Maria Arbatova (left) and Elisabeth Rich (right)

ARBATOVA’S FEMINISM

In the 1990s, Maria Arbatova1 emerged from the rubble of the former Soviet Union as one of the leading and most outspoken feminists in the early post-Soviet women’s movement. In fact, it is safe to say that it was largely due to her efforts that the words “feminism” and “feminist” gained new-found legitimacy in early post-Soviet Russia---words that had been stigmatized as a female “abnormality” during the Soviet period, a time when official propaganda alleged that gender equality had been established and that the women’s question had been “solved.”2 Arbatova is also a feminist writer, talk show host, and politician.

I first met Arbatova in 1993, when a mutual friend (Alya), who worked as an editor at the Moscow-based publishing house “Progress,” introduced her to me.  Like Arbatova, Alya was doing her part to bring attention to women’s issues, disseminating feminist literature that had previously been unavailable to the Russian public---classics such as Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963), which is widely credited with initiating the second wave of feminism in the United States in the early 1960s.  With no financial assistance from the post-Soviet state, Alya was only able to undertake this endeavor due to Western support (in this case, Katrina vanden Heuvel, the long-standing editor of The Nation).  Alliances of this nature were common at that time, since the West, and the grants they offered promoting “democracy” and “equal rights,” was essentially the only source of funding available to Russian women activists for their projects in the 1990s.

Given their Soviet past, the need to expose post-Soviet Russian women to feminist-oriented literature during this period was critical.  For all the government’s claims about woman’s emancipation and achievement of gender equality, the reality is that Soviet society was conservative and patriarchal, with women typically assuming the “double burden” of working at lower-end jobs and serving as the primary domestic caretaker.  Understandably, this left Soviet women both overworked and unfulfilled.  They also had to contend with the government’s appalling lack of concern regarding female health-related issues, which included, but was not limited to, birth control, abortion, pregnancy, and childbirth.  Since censorship prohibited women from voicing their problems through official channels, they had no choice but to quietly endure the challenges and hardships that confronted them on a daily basis.  As for those who were daring enough to raise women’s issues through unofficial means, the penalties were severe.  In 1980, for example, a group of female dissidents was expelled from the Soviet Union for publishing a samizdat journal that included discussion of the “double burden,” the horrendous conditions of maternity clinics and abortion centers, and the shortage of food and consumer goods.3 

A few weeks later, Arbatova and I made plans to dine at a restaurant in Moscow.  Our conversation there made a vivid impression on me, and three decades later I still remember it.  Although I did not know her well, she proceeded to share intimate details with me about her sex life and multiple partners.  I wondered if she was simply posturing in front of a Westerner, trying to look the part of a feminist who embraces free love and promiscuity, or if she had low self-esteem because of her limp, the result of polio as an infant.  It was only after I read “Учителя” (“My Teachers”), an excerpt from her autobiographical bestseller Мне сорок лет (I’m Forty, 1998), that I realized that she shared these confidences with everyone.

Yet for all her bravado about sexual freedom, the fact remains that Arbatova still upholds traditional values such as marriage and the family, making her feminist stance aligned to mainstream feminism, an ideology committed to the idea of legal and social equality between the sexes and, more recently, social equity.  In other words, she is not a “radical” feminist, whose ideology views “men and women as separate and antagonistic classes” and seeks “gender (class) justice” for the latter.4 For example, Arbatova actually embraces the fundamental differences between men and women, taking pride in her body, her female attributes, and her personal appearance.  She also likes men, enjoys physical intimacy with them, and takes pleasure in the fact that men find her alluring, even going so far as to write in one of her autobiographical pieces that “eight of ten men were attracted to [her] without any effort on [her] part, nine out of ten with only minimal effort.”5  In this respect, she certainly defies the traditional Russian stereotype of feminists as “men-haters,” “lesbians,” or “mannish women with unshaven underarms”---which undoubtedly made her more acceptable to the Russian public in early post-Soviet Russia.

According to Arbatova, Russian women, including herself, present themselves more through clothes and makeup than women in the West---an attitude that stems from cultural experience unique to the Russian woman.  First, imported clothing and makeup were impossible to find during the Soviet era, making them highly coveted items for Soviet women, while clothing and cosmetics manufactured in Russia were generally considered to be of inferior quality.  Soviet women would even run to the store when a pair of boots made in Czechoslovakia, one of the satellite countries of the Soviet Union, appeared on the shelf.  Arbatova even references this in her story “My Teachers,” describing how as a teenager she spent countless hours trying to impart “the look of real jeans with a past to [her] fake jeans from ‘Children’s World’ store.”6 The second reason for the Russian woman’s obsession with appearance can be found in Russia’s demographic situation: Because the number of women in Russia surpasses that of men, a woman is expected to look her best if she wants to attract a husband.  Maria Bolomikova in her article “On Being a Feminist in Russia” describes this social expectation as follows:

