Abstract
Barbara Engel's Marriage, Household, and Home in Modern Russia provides an excellent overview of exactly those topics from the start of the eighteenth century to the present. Given that this is not a long book, it is impressive that Engel's analysis manages to be comprehensive as well as succinct. Her use of examples—case studies really—is particularly noteworthy because it enables Engel to underscore larger points with references to real individuals, something that makes this book a good one for teaching, especially university undergraduates. She capably demonstrates the impact the state had on family life and household structures at key junctions in Russian history, and Engel regularly situates Russian developments in a wider European context.
The book opens with a chapter discussing the impact of Peter the Great's reforms on Russian society. When the Petrine era began, marriage was nearly universal and served to, among other things, forge household-based economic units. At a time when there were no banks from which to obtain capital, and when private loans were difficult to obtain, the kinship networks established via marital alliances were enormously important as were the dowries that women brought into their marriages. Love, physical attraction, and sexual pleasure, by comparison, mattered very little. The rules of the Russian Orthodox Church affected the choice of partner, and weddings were usually timed according to the religious calendar. Violence against women was an accepted and common part of women's lives.
With all of that said, during the reign of Peter I, the intimate lives of the social elite began to differ from those further down the social ladder. For example, the emperor issued decrees that provided for new social activities (balls, theatrical performances, concerts, etc.) at the imperial court, and thereby provided opportunities for unmarried men and women to socialize, in part because he believed that spouses who liked each other were more likely to have fruitful unions. However, many of Peter's reforms also strained family units a great deal. The introduction of compulsory state service meant that noble spouses often lived apart from one another for extended periods, with husbands away fulfilling the demands of their positions while their wives were left to manage family holdings in the countryside. The almost constant warfare associated with Peter's reign meant that peasant families were also affected by state demands. As more serfs were conscripted into the army, peasant families had to adapt to the absence of manpower or face economic hardships.
In her second chapter, Engel addresses the impact of the “Culture of Sensibility” in the years between 1761 and 1855. As she rightly notes, the European Enlightenment brought an increased focus on the individual self, which led to more people keeping diaries or writing memoirs. It also promoted different ideas concerning romantic love and sexual desire, both of which were now assumed to make people happy. The reason for starting the chapter in 1761 is that the Russian gentry was freed from compulsory state service the following year, thereby giving men more time at home on their estates. When Catherine the Great came to the throne a few years later, she kept this measure introduced by her husband because she believed it would raise the cultural level of the countryside. Catherine's firm promotion of Enlightenment works and ideas changed noble life forever for, as Engel writes: “Whereas once elite status had been determined almost solely by an individual's position in the social hierarchy and/or proximity to the ruler, from Catherine's reign onward, elite standing became contingent on a person's behavior, values, ideals, and feelings, as well.” (24) This increased emphasis on comportment led to domestic violence becoming less acceptable; it was assumed that men from the Russian elite should have more control over themselves and not engage in violence towards their partners.
Few of these changes wrought by the Enlightenment filtered down to Russia's villages, however. In her chapter on the peasantry up to 1861, Engel describes a society that was frozen in time, so to speak, since its economic base and rituals had remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. Marriage was the foundation of peasant life and conferred adult status on villagers. Households were extremely patriarchal and large since complex or extended groups provided more protections and made it easier for peasants to meet their financial obligations. Marriages were usually arranged by matchmakers, and the bulk of the negotiations focused on economic matters, particularly the size and contents of women's dowries. While roughly 50% of children died before they reached the age of five, those who did survive learned gender-appropriate work skills from the parents, often beginning that process when they were five or six. Only the position of soldiers’ wives was anomalous. These women, whose husbands might never return to their home villages, were on the margins of rural society and, lacking any power or status within the households of their husbands’ families, were regularly abused by those they were forced to live with.
The 1860s brought significant changes to everyday life in Russia. The “Great Reforms” introduced by Alexander II left the legal bases of family life intact, but dramatically altered the world surrounding the home. The decade saw Russian intellectuals begin to discuss what they referred to as “the woman question” as they became increasingly averse to family despotism. Literary works raised issues of gender equality, love, and sexual fulfillment. Soon some young people—often calling themselves nihilists—began to develop alternative family forms and adopted what were seen as radical forms of dress. An evolving job market meant an increasing number of young men did not follow in their fathers’ career footsteps but obtained white-collar positions instead. Urbanites wanted more say in their choice of marriage partners and the idea of a nuclear family (admittedly with servants) became increasingly attractive. In Russian villages, the emancipation of the serfs upheld the power of the patriarchal household and the village council. But the redemption payments that the state imposed on the peasants to cover the costs of the land they were given meant villagers needed more cash—an imposition which proved to be the impetus for both the expansion of cottage industries and migration to the cities for work.
