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Temptress or Virgin? The Precarious Sexual Position of Women in Postemancipation Ukrainian Peasant Society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Christine D. Worobec
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Extract

Ukrainian peasant women of the postemancipation Russian Empire, like their Russian counterparts, faced an oppressive patriarchal system in both family and village. Over the ages peasants strictly delineated tasks and functions according to gender and age in order to meet the demands of a predominantly agricultural economy. The precariousness of subsistence agriculture and the peasantry's burdensome obligations to family, community, and state reinforced inflexible and oppressive power relations in the village. Ukrainian peasants feared that any departure from the subordination of woman to man, child to parent, young to old, and weak to strong would threaten the existence of their society and culture.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , Summer 1990 , pp. 227 - 238
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1990

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References

I am grateful to Barbara Evans Clements, Barbara Alpern Engel, and John-Paul Himka for providing detailed criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper which was presented at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, 30 December 1987, in Washington, D.C. Research for this paper was accomplished with the generous support of the Research Office, Division of Research and Sponsored Programs, Kent State University.

1. Bonnie Anderson and Judith P. Zinsser, A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 1988) 1: 78–79.

2. Fortunately for the purposes of this study, there is an extremely rich collection of 319 bawdy Ukrainian folktales from Kharkiv and Kursk provinces. See Pavlo Tarasevskyi, Das Geschlectleben des ukrainischen Bauernvolkes folkloristische Erhebungen aus der russischen Ukraina, vol. 1: Dreihundertneunzehn Schwänke und novellenartiger Erzählungen, die in der Gegend von Kupjanśk und Šebekyno der Gouvernements Charkiv und Kurśk gesammelt worden (Leipzig: Deutsche Verlagaktiengesellschaft, 1909).

3. When the Liuboshchinskii Commission for Reforming the Volost’ Courts conducted its appraisal of the new court system in the early 1870s, it investigated courts in fifteen provinces, including those of Kiev and Kharkiv. These provinces were selected as representative of all the regional, economic, and ethnic diversities of European Russia. See the Trudy Kommisii po preobrazovaniiu volostnykh sudov: Slovesnye voprosy krest'ian, pis'mennye otzyvy razlichnykh mest i lits i resheniia: Volostnykh sudov, s“ezdov mirovykh posrednikov i gubernskikh po krest'ianskim delam prisutstvii, 7 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1873–1874). Hereafter cited as Trudy Kommisii. Another source for volost’ court cases in Ukrainian provinces is P. P. Chubinskii, comp., Trudy etnografichesko-statisticheskoi ekspeditsii v zapadno-russkii krai, 7 vols. (St. Petersburg: Izd. Iugozapadnago otdela Imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva, 1872–1874) vol. 6.

4. The volost’ court commissioners did not collect court cases in a systematic and standardized fashion. The criteria for selection appears to have varied with each commissioner. Furthermore, commissioners did not indicate what percentage of court cases they recorded.

5. For a discussion of the effect of commercial agriculture on peasants in postemancipation Kiev province, see Edelman, Robert, Proletarian Peasants: The Revolution of 1905 in Russia's Southwest (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

6. See Christine D. Worobec, “Patterns of Property Devolution among Ukrainian Peasants in Kiev and Kharkiv Provinces, 1861–1900,” Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies Occasional Papers, number 206.

7. Apparently St. Nicholas was not to his liking either because the saint did not mind prayer services. The runaway serf cast his vote for St. George because St. George “would slay all the diabolical lords.” Recorded in Drahomanov, Mykhailo, comp., Malorusskiia narodnyia predaniia i razskazy (Kiev: Izd. Iugozapadnago otdela Imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva, 1876), 140, number 33.Google Scholar

8. For an example of a folktale justifying male authority in the domestic sphere on the basis of woman's stupidity, see Ivan Savchenkov, “Narodnaia legenda o prave zhenshchiny v malorusskoi sem'e” (1890), cited in Zelenin, D. K., Opisanie rukopisei uchenago arkhiva Imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva, 3 vols. (Petrograd: Izd. Imperatorskago russkago geograficheskago obshchestva, 1914–1916) 2: 623 Google Scholar.

9. Segalen, Martine, Love and Power in the Peasant Family: Rural France in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Matthews, Sarah (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 125 Google Scholar.

