The onesidedness or positive errors in the results obtained by a partial examination of the picture are due to a neglect of cultural or social factors—an exclusion from the picture of women living under civilizations with different customs. The Russian peasant woman of the Tsaristic and patriarchal regime was invariably cited in discussions aimed at proving how deeply masochism is ingrained in female nature. Yet this peasant woman has emerged into the self-assertive Soviet woman of today who would doubtless be astonished if beatings were administered as a token of affection. The change has occurred in the patterns of culture rather than in the particular women.112
There can be no doubt that an immense sociocultural change took place in Russia in the early decades of the twentieth century. But this does not necessarily mean that masochism disappeared (or even lessened) in Russian women. Perhaps wife beating per se did become less accepted, especially as women moved to urban areas and became more educated than their mothers and grandmothers were. But the Sovietization of Russia also brought vast new opportunities for women to suffer. Women achieved some degree of equality with men but, as one Soviet woman interviewed in Moscow said, “it seems to me that our women suffer from equality.”113 How is this possible?
Lynne Attwood explains: “the emancipation [Soviet women] have supposedly enjoyed for the past 70 years has saddled them with a hefty double burden of work inside and outside the home, unassisted by husbands or by many of the labour-saving devices of the West.”114 This “double burden” (“dvoinaia nosha,” “dvoinaia nagruzka”) which most Soviet Russian women bore is well known. Even the conservative Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev recognized it in a 1977 speech in which he asked the members of his audience to express their gratitude for the “self-sacrificing labor” of their female comrades.115 The typical Soviet Russian woman handled the bulk of domestic-related tasks (cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping) and held down a full-time job. In the words of the same Muscovite woman quoted above, “it’s obvious that the woman suffers the most.”116
What drove Soviet women to increase their labor by entering the workforce? The answer to this question is complex, and depends in part on historical context. In the troubled early decades of Soviet power many women simply had to work because there was a severe deficit of males (many women lost their men during the First World War, the civil war, the purges, and the Second World War).117 Women were also encouraged to work by an ideology of emancipation that glorified those women who worked side-by-side with men in building Communism (the ideology itself was fueled, in part, by labor shortages). More recently two primary factors, according to Gail Lapidus (on the basis of Soviet data), motivated women to be employed: economic pressure to make adequate provision for the family, and the attraction of enhanced status and independence for those who could claim to be gainfully employed.118 The salary of one spouse was simply not enough to meet expected living standards for a family of dependents, and besides, a job was itself of intrinsic value. This last factor was particularly important, as some studies showed that most women would continue working even if it became economically feasible for them not to, or at least they would continue in part-time employment.119 A very typical statement was made by a Moscow woman named Natasha: “I think it’s essential for a woman to work. If I don’t work for a period of time, I lose my feeling of self-esteem.”120
Although a Soviet woman’s employment brought her positive feelings about herself, she was not necessarily treated equally with men in the workplace. Women were generally paid less than men who had the same amount of education, they held jobs of lesser status, and were underrepresented in managerial positions. This is documented by a variety of Soviet statistical sources.121
Russians like to refer to women as “the weak sex” (“slabyi pol”). But in some areas, such as agriculture, Soviet women were not permitted to operate heavy machinery and had to do the bulk of the manual labor instead (98 percent of the field workers in agriculture were women).122 More than one quarter of construction workers and about a third of road workers were women.123 Overall, more than half of all the manual laborers in the Soviet Union were women.124 L. T. Shineleva wrote: “Our pain and our shame is women pouring asphalt and laying railway cross ties.”125
If women were as active as men in the workforce, they were even more active than men in the household. Lapidus summarizes some of the Soviet sociological studies: “Although men and women devote roughly equal time to paid employment and physiological needs, working women devote on average 28 hours per week to housework compared to about 12 hours per week for men; men enjoy 50% more leisure time than women.”126 The differences may even have been greater than this, especially in rural areas.127 To some extent the differences extended into grandparenthood: the Soviet Russian grandmother (“babushka”) was much more likely to be involved in the care of her children’s offspring than was the grandfather.
The imbalance between hours spent by men and hours spent by women on household tasks was very roughly similar across developed countries, such as the United States, the Soviet Union, France, Germany, and Great Britain.128 What was different about Soviet women is that they endured the imbalance and typically worked full-time. In a time-use study comparing the residents of Jackson, Michigan, with those of Pskov, USSR, it was found that 80 percent of the Pskov women were employed, while only 55 percent of the Jackson women were. In addition, while employed women in Pskov worked forty-eight hours per week on average, employed Jackson women worked only forty-one hours.129
As Vladimir Shlapentokh and others have pointed out, the main concern in a Soviet woman’s life was lack of time to do all the tasks she expected of herself. It is no wonder that she fell ill much more often than her male counterpart.130
There were of course other things in life that weighed heavily on Soviet women besides their double burden. Women menstruate, get pregnant, have abortions, give birth, and go through menopause. Not for nothing did Dr. Nemilov speak of “the biological tragedy of woman.” Russian men, Soviet or otherwise, do not have to do any of these things. True, neither do men from other cultures, but Russian men seem to bend over backward to avoid getting involved, or are prevented in one way or another from getting involved. For example, a man would never have been seen in a Soviet abortion clinic where, because of inadequate educational and contraceptive practices, the average sexually active Soviet woman went two to four times by the end of her reproductive cycle.131 As for childbirth, it was a lonely, frightening, and painful experience for the Soviet woman. She was obliged to give birth in a special, unhygienic place called a birthing house (“roddom”). There she was typically not given anesthesia, was often treated rudely by the personnel, and was forbidden visits by her husband. Postpartum sepsis was not uncommon, and maternal mortality and infant mortality occured at rates up to seven times greater than in the developed countries of the West.132
As far as their “female” physiological functions were concerned, then, Soviet women bore a heavy, risky burden alone, without the help of their men. It is not surprising that, in the context of a questionnaire about childbirth practices, a sample of ex-Soviet women were much more likely than American women to agree with the statement that “women must be strong and accept the fact that they carry most of life’s burdens.”133