Women are made to feel that their beauty is an indispensable element of their public persona, that they are not quite doing what is expected of them and that they will be significantly lacking in social capital if they do not wish to make themselves appetizing to men.7

Indeed, the ratio of men to women is so skewed that Arbatova has even suggested in the Russian press importing grooms from India to Russia to remedy the problem, stating that “Indian men are a better match [for Russian women] because they’re closer to Russians emotionally.”8 Arbatova speaks from personal experience here: Her third marriage is to an Indian, a financial analyst who is fluent in Russian and has been living in Russia for more than three decades.  She also refers to this as her “happiest” marriage, which brings us to the next point: Arbatova’s views on marriage and the family.

Based on her personal history---her willingness to marry a third time despite two failed marriages, as well as her reluctance to separate from her first husband until their twin sons were grown—it is clear that Arbatova values the conventional nuclear family (marrying and raising children within the boundaries of marriage).  In other words, she rejects the views of radical feminists who, denouncing marriage as an institution that “oppresses women” and the family as a unit that “breeds patriarchy,” believe that the only solution is to eradicate both.  Instead, she endorses the position of liberal feminists, who view “marriage as salvageable, as an institution that needs reform rather than elimination,”9 a point that will be discussed in more detail later in this essay.  It is also worth noting that she supports same-sex marriage.

While some of Arbatova’s views may seem traditional to an observer with a western perspective, her feminist position, overall, was actually far from moderate for early post-Soviet Russia.  Even today, as Yulia Alexeyeva, an activist and volunteer at the Sisters sexual assault NGO, has pointed out, critics of domestic violence, job discrimination, and homophobia “won’t look extreme to a first world citizen, but in Russia, they’re almost radical.”10

ARBATOVA’S WOMEN’S ORGANIZATION: ГАРМОНИЯ (HARMONY)

Despite the lack of financial assistance from the Russian government, as well as the practical difficulties involved in setting up a non-governmental organization in post-Soviet Russia, a plethora of women’s “grassroots” organizations emerged in the first half of the 1990s, especially in the more cosmopolitan cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg.  Each had its own aims and activities, much like the consciousness raising groups that emerged in the United States in the 1960s during the second wave of feminism.  Some organizations formed around a particular issue (i.e., the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, which concentrated on the rights of soldiers and their families) or a particular constituent (i.e., Только Мама [Only Mama], a single mothers’ support organization), while others focused on broader issues, such as educating women on their civil rights or providing economic initiatives for women.  There were also groups whose sole purpose was to provide emotional support and a sense of solidarity to the women’s community.  However, most of these organizations did share one commonality: a reluctance to pursue an explicitly feminist agenda, to be “too theoretical,” or to create “an alternative worldview” that ran counter to mainstream post-Soviet debates on gender difference.  Instead, they dedicated their efforts to making practical improvements in the lives of post-Soviet Russian women and to addressing their most pressing needs and concerns.  Even the women who identified themselves as feminists, largely focused on the immediate problems confronting women at this time.11

In 1991, Arbatova also created her own women’s organization: “Гармония” (“Harmony”), which focused on the psychological rehabilitation of women.  Given her interest in psychoanalysis, in which she received underground training as a young adult, it is hardly surprising that Arbatova should form this group around an initiative that sought to provide psychological assistance to women.  When she invited me to attend one of its meetings in downtown Moscow in the early 1990s, I was excited, fully expecting to see firsthand the post-Soviet women’s movement in action.  However, as it turned out, there was no agenda or formal discussion of women’s issues.  Rather, it was an informal gathering, with women of all ages milling about the room, sharing their day-to-day problems with other women.  In other words, it served to provide a network for emotional support and solidarity, giving the organization’s members an opportunity to not deal with their difficulties alone.

Years later, I still recall a seemingly minor incident that transpired at this meeting.  As I stood with Arbatova, a middle-aged woman approached us to share her unusually good fortune that day, her purchase of a floral skirt that she had draped over her arm; for her, it was a rare find since commodity items (in this case, fashionable clothing) were in short supply in the early 1990s.  I remember this detail because it was precisely at that moment that I understood why Russian women’s grassroots organizations focused on providing tangible practical support to its members instead of pursuing an overtly feminist identity.  Arbatova later stated as much in one of my interviews with her.  Describing Western feminists as “women who don’t like getting dressed up and using makeup and get hysterical if a man does anything for them,” she wryly declared, “[W]e should have their worries.”12  Here Arbatova neatly summed up the position of many other women at that time, who viewed feminism in the West as “a theoretical pursuit for privileged (Western) women enjoying the luxury of spare time, financial security, and material comfort.”13