10. Anderson and Zinsser, A History of Their Own, 22–23.

11. S. A. Khotiaintseva and A. A. Usikova, “SI. Mostki,” in Materialy dlia etnograficheskago izucheniia Khar'kovskoi gubernii, in Khar'kovskii sbornik 8 (1894) part 2: 76.

12. V. Miloradovich, “Zhit'e-byt'e Lubenskago krest'ianina,” Kievskaia starina (February 1903): 188, 202.

13. Anderson and Zinsser, A History of Their Own, 23, 80.

14. Both versions are recorded in Chubinskii, Trudy 1 (part 1): 145–146. For another version, see Drahomanov, Malorusskiia narodnyia predaniia, 91–93, number 2.

15. Chubinskii, Trudy 1 (part 1) 146–147.

16. Cited in Tarasevskyi, Das Geschlectleben des ukrainischen Bauernvolkes, 219–221, number 242.

17. Ibid., 98–99, number 133; 19–20, numbers 34–35, 23, number 39; 247–248, number 251, 250–251, number 252, 282–283, number 263; 26, number 43; 219–221, number 242; 254–255, number 254.

18. Ibid., 18, number 33; 61–62, number 92; 21, number 37; 216–217, number 240.

19. V. Miloradovich, “Zametki o malorusskoi demonologii,” Kievskaia starina (September 1899): 380–400; Linda J. Ivanits, ed., Russian Folk Narratives about the Supernatural, in Soviet Anthropology and Archeology 26, no. 2 (Fall 1987): 72–74; P. M. Shinkarev, “SI. Belo-Kurakino,” Materialy dlia etnograficheskago izucheniia Khar'kovskoi gubernii, in Khar'kovskii sbornik 9, part 2 (1895): 272–273; A. V. Ivanova and P. Marusov, “Materialy dlia etnograficheskago izucheniia Khar'kovskoi gubernii: SI. Kaban'e,” Khar'kovskii sbornik 7 (1893): 434.

20. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans, and ed. H. M. Parshley (New York: Bantam, 1970), 143.

21. Quoted by Khvedir Vovk, “Shliubnyi rytual ta obriady na Ukraini,” in his Studii z ukrains'koi etnohrafii ta antropolohii (Prague: Ukrainskyi hromads'kyi vydavnychnyi fond [1926]), 305–306.

22. Afanasii Aiudkevich', “Malorossiiskaia svad'ba s ee obriadami i pesniami, u krest'ian Letichevskago uezda” (1870), cited in Zelenin, Opisanie rukopisei 3: 1081.

23. Translated in Five Sisters: Women against the Tsar: The Memoirs of Five Young Anarchist Women of the 1870's, ed. and trans. Barbara Alpern Engel and Clifford N. Rosenthal (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 111.

24. Simeon Lukhanov, “Etnograficheskiia svedeniia” (1851), cited in Zelenin, Opisanie rukopisei 3: 1104.

25. Trudy Kommisii 5: 2, 8, 16, 161.

26. Tarasevskyi, Das Gesehlectleben des ukrainischen Bauernvolkes, 213–214, 239.

27. Ivan Prokop'ei Savchenko, “Narodnyi kalendar’ Vodotniskoi volosti Radomysl'skago uezda” (1886), cited in Zelenin, Opisanie rukopisei, 616.

28. Bundling occurred during the autumn and winter socials called vechernytsi. When the evening's work and festivities were over, couples spent the night together in a group. In the summer individual couples slept together on their own in the unheated portions of peasant huts and barns, away from the watchful eye of parents and other youths. For descriptions of evening socials, see P. V. Ivanov, Zhizn' i pover'ia krest'ian Kupianskago uezda, Khar'kovskoi gubernii, in Sbornik Khar'kovskago istoriko-filologicheskago obshchestva 17 (Kharkiv, 1907), 208–216; V. Iastrebov, “Novyia dannyia o soiuzakh nezhenatoi molodezhi na iugeRossii,” Kievskaia starina (October 1896): 110–128; VolodymyrHnatiuk, “Pisnia pro pokrytku, shcho vtopyla dytynu,” Materiialy po ukrains'koi etnol'ogii 19–20 (1919): 286–293.

29. G. A. Kalashnikov and A. M. Kalashnikov, “S. Nikol'skoe,” in Materialy dlia etnograficheskago izucheniia Khar'kovskoi gubernii, 213.

