Letters to the Editor

To the Editors:

I enjoyed reading the September-October, 2014, issue of Russian Life. However, I noticed an unfortunate inaccuracy in the otherwise wonderful article on the Moscow Zoo. According to the article, Lenin delivered “a speech among the animals in 1915.” This could not be possible. Vladimir Lenin was in Switzerland from 1908 through early 1917; it wasn’t until April 1917 that he returned to Russia (St. Petersburg).

Sincerely,

Olga Grushin
Catalunya, Spain

Olga:

Thanks for the keen eye. In fact, the zoo director cited this date for Lenin’s speech in our interview, even though that would have been physically impossible. If the speech happened, it most likely was in 1918.

– The Editors

To the Editors:

I just read your article “Birthing Pain” by Anna Mazanik [Jan/Feb 2015 issue].

I am 44 years old. I was born, raised and educated in former USSR. I had two sets of grandparents from rural parts of Russia who died in their 80 and 90s. As grandchildren, we have heard many stories on how their grandparents lived and how hard it was back then... Reading Anna’s article made me wonder if she did her research right. 90 percent of the facts listed was totally shocking to me and never heard of! I know Russians are big on relying on “wise” medicine -– back then especially. But the way it portrayed in Anna’s article is lopsided – dark and harmful.

Somebody (much older) should have read the article before publication.

Thumbs down for me.

Larisa

Dear Larisa,

Thank you very much for your feedback. I am actually quite pleased that you found my article so shocking that you refused to believe it. This was exactly the reaction I had myself when several years ago I came across the topic of childbirth and infant care in pre-revolutionary Russia while working on my PhD dissertation. Just like you, I found those accounts surprising and wanted to check them against the experience of my grandparents, who had never mentioned such things. Interestingly, when, disturbed by what I had read in the sources, I asked my grandparents directly, all of them remembered several cases of infant death and neglect among their siblings, relatives or neighbors – something they had never spoken about before I brought it up.

There can be many reasons why your – or my – Russian grandparents tended to be silent about these questions. The generation born in the 1900s and 1910s, to which I assume your grandparents belong, witnessed and survived the tragic events of the twentieth century – two world wars, revolution, collectivization, repressions, famine and deportations. Possibly, they simply did not reflect upon the situation with infant care and reproductive health in the time of their childhood and thought that it was not important enough – or too delicate and embarrassing – to discuss. Or, perhaps, your grandparents were the fortunate ones and their families were able to provide better conditions for pregnant mothers and their babies.

As I wrote, there were significant regional, seasonal and income variations. And, obviously, there always are individual stories, some of which are more representative than others, that contradict the general trends and the image of the past preserved in historical sources.

I have read many pre-revolutionary accounts on childbirth and infant care left by statisticians, physicians, sanitary inspectors, anthropologists, governmental officials or priests. Each of them is of course biased in its own way – as are all historical sources and personal memoirs – but taken together they present a remarkably coherent picture that I tried to convey in my article. If you still find it unconvincing and would like to have more evidence and analysis, I direct you to the works of David Ransel, who has studied these questions in great detail in his books Mothers of Misery: Child Abandonment in Russia (Princeton University Press, 1988) and Village Mothers: Three Generations of Change in Russia and Tataria (Indiana University Press, 2000). I will be very glad if my short article encourages you to explore the unknown sides of the Russian past – even if sometimes they are difficult to accept.

With kindest regards,

Anna Mazanik

To the Editors:

I am extremely happy to have discovered Russian Life. I was looking through some old copies of Soviet Life, and one thing led to another... but Russian Life is without doubt superior to Soviet Life. The articles are honest, diverse, and well written. I especially like the Uchites page: it helps keep my Russian language skills up to snuff. (Okay, so I recently bought Rosetta Stone Russian to help me in a bigger way... thirty years is a long time ago, and that’s when I took my last Russian course!)

Your hard work and dedication to an idea are truly inspirational. Thanks and please keep it up!

Emmet Hoops
via Email