Common Strength: Eight Russian Women

Whenever Russian men realize that March 8th is approaching, Women’s Day Fever hits. Some men go on a shopping spree, others clean the house, others cook something unusual (if they can) for their spouses. 

Of course, honoring Russia’s women just once a year is not enough. But no matter what anyone says about March 8’s “Potemkin Village” character, Russians generally love this romantic holiday. Russia may be a strongly patriarchal society, but that does not mean that all Russian men oppress their loved ones. Of course, as some of the stories below show, there is plenty of room for improvement in relations between the sexes. This is a painstaking process, in some respects more arduous and tortuous than the transition to a market economy. But progress is being made. Faster than some would like and slower than others propose, but there is progress nonetheless.

At first glance, the “heroines” in our stories seem different in every way—their professions, ages, appearances, characters, lifestyles, manners. Yet, they are united by a common trait: each of these eight representatives of what we Russians often call the “weak sex” are, in fact, very strong characters. They have all worked very hard for everything they have achieved. All have persevered through many ups and downs. Taken separately and in aggregate, they represent many of the facets of Russian life as we live it today. 

We undertook this ambitious journalistic assignment with some trepidation. But now that it is done, each of us feels more enlightened, enobled and encouraged. We hope you come away from our stories feeling the same.

Mikhail Ivanov

Valentina Kolesnikova

Valeriya Mironova

 

Svetlana

“Can you imagine,” wrote British ballet critic Bruce Marriott last summer, “any English company doing a new production of a classic and giving a 16- or 17-year-old the lead? Amazing.”

Marriott was talking about 18-year-old Svetlana Lunkina, a bright young star of the Bolshoy Ballet. Last year, at 17 and fresh out of dancing school, Lunkina was given the lead in a brand new production of Giselle. To rave reviews, first in Russia, then on tour in the UK, Lunkina’s stunning performance and that of the Bolshoy in general, heralded a resurrection of the Bolshoy’s international prestige under the directorship of Vladimir Vasiliev.

“Everyone kept asking me,” Svetlana recalled, “‘Do you realize, Sveta, that you danced Giselle right after joining the Bolshoy troupe?!’ I responded, ‘No, sorry, but I still can’t fathom it.’”

Modesty is one of Lunkina’s greater virtues. She is swift to downplay her blossoming talent, and to ascribe her successes in Giselle to her teacher at the Bolshoy, the legendary Yekaterina Maximova. “She taught me a lot. She was very particular about details. She told me to be sincere, that every move should come from my soul. Like, for example, when I am guessing on the daisy. [‘He loves me, he loves me not...’ – Ed.] She drew my attention to these moments from the rural life of my heroine. She told me it should be natural, truthful, with no artificial gestures or anything.  She said you can’t overdo it, you must do it the way you feel it. And I am very grateful to Yekaterina Sergeevna—she helped me to identify myself.”

Svetlana is the middle child in a family of three daughters. Her mother, a former circus performer, “dedicated her life to us, her children,” Svetlana said. Her father was a printer at Nauka publishing house. Making ends meet was a challenge on just her father’s salary, particularly with two girls in ballet school (Svetlana’s sister Yulia, just over two years her younger, is currently enrolled at Svetlana’s alma mater, the Moscow Choreography School—MAKhU). “Whatever he earned,” Svetlana recalled, “was basically spent on us, on our suits, on the ballet shoes ... it was tough for the family.”

Svetlana has liked dancing since early in her childhood: “I loved dancing a lot, but more the folk dances, not ballet or classical dance.” She recalled in a recent interview that, when ballet would come on the TV, the family would turn the set off, since, in Soviet times, this was a not so subtle indication that bad news was in the offing (e.g. the death of a leader).

While in grade school, Svetlana frequented the Loktev Folk Dancing group in Moscow. A teacher there recognized her talent and recommended that her parents enroll her at the prestigious MAKhU. “At the beginning,” Svetlana recalled, “when they made us walk on our toes—all this classic stuff—I gave my mom a hard time, saying I was going to quit ballet. But mom knew that kids are always having such fits. So she said, ‘OK, go and withdraw your papers from the school. Quit if you like!’ Of course, she knew I could not withdraw the documents by myself—I was too young. So once she said this to me, I realized I couldn’t do it myself, so I stopped having fits. There have been no scandals since.”

Indeed. Svetlana was handpicked for the Bolshoy by its new director, Vladimir Vasiliev, in August 1997. By September she was rehearsing for the lead in Giselle, which premiered in December 1997. Actually, Vasiliev’s new production of Giselle was premiered with the Bolshoy’s prima ballerina, Nina Ananyashvili, in the lead. But Lunkina took up the part from the second performance on. Hardly the old Soviet way, which involved years of apprenticeship—a change whose significance is hardly lost on Svetlana, even if she can only hear of such hardships second-hand: “I was told that young dancers were supposed to work in the corps de ballet for a long time, sometimes for three years. Then they would graduate to small roles, then to some variations, etc. etc. That was the required road. And it was impossible to come to the theater and dance a solo role right away, especially on the scale of Giselle.”

So it is natural that Svetlana’s success should engender some jealousy from other, more seasoned Bolshoy performers. “There is nothing surprising about it,” Svetlana said. “It’s quite normal. If I were in their shoes, I mean an accomplished ballerina, a leading soloist at the Bolshoy, and some young girl came in and took this role from me and all, I think that deep down I would feel something ... it is just creative competition.” And then there was the other side of it. “It was a very risky thing,” Svetlana said, “for Vasiliev and Maximova to give that role to a girl who just graduated ... of course they pinned much hope on me. I know that both ... had jitters. But, thank God, everything went OK.”

