Popular "historical" texts about the life of women in Russia, which are actually fakes

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

There are many popular texts circulating on the Runet that open our eyes to many things in the past: for example, the life of a woman. Probably the three most popular are a story about the socialization of women by the early Soviet regime, an excerpt from a book on housekeeping, where the husband is taught to meet after work, and a text that tells how the husband and wife used to show mercy on weekends in order to live in harmony. And all three are trompe l'oeil.

Decree on the socialization of Russian girls and women

Many have seen the text of this decree. It states that the Soviet government made a decision to abolish the private property of a woman and now girls and women from seventeen to thirty years old are becoming public property. Which means, for example, that they have no right to deny intimacy to a working man. And for this he deducts 2% of his salary to a special cash office - so that for her social work in bed, a woman receives a remuneration.

This post was not cooked up in Photoshop. It was actually published in 1918. First - in the city of Saratov, then - in several newspapers in different cities and countries. And all these newspapers were in opposition to the Soviet regime. Surprisingly, not a single official press wrote about this decree, and moreover: all the decrees that were previously issued by Lenin and company completely removed the sign of equality between women and property and granted her all the civil rights that men possessed.

Since the decree in Saratov was signed by the local anarchist society (and not by Lenin, Krupskaya, Kollontai or even Stalin), a crowd of angry city dwellers attacked the anarchist club: "Look what you are thinking!" The anarchists had to escape through the back door (and, according to legend, partly through the windows). A few days later they killed a certain Mikhail Uvarov, a private entrepreneur, an opponent of the Soviet regime. Killed for publishing a decree on behalf of the anarchists.

Officially, the publication was recognized as false and illegal, about which the local commissars and Komsomol members responsible for working with women were obliged to inform the commissars and Komsomol members when such questions arose. Nevertheless, numerous ideological opponents of the Soviet regime liked it very much, and they gladly republished it. And in the nineties, when in Russia it became possible to closely study the point of view of "anti-Soviet", the decree was shaken off the dust and put back into circulation - consciously or not, presenting it as a reliable document.

The "decree on the nationalization of women" was published not only outside Russia. He could often be seen in city Soviet newspapers. As a result of such publications, women have always raised a fuss, and various consequences followed, up to the courts over the authors of the publications.

A book on home economics, published in the 60s in the USSR

With such a liner, the following text goes around the network, even more popular than the previous one:

“You must remember that you need to prepare for the arrival of your husband from service every day. Prepare the children, wash them, comb their hair, and change them into clean, smart clothes. They should line up and greet their father when he walks through the door. For such a case, put on a clean apron yourself and try to decorate yourself - for example, tie a bow in your hair … Do not enter into conversations with your husband, remember how tired he is, and what he has to do every day in the service, for your sake - silently feed him, and only after he has read the newspaper, you can try to talk to him."

Sometimes it is supplemented with the following passages:

“Be sure to follow your horizons, be aware of the political and economic life of the country. Be prepared for the fact that after a short rest, your husband will want to discuss foreign policy news or stock exchange with you. Always keep a small dictionary of economic terms close at hand, but never use it in front of your husband: the husband will undoubtedly take great pleasure in explaining the meaning of the terms to you himself."

“Do children play pranks and interfere with the rest of their spouse? Keep them busy. Let the children make some useful thing: a birdhouse, a weather vane, a doghouse."

Section for the husband: “After having an intimate act with your wife, you must let her go to the bathroom, but you don’t need to follow her, let her be alone. She might want to cry."

Anyone who grew up in the USSR or read a lot of Soviet books is alarmed by the very first lines of the "Soviet manual". In them, the husband gets tired in the service. At the same time, after the Bolshevik revolution, the word "service" was very rarely used - usually in relation to policemen, military men, officials and theater actors. In all other professions it was replaced by the word "work".

Undoubtedly, some articles and advice for young housewives in the USSR included a recommendation “not to dissolve yourself at home,” that is, to wear aprons over cute dresses, not greasy dressing gowns. But they almost always also proceeded from the assumption that the young wife also works (or studies at the institute), and the family does not live at the expense of the fact that the husband undergoes something for everyone in the service.

So this text is real, but with reservations. Before us is a translation from an English-language manual on home economics (according to some sources - Australian). In the nineties, it was with great pleasure that they translated and sold books that were already considered moldy in the West. On the one hand, this is how Russians finally got acquainted with the works of Benjamin Spock, on the other hand, an avalanche of frankly obsolete books rushed on them, including esoteric searches of the hippie era, for example.

Mercy and jubilation

“In Vedic Russia there was a tradition among married couples - one day a week (usually at six) they stayed alone at home (they put off things, sent the children to their grandmothers) and devoted that day to creating a harmony in their relationship. This process was called POROTE.

The spouses openly talked to each other about their grievances and asked for forgiveness for their mistakes, talked about their experiences in connection with this or that spouse's behavior, about what was pleasant or unpleasant for them, discussed issues of raising children, relationships with parents and other relatives, shared what they had enough in the relationship, and what they would like to receive more from their spouse … And they did not leave the house until the issues were resolved, until each of the parties felt satisfied with the communication that took place.

In fact, they had at their disposal the time until the evening (or until the morning), that is, a certain deadline for the end of the "negotiations" was determined, and therefore both the husband and wife understood that the time was limited, and on some issues they would have to go on concessions."

The text that travels the net is actually long, so here's the opening excerpt. It is already clearly seen from it that it was written by a modern city dweller, for whom it is normal to live in small families, and not by birth with grandparents and not only, but to have children so late, at about thirty, that grandmothers are already very old by that time and they themselves do not need to show mercy to anyone, I don’t want to take my grandchildren. And it is also clear from the text that the author is not aware: on any day of the week, without exception, in a house where subsistence farming is conducted (as it was in Russia), you need to feed a bird, milk a cow, chop wood and do many other things. Before talking!

With such knowledge of the realities of life until the twentieth - twenty-first centuries, is it worth delving into the text further and demanding at least one source that would confirm the existence of such rituals, the behavior of spouses as in modern American films and just such a story of the use of the word "have mercy" and "rejoice "? Probably, they found themselves in the author's head as a kind of magic, and the magic cannot be denied.

Not only fakes about women are popular: Did Saint Valentine really crown men and other myths associated with popular holidays?.