Mother Russia Home to Life Without Men

As a student back in Britain, I was once made homeless by a group of radical feminists with whom I was sharing a house. After I suggested it might be fun to invite men over occasionally, they put me and my possessions out on the street, declaring me "ideologically unsound."

Here in Mother Russia, where feminism has never taken hold, I quite often come across all-women households. But it is circumstance rather than ideology that causes Russian women to live without men.

In the suburbs of Medvedkovo, a desert of mud and grim apartment blocks at the end of the orange metro line, I sometimes visit a home where three generations of women are living together. Valentina Nikolayevna is stilt sprightly at the age of 82. In all probability, she will live to see her daughter Vera celebrate her retirement next year at the age of 65. The baby of the family is Vera's daughter Nadya, 33.

Valentina Nikolayevna is typical of her generation, a woman who was robbed of her man by war. "My husband went to the front in 1942 and did not return," she said. "Vera was born after he left. She never saw her father." After the war, there was a shortage of men, even if widows had an inclination to remarry, which in many cases they did not.

Vera lost her husband in a battle of a very different kind - the battle against alcohol. She suffered his bouts of heavy drinking for many years until their girl was grown up, when she finally felt she could divorce him.

Nadya's own marriage was no more successful. Her husband turned out to be not only a drinker but a womanizer. "The difference between me and Mum was that I did not put up with him for so long," she said. "I divorced him as soon as his pattern of behavior became clear." To this extent, Nadya was more of a feminist than many of her Russian sisters, who masochistically tolerate the worst of men.

Nadya believed she and her mother and grandmother could make a peaceful life together, and indeed they have done so. Their apartment is cramped but very cozy. As well as a tiny kitchen, neatly arranged, and a minuscule bathroom, smelling of rose soap, they have a living room with all their crystal on display. It doubles up as a bed­room for the two older women while Nadya has a room of her own, narrow as a nun's cell but warmer with its golden curtains and matching cushions.

The division of labor is rational. Valentina Nikolayevna, whose family owned a large country house and garden before the communists confiscated it, still gardens at the dacha in the summer and grows fruit for jam. Vera, who has a low-paid job in a shop, does most of the cooking, making among other things delicious pies. Nadya brings home the bacon. A classical musician by training, she has sacrificed her dreams of working in her field because she can earn more money giving English lessons to bankers.

In a difficult world, the women have organized life for themselves as best they can. Their home smells of sadness. Nadya, especially, is a sad figure; at 33 an "old maid" by Russia's conservative standards, with little to look forward to except caring for elderly relatives and a lonely old age.

Friends in her position have married foreigners simply to escape but Nadya says she will not do this. "If I marry again, it will only be for love," but if love comes along she will not let feminist ideology stand in her way.

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Дата добавления: 2014-12-24