For Lunkina, that is. In England, the Bolshoy’s Giselle was greatly anticipated, but reviewers found much of the ballet’s acting a wooden reflection of  Soviet era mime. With the exception of Lunkina. Ballet Magazine called her “glorious ... she played it very sweet and girlish, there was nothing knowing in her interpretation. And no overacting either. Technically she was a glory too—I don’t think I have seen anybody, including [the Royal Ballet’s Sylvie] Guillem, promenade on one pointe better. And such expressive arms.” Ismene Brown, for the London Telegraph, called the “nervous but remarkable” Lunkina “amazingly delicate in her movement and powerfully fragile in her interpretation of Giselle ... Lunkina is a gripping new star, which the Bolshoy badly needs.” The London Times called Lunkina’s performance “impressive. Her technique is secure and her style soft and pure; and she seems to have escaped the dreadful histrionics of her elders.” 

The reviews do not seem to have gone to Svetlana’s head. She very much feels the strong legacy of Russian ballet “supporting her” when she dances: “I am trying my best to keep up the traditions of Russian ballet, which I still think is the world’s best, no matter what!” She feels she is a participant in a resurrection of the Bolshoy’s prominence, one she said “parallels changes in the country and in the society.”

When in London, Svetlana also premiered in the role of Kitry in Don Quixote, again, to rave reviews. The debut happened to correspond with Svetlana’s birthday and she seems to remember the event most because “the audience ... found out about my birthday and brought me flowers and congratulated me and were all shouting, ‘Happy Birthday’! ... I was so agreeably surprised.”

Svetlana said she hopes someday soon to play Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, but not until she has fallen in love. “Of  course, I could dance Juliet as is,” she said, “but it wouldn’t have anything special about it, no special drama. If I were to dance Juliet now versus later, when I will have these changes inside me, I think the difference will be huge.”

For all that, Svetlana does not dream of being Russia’s next Plisetskaya, the beloved prima ballerina who danced past the age of 60. “I dream of having a family,” she said. “I always dreamed of having two children. I don’t know if it is possible, but I would like to have a big family—maybe because I grew up in a big family myself ... I can’t say that I dream specifically to conquer the world or become a prima ballerina at the Bolshoy. I totally rely on my destiny. I want to accomplish what I am supposed to.”

And she sees her destiny to be playing out in Russia. “I could go abroad and dance,” she said, “but my creative growth will happen here. It is not by accident that I danced Giselle at the age of 17. This is my fate to be here.”

When she is not dancing, Lunkina said she enjoys simple pleasures. She likes to vacation with her family in a village in southern Russia. “That’s the only place where I can truly relax after a hard year,” she said. “I am used to going there ... I have been going there since I was seven months old ... I love the internal freedom of the locals. People are more relaxed, compared to Muscovites. I like local Cossacks, their traditions. They are an emotional people, and so am I.” 

She also loves fine, homemade Russian food—especially that prepared by her babushka. Much to the surprise of ballet critics, Sveta does not follow a rigorous diet and enjoys all of her babushka’s delicacies, burning whatever calories she takes in. She said her favorites are dishes with fish, including Russian-style herring with beetroot and mayonnaise, which Russians affectionately call “herring in fur.” “That’s one of my favorites,” the frail ballet star confessed.  RL

 

Tatyana

At first sight, 21-year-old Tatyana (“Tanya”) Yanichkina looks the typical Russian devushka (young girl) working in a typical Russian bulochnaya (bakery). But appearances can be deceiving. This warm, well-decorated store on Moscow’s Myasnitskaya street is not your typical bakery—the bread is always hot and the selection and service are good. And Tanya is not your typical shopgirl. 

For one thing, Tanya almost always smiles. For another, she works hard, very hard. The youngest in a family of five children, Tanya had to go to work when she was 16, right after graduating from secondary school. She became an apprentice at this bakery. Today she works two jobs, alternating weeks of 12-hour days at the bakery and at a local clothing store.

“My parents couldn’t afford to give me higher education,” she said. “The only child in the family whom they could support was my brother Sergei—he graduated from MAI, the Moscow State Aeronautics Institute.” In fact, by the time Tanya graduated from secondary school, her parents had retired, having received the social benefit of early retirement as parents in a mnogodetnaya semya (multiple-child family).

And yet, Tanya said she knows she could do something more than serve fresh rolls. “I was good at mathematics, physics and chemistry, but school teachers called me ‘a lazybones with a good brain.’ I was quick at getting whatever they taught us in class, but I wasn’t zealous about homework. I’d rather have fun—go for a walk with friends or something. ... Now I can’t even spare time to study by correspondence. [Even with this], you need to take at least a month off each in winter and in summer. I just need to earn my living for now and can’t combine the two. Pasha can’t help me either, though he is encouraging me to pursue my studies.”

Pasha and Tanya are not married. For six months they have been “living in civil marriage,” as Tanya put it. This is a very popular arrangement in Russia today, although at first Tanya’s parents were skeptical. “They said, ‘Just first go and register your marriage, then live together,’” Tanya recalled.

Tanya and Pasha share a two-room apartment with Pasha’s parents. Relations with her “almost mother-in-law,” she said, are “rather tense.” To add to the conflicts one would expect in such a mix, Tanya has the largest salary in the household. Pasha works at a state-owned construction company as a driver, so Tanya ends up bringing home about twice his salary. And, what with two jobs, Tanya cannot contribute much to housework. “I finish my work at the bakery only at 8 pm and get home at 9 pm at best. So I have to give Pasha’s mother R2000 ($70) so that she can buy food and cook for us. Even so, she says ‘It’s not enough.’ ... My svekrov (mother-in-law) is 45 and she works too. So she expects me to clean the apartment, to do the laundry, the ironing for my husband and myself, to clean the corridor, the bathroom and the kitchen. ... She is used to giving orders at her work. She is a bookkeeper at a military organization, and she is always giving orders to her son and to her husband ...”

But then it is not all so bad for Tanya. Even a meddling mother-in-law does not blunt what they call here zhenskoye shchastye (women’s happiness). Tanya takes pride in the fact that Pasha is very helpful around the house and very handy. “We have an old kopeyka (perjorative term for the obsolete Lada-1) but he made it look like a real inomarka (foreign-made car) inside,” she said. Of course, there is the added plus that, since moving in with Pasha, Tanya no longer has to make a daily 75 km commute to and from her parents’ home in Tuchkovo. The long hours at the bakery, combined with that long commute used to mean she could sleep only five hours a night.