Russian women, however, did not have these luxuries in the 1990s---a period of radical reform and social upheaval as Russia transitioned to a market economy.  Due to high inflation and surging prices, Russians faced at this time overwhelming material and financial hardship, making their existence little more than a struggle for survival.  In this respect, Arbatova was no exception, telling me on one occasion that “As soon as the economic shock came [after the collapse of the Soviet Union] . . . there was no time to think, only to survive.”14  Indeed, her financial situation was so precarious that she, like many other Russian women, was forced into commercial activity (writing for “dollars”) in order to keep her family afloat.  This said, it is easy to understand why the majority of women in early post-Soviet Russia viewed feminism as irrelevant to the practicalities of their daily lives. 

ARBATOVA AS A FEMINIST WRITER AND THE WOMEN’S ISSUES ADDRESSED IN HER AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WORKS “MY TEACHERS” AND “MY NAME IS WOMAN”

Simultaneously with her involvement in Harmony, Arbatova was emerging on the Russian cultural scene in the 1990s as a feminist writer, a vocation that allowed her to raise awareness about women’s problems to a wider audience.  She began to write about topics pertaining to women’s issues well before the collapse of the Soviet Union, but after a confrontation with censors in the early 1980s over the staging of her play Equations with Two Knowns, she realized that she had no alternative but to put her writings “into the drawer,” a common practice for Soviet writers who knew that their works would be banned by the authorities. According to Arbatova, Soviet directors were enthusiastic about producing this play, but “when they went to discuss this with the censors, [the latter] would say, ‘What’s this you’ve got here?  Here is the word ‘gynecology’and here is the word ‘abortion’.  We cannot give permission for this to be performed; this is not a suitable theme for dramaturgy.”15  Ludicrous as it may sound, one high-ranking member of the Ministry of Culture even implored Arbatova to change the profession of her hero, a woman gynecologist who oversees the pregnancy of her former lover’s daughter.  “And what should she be?” Arbatova declared, recounting her conversation with this individual.  “An astronaut?  A steel founder?  How can she then meet with her [ex-lover’s] daughter during childbirth?  .  .  .  Ten years of this.  How did I survive?  I raised my children, wrote, and put everything into a drawer.”

Although Arbatova’s literary works touch on all problems relating to women to some degree, it is safe to say that she favors sexual freedom for women and the issue of abortion as central themes.  In this regard, two autobiographical works stand out above the rest: “My Teachers” and “My Name is Woman.”  Based on Arbatova’s own personal experiences, these works are both illuminating and compelling for what they tell us about the plight of Russian women living in patriarchal Soviet society in general.

In “My Teachers,” which charts her sexual awakening as an adolescent and young woman in Soviet Russia in the 1970s, Arbatova describes in detail her liaisons with numerous lovers, thus bringing to the forefront a topic previously considered taboo in Russia: sexual freedom for women.  In oppressive and puritanical Soviet society, a woman having multiple sex partners was considered nothing less than a flagrant example of promiscuity, but for Arbatova it is simply an expression of her (a woman’s) fundamental right to act on her sexual desire.  She also believes that other groups, such as homosexuals and prostitutes, share the same right, insisting that society and the government have no authority to interfere with, or prohibit, the sex life of any of its citizens.  In an interview with Julia Taratuta, Arbatova explained:

The most important thing for me, as a liberal, is that society and state not have the right to prescribe to adults how to have sex: for money, for free, upside down, on the ceiling, on the floor. This is not within their jurisdiction; it is a private domain.16 

Arbatova, we learn in the first few pages of “My Teachers,” became sexually active at the age of fifteen, taking on several lovers in her quest for what she repeatedly refers to as her “spiritual-sexual education.”   As “teachers,” most of her partners are considerably older than her and have impressive careers: Her first lover, a thirty-year-old avant-garde artist, is twice her age; her second lover, a forty-year-old script writer, is almost three times her age; and her third lover, a physicist, has to be significantly older since he trembles “at the thought of his dealings with a minor being found out.”17  While these relationships certainly advance Arbatova’s sexual education, they prove to be disappointing on a spiritual level: The men involved are simply too narcissistic, irresponsible, and opportunistic to provide any kind of spiritual enlightenment.  The first lover, for example, never says “so much as a word on the subject of contraception”18 despite the fact that he is sleeping with a girl half his age, while the second lover studies her diaries so that he can collect material for a script about young people that he is under contract to write.  As Arbatova comes to realize, most men of the older generation were “pigs who proved themselves at your [women’s] expense.”19   It is only with the fifth lover, a French-speaking biracial student at Patrice Lumumba University who is much closer to her age, that she learns that her body also exists for purposes of receiving pleasure.  Like her western feminist counterparts, Arbatova rejects what critics have referred to as the “sexual double standard,” insisting instead that women have as much right to pursue a satisfying and pleasurable sex life as men.

