Russian women

“ For a year and a half almost the only specimens of womanhood that I had seen were squat and swarthy Bulgarian girls, frowsy Armenians, or Turkish women closely veiled in their yashmaks. It was no wonder that this lovely Russian, with her delicate, refined beauty and her frank and gracious manner, made a profound impression upon me, and set my heart beating quickly with mingled surprise and delight. ”

“ It is especially in the domain of fiction that Russian women excel. After the two renowned names of Tourgueneff and Tolstoi, the greatest genius of which our contemporary literature can boast is Krestowsky, the pseudonym of woman. "The reäctionary party," exclaims the same lady with enthusiasm, "counts in its ranks no woman distinguished for thought or talent." Even this brief glance at woman's position in Russia conclusively proves that when the day of liberty comes to the great Cossack empire, the women will be as thoroughly fitted to enter upon all the duties of citizenship as the men. ”

“ The Women-Haters: Tolstoy and Strindberg I Leo Tolstoy
There are mornings in summer when the sunshine is radiant, and when the earth smells so fresh and sweet that body and soul expand in a feeling of exultant health and strength; and then no matter where we are, or how it comes to pass, the Russian world springs up before our eyes, and the Russian woman, with her hearty laugh and motherly figure, rises before us as the living incarnation of just such a morning. ”

“ The Russian women, it has been truly written, like the gentlewomen of other European countries, who are reared in the lap of luxury, can employ and practise all the accomplishments and seductive arts that most enchant society, and employ them well! They have great vivacity of mind, much grace of manner, and possess the most subtle and exquisite taste in dress; yet the domestic virtues are but little cultivated under the double-headed Eagle, and marriages are too often mere matters of convenience ”

“ The Russian women we have hitherto seen, though they cannot be called pretty, have generally very pleasant faces. Their voices are sweet and low, and the gentleness of their manner is very prepossessing. It is impossible, however, not to feel that so much timidity probably originates in the [153] harsh treatment they experience in their homes, for the men, though humble and cringing when addressing their superiors, are coarse and boorish to their inferiors. ”

“ Russian women of all stations, and some of them of the highest rank, have won the admiration of the whole world, for their disregard of self, the sacrifice of all ease and comfort, and the braving of the worst dangers and the most poignant sufferings in their constant efforts to oppose political slavery. ”

“ The most curious part of the work deals with the minute details of domestic economy—one injunction being, that all men shall live in accordance with their means or their salary—and family relations, in the course of which the position of woman in Russia of the sixteenth century is clearly defined. This portion is also of interest as the forerunner of a whole series of articles in Russian literature on women, wherein the latter are depicted in the most absurd manner, the most gloomy colors—articles known as "About Evil Women"—and founded on an admiration for Byzantine asceticism. ”

“ Connoisseurs of Russian beauty could have foretold with certainty that this fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its harmony by the age of thirty, would “spread”; that the face would become puffy, and that wrinkles would very soon appear upon her forehead and round the eyes; the complexion would grow coarse and red perhaps—in fact, that it was the beauty of the moment, the fleeting beauty which is so often met with in Russian women. ”

“ The news of the women’s battalion had drawn these men like a swarm of bees. They thrust their unshaven faces into the car windows, bawling the parrot phrases taught them by their German spy leaders. “Who fights for the damned capitalists? Who fights for English bloodsuckers? We don’t fight.”
And the women, scorn flashing from their eyes, flung back: “That is the reason why we do. Go home, you cowards, and let women fight for Russia.” ”

“ Yet when the revolution came women sank mysteriously into the background. Russians explain this by various theories. One was that Russian women possess the fervor necessary to martyrs, but little of the balance needed for practical reconstructive work. Personally, I think it is entirely a matter of experience and education, for it is evident that women enter politics everywhere with great hesitancy. Even in America where equal suffrage has been a fact in some states for many years, we have only one or two women to point to as having attained political prominence. ”

“ Here they unrolled their big overcoats for blankets, and here for the next week, all of us, officers, soldiers and war correspondent, ate, slept and lived. Two hundred and fifty women in the midst of an army of men. Behind us a government too engrossed in fighting for its own existence to concern itself about the safety of any group of women. Before us the muttering guns of the German foe. Between us and all that women have ever been taught to fear, a flimsy wooden door. ”

“ The whole INTELLIGENZIA of Russia was filled with the ILLEGAL spirit: revolutionary sentiments penetrated into every home, from mansion to hovel, impregnating the military, the CHINOVNIKS, factory workers, and peasants. The atmosphere pierced the very casemates of the royal palace. New ideas germinated in the youth. The difference of sex was forgotten. Shoulder to shoulder fought the men and the women. The Russian woman! Who shall ever do justice or adequately portray her heroism and self-sacrifice, her loyalty and devotion? ”

“ On Moscow's streets one can still pick out members of the ex-bourgeoisie, especially the women, by means of their faultless raiment, made up of left-overs from old-time stacks of clothes. The Russian women's hats are wonderful works of art. ”

“ There are women in Russian hamlets
With a dignified calmness of face;
With a beautiful strength in their movements,
With mien and glance of an empress in grace.
A blind man alone could ignore them;
And he who can see them must say:
"She passes—'tis as though the sun shineth!
She looks—'tis giving rubles away!"
A noble-minded, splendid peasant woman, who has worthily fulfilled all the duties of her hard lot, at last becomes a widow. The manner of it; the quaint folk-remedies employed to heal the sick man; the making of the shroud by the bereaved wife ”