Ironically, housing conditions are much better in Tuchkovo—her parents received a four-room apartment from the state, but only her brother Sergei lives with them there. All of Tanya’s three sisters (Olga, Svetlana and Yelena) have moved to Moscow. “There was no way to find a well-paying job in Tuchkovo,” Tanya explained. “They would offer you peanuts: R300-400 ($15/month). It’s ridiculous, you can’t live on that.” 

Long hours leave little time for recreation. “When we were younger, I went to a disco. But my favorite pastime was to go to our dacha with my dad. We had a pond there, it’s nice. I just enjoyed my time there with my family. We ran with our dog in the field. But now, whenever I have a spare moment, I have to spend it on duties about the house—so that my mother-in-law cannot complain ...” 

Tanya doesn’t have weekends. For her, a short working day is like a day off. “But sometimes our girls will give me a day off occasionally—they know I am juggling two jobs, she said.” 

As for the future, Tanya is an avowed partisan of large families. “I certainly plan to have more than one child,” she said. “Otherwise you will bring up an egotist ... ” 

She is less sold on an early marriage, however, while Pasha wants to register very soon. “He is already making plans for it,” she noted. “Pasha wants to upgrade his Lada-1 to sell it and buy a more prestigious devyatka (Lada-9). ‘If I am a family man, I need to have a Lada-9,’ my Pasha says. In fact, it’s me who is holding back consent. We both have lots of plans, but to make this happen we need money. I am not doing it [getting married] unless we can afford it financially.”

Through it all, Tanya loves her job. “I like to communicate with different people. You get to know good guys—for example, we have loyal, regular customers who keep coming back, if only to say, ‘Thank you so much for your tasty bread.’ It’s so nice to hear.” But rush hours can be nerve-wracking and at any time there can be some very obnoxious customers. “I remember there was one of these ‘New Rich,’ gesturing with his hands in front of me while he talked. I told him to please not slap me in the face. So he started calling me every name in the book, and looked like he was ready to take out his gun or something. I just kept silent and continued talking to the next client.” And then there are some older clients, used to being mistreated by old-style Soviet shop girls, who involuntarily toss out insults: “Oh, all of you, torgashi (pejorative for “merchants”), you are cheating us.” 

“But it would never even occur to me to cheat with money,” Tanya said. “I would lose my job immediately!” In fact, her job was once threatened by a petty client. “It was on a weekend—a banker from an office next-door complained about me,” she said. “I had no small change because our bookkeeper had withheld change from the registers. So I asked the banker to wait a bit while I collected enough change from other clients. But he said he had no time. He was right, of course, but I couldn’t do anything about it! It was a Sunday; all the stores in the neighborhood were closed. So, the following Monday, the banker told our director about me. The director summoned me and told me that the next time I would be fired. I tried to explain it to him, but he told me to just shut up. I just had to listen. This boss is no longer working at the company. But it hurt me and I still recall it.” 

Dealing with people day in and day out, Tanya developed a passion for psychology. “I have a lot of books on conflict and their sources. I want to learn how to keep cool, relaxed, and smiling inside, no matter what. I want to learn it both in theory and practice.” 

Meanwhile, Tanya is banking on the fact that her hard work and perseverance will bear fruit. But she is not chasing unrealistic dreams. “I want to reach the average level,” she said. “I want to be just solid middle class, have enough money for the two of us and for our future kids, have an apartment and a car. I don’t need a dacha, since my parents have one and can always spare a corner for me.” 

Politics? No time to “even think about it.” Of course, she knows there is a war going on in Chechnya, which she regards “with horror.” “That’s why I am interested in psychology,” Tanya said. “I just can’t fathom this conflict. I grew up in a family with many children and we never had any conflict. My boyfriend Pasha may not talk to his father for weeks. Is that normal? How can people not even try talking about their problems?! It would never happen in my family—we always were like one.”

Vacation? Luckily, in August, when Moscow is empty, Tanya can take a few weeks off. This year it will be shorter because of her second job. Needless to say, the hundreds of travel agencies which advertise their services in Moscow don’t target Tanya and her Pasha as their clients. Still, deep down, Tanya dreams of traveling to foreign countries someday. “I would like to show my kids other places, other people. They have a different psychology abroad ...” 

Speaking to these differences, Tanya said she likes her shop’s Russian clientele because “they are open and frank. Foreign customers who pop in always smile, but their eyes are empty,” she said. “I see lots of them, especially on weekends. We have visitors from all over the world—from Japan, Germany, France, anywhere. They usually explain themselves with gestures. They point to the type of bread they want to buy and never rush you. 

“I must say, their level of culture is higher. They are more cultivated than Russians. They would never throw their hands about in front of your face or bend over the counter like some of our guys do. But sometimes you feel like the smile is artificial; it’s hard to see the soul behind. With our people you can see everything in the eyes.” 

But aren’t artificial, yet polite, smiles better than overt boorishness? 

“I’d rather have it the Russian way,” Tanya confessed, after thinking hard on the question. “When they are boorish, at least everything is clear. You know what’s on their minds ... And then when they smile, you know they really mean it.” RL

 

Katya

The late 1980s and early 1990s were a heady time for Russian television. The new political pluralism brought new TV channels, new, Western-style programming, non-propagandistic news and much more. 

But with the good also came the bad. Stodgy Soviet news announcers were  replaced by younger, less-experienced broadcasters who revel in off-the-cuff commentary and jokes. While some of the members of this “new breed” of broadcasters are bold and daring, many engage in political invective, use poor Russian, and are less than fastidious about their on-screen appearance. 

And yet, there have been notable exceptions to this trend. Like Yekaterina “Katya” Andreeva, current anchor for the popular evening news program, Vremya, which airs on ORT Channel 1. Katya did not follow a well-worn path to this influential chair. “In 1991,” she recalled, “my mother found out that the Institute for TV and Radio Workers’ Continuing Studies was recruiting students. I was at a crossroads—in a total mess morally ... It was fate, something which has always played a huge role in my life.”

