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| WOMEN
IN RUSSIAN HISTORY 5 |
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To return to the problems of women's emancipation in Russia, the
peculiar aspect was that at first the idea of emancipation was discussed by
men supporters and opponents, while women themselves hardly took part in
these arguments. The women's movement in Russia at that time had not taken
shape ideologically and had no common platform or program of action. Women
fought for the possibility of working on an equal basis with men to get
financial independence and for the right to get a higher education. On the
city streets there appeared young women with books and notebooks under their
arms who had broken away from the surveillance of family and guardians.The middle
l860's saw the collapse of many small gentry estates and the
mass ruin of the lower gentry, forcing it out of the
countryside into the city. I.V. Stasova brilliantly
characterized this social stratum as the
"landowner-proletariat." Young women of this
intelligentsia were obliged to help support the family, as they did not want
to be in the position of dependent parasites.
By the second half of the l9th century, the idea of "liberating women
through work" was on the whole supported by society. What made for the zeal
of women's struggle at that time? Foremost, it was in the freedom to earn
her bread by the work of her own hands, and not to be despised and
humiliated
by society. For some women, a job was the only way to feed themselves and
their families. A peculiar competition developed among them, but since
women
did not then have sufficient qualifications, skills, and couldn't compete
with men, the main form of organizing women's work was through all kinds of
labor associations. After the publication of Chernyshevsky's novel, What is to Be Done?,
which describes the work of a sewing artel organized as a commune, dozens of
young women tried to form similar communes, many of which failed even before
they really started to function.
Sometimes girls from well-off families were given jobs. Some came to
work in rather distinctive original dress and agreed to do any kind of work,
even the least interesting and low-paid, which of course
did not
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suit them.
Freedom for a segment of women turned out to be freedom from moral ideals
and
from duty to one's relatives, which gave grounds for statements about the
corrupting effects of jobs on women and its destructive influence on the
family. By the end of the l9th century, getting specialized education for women
became an urgent social mission and an important signpost in the process of
emancipation. The women's movement made the struggle for higher education a
basic goal. A congress in l868 stimulated broad discussion of this
question,
and a letter with 400 signatures was addressed to the Minister of Education,
Count Tolstoy. In the autumn of l869 evening courses open to both sexes
started in St. Petersburg with lectures by professors of the university.
Women strove to study in universities. Beginning in the l820's they
had
attended some lectures in Moscow University, but it wasn't until l860 that a
Russian woman studied in St. Petersburg University on equal conditions with
men students. The rector allowed women to attend lectures on law and most
of
the lectures in the natural sciences and historical-philosophical faculties.
The faculty reaction ranged from openly hostile to sympathetic, which was
the
predominant one. The men students were friendly and monitored the behavior
of their colleagues, such that there were no grounds for censure.
S. Svatnikov, who studies the history of women's education, has defined
two stages in its development in Russia: the first stage when society saw
nothing reprehensible in women's higher education, and the second marking a
reaction. A government ruling of May 3l, l86l, denied women access to the
universities, and a university statute of l863 categorically forbade women's
admittance. … Even in
appearance, women striving for independence were different from
society women. They wore round Garibaldi hats, simple straight skirts and
modest jackets; some smoked, others cut their hair short and wore glasses,
all of which was ridiculed by society. … and led to accusations of socialism
and nihilism. Some professors suggested to the women students that they go
study in Switzerland. The first to go, Suslova, received in l868 a diploma
from Zurich as a doctor of surgery and obstetrics. In l868 there were four
Russian women students abroad, and by the l870's there were many more. They
did well. The university in Zurich noted their serious attitude to science
and scholarship, their genuine desire to study and their irreproachable
moral
behavior.After l880 the flow of Russian women to Western Europe greatly
increased, and in Russia itself democratic trends insisting on the right to
higher education prevailed, and in l870 the Defense Minister Miliutin
permitted the creation in the Academy of Medicine and Surgery of a special
four-year course to prepared educated midwives - some 959 women over ten
years. Every possible comment was made about these women, that they cut up
corpses at night and carried around human bones in their pockets. The women
students were held to higher standards than the men.
Then beginning in the l870's the government permitted the start of
courses for women in the major city universities, but in the l880's again
there was a reaction and many of these courses were closed, to be opened
once
more in the first decade of the 20th century when the reaction had died
down.
By then women had gained the right to take government and diploma exams
and get degrees. … After l905 the number of women students was not in the
hundreds but the thousands, and they came even from remote provinces to
study
in Moscow and St. Petersburg. An essential aspect of the women's movement in Russia in the second
half
of the l9th century was the active participation of women in revolutionary
activity. … In the 1870's, 95 women were found guilty and sentenced. In the
1860's women chose between family and their desire to study and work on an
equal basis with men, to serve society and the nation, through teaching and
enlightenment and healing. By contrast, Vera Figner and those
revolutionaries like her had first of all to choose between getting a
diploma
and fostering revolution. It was hard and painful to renounce the eternal
woman's need to do good in society, and instead to take up the dagger, the
gun, and dynamite. These women gained equal rights with men to be exiled
and
executed. …
Maria Kotovskaya
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