Relieving women of part of their heavy burden was not necessarily an end in itself, however. Sociologist Tatiana Zaslavskaya, for example, was concerned about the children of working mothers: “We have a generation of children who have been raised without mothers, who were all out working—an abandoned generation. These children have a lot of problems, including a sharp drop in morality among them. No one can replace a mother.”218 An anthropologist might interpret this as a plea to retain traditional Russian matrifocality.
Zaslavskaya said that “many Soviet women would like to leave the workforce if their husband’s salary were large enough.”219 This statement reveals a concern not only with a married couple’s financial total, but with the relative male versus female contributions to the total as well. Elsewhere Zaslavskaya refered to sociological research showing that 40 percent of women would prefer to work part-time. She added that, “to make this possible, however, men’s wages must be raised.”220
Men’s wages? Zaslavskaya wanted to aggravate the already existing wage differential between the sexes. The idea struck some Soviet scholars as retrograde in the extreme.221 Besides, it did not even make mathematical sense. For example, assume that the savings accrued from women cutting back to one-half-time is available for increasing wages. It turns out that, if male and female wages are roughly equal at the start, then equally increasing both women’s and men’s wages would result in nearly the same income for a couple as increasing only men’s salaries.222 Why the sophisticated sociologist Zaslavskaya did not think of this can only be explained by her respect for the delicate male ego and/or her low opinion of the value of woman’s labor. There is no intrinsic need to devalue woman’s (or overvalue men’s) labor in the workforce just because many women wish to work part-time.
There were indications of political action as well. An open airing of women’s dissatisfaction with their undue domestic burden was made at the 1987 All-Union Conference of Women, and a declaration was made by the Conference: “We strive to achieve the situation in which husband and wife carry out household chores equally and take responsibility for childrearing.”223 The concluding document of the First Independent Women’s Forum held in Dubna in March of 1991 supported “a family founded on partnership relations, with equal participation of both parents in raising children, performing everyday tasks, and maintaining a good emotional climate.”224
As the Russian economy is being transformed downward in the post-Soviet 1990s, and as women are losing their jobs in droves, there are conflicting reports on whether and to what extent women want to retreat to the domestic sphere. There is a so-called “Go home” (“Idi domoi”) movement being supported by antifeminist women’s groups such as Rossiia.225 A recent poll reported in the New York Times indicates that only 20 percent of Russian women wish to remain at home.226 A recent volume edited by Iu. V. Arutiunian reports that a third of Russian men and less than half of Russian women think that wives should continue working when the family is financially secure.227
Of course financial security is now uncommon, to put it mildly. Many women have no choice but to look for work. Unemployment lines, like most other lines in Russia, consist mostly of women. Approximately 75 to 80 percent of the people signed up in the unemployment offices are women. Many women are losing jobs or finding it extremely difficult to find new jobs because they have small children, and employers do not want to deal with childbirth leave and days lost to sick children. Women over age forty are having difficulty because they are considered too old to work efficiently.228
Already overburdened during the relatively affluent Brezhnev era, women in the post-Soviet depression are under even more pressure to bring in more income for their families. Some succeed in doing this by engaging in “unofficial” work ranging from production of handmade arts and crafts to prostitution.229
A poor economy is not good for women. It is not good for men either, but men control resources and are in a position to demand greater control over those to whom they allocate scarcer resources. It remains to be seen whether the slight antimasochistic drift in Russian women during the late Soviet period will be canceled by these economic developments.
EIGHT
Born in a Bania: The Masochism of Russian Bathhouse Rituals
A favorite theater of pain in Russia is the communal bathhouse (“bania”). This idea may seem strange to the Westerner who is accustomed to the lonely pleasure of a tepid bathtub, or the bracing spray of a shower. A proper Russian bath, however, is not just relaxing, or bracing. It truly hurts. The Russian does not merely soap up and rinse off, but endures additional quotas of suffering. The water (or beer, or kvass) thrown on to the stones or bricks atop a special bathhouse stove (termed “kamenka” in the countryside) produces steam which is so hot as to bring out a profuse sweat in the bathers. The eyes and nostrils sting from the heat. Moreover, the naked bathers flail one another (or themselves) with a bundle of leafy birch twigs (termed a “venik”). This mild flagellation supposedly assists the steam in flushing out the pores of the skin, and leaves behind the pleasant fragrance of the birch. Sometimes the hot portion of the bath is followed up with a roll in the snow, or a dip in a nearby river or lake, or a cold shower. The hot bath may then be repeated.1
Russians of all social strata perform the bathhouse ritual willingly, and often follow it up with a hearty meal and drinks. Russians who do not know how to perform the ritual are rare. A criminal character in Vasilii Shukshin’s novella Snowball Berry Red has spent so much of his time either in prison or on the run that he does not know how to make proper use of a bania: instead of pouring more water on the kamenka, he pours it on a fellow-bather, scalding him. He is called a “halfwit” (“poludurok”) for such incredible ignorance.2
Cleansing Body and Soul
Pain is essential to the bania. In the Primary Chronicle it was said of ancient Novgorodian bathers that “they make of the act not a mere washing but a veritable torment.”3 Adam Olearius, who partook of a bania in Astrakhan in the middle of the seventeenth century, declared that the combined heating and beating was “unbearable for me.”4 Soviet writer V. Kabanov conjures up the cries of pain/delight uttered by peasant bathers as they would lash one another in the traditional bania: “Gradually, with growing excitement, the bathers would pass the venik from hand to hand, not letting a moment go by without using it. The sweaters would cry out rapturously, “okh!,” “akh!,” “ukh!,” and would ask those down below to put on more steam.”5
It doesn’t take a clinician to recognize the masochistic element in this practice. Journalist Hedrick Smith, who visited the famous Sandunov Baths in Moscow, refers to the “special twist of Russian masochism” in Russian public bathing. He adds: “The banya is supposed to produce a sense of well-being but in my experience Russians do not really enjoy that without a preliminary dash of masochism.”6