1917 marked a watershed not only in the establishment of a new political framework in Russia – a new set of state actors working with a new set of political rules – but also, perhaps more remarkably, a new ideological framework. A central tenet of the ideology of socialism that the Bolsheviks purported to adopt was the concept of equality and as such a core pursuit upon assuming power was not simply to be the reformation of the ownership of the means of production but a commitment to the restructuring of the highly inequitable Tsarist system they had inherited. Much has been