The final years of imperial Russia saw the pace of industrialization and economic development accelerate theses changes. Engel describes how millions of migrant workers brought aspects of rural life and consumer culture into villages across the country. The number of urban working-class families gradually increased, although it remained hard for workers to earn enough to support families, leading to Russia having one of Europe's highest rates of female participation in the labor force. Popular culture celebrated individualism, so more people wanted relationships based on romantic love. However, as Engel notes, those doing manual labor were still more likely to consider economic matters in their choice of partner and had little privacy in their living spaces to enjoy any relationships.
The outbreak of the First World War strained Russian society to its limits. Marriage and birth rates dropped precipitously as millions of men were conscripted, leaving their partners to toil for long hours in factories or fields in order to ensure the survival of the family unit. As hunger spread into the cities, anger at both the government and the privileged classes was openly expressed. Here Engel focuses notably on the position of soldiers’ wives as they grew increasingly assertive in their demands for support from the state. The February revolution that brought down the monarchy did little to change the situation, however. Instead, truly radical change came only when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in October 1917. Over the next few years, the Bolsheviks abolished religious authority over marriage, made no-fault divorce available, introduced paid maternity leave for women in industry, legalized abortion, declared legal equality between men and women, and promised the socialization of housework. While funding often ran short for the promised childcare and other social services, the 1920s did see a relaxation of sexual mores in the cities, especially among young people. The 1922 Land Code gave property rights to all adults, which led to the breakup of many extended peasant households. And the nationalization of urban housing was an open attack on the bourgeois family; it meant for the remainder of the Soviet period people's living space was determined by work or state authorities rather than by wealth.
In chapter seven, Engel shows that a similarly drastic transformation of life began in the countryside when the Soviet government introduced the collectivization of agriculture at the end of the 1920s. Property became collective, and the state's assault on traditional village life eroded the power of older males in their communities and households. By contrast, women's work became more important, since they managed the small private plots that families were allowed to cultivate to feed themselves. In 1936 the government introduced a more conservative family code—a document whose limits on divorce and insistence that fathers pay child support were welcomed by women, even if its restrictions on abortion were not. Engel's narrative shows how propaganda campaigns supported this restoration of the family and celebrated domesticity, even as tens of thousands of families were affected by Joseph Stalin's purges at the end of the 1930s.
Once the Second World War broke out in 1941, the Soviet state had to adjust its relationship with the population again. Images of mothers abounded in wartime propaganda and women were played pivotal economic roles as the conflict dragged on. By 1945, women accounted for 56% of the industrial labor force and 97% of agricultural workers (153). Engel clearly outlines how the war worsened an existing gender imbalance since three quarters of Soviet citizens killed were men. The looming demographic crisis led the Soviet government, in 1944, to make divorce extremely expensive and to rescind legal recognition of common-law marriages. Moreover, only registered married couples could obtain state-owned housing—a notably valuable thing in a country where twenty-five million people were left homeless at the end of the war. Despite all of the state's pro-natalist policies, however, the birthrate never returned to pre-war levels and 15–20% of babies were born out of wedlock (165).
After the death of Stalin, Engel describes how the Soviet government prioritized the construction of more housing, which allowed millions of families to move from communal apartments and enjoy more privacy. In 1955 abortion was again legalized and a decade later divorce laws were revised again so that the process was easier and less costly. The postwar period as a whole was one of rising expectations, even though everyday life remained difficult. In her chapter on this era, Engel is right to emphasize the way in which the “double burden” affected women's lives. Ironically, men's “marginality in the household would contribute to a perceived crisis of masculinity in the late Soviet era, for which women would again be held responsible” (185). Grandmothers stepped in to fill the void and they are fixtures in female-headed households down to the present.
In her final chapter, Engel addresses the catastrophic impact the collapse of the USSR had on family life. In the 1990s, state supports for women and the family disappeared entirely, and the birthrate fell even further as the economy contracted. Patriarchal rhetoric, and occasional pro-natalist campaigns, have flourished in the media but have had little actual effect, given that women's work remained vital to family budgets. Indeed, in 2017—in other words, long after the worst effects of the economic collapse of the 1990s were over—48.6% of the Russian workforce was female (206). Socio-economic inequality was a hallmark of Russia's transition to a market economy, and rural poverty was simply staggering once the collective farms were dismantled. Having children became a luxury in rural communities. Engel also describes how exploding rates of alcoholism not only reduced male life-expectancy, but also led to an exponential increase in domestic violence—something which admittedly had never truly disappeared from everyday family life in the three hundred years covered by her book.
As one can see from the contents of this review, Barbara Engel's well-written new book offers quite a comprehensive look at all aspects of Russian family life in the modern era. Hence, it is both a welcome addition of the scholarly literature on the history of the family in Europe and an impressive resource for teaching.