Katya’s teacher was Igor Kirilov, famous for anchoring the Vremya news program in the Soviet era. Kirilov helped his students get placed as interns at Moscow’s Ostankino TV Center. Katya started by interning in the speaker’s section and by 1992 had worked herself into a full-time job. Her first on-air position was with the popular morning news program, Dobroye Utro (Good Morning), then reading economic news on ORT.

Katya was a natural from the very beginning. She exudes confidence and poise in front of the camera and dresses attractively in conservative black or grey Armani suits ... 

Rewind to 1983 ... Katya was working her way through night law school, serving as a senior assistant to a deputy in the prosecutor’s office. She was doing quite well and looked forward to a legal career. Then a painful case opened her eyes and sent her running from the law.

The case involved a little girl’s cruel murder on a train, by a repeat offender. The killer was apprehended and was being questioned by the police when the father of the little girl came storming into the building, grabbed a paperweight and struck the killer dead. 

“The father was sentenced to eight years in prison,” Katya recalled. “It was impossible to find extenuating circumstances. According to Russian forensics, the state of affect [rage or shock] lasts only thirty minutes, but several hours had passed since the little girl was murdered.” 

Katya realized that the girl’s father was guilty under the law, but that her heart was on his side. “There were other situations as well,” Katya explained. “At some point, I began hearing this Russian proverb playing over and over in my head: Zakon shto dyshlo—kuda povernyosh, tuda i vyshlo. (The law is like an axle—you can twist it anyway you please, all you have to do is grease it.) Even the most terrible criminal can avoid punishment if he knows the law well. I couldn’t live with that.”

Katya moved from law to history, but found similarly unacceptable compromises. She chose to write her dissertation on Nuremberg, making comparisons between Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. It was 1984. “My dissertation adviser, as it seemed to me from certain of his speech patterns, was connected with the NKVD. So, whatever I wrote did not please him...” She recalled how her adviser crossed out in her work any mention of Stalin’s military aid to Hitler before WWII. In the end, she said, “I couldn’t keep trying to break through the wall with my forehead, the wall of these people who grew up in this system.” 

Katya attributes her obstinance, independent spirit and striving for justice to lessons taught her by her father, whom she called “a very complex and unusual personality.” 

“If I have developed a rather independent character, especially for the Soviet system,” she said, it was thanks to a father, who “endured her like steel.” Although he held a high post in the Soviet hierarchy—Deputy Chairman of the Soviet GOSSNAB (State Committee for Supplies)—he remained, Katya said, a “very free man ... Unlike so many of his colleagues, he somehow managed to stay away from shady affairs. We always had a modest apartment; we never had the perks which people of his level had. He was a very righteous man. And this was the atmosphere in which I grew up. Money-grabbing, graft, bribery, or such notions as Golden Children were not known in our family.”

 

Fast forward to 2000 ... Much has changed on ORT Channel 1 since the mid-1980s. The intro music may be the same on Vremya, but little else is. No longer 100% state-owned, ORT has private shareholders, including financial mogul and Kremlin insider Boris Berezovsky. Many criticize the channel for not being objective (in some media, ORT is labeled as Berezovsky’s mouthpiece). Some politicians, including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, have even sued ORT commentators for libel.

“I don’t know [Berezovsky] personally,” Katya commented, “...but quite naturally, as a shareholder, he has the right to, say, express his opinion or the opinion of several shareholders. I think it is quite a normal situation for any channel, including a Western TV channel. He who pays people’s salaries calls the tune. ... So phrases like ‘Mouthpiece of Berezovsky’ seem very simplistic. ... In fact, it is much more complicated. We have so many people working here. My impression is that Boris Abramovich does not expect to be given lots of exposure [on ORT]. But it happens that some people are dying to be ‘helpful,’ [providing just such exposure] on their own initiative ... It is like this Russian proverb: ‘A helpful fool is a dangerous enemy.’”

Clearly not one to mince words, Andreeva also sees herself as something of a defender of the Russian language. During a recent news program, she openly cringed when an ORT journalist used the word “kozly” (literally, “goats,” a very crude insult). “How could I not react?!” Katya said. “I was not ready to hear such a word. My face remained on the screen, but it showed what I thought about it ...We are the official—the first—channel, which covers a huge audience, and we must, accordingly, raise our viewers up to our level, including our level of speech ...”

Nor is Katya happy with the constant reshuffling of ORT’s prime time news anchors. “Unfortunately, on ORT there are no criteria for anchor, either good or bad,” she said. “In this respect, NTV [a competing channel] is much more concerned about their brand—they have been around for five years and still have the same TV news anchors. This creates audience confidence.” Reshuffles at ORT, she said, “testify to a crisis which reflects the constant changes in the Russian political hierarchy.”

Such frankness seems out of place at ORT, often accused by Russian media of spreading falsehoods and toeing the government line. “As an anchor, I never tell lies because I always write my texts myself,” Katya asserted. “... I must be about the only person on ORT channel who has not been sued in court [for libel]. That is an appraisal of my work ... I also have a striking intuition and a sense of what truthful news is. ... I have never felt strong pressure [to change reportage]; it is hard to put pressure on me.”

No need to tell that to Andreeva’s second husband, Dushan. A Yugoslav businessman doing project finance in Russia, Dushan fell in love with Katya at first sight, after seeing her on TV. But he had to court her for three years before she agreed to marry him. 

“We have no distribution of housework whatsoever,” Katya explained. “Whoever is at home and sees that something needs doing, does it, including my child [a 17-year-old daughter from her first marriage]. ... We don’t divide duties [into feminine and masculine]. No one cooks for anyone ... He believes that only a man is good at ironing a shirt and pants. ... He never trusts anyone else to do it, because he is the one who wears these things. ... Everyone takes care of himself in our family.” 

Katya recognizes that hers is not a typical Russian marriage. “But it has always been typical for me,” she said. “... Of course, having said this, I can’t call myself a feminist, who might say women don’t need men. But, then, I am not going to wash socks for any man. Why would I? Can’t he do it himself?! If not, then one must admit he is a fool.” 