30. In some areas a boy who was a repeated offender may have been barred from evening socials but was not publicly shamed (Iastrebov, “Novyia dannyia,” 122–123).

31. The song from Lozoviki is in A. G. Khatemkin, “Pesni molodezhi v sovremennoi derevni,” Kievskaia starina (September 1897): 309, number 55; the next song is in N. I. Kostomarov, “Istoricheskoe znachenie iuzhnorusskago narodnago pesennago tvorchestva,” in Sobranie sochinenii N. I. Kostomarova: Istoricheskiia monografii i izsledovaniia, 21 vols, in 8 bks. (1906; reprint ed., The Hague: Europe Printing, 1967), 8: 952; and the last in Miloradovich, Narodnye obriady i pesni Lubenskago uezda, Poltavskoi gubernii, zapisannye v 1888–1895 g., in Sbornik Khar'kovskago istoriko-filologicheskago obshchestva 10 (Kharkiv, 1897), part 2: 73, number 56.

32. The majority of nineteenth century observers of courtship practices among Ukrainian village youth reported that premarital pregnancies were rare. See Kostomarov, “Istoricheskoe znachenie,” 951; Kalashnikov, “S. Nikol'skoe,” 206; Valerian Borzhkovskii, “ ‘Parubotstvo, ’ kak osobaia gruppa v malorusskom sel'skom obshchestve,” Kievskaia starina (August 1887): 774; A. Gubnykh, “SI. Bondarevka,” in Khar'kovskii sbornik 12 (1898) part 2: 233. Laura Engelstein has found the same underreporting of peasant sexual practices among doctors studying syphilis in Russian villages. She claims that doctors avoided attributing the virulence of syphilis to extramarital and homosexual relations among peasants, preferring instead to maintain a myth of a puritanical peasantry. See her “Morality and the Wooden Spoon: Russian Doctors View Syphilis, Social Class, and Sexual Behavior, 1890–1905,” Representations 14 (Spring 1986): 169–208.

33. Legal ages at first marriage were sixteen for females and eighteen for males. In 1897 the mean age at first marriage for females was 20.8. See Chubinskii, Trudy 6, 38; Ansley J. Coale, Barbara A. Anderson, and Erna Harm, Human Fertility in Russia since the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), 136–138; 251–253.

34. Hnatiuk, “Pisnia pro pokrytku,” 252, number 3.

35. Ivanov, Zhizn’ ipover'ia, 209.

36. Kostomarov, “Istoricheskoe znachenie,” 976–981. For other songs which describe the seduction of maidens, see Khatemkin, “Pesni molodezhi,” 290–291, 298–301.

37. See Hnatiuk, “Pisnia pro pokrytku,” 249–389; Miloradovich, Narodnye obriady, 120, number 24; Kostomarov, “Istoricheskoe znachenie, 985n; Khatemkin, “Pesni molodezhi,” 315–316, number 69.

38. Trudy Kommisii 5: 317, number 25; 155 (27 April 1871). Similar cases may be found in ibid., 348, number 4; Chubinskii, Trudy, 187.

39. It is unclear whether the judges acquiesced to this unusual request, given the fact that twenty lashes was the maximum penalty for any offense that came before the local courts (Trudy Kommisii 4; 13; 79–80).

40. Ibid. 5: 69, number 2; 286, number 34; Chubinskii, Trudy, 186–187, number 204–205.

41. Chubinskii, Trudy, 187, number 207; Trudy Kommisii, 245, number 20. Russian peasants also subjected maidens suspected of moral impropriety to physical examinations. See M. M. Gromyko, Traditsionnye normy povedeniia i formy obshcheniia russkikh krest'ian XIX v. (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), 98; Hnatiuk, “Pisnia pro pokrytku,” 332–333.

42. Trudy Kommisii, 125, number 11. For a discussion of the marginality of soldiers’ wives in postemancipation Russia, see Richard Stites, “Prostitute and Society in Pre-Revolutionary Russia,” Jahrbiicher für Geschichte Osleuropas 31, no. 3 (1983): 351; Beatrice Farnsworth, “The Soldatka: Folk Lore and Court Record,” paper presented at the Conference on the Peasantry of European Russia, 1800–1917, University of Massachusetts-Boston, August 1986. Farnsworth's paper has been published; see Beatrice Farnsworth, “The Soldatka: Folklore and Court Record,” Slavic Review 49 (Spring, 1990): 58–73.