The time of Arbatova’s “spiritual-sexual adventures” are reflective of the times: It was the early 1970s, a period of relative freedom and non-conformism in Soviet Russia, and Arbatova was very much a part of the counterculture movement.  This counterculture also overlapped with the sexual revolution and the “Free Love Movement” in the United States, Great Britain, and other western countries---a time of sexual liberation when feminist leaders such as Germaine Greer encouraged women to be sexually adventurous.  Like her hippy friends, Arbatova wore knitted vests and wove beads into her braids; read verse aloud in the company of drunken friends; used words like “existential” and “transcendentalism” to initiate conversations in public; and refused to become a member of any Party organization, beginning with the Komsomol (Young Communist League).  In a conversation with me, Arbatova explained the difference between Russian and American hippies: 

The Moscow hippies, of course, differed from the American ones because besides being hippies, we were all in school. It was a counterculture, and of course we protested and had skirmishes with the police, and they beat us up---we did all that, but at the same time I was studying philosophy at the university.20

When one considers her formative years, it is easy to understand why Arbatova became a rebel, non-conformist, and social activist.  In “My Teachers,” she tells the reader that she has a Jewish mother who was overprotective and un-nurturing.  She also contracted polio as an infant, which led to protracted stays in hospitals and sanatoriums and a lame right leg:

In 1958, when I was one-year old, I had polio.  As you probably know, vaccination was not very common in Russia at that time.  We didn’t get the polio vaccine until much later.  My father was a teacher of philosophy in the military academies and was exiled to the provinces in 1950, when they removed the entire university department of philosophy.  This came at the very end of Stalin’s regime, and that’s why I was born in Murom [a town in east central Russia].  I contracted polio because they didn’t vaccinate there.  My fate was decided at that moment because my entire childhood consisted of hospitals, hospitals, hospitals, and my school years were operations, operations, operations.21 

Still, Arbatova insists that she has a positive self-image and that whatever her losses due to lameness, her curvaceous figure more than compensated for them.  As she writes in “My Teachers,” her approach to life stemmed from “social convictions, not an inferiority complex.”22  One could easily argue here that these early years were crucial to her development as an activist, making her abhor constraints of any kind, as well as giving her a strong, willful, and indomitable spirit.

At the age of eighteen, Arbatova adopts a more conventional life style: She falls wildly in love with a fellow student (an opera singer), marries him, and gives birth to twin boys.  Her happiness, however, is short-lived.  We learn that the marriage quickly turns into a “battlefield” and that there are numerous infidelities on both sides. However, Arbatova and her first husband do not separate for sixteen years, preferring instead to stay together for the sake of their children. This arrangement leaves Arbatova free to pursue more spiritual-sexual adventures, although she by no means welcomes all advances from the opposite sex.  For example, when a senior and highly respected teacher at the Gorky Literary Institute where she is studying in the Dramatic Arts Division proposes adding her to his list of sexually favored women, she rebuffs him, despite the fact that she knows it will lead to retaliation.  For her, a woman’s body should be seen as “[her own] property” and not “as a ware with which [she has] come to literature”;23 in other words, she insists, like western feminists, “on sexual and bodily autonomy,” a belief that sets her apart from other female classmates whom this teacher had tortured in this way.  Instead of saying “no” and rejecting his unwanted lascivious advances, many young female students succumb to them, finding it easier “to retake the exam in his apartment when his wife was at work: to grit their teeth, close their eyes and be done with the whole business.”24 Here Arbatova underscores another issue important to feminists in the West: sexual harassment, which in this particular case involves a teacher using his authority and power to procure sexual favors from female students in Soviet Russia.  Astonishingly, although sexual harassment was a criminal offense in the former Soviet Union, it was not until 1994, three years after its collapse, that the first known case of sexual harassment reached the courts in Russia.25 

At the age of twenty-five, Arbatova finally finds a teacher worthy of giving her a spiritual-sexual education.  He is referred to as V. and is another one of her instructors at the Literary Institute.  V. teaches Arbatova “how to live, how to write, how to converse, how to help, how to sort out differences without getting bogged down in them, [and] how to have fun.”26 Most importantly, he teaches her how to love.  The two also engage in spiritual-sexual experiments, because V., a long-time student of yoga, karate, and power games, “adored to experiment with the female body.”27   She is incredibly happy with him, but the three-year relationship comes to an end when the experimentation goes too far.  After they take some “little pills,” Arbatova has such a terrifying hallucination that she becomes afraid of V.