“ When denied in their own land, Russian women have flocked to the Swiss and French universities, and have even gone in considerable numbers to Finland and to Italy. Now Russia is slowly responding to its women’s entreaties. ”

“ We shall now take up the Slavonic countries, beginning with Russia, which stands first, not only because of its vastness, but also because of its liberality toward women. The position of the Russian women before the law is very peculiar. Children, whatever their age and whether male or female, are never emancipated from the control of their parents. ”

“ Americans, having in mind their own pampered, weak women, are inclined to smile when they hear talk of women soldiers. But those who have followed the course of events in this country, and who are acquainted with the wonderfully strong Russian women, look upon the matter quite differently. A constant marvel of visiting Americans was the magnificent physique and vigor of the Russian women and girls.
After the parade came what are termed massed military exercises. ”

“ Along with a series of masculine types, Turgéneff's works present a whole gallery of Russian women of the '50's and '60's, portrayed in a matchless manner with the touch of absolute genius. And it is a fact worth noting that in his works, as in those of all the "authors of the '40's," the women stand immeasurably higher than the men. The heroines are frequently set forth in all their moral grandeur, as though with the express intention of overshadowing the insignificance of the heroes who are placed beside them. ”

“ The married woman is in the full power of her husband, though she is the mistress of her own fortune. Divorce exists. Russian women vote on an equality with men for members of the municipal councils and county assemblies, and these two bodies choose the boards which transact the public business, such as superintending the collection of taxes, keeping the roads in order, directing the schools, etc. The Russian woman does, not however, appear at the polls, but is represented by some male relative or friend (as we have already seen in Austria) who casts the vote for her. ”

“ If fighting and dying were the price of Russia’s freedom, they wanted to fight and fight again. If they could rally unwilling men to fight, they wanted nothing in the world except more chances to do it. Wounds were nothing, death was nothing in the scale of Russia’s honor or dishonor. Then too, and this is a strange commentary on women’s “protected” position in life, the women soldiers said that fighting was not the most difficult or the most disagreeable work they had ever done. They said it was less arduous if a little more dangerous than working in a harvest field or a factory. ”

“ Well, you must think we Russian women are poor stuff! One day, ready to sneak off in disgraceful cowardice: and the next, willing to marry an utterly despicable wretch because he has money and influence and position. ”

“ We are now speaking only of the women of Little Russia; but those of Great Russia retain the national costume called serafine, which is very picturesque, and is still worn at court on special occasions.
The women of Little Russia, accustomed to field labour from their childhood, and usually marrying at the age of fifteen or sixteen, are old before they have reached their thirtieth year; indeed, one can hardly say when they cease to be young, since they never exhibit the bloom of youth. Whether a Russian woman's age be fifteen, twenty, or thirty, it is all one in the end. ”

“ Women, in the long years which history has recorded, have done everything for men that they were called upon to do. It remained for Russian men, in the twentieth century, to call upon women to fight and die for them. ”

“ Among the higher ranks, whose blood is mingled with that of Georgians, Circassians, and Poles, there are some women of extraordinary beauty; but the Russian females are in general short, clumsy, round-faced and sallow. ”

“ They are, in fact, the most womanly of women, as little to be depended upon in their amiability as in their anger; they are quick to fall in love, and men are as quickly enthralled by them. But Sonia Kovalevsky was not one of these.
The women of the second type present the greatest contrast that it is possible to imagine. They are honest and straightforward, and essentially what is called “a good fellow,” plain, sensible, brave, energetic, as strong in soul as in body,—thinking heads, flat figures; they have none of that grace of form which is peculiar to a large number of Russian women. ”

“ But most wore the common Russian blouse of dark brown canvas, buttoned up close to the neck, and gathered round the waist by a leather belt.
Many women were there, too, but as a rule they were not working women from the mills. Some may have been artisans or the wives of artisans, but most were evidently journalists, doctors, or students, from the intellectual middle classes, which in Russia produces the woman revolutionist—the woman who has played so fine a part in the long struggle of the past, and was now elated above human happiness by the hope of victory. ”

“ One afternoon he called into his office five young Russian women, all typical revolutionists, and said to them: “For centuries women have been oppressed, they have been the victims of prejudice, superstition and the selfish desires of men. In writing the marriage laws I don’t mind if women have even a slight advantage over men. ”

“ The movement, she told them, must be a Russian women’s movement only. No foreigners should appear in it at all. They must do the work, but she was there to give them the full benefit of her experience as an organizer. ”

“ This point of view I have heard expressed by other Russian women soldiers, those who have fought in men’s regiments. There are many such women; I have met and talked with some of them. One girl I saw in a hospital, a bullet in her side and a broken hand in a plaster cast, assured me that fighting was the most congenial work she had ever done. This girl had gone to Petrograd from Riga to join Botchkareva’s battalion, but for some reason she had not been accepted. ”

“ Russian women and girls played a prominent part in the terrorist revolution. The wives of the decabrists were renowned for the devotion and tenacity with which they clung to their husbands' ideals. Nihilism and the revolutionary movement secured from women and girls a notable contingent of persons of fearless temperament and indomitable will. We may recall the high estimate placed by Bakunin and Nečaev upon feminine cooperation in the revolution; and the Russian government, from the adverse outlook, took a similar view. ”

“ Those who know something about Russian women, without having any very detailed knowledge, divide them into two types, and a superficial observer would class Sonia Kovalevsky as belonging to one or the other of these. The first type consists of luxurious, languishing, idle, fascinating women, with passionate black eyes, or playful gray ones, a soft skin, and a delicate mouth, which is admirably adapted for laughing and eating. These women have a most seductive charm ”