Reading Journal 6

(In response to the readings packet on Aleksandra Kollontai.)

The text on Kollontai was pretty useful for me at this point, because from Gorky and from a couple stories I remember reading in The Gulag Archipelago, it's clear that at some point the Revolution included the idea of a massive shift in the position of women within Russian society and politics, but that, as with many currents that perhaps swept communism into being the reigning political paradigm, at some point it died fairly completely from the picture of reality the authorities were bringing into being. With Solzhenitsyn I have in mind a few stories involving female interrogators (i.e., in a position of relatively high power) and his remark about the equality promised ironically coming to fruition when, as the prisons came to be used at many times their intended capacity, men and women were crammed together into cells in which there was one latrine bucket to be shared amongst everyone. Gorky, with Mother being from a more formative period, as we saw last week, envisioned a world in which men and women treated each other with respect, and both were considered worthy revolutionaries, with no limit on the human fulfillment of either sex.

It's very interesting to read, then, that she had such close ties to Lenin (as Gorky did to Stalin, albeit with a much different relationship). What went wrong? It seems that, as problems arose, the men in power, in a sort of fear-inspired conservativism, reverted to previous models of socioeconomic gender relations with the NEP.

But I could be confusing the reading with the WTN spot we watched in class. There were a few points where I got a very different impression of history from the two sources. For example, in the text, it seemed as if Kollontai and Lenin remained aligned until his death, whereas the video exhibited a divergence at some point, with them defying each other in public over what was to be done about the nuclear family. Lenin apparently wanted it kept intact, unlike Kollontai, who wanted sexual freedom for women and communal childcare in crèches and the like. Another example was her appointment to the post of Ambassador to Norway: the video says she was relegated and then rose to the position by merit somewhat despite this (and stayed there, alive, under Stalin, because it made Russia look socially advanced to the international audience) but the text has her appointed as a graceful way of removing her from "actual" power. The documentary was good for showing the significance of the Women's Congress, but I appreciated the text's tracking of her development as an author, presenting her ideas non-statically, unlike many historical profiles.

I don't actually have all that much to say about Thirty-Two Pages--it fits the description given in the biography snugly. The only thing that struck me was the incredible and unexpected tragedy of the last two pages, wherein the man is utterly unsympathetic and insulting to her ("I'll be holding you by the bridle, the way a woman should be kept") and somehow she decides to declare, "You are good." It's gracious of her to say that "he loved in his own way," but awful that she sees no vision of a way out or hopes not for something better for herself. This actually brings up something personal for me, having come from a mixed religious background propounding and sometimes promoting the idea of women as to be loved and respected but still only as subordinate to men, but seeing a more equal relationship actually play out between my parents and my then-girlfriend's parents. As our relationship disintegrated near the end, with as much conviction as I could muster I swung from one extreme to another in various aspects of life philosophy in an attempt to keep our relationship alive and somehow moving forward, but as last-ditch effort, I came to her with a similar proposition as the man in the story, and thankfully for her sake she didn't even bother to engage the discussion, but finally rejected our relationship outright. Juxtaposing my story with Thirty-Two Pages, I favour what happened to us, but I'm left with the question of whether, if the man's heart and mind had been more open, and the woman had had more vision and a dash of bravery, the relationship could have been redeemed in that moment, and taken a decisive turn toward something lastingly healthy. Not to be pessimistic, but I'm guessing it's not all that likely, and that sometimes we as human beings (to be a bit more general than the story above) need pain to bring us enough distance to see life clearly. But a solid alternative social model to look up to in the first place seems much more promising.

Communism and the Family was quite interesting to me. Kollontai makes very good arguments relevant to the state of the family at the time, wherein women had joined the workforce and only been relieved of parts of their duties within a nuclear family. I'm not sure what to think of the set of her recommendations as a whole, as far as ideals go. I'm quite in favour of her prescription on p. 251 to take an honest look at our situation, discard what doesn't make sense, and embrace that which does. Her recommendations of what falls under each category make perfect sense if one takes the division of labour to its logical extreme. Unfortunately, as one of my professors at Laurier, Dr. Friesen, once pointed out, this is actually where communism and capitalism parallel exactly: in both, "economics is trump." Since I feel this to be the downfall of both models, I can't wholly agree with Kollontai, and yet I find many of her ideas to be ones I've thought of as well. In our socioeconomic context, parents hire babysitters and thus rely on a sort of paid communal childrearing, or increasingly, day-care centres wherein a larger organization that the parents don't necessarily have a stake in is given a share of the duty. As always, except for those who can afford otherwise, the state is largely responsible for influencing children after a certain age through public schools. Only in a few contexts that I know of, such as homeschooling networks (again, a privilege of those who can afford it) and some native reserves in Canada, are communities given both the set of materials and tools by the state but also the freedom to use their own wisdom, communally, in reinterpreting them for children. I've only witnessed two communities so far wherein unrelated couples trusted one another enough to be on board with communal childrearing from birth. In both of these contexts it does seem to be giving women more freedom than in a nuclear model, while maintaining the family unit as a kind of underlying structure. But in Kollontai's description, there are a few flaws. As the character Michael points out in the movie Office Space, "If everyone [acted on this], there would be no janitors, because nobody would clean shit up if they had a million dollars." While not precisely true, the point is made that there's no guarantee that sexually unconstrained women and women who wish to raise (or would be good at raising) children as their specialty in the division of labour will be in the proper proportion, or for that matter, that there will be enough people whose best development would occur in custodial occupations. She almost seems to be aware of this on some level, but doesn't engage it beyond this: "Even if the products sold in the store are of an inferior quality and not prepared with the care of the home-made equivalent, the working woman has neither the time nor the energy needed to perform these domestic operations." (p. 254) She then advocates for the next step, rather than questioning this loss of care, and perhaps something more, in what is home-made.

To be sure, Kollontai is absolutely right that capitalism has doubled women's load. However, I'm not convinced that the complete division of labour produces well-rounded, healthy, or even free individuals, in at least the sense of having the opportunity to explore different occupations and hobbies. In this sense the working woman's life under Kollontai's model may even be less fulfilling than in a nuclear family model. To me, there's an important element of humanity lost, despite the hopefulness found in the male-female relationship she describes, if a couple can get pregnant, give birth, and then have someone else raise their child while they return to work. I much rather favour paternal and maternal leave, where a couple's respect for each other is solidified by their having to work together to raise a child well.

As a final point, recalling the "economics is trump" line of thinking, Kollontai reassures women that, "The woman in communist society no longer depends upon her husband but on her work. It is not in her husband but in her capacity for work that she will find support." (p. 258) And although she has outlined provision for all children, including orphans, she has left out the disabled, developmentally challenged, and the retired. (The latter she even brought up in the context of the old way of capitalism, wherein money had to be made for the children to one day support their parents in their old age, but support for them in her new model is conspicuously absent.) People who are less productive, in her model, are not valued, since their wisdom and other gifts that might be offered to the rest of society are not economically quantifiable. Children are valued, sure, because they're the future workers. What about a woman who loses her arms? Does Kollontai's communism still save her from prostitution, if she's ambitious, or neglect unto death, if she isn't? These are some subtle points at which her otherwise intelligent vision seems unravel, unfortunately. Hopefully in next week's discussion of the video in the context of further readings on Kollontai we'll be able to see how women of the time engaged with this vision, before their position to effect any of it was apparently swept aside as the political climate grew increasingly ruthless.