Arbatova concludes the story by discussing how feminist principles form the foundation of her relationship with her second husband.  She writes:

My own feminism has come of living with a man with whom I share all domestic duties: the ideal husband is not the one who crawls in the window with a bouquet in his teeth after seven years of married life, but the one who respects you always and never treads on your spiritual territory. Still, you cannot be the student of your husband.  As one classic said: “It is dangerous and harmful to touch idols, their gilt sticks to your fingers. . .”28 

A teacher of sorts in her own right who seeks to instruct by example, it is safe to say that Arbatova uses the words above to convey the ingredients she deems necessary for a healthy and happy marriage, one of which is clearly the equal division of household tasks.  As mentioned earlier, women during the Soviet era carried most, if not all, responsibility for childcare and domestic labor, despite the fact that the majority of them had full-time employment outside the home.  Arbatova, on the other hand, underscores the fact that she and her husband share “all domestic duties,” making it implicitly clear that she rejects the Russian woman’s traditional “double burden” in favor of the ideal of “equal marriage” (a marriage in which husband and wife contribute equally to running the household).  Again, her views are consistent with those of liberal western feminists, who, seeing “an imbalance [in marriage] in the amount of domestic chores performed by women as opposed to those performed by men,” advocate for men to share the load equally.29 

In addition to sexual freedom for women, the issue of abortion and female health is another overarching theme for Arbatova.  A good case in point is her autobiographical story “Меня зовут женщина” (“My Name is Woman,” 1997).  Although this work highlights a plethora of societal ills and patriarchal attitudes confronting women in Soviet times, its primary objective is to expose the miserable and appalling conditions of Soviet-era abortions and hospital births, which included overcrowded wards, dealings with rude and insensitive medical personnel, a lack of comfort and privacy, and ‘assembly-line’ service.  As a young adult in Soviet Russia in the 1970s, Arbatova encountered these problems first-hand.  “I can only write about my own personal experiences,” she admitted.  “I’m like those authors who always write to solve their own psychological problems.”

“My Name is Woman” begins with Arbatova describing her first abortion at the age of eighteen.30   Due to the lack of access to other forms of contraception in Soviet Russia, abortion was the primary method of contraception, making Russia at that time the “abortion center of the world.”31   Having one was so commonplace, in fact, that the woman doctor who confirms Arbatova’s pregnancy and refers her for an abortion in “My Name is Woman” has had fifteen abortions herself.  We learn this detail from another character in the story---Arbatova’s mother, who is also a physician.

Understandably, Arbatova is frightened at the prospect of having an abortion.  She is also completely ill-prepared for the indignities, insults, and humiliation that lie ahead: a whole line of women waiting their turn as if in “a production line,” looking at their watches to see what household chores they would have time for after their abortion, as well as mean-spirited nurses, who castigate the women with insensitive and cruel comments such as “Get into the ward and put the pad under you properly.  You’re bleeding and there’s no one to wipe it up!”32   The procedure is also excruciatingly painful, to which “the screams from behind the closed door [of the operating room]”33 clearly attest.  When Arbatova asks if she will be given an anesthetic, the response from a fellow patient is, “You must be joking”34 and that she should consider herself fortunate to get a novocain injection that may or may not mitigate the pain.  With no other options, she is forced to lie, telling the doctor that she is allergic to novocain and that she can only have a general anesthetic.35 With sarcastic humor, which is characteristic of Arbatova’s writing in general, she then adds, “This was a clever lie, which mother had taught me, instead of telling me about contraception.”36

Arbatova’s negative stance on abortion does not mean that she is pro-life, as it would imply in the West under the religious right-wing and as it currently implies in Russia under Putin’s conservative leadership and the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church.37  On the contrary, like her feminist counterparts in the West, who insist on the fundamental right of women to control their own reproductive lives, Arbatova believes that women should not be forced to give birth if they are disinclined to do so.  In other words, she is pro-choice, although in the early 1990s, this concept to her meant the right to secure access to contraception as an alternative to abortion.  Her views are certainly not without merit: Why should a woman go through the ordeal of terminating a pregnancy through abortion, which has to be a traumatic experience, when she could easily avoid this by using other safe and reliable contraceptive methods?  Arbatova explained her position to me as follows:

When I say that I am against abortion, I mean that I am for contraception.  The curve of abortions shows that the highest number of abortions is performed on young girls from the age of 14 to 20.  I myself was such a young girl.  My mother is a doctor, but I only found out about other forms of contraception after I had my first abortion, because my mother considered it improper to discuss such things with a child.38   

However, because the government did not make other contraceptive methods available to its female population, Arbatova and other Soviet women had to look elsewhere to procure them, a fact she references in “My Teachers.”  She writes that her husband tries to buy her an IUD in Greece when he is on tour, but when that fails, she asks her current lover to pick one up for her in England.  Interestingly, we find the opposite scenario in the United States during the second wave of feminism in the 1960s.  American women at that time had access to contraceptives, like the Pill, which had been approved by the federal government in 1960, while feminist leaders were speaking out against restrictions on abortion, which remained illegal throughout much of the country until the U.S. Suprem Court ruling on Roe v. Wade in 1973.