Truth be told, Andreeva and her family are well enough off to afford a housekeeper. And much of their cooking is done by Katya’s mother. They eat very simple, healthy, low-fat food. Katya eats almost no meat and prescribes the same dietary habits for her husband. But to his benefit, Katya averred. “Dushan used to be fat! Thanks to me he became slim, skinny and handsome,” she said in an interview with Zhenskiye Sekrety (Women’s Secrets). 

Katya sees herself taking care of her man not by cooking and cleaning up after him, but by “creating a good mood for him.” To her, that means she “can support him if things are difficult for him. In every way.” In addition, she is very protective of her and her family’s privacy. “I have a narrow circle of friends,” she said,  “and I try not to go beyond this circle ...

“I take the word efir [Russian for “air, the ether, broadcasting”] literally,” she added. “It is something ethereal or ephemeral which will go away if you blow it. If someone starts thinking that he is worth more just because he is shown on TV everyday, then he is a fool.” Katya knows not to confuse notoriety with intelligence, experience or self-worth. And, conversely, just because she is in everyone’s living room every night, she does not feel that she must let people “rub shoulders with her in stores.” She knows, she said, “how to keep people at a distance ... people call or write to complain or express admiration, but this is at a distance.”

Despite this physical distance, Katya said she feels very much in touch with her audience emotionally. “I am lucky,” she said. “My husband is a foreigner and he is a well-off man ... That’s why I have always felt independent. I have always regarded money as a means rather than an ends—a means to obtaining pleasure, such as traveling on vacation or a car or buying tasty food or the possibility of buying nice gifts for close relatives ... But, emotionally, I have a lot of compassion for my audience. I can’t be indifferent even though many of my friends say, ‘What are you complaining of? You have a job and a husband such that, even if you didn’t have a job, not much would change for you financially. So why do you have such dark moments in your life?!’ Simply because I can’t feel satisfied when everything is—excuse me—screwed up in our country ...” 

Katya said she often will cry about sad news stories and has had to choke back her emotions many times while she was on the air. “I can’t be happy in a country where such things happen,” she said. “And I can’t fathom our rulers ... I wouldn’t want to be president in a country where doctors and teachers don’t get their salaries. Because, okay, the young ones can do business: they could ultimately live off washing cars; they can do something. But what else is a doctor supposed to do to earn his money? So he must do heart surgery on someone and then run to the market and sell some stuff with his precious hands?! This is terrible! This is odious! And I believe that, until our ‘powers that be’ realize it is odious, we will have this rubbish in the country. Because I can’t believe that a country like Russia, with such historical, spiritual and human potential, can go on living like this.”

Ever the idealist, Katya said she believes that someday everything will be fine in Russia. When she prays at home in front of the icon of her favorite Russian saint, St. Serafim Sarovsky, all her prayers are for Russia. 

Interestingly, Katya has another portrait hanging in her home, one of Josef Stalin. “I am no Stalinist,” Katya explained. “I am just trying to understand what kind of a man he was. Because people who want to keep developing as a person always keep looking. You may well read a history book and consider it to be the Truth. I am not saying that is wrong. So why should someone else feel it is wrong for me to want to know the Truth about such or such man?! ... What they have written about him [Stalin] of late is more or less getting closer to the truth. But, in the past, he was a personality tragically defiled ... everything that was written about him—including the way they described his death—virtually all of this needs to be seriously checked ...” 

Katya’s liberal views on Stalin are not atypical. Increasingly, in public opinion polls,  Russians are expressing disillusionment with botched reforms, “venal” rulers and “pillager-privatizers.” Some are even nostalgic for the Stalin era. In a recent interview in Trud newspaper after the resignation of President Boris Yeltsin, Yuri Levada, director of the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Studies, noted that “the Russian people have been waiting a long time for a strong hand.” An opinion poll taken by his agency on the occasion of Stalin’s 120th birthday (December 21, 1999) showed that 44% of Russians think the Stalin era brought Russia “good and bad in equal shares.” 19% said they thought Stalin did more good than bad.

In contrast, Andreeva cannot say enough bad about Russia’s modern politicians. She said she voted against all candidates in the December Duma elections and does not have a positive impression of any top Russian official. “There is not one who doesn’t evoke disgust ... All of them...” Even Acting President Vladimir Putin. Why? “Because of everything,” she said, “everything which is happening in the country.” 

Katya said she has but one wish for March 8 (a holiday she said she dislikes because it is a cover-up for Russian women’s hard lives). It is “that Russian women bring up their sons properly. Because, when these sons grow up, they become men and they become our rulers, our workers, our members of government. And that is how we get what we get ... That’s why we see our men sinking in alcoholism, why we see irresponsible fathers who can’t provide for their families ... In the first place, it is the mother’s task to make the right adjustments in the upbringing of their sons, so that this son doesn’t think he is a White Prince that the world revolves around.”  RL

 

Yelena

The railway is in Yelena (“Lena”) Tokareva’s blood. Her mother worked as a Train Chief and her father worked as a railway machinist. So, naturally, Lena attended the Wagon Building Technical Lyceum, in her home city of Tver. Graduating in 1993 with special honors, she took a supplementary course for passenger train attendants, then began working as a provodnik (or rather provodnitsa) on Firmenny Train #1516, Arktika, which plies the Moscow-Murmansk route. 

Lena was immediately a stand-out on the job—after just one year of work she was recommended to attend courses in Moscow on becoming a Train Chief. Six months later, the courses complete, she was promoted to this highly-sought-after and important position. But there was a problem.

“The job of Train Chief was very difficult for me,” Lena, now 25, said. “I have too soft a character. I didn’t feel I could manage so many people. Plus, they didn’t regard me seriously as their boss—I was very young, just 21-years-old. You shoulder too much responsibility [as Train Chief], and everyone has a different character. I am a very sensitive person—if someone yells at me, I am on the brink of tears. So I felt it wasn’t a job for me. I had to manage 30 provodniks, plus the whole train. It was a unique case; I was the youngest Train Chief at my train shop.”

