This was what Caitlin had stayed in Russia for; this was what kept her going when less welcome things like hunger and loneliness and unwelcome political developments gave cause for doubts and depression. If you looked for reasons to feel pessimistic, there always seemed one to be found—some murderous outrage by the Chekas, some new instance of official corruption, what was going on now up at Kronstadt. But they weren’t the whole truth. Good things were happening, too. The civil war was over; Muslim women were finding a voice. And who would have thought that Cheka bosses would turn into guardian angels where orphan girls were concerned?
The question, she supposed, was, which was the rule, which the exception? Sergei seemed increasingly convinced that everything was going to hell, but she hadn’t given up hope. Far from it.
She was five minutes early for the appointment, but the committee was apparently running late, and the male secretary primly told her to join the queue in the waiting room. “How long do you think it’ll be?” she asked him sweetly, leaning forward to read his list. As she expected, the Zhenotdel was right at the bottom.
Swallowing her anger—why make things worse before the committee had its say?—she joined the four men in the smoke-filled anteroom. Listening to their conversation, she realized that one was there to lobby for better sports facilities in Yalta, another to enlist decorators for the party offices in his local village. After seething quietly for several minutes, she took a deep breath and set to work on editing an article for Communist Woman that had reached the office that morning.
It was almost three hours later that she was invited into the committee room, where five comrades were seated on the far side of a long and highly polished table. She knew three by sight, including the chair, Vyacheslav Molotov. Each man had a copy of the Zhenotdel proposals in front of him, and the first objection wasn’t long in coming.
“This hall in Yaroslavl,” one man began. “It’s currently a soldiers’ club.”
“It’s a public bar,” she corrected him.
“Which our soldiers use. Would you deny them a place to let off steam, after all the sacrifices we ask them to make?”
“Of course not. But there are many other bars in Yaroslavl, and this one has several rooms on both floors that would make an ideal suite of offices.”
“Why not just use those other rooms?”
Are you serious? she thought but didn’t say. “I doubt that using the same building for two such different purposes would work,” she replied. “The men might feel inhibited by the presence of working women,” she added with a straight face.
“Could the women not take turns meeting in one another’s kitchens?” another man interjected.
She took a deep breath. “We are setting up working offices, comrades. Might I remind you that Vladimir Ilych has urged all local parties to offer assistance in this matter.” Caitlin was fairly sure he had said something along those lines, and even if he hadn’t, none of the men across the table would be certain whether or not he had.
“Of course,” Molotov agreed. “But we have the responsibility of ensuring that the correct assistance is being offered.”
And they took that obligation seriously. They offered a litany of objections to all but a few of the proposed requisitions, and though most were eventually sanctioned, the tone of the proceedings was appallingly paternalistic.
“Comrades,” she almost pleaded after more than an hour had passed, “we are on the same side. Women are vital to the future of the revolution—the party says so—and the Zhenotdel is vital to the future of our women. We’re not asking for the moon, just appropriate housing for our offices and educational facilities. And we have done our research—we haven’t just picked buildings we liked the look of. Give us some credit, please.”
Molotov had the grace to look slightly abashed, which was just as well, because his underlings merely looked sour. “I take your point, Comrade Piatakova,” he said. “And perhaps we should take the remaining suggestions as read. But I think you would agree that the committee would not be fulfilling its duty if all suggestions were simply waved through without query or challenge.”
“Of course,” Caitlin agreed. He sounded more like a manager than a revolutionary, she thought.
Outside on the street she took a deep breath of the fresh evening air. She felt vindicated, annoyed, and depressed in almost equal measure. Why did it have to be so hard? How many years would it take to make men like that appreciate the central truth that improving women’s place in the world would also make life so much fuller for men?
It was dark, the few working streetlamps like spotlights on a citywide stage. The Muslim women were going to the theater that evening—they would probably be there by now—and she had meant to go with the party. She had already seen the play, but was curious to see what their guests would make of it. After hesitating for several moments, she decided she would simply go home. The last few hours had worn her out.
Her room was a mile and a half from the office, just south of the river and canal. A safe walk these days, even after dark, now that most of the robbers who’d plagued Moscow streets in the civil war years had been caught by the Chekas. As she strode across the Kamenny Bridge, Caitlin found herself thinking about the notorious “jumpers,” footpads who had—it was said—attached springs to the soles of their feet for bouncing away from Chekist pursuit, triumphantly waving stolen fur coats in the air. Had these “jumpers” ever been caught? Had they even been real?
The room she’d lived in for the last eighteen months was at the top of an old mansion on Dmitrova Street, a few hundred yards south of the river. It was cold in winter, but less noisy than those on the floors below, which were large enough to house families. She got on well enough with her neighbors, but her fluency in Russian could never quite make up for being born a foreigner.
Despite the cold, several of the older children were out on the stoop. “Good evening, Comrade Piatakova,” they all chorused. “Your husband has returned,” her neighbor’s daughter Lana added, with what looked suspiciously like a leer.
“How long has he been back?” Caitlin asked automatically.
“Not long. Ten minutes, perhaps.”
As she started up the stairs, Caitlin tried to sort out her feelings. She was glad he was safe, glad that he wasn’t one of those taking on the Kronstadt rebels. Which didn’t mean she was pleased to see him.
She told herself to be more generous. Sergei was always interesting to talk to, and having him hold her in bed was warming in more senses than one, even when being held was the only thing on offer. Of all the men she’d met in Russia, he was—or had been—the kindest and most likable.
They had met at Kollontai’s wedding in early 1918 and become lovers a year or so later on one of his leaves from the Volga front. The relationship hadn’t been easy at first because she couldn’t be her usual honest self with him. It wasn’t a straightforward case of two people falling in love—she knew only too well that Sergei was filling the emotional space that Jack had left behind. But other leaves had followed, and she’d gotten used to walking the line between playing a part and finding real satisfaction in what they actually shared. They had become what Kollontai, in one of her writings on love, called “erotic friends”; they had, almost on a whim, embarked on what many party members called “a comrades’ marriage.” Or so Caitlin believed. She sometimes worried that he felt more for her than she did for him, but he was never fawning. He was ruthless in argument and would never do anything just because she wanted him to.