Due to the high risk of first abortions causing infertility in Soviet Russia, an elderly Armenian doctor gives Arbatova the night to think it over and reconsider her decision to have the procedure.39 Arbatova returns the next day and has the abortion.  Fortunately, it does not result in infertility; in fact, a few months later, she returns to the same clinic, this time pregnant with twins.

We quickly learn that the hospital conditions for childbirth during the Soviet period are no less deplorable than the conditions for abortions.  The pathological pregnancy department, which is in a building “on the verge of collapse,” lacks adequate sanitation facilities, with only one toilet for the entire floor; as a result, there is “a long line of pale-faced women queuing outside it, clutching their bellies.”40 The hospital also does not have piped hot water, which forces Arbatova to take “icy washes in the morning in a packed washroom full of big jars of urine tests.”41 Since the ward has about thirty beds, two women have to share a locker to save space.  There are also only two delivery tables, and when both are occupied, a woman going into labor is forced to wait in the ward, no matter how close her contractions are or how agonizing the pain.  Most shocking, though, is the shortage of medical personnel.  In fact, one of the reasons that Arbatova elects to have a caesarian is because “the doctor was there all the time, whereas if it wasn’t a caesarian you might have to hunt high and low for one.”42 

Despite the government’s claims of a classless society that fairly distributed its resources among its people in accordance with Marxist-Leninist ideology, Soviet society largely operated according to the principle “Всё по блату” (“everything through connections”), which in effect fostered distinct class structures.  This principle is also present in “My Name is Woman.”  Since Arbatova’s mother is a doctor, she is able to “pull strings” to have her daughter transferred to the Central Institute of Gynecology, where the wives of diplomats and cosmonauts gave birth.  This maternity ward offers better quality care, but even there we find notable class demarcations in terms of food, comfort, and visitation rights:

The wards were either for six ordinary pregnant women or one diplomat-cosmonaut-general’s wife.  An orderly brought round a dirty trolley with some cadaver-colored kasha for the ordinary patients and morsels of haute cuisine for [the spouses of the aforementioned elite].  They were allowed to have visitors in the ward, while we had to make do with scribbled notes and hurried shouts down the phone or through the window.43

As with abortions, the then nineteen-year-old Arbatova lacks even a rudimentary knowledge about childbirth, and is completely unprepared for it.  Shockingly, she does not even know what it means when her water breaks.  After waking up “in a pool of water,” she approaches a nurse for help, telling her, “I’ve got water running down me and I don’t know what it means.”44   Arbatova’s appalling ignorance here can be attributed to the absence of sex education during the Soviet period.  Parents did not teach it in the home, nor did instructors teach it in the school system.45

In “My Name is Woman,” Arbatova repeatedly describes the medical staff as rude, disrespectful, and insensitive.  This is hardly surprising, given the status of health care professionals in the former Soviet Union.  State employed doctors, comprised mostly of women, received low salaries from the state and enjoyed no particular prestige; in fact, they earned half the salary of a bus driver, a worker with a considerably lower skill grade.  One female doctor complains that she “does too much as it is for [her] miserable wage,”46 while a nurse on duty snarls at Arbatova, “On seventy rubles a month I don’t have to run around for all of you.  At least the foreigners give us presents . . .”47   Here Arbatova not only shows the health care professionals’ lack of monetary incentive to do their job well, but also makes an implicit reference to the “gender pay gap” that existed during the Soviet period.  Although the disparity in wages among the Soviet population as a whole was relatively modest (as compared to the United States and other western countries), the fact nonetheless remains that Soviet women dominated fields where salary was lower, such as health care, education, and clerical jobs.  Indeed, by the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse, women’s earnings were on average only 70 per cent of men’s.48

Arbatova also describes in horrifying detail the medical staff’s slovenly work ethic and deplorable lack of sanitary practices.  Because the obstetrician delivers Arbatova an hour late, her vaginal area is so “torn to pieces”49 that she is told that she will be unable to sit down for six months; another doctor barely rinses her hands after “rummaging around in [Arbatova’s] genitals”;50 and a nurse leaves her on a trolley for two hours in “a tatty, unheated corridor” so that she will stay awake “to catch internal bleeding if there is one”51---which nearly results in Arbatova’s demise.  Since foreigners can pay for medical services with foreign currency, they are the only ones to have bedside nurses.