It didn’t help that her first trip was a trial by fire. “During my very first trip,” Lena recalled, “I faced huge problems: I had to deal with a chip on a pair of wheels on the way out, and, on the way back, I had a dead passenger. It was too much stress. ... [The chip] turned out to be within acceptable norms, but I know such a wheel could wear down and send the train down the wrong track at a junction. ... And all the train inspectors gave me advice about what to do with the body [a 23-year-old woman who died suddenly of a lung embolism]. But no station would take the responsibility of removing the dead body. Then a commission in St. Petersburg advised me to keep the train at the station until the station agreed to take off the body ... [According to railway regulations] you can’t carry a dead body on a train for more than two hours ...”

There was another problem: Lena was Train Chief and her husband Oleg was working on the same train as a provodnik. “This thing sort of had an impact on him,” Lena said “... I was the boss and he was the subordinate. He had problems with it ... I was earning more than him ... A provodnik makes less than half that of a Train Chief.

“So I asked my bosses to let me go back to working as a provodnik. I wanted to return to my own train, Arktika. But they said, ‘Look, you received extra education, so you need to take a more responsible job.’ That was how I ended up working on the international train Leo Tolstoy, on the Moscow-Helsinki route. They hire those with the best professional education for all jobs on this train ... mostly former Train Chiefs.”

 

Literally, provodnitsa means “one who conducts or leads” (from the verb ÔpÓ‚Ó‰ËÚ¸). Conductors work in tandem, in shifts—while one is on duty, the other takes a rest. The job description includes checking tickets, distributing pay-for-use linen, cleaning compartments and “facilities” (i.e. the bathrooms), and of course, serving tea. But the main task is what they call in train-speak kulturnoye obsluzhivaniye passazhirov (“cultural service of passengers”). “As we say,” Lena related, “how you spend your time with your passenger will depend on the way you greet him on the platform. So I try to smile more. Passengers all have different characters. I try to please people, to make them feel comfortable ...” Which of course includes stoking up the huge metal water-boilers Russians call “titans,” and making tea that is served in Russian-style glasses.

There are also some physically demanding sides to the job of conductor. When there is not enough voltage (less than 3000 volts) on the track, “we have to take a shovel and throw coal into the furnace.” What is more, “they have added to the list of provodnik duties chipping off ice from brake-pads [with a hammer, axe or iron bar]. We cut more ice on the Helsinki route than we did on the Moscow-Murmansk route, due to greater differences in temperature. If we have frost in Russia, then the weather is very warm in Helsinki, and vice-versa.” 

The train conductor is also fully responsible for security in her wagon. “If anything were to happen,” Lena noted, “I am fully responsible for the car.” This means everything from being on the lookout for bombs to dealing with bombed passengers. “Some passengers are quiet when they drink and go to bed right away,” Lena observed. “Others are inclined to ‘heroic deeds.’ Some want to stop the train with the emergency brake; others demand music in the middle of the night ... But now we have a militia squad accompanying each train for the entire trip. So, if we have problems with passengers, we turn to them.”

 

One deep-rooted urban myth about Russia’s female conductors (perhaps perpetuated by men prone to “heroic deeds”) revolves around their alleged willingness to have affairs with passengers. The myth is perpetuated by film scenes where men wink knowingly at provodnitsas. The legendary rock group, Time Machine, also has a song dedicated to the legendary Provodnitsa (see box). Lena said she is certainly aware of the myth and battles it daily. “It all depends on how you position yourself in your relations with such passengers from the very beginning. Throughout my work, I have always made it clear—it’s a ‘no-go.’”

And there are other challenges. In Soviet times, tickets were very cheap and often hard to come by, so a provodnik could make money on the side by letting a passenger ride a train without a ticket. But today train tickets are easy to come by and personnel policies are tougher. “Today,” Lena said, “this would be practically impossible. [But not totally so, see Yekaterinburg story, page 48 – Ed.] In the past, they just deprived you of bonuses or issued a reprimand. But today it is much easier to fire an employee . If I were to do such a thing, I would be fired right away.”

In fact, the Russian Railway Ministry is one of the rare state structures to have survived the disintegration of the USSR, while preserving a strong, centralized organization. In the Stalin era, the railways were run like an arm of the military, with rigid discipline and military uniforms for all. And while the military organization was done away with long before the arrival of the market, the high level of discipline and pride in the railways is notable, compared to the general disarray elsewhere in the economy. It certainly helps morale that railway employees are always paid their salaries on time and that they enjoy decent social benefits, namely, free transportation to work and a free ticket once a year to any place in Russia.

Today, foreign train routes like the one Lena conducts are not as tantalizing or prestigious as in Soviet times. Then, provodniks would buy clothes or electronics in Helsinki to bring back and resell in the USSR at a profit. But now Russian stores are no longer empty. “I didn’t live in Soviet times,” Lena said, “but this is no longer a privileged position. Sure, we have a six hour stopover in Helsinki, but it makes no sense to buy anything there—it is so expensive!”

The passengers can also be very challenging. Most of the foreign passengers on Lena’s train are Finns—construction workers who work in Moscow during the week, traveling home for weekends. “Our Russians are no angels,” Lena said, but compared to the Finns, “they are more discreet and polite ... When Finns get onto Russian territory, they loosen up and become reckless. They know nobody can do anything to them. So we have to make sure they get to their compartments when they are drunk. Sometimes waiters from the restaurant car will call us, asking, ‘Are these your passengers?’ So we begin ‘dispatching’ and sorting them out ... I lead the Finn to his compartment like a child.”

In another case, Lena recalled, “a Finn was standing helplessly, and his wife was beating him. He had no reaction whatsoever. They must have had a drink in the compartment and they quarreled, I guess. He came out with a shredded T-shirt and asked me to ‘please, throw it away.’ A short time later, he came out with a second T-shirt in same condition, and the poor thing complained, ‘I will have nothing to wear if it goes like this!’”

The ability to deal with such a wide variety of tasks—from cooling marital disputes to serving the perfect cup to tea to chipping ice from brake pads—seems to come to Lena from her father. He was responsible for most of her upbringing, since her mother was a Train Chief. “When at school they would tell my sister and I to bring to class home-sewn stuff, my father would sew something for us. And I told everybody with pride, ‘this was done by my father.’ He was an ideal for me in everything.” 