To some extent, the medical staff’s brusqueness and lack of emotional support to its patients can be attributed to a worker’s mentality.  One physician is described as “a real battleax of a female doctor,”52 bringing to mind the epitome of the Soviet worker sledging a hammer at a steel furnace, while another doctor, who is in charge of the gynecology department, tries to justify the department’s horrific conditions by making a comparison to an even less agreeable scenario for childbirth:

Arbatova: “Yesterday a woman went into labor and the nurse told her to wait because there were only two tables and they were both occupied.”  

Doctor: “What difference did it make?  She yelled a bit in the ward.  My mother gave birth to me in a hay field.  She was mowing and had me on the spot.”

Arbatova: “I’d prefer a bit more comfort than that.” 

Doctor: “Then send a telegram to Brezhnev saying you’re someone special. 

Maybe he’ll let you give birth on his nice big office desk.”53

Arbatova, on the other hand, is a “degenerate bohemian,” a university student studying philosophy, an intellectual.  She is by no means like the archetypal Soviet mother--- mothers who were “iron-willed” and “stony-faced,” brawled in lines, complained about their drunkard husbands, and “gladly abandoned their children to the mercy of nurseries, hospitals, summer camps and schools.”54 Nor, as she makes clear, does she have the slightest inclination to join their ranks.

Arbatova ends the story with a warning: “As long as there are people who do not regard [women’s problems] as a suitable [topic] for discussion it will happen each day to other women.”55 The message is self-explanatory: In order to eradicate problems pertaining to women, people and society as a whole must admit that they exist and openly address them—which is precisely what Arbatova accomplishes with the publication of “My Name is Woman.”  Indeed, it was with this story, which pushed a number of critical female health issues to the forefront for discourse and debate, that Arbatova made one of her most important contributions to the women’s movement in early post-Soviet Russia.

ARBATOVA’S NON-LITERARY FORUMS: TV TALK HOST AND POLITICIAN

In addition to being a successful feminist author, Arbatova looked to other forums to raise awareness about women’s issues, even becoming in the mid-1990s co-host of the popular daytime women’s talk show Я, сама (I, Myself), a program in which she was given complete freedom to promote her feminist views.  As the first female talk show in Russia, it represented a new phenomenon in the Russian consciousness, and addressed an array of women’s questions---questions like whether a woman should get married, and if so, whether she should continue to work and be financially independent, or live at her husband’s expense.  Some of the programs were more sensational for that time period, such as “Our Friendly Family,” which is about a man with two wives and deals with the problem of polygamy; “I am a Rape Victim,” which is about a girl who, raped by two azerbajzhanians at the age of fourteen, becomes a drug addict; and “How I Became a Woman,” which tells the story of a transgender woman.    The talk show, which ran for almost a decade, was so successful that it received Russia’s most coveted television prize “Teffi.”  It also turned Arbatova into a celebrity and household name in Russia, which, as one might expect, dramatically widened her sphere of influence. 

It was also in the mid-1990s that Yeltsin’s camp recruited Arbatova to work with other experts on human rights issues, such as maternity and paternity, the rights of women and children, and the protection of invalids.  “Yeltsin,” she told me, “wanted a group of independent intellectuals under his power.”  Arbatova admitted that she profited immensely from the experience---an experience that allowed her to be “at the very threshold of an imperious structure”---yet, at the same time, she compared her involvement in Yeltsin’s camp to “a schizophrenic comedy.”  She explained: “It was as if they had taken me to serve in the army, where only the needs of men were taken into account.”  She then went on to say that on the night of Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996, the entire command went to the Kremlin, leaving her behind:

When I asked why I wasn’t going too, they told me that a pass had not been issued for me.  I said, “Am I really less of an expert than you?” and they responded, “It would be awkward [for you to go].”  Until the very last moment, I was not on equal footing with them.

Arbatova’s exclusion from attending Yeltsin’s victory celebration is starkly reminiscent of the Soviet period when women largely held the more insignificant roles in the political hierarchy.  As one moved up the ladder of Soviet power, the lower the level of female representation; in fact, only one woman, Ekaterina Furtseeva, who served as Minister of Culture under Krushchev and Brezhnev, ever became a full member of the Politiburo.