Lena said she feels equally lucky with her husband Oleg. “As far as I am concerned, I can’t say anything bad about him. He helps me in everything, with cooking, with washing. Or he might mop and wash the floor in my absence. He can do both men’s and women’s work, fix stuff and all. Well, I wouldn’t say he is such an ideal ... But I can compare my life favorably with  my friends who also have husbands. Everything is mutual with us. We are not jealous of each other—I can go and meet with friends with no problems.”

Lena and Oleg get to spend about three days a week together. They live in Tver in an apartment awarded to her father for 45 years of service in the system. Their salaries are not huge but, as Lena pointed out, “not that small ... We have enough to buy normal clothes, and good food, fruit and meat, etc.” A car is out of immediate reach and vacations can be at the whims of fate. “Last year, we weren’t very lucky. I had a vacation in June and my husband’s fell in winter. But this year we will go to the sea.” A sea someplace in Russia, that is. But Lena said that, in principle, they could even afford a cheap package tour to someplace like Turkey.

All in all, Lena’s is a story which, for Russia, to some extent sounds too good to be true: no problem with salaries, no family conflicts ... “Well we do have some,” Lena admitted, “who doesn’t have disputes?!” 

Still, Lena does seem to have found professional and family happiness on the rails. Which certainly does not rule out hopes and dreams. “I saw my parents and, throughout their lives, they hardly saw each other ... I don’t consider the profession of train conductor to be purely feminine, because there are lots of duties which are better given to men. It is not women’s labor to be sitting under a car with a hammer. Of course, the work inside the car is not hard. But I also think that a woman needs to have normal sleep at night, because here you have to be on duty at night, as this is a night train. And I would like to rest at night.”

The rails may be in her blood, but Lena doesn’t rule out someday making a career change. In fact, the hard-working provodnitsa has somehow found time to take a course in cosmetology and said she would love to find a job using these skills in Tver. “But,” she said, “nothing is definite. I might as well stay in the railway system for a while. I am only 25, we’ll see.”  RL

 

YEvgenia

In 1993, Yevgenia (“Zhenya”) Dyako-nova was an unknown artist, earning a living painting nesting dolls, matryoshkas. She heard that an Ameri-can company was hiring a team of Russians to go to the US to participate in local state fairs. There, a Russian pavilion would entertain visitors with Russian songs, dances and traditional crafts, including wooden nesting dolls and eggs. 

Zhenya’s dolls were not your typical matryoshkas featuring Gorbachev, Yeltsin or other Russian “fairy tale heroes.” “In fact,” Zhenya said, “we had developed a whole new matryoshka style, whereby each nesting doll was a piece of art in its own right, featuring a finished landscape or some other composition.” Zhenya’s matryoshkas were sold to connoisseurs, with prices starting at around $300 a piece.

The American company offered the folk artists free round-trip air tickets to the US, $100 a week, plus food and lodging. This stipend was good money back in 1993. But, for Zhenya, then 27, the main attraction was the romance of her first trip abroad, and a chance to test and improve her secondary school English. She jumped at the unusual opportunity. 

Unfortunately, the trip was more “unusual” than it was an “opportunity.” The 60 Russian artists (including a children’s ballet troupe) were lodged and fed and worked very long days, traveling to state fairs in Indiana, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Nebraska and Oklahoma. But visitors did not flock to the Russian pavilions and the anticipated profits did not come. A dispute erupted between the some of the performers and the tour organizers about payment of stipends and work schedules. In the end, Dyakonova and eight other “fellow travelers” decided they had had enough. When the rest of the group departed Oklahoma for Florida, Dyakonova and the eight stayed put. 

Housed at a local Days Inn, the Russians looked for ways to earn enough money to get to New York, to make their return flight home. A secondary school in Oklahoma and two little towns sponsored paid performances. A local charity gave them food; the hotel let them stay for free and, at the end of their stay, locals arranged for two mini-vans to take them to New York. 

But all of this was only the beginning of Zhenya’s American Story. A woman who worked at the Days Inn, Eimile Hart, became friends with Dyakonova. Eventually, the two women started a business together, with Hart organizing return trips for Dyakonova to the US, where Zhenya sold Russian collectibles at art shows. In 1996, Zhenya returned to exhibit her paintings at the 1996 Sand Plum Festival in Guthrie, the historic capital of Oklahoma. The local reviews were good: “From her window in Moscow, she could see the area surrounding Red Square, and, with careful brush strokes, the brilliant red, blue, green and purple watercolors and oils on the canvas became the portrait of her country,” wrote the Guthrie Daily Leader. 

Even so, Zhenya said she cannot afford living on her art alone. “It’s more like at break-even level,” she joked. She supplements her income by teaching English at a private English School she established in southwest Moscow. After her experience in the US, she traveled to Cambridge, England and took a two-week long course in foreign language teaching. “Teaching and learning English helps me a lot in my art,” Zhenya said. “It gives me a broader view of the world. Psychological research has confirmed that study of a foreign languages can completely renew one’s life.”

This was especially true in Zhenya’s case. A married mother of two girls, Masha (12) and Olga (9), Zhenya was born into what she calls “a normal Soviet family — dad was an engineer, mom a linguist.” It was not exactly the best combination of professions for nurturing Zhenya’s artistic career. And yet, her passion for art overwhelmed her. “I began dreaming of art at such an early age that I don’t even remember how old I was,” she said.  But without svyazi (“useful contacts”), it was nearly impossible to get a start in the world of Soviet art.

Her practical-minded parents were hardly saddened by this reality. Zhenya’s mother wanted her to study foreign languages, so Zhenya was enrolled in a prestigious secondary school specializing in English. But her passion for art was so great that, at the age of 13, she also began attending a Secondary Art School. In 1983, she graduated from both schools and was faced with a choice of career paths. As she had no svyazi, the famous Surikov or Stroganov Art Schools were closed to her. So she decided to take a chance on the Theater Art School. There she could at least apply her talent to make-up and stage decorations. 