Given the above, it is not surprising that Arbatova, like western liberal feminists, began to advocate for equal representation of women in the post-Soviet political establishment, even becoming in 1996 the president of the non-governmental organization Клуб Женщин, Вмешивающихся в Политику (The Club of Women Meddling in Politics).  She also became actively involved in politics herself.  Among other things, she joined the liberal party Союз Правых Сил (Union of Right Forces), made a bid for election to the State Duma in 1999 (albeit unsuccessfully), led the Human Rights Party from 2001 to 2003, and finally, served as a political psychologist in several election campaigns, including Ella Pamfilova’s.56 

The importance of Arbatova’s efforts to place women (including herself) in high-ranking political positions in Russia cannot be overstated: As long as men dominate the government, they will continue to endorse policy that is advantageous to them and not to women.  Indeed, no one knows this better than Arbatova, who encountered more than once in the 1990s the adverse effects of unequal political representation of women on women’s issues.  For example, in an interview in 2012, she told Julia Taratuta that the Russian feminists’ decade-long initiative to push through legislation on alimony was consistently rejected, because men, who constituted the vast majority of the Duma at that time, were averse to paying alimony to an ex-wife or child support.57 

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention Arbatova’s tireless efforts to improve Russian women’s sense of self-worth and awareness of their right to social equality---women who, stigmatized as second-class citizens in patriarchal Soviet society, understandably suffered from low self-esteem.  In addition to “Harmony,” the organization that, as previously mentioned, she formed in the early1990s to aid in the psychological rehabilitation of women, she has provided individual counselling to women since 1996.  Significantly, unlike other Russian feminists, Arbatova eschews monetary rewards for what she regards as “missionary” work and never accepts grants for her activities.58   

ARBATOVA’S CURRENT INVOLVEMENT IN THE WOMEN’S MOVEMENT AND LEGACY

Given the range and magnitude of her resume, it is hardly surprising that Arbatova has garnered over the years several national and international awards for her contributions to the post-Soviet women’s movement.  They include, among others: a Gold medal from the Cambridge bibliographical Society for “Contributions to Culture in the 20th Century” (2003); a medal “For Service to the Fatherland” by the National Welfare Fund “Eternal Glory to Heroes” (2003); a special social honorary badge from the Congress “The Image of Women in the 21st Century” for her contributions in enhancing the modern woman’s image (2014); and the order of “Honorary Citizen of Russia” (2015).

Although it is true that the now 66-year-old Arbatova primarily received these honors for her achievements in the early post-Soviet period, a time in her life when, by her own admission, she had a great deal more strength and energy, she has by no means disappeared from the public arena.  On the contrary, she continues to wield influence and to be actively involved in matters pertaining to women’s issues and equal rights, such as overseeing the “Women’s Aid Center,”  conducting a program on Radio Mayak that pertains to human rights and is called “Право быть собой” (“The Right to be Yourself”), and serving as a member of the Commissioner’s Expert Council for Human Rights in the City of Moscow. 

In keeping with the current forth-wave of feminism in the United States, which began in 2008 and is often characterized as “online feminism” or “a movement connected through technology,”  Russian feminist groups like “VKontakte,” one of Russia’s largest social media platforms, have turned to the internet in recent years to highlight women’s problems and to bring the women’s community together.  Arbatova is representative of this movement as well, boasting a strong online presence that includes Facebook, Twitter, and an online live journal. 

Yet Arbatova’s position on women’s issues remains largely unchanged from the 1990s---a moderate feminism that, as discussed earlier, stems from cultural experiences unique to her and other women of her generation.  This said, it is hardly surprising that she rejects the notion that   “Pussy Riot” represents the new generation of Russian feminists, despite worldwide claims to the contrary, viewing their provocations and radicalism as post-modernist, avant-garde theatrical antics rather than the expression of a serious feminist agenda.59  In fact, when Ksenia Sobchak asked her that very question in an interview, “Do you feel that they are the new generation [of feminists] replacing you?” her response was, “Не дай Бог” (“God forbid”).60  No less surprising is the fact that Arbatova, who values the conventional nuclear family, endorses the use of dating sites on the internet to seek love, companionship, and marriage---a position that would certainly not be regarded as “feminist” by observers with a western perspective.  For example, when she traveled to Kiev in 2013 to give a master-class to a group of more than a hundred women on the topic “Как не быть одной” (“How to not be alone”), she encouraged those who were lonely and single to use these sites to find a male suitor, telling the crowd that it was through the internet that she became acquainted with her third husband.  However, at the same time, she urged them to protect their financial interests,61 cautioning them to draw up a prenuptial agreement before entering into marriage, even if their assets only consist of “five forks and plates.”62 

Based on the preceding, it is clear that Arbatova has played a pivotal role in raising public awareness about issues pertaining to women’s health and sexuality and in improving the modern Russian woman’s self-image.  Indeed, she has carved an indelible niche for herself within the annals of Russian feminism, empowering Russia’s female population in the 1990s in much the same way that works like The Feminine Mystique and Our Bodies, Ourselves enlightened American women in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Elisabeth T. Rich is Associate Professor of Russian in the Department of Global Cultures and Languages, Texas A&M University

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