But Dyakonova failed the entry exam. “I realize now I was lucky to fail,” Zhenya said, “because I would have become just a craftsman, not a real artist.” This setback led her to follow her parents’ advice, and get training in a solid profession, “just in case.” She entered the evening journalism faculty at Moscow State University (MGU), while continuing her art education via MGU’s Faculty of Optional Professions. 

She graduated in 1988, now married and with a young daughter. Demand for journalists was not high, but the so-called “cooperative movement” was in full bloom. So Zhenya had few options when a friend offered her a chance to paint matryoshkas and wooden eggs. “I never would have thought I would do this, because I frowned upon such ‘business.’ But it turned out to be very educational, and it was good training.”  Later, Zhenya was invited to teach matryoshka painting at a private art school. She said she tried to teach her students that “they are making a new person who will become an inalienable part of a foreign family. Thus, they become responsible for the personality of the doll.”

How does she make it—caring for two children, participating in art exhibitions and managing a private English school? She admits it can be tough. “When I am working on my canvases in our kitchen at home, it is just such a mess. It smells of paint and my mom gets nervous because she can’t quietly cook her borshch. There I am, standing with my palette, looking out the window trying to catch the moment. But then, all these inconveniences are nothing as compared to what I feel inside when I paint. It is, well, just such a kayf (slang for “pleasure”).” 

In the spring of last year, Dyakonova held her first individual exhibition in a small gallery in Moscow’s Peresvetov lane. The show helped her to establish herself as a serious Russian artist and to start up her own art studio near Moscow’s Paveletsky metro station. She also participated in six other exhibitions in 1999. While she is not yet famous, she is slowly beginning to make a name for herself, carving out her niche in the Russian art world.

“Few people have had as much luck as I had,” Zhenya said, recalling her experiences of the last decade. “I am very grateful to America and I am even grateful to that American company. If it were not for them, I would never be where I am now. I could have stayed there [in the US] and asked for political asylum or something, as I was there just at the time when the White House was being shelled in Moscow, in the fall of 1993. And I received many offers to this effect. But I thanked them all politely and returned to Russia. We are just different people. My home is here. I was told that Americans, on average, change their houses for new ones every fourth year. I don’t know if this is true, but I can’t imagine ever swapping my apartment on Pokrovsky boulevard for another place in Moscow. My roots are here. Where else can I find so much history around me?! Just think about the names—Maroseyka street, Khokh-lov-sky lane, Trinity Church in Khokhly, Solyanka, Pokrovka ... Entire centuries and thick historical backgrounds are behind these names.”

Zhenya added that she was not even tempted to leave Russia after the August 1998  financial collapse. “My husband lost his job as a computer expert, and I felt really bad. But then I walked down the boulevards, stomping on the first autumn foliage in September, and I felt calm in my soul. Now I know, no matter what, I will have this internal comfort.”  RL

 

Alina

When Lyubov Kabaeva took her seven-year-old daughter Alina to a rhythmic gymnastics club in Tashkent, she was turned away. “A TV set on short legs,” one coach unkindly dubbed Alina. 

Today, at 16, Alina has risen to the top of her profession, having won every top title (excepting the Olympic Gold) in rhythmic gymnastics. A pupil of the esteemed Russian coach Irina Viner, Kabaeva won the World Youth Games (1998), the European Championship (1999), the Goodwill Games (1999) and a record four gold medals at the 1999 World Championships in Japan. At the traditional New Year’s Olympic Ball in Moscow, Alina was named Russia’s Best Sportswoman of 1999. 

It would appear that the Tashkent coach was not the best judge of potential.

Viner, for her part, said she cannot believe the coach issued such an undiplomatic  diagnosis to Alina. Yet, she noted, “it was the pure truth.” Still, Alina said she never took the TV set diagnosis to heart. She said she couldn’t care less about being a bit short or a bit on the fat side. Nor, she said, did she care back then if adults said she would never make a good gymnast. “I loved gymnastics and I kept on practicing without paying attention to anybody,” she recalled.

Kabaeva began practicing rhythmic gymnastics at the age of three. At first, she said, it was for her health. But her mother, who had played in her youth for the Uzbek National Basketball Team, and who had studied at the same sports school as Venera Zaripova (an older pupil of Viner’s), began hatching other plans. Lyubov Kabaeva said that, when she became pregnant, she had made a wish: “If a daughter is born, she will become a gymnast.” Lyubov became an avid fan of rhythmic gymnastics, and planned to move to Moscow, where Viner was working, so as to boost her young daughter’s chances of making it to the top of this competitive sport.

It took five years to begin the move. Alina was 12 at the time and quite normally proportioned—or so it seemed to her and her mother. Viner, known for her outspoken demeanor, at first did not want to accept Alina; she thought Alina was still overweight and too short. But, after watching Alina practice, Viner changed her mind. She could not help being impressed by Alina’s flexibility and her spectacular leaps. Alina recalled how Viner finally relented. “She said, ‘Okay, I will keep you. As to the extra weight, I will extract it from you with a syringe.’ And she immediately made me follow a diet.” 

For the first three days Alina drank only water. This, coupled with non-stop workouts got her into shape. Having so many top-class gymnasts practicing alongside her, she said, was an extra incentive. Meanwhile, Alina’s mother returned to Tashkent to work, leaving Alina alone at the Olympic center in Novogorsk (near Moscow). But she called every day and often came to visit, reminding Alina constantly to “be patient and hang in there.”

This went on for nearly two years. “It wasn’t that difficult, actually,” Alina reflected. “I practiced a lot and that helped me to forget about other things.”

After a year of intense training under Viner’s guidance, Alina was in top form. She began to gain confidence as she won her first competitions; both Alina and her coach felt she had what it took to be a world-class gymnast. Lyubov quit her job in Tashkent and moved to Moscow with Alina’s younger sister. The Kabaeva trio now rent an apartment in Moscow. Her father, Marat Kabaev, is a well-known soccer player who played for the Soviet National Team in the Olympics. He works as a coach in Tashkent and did not want to loo