A Russian Woman Responds

“With a sickle in one hand and balalaika in the other,” well, part of that image is true. That’s the major feature of the Russian woman – her versatility.

Photo by Julia Borodina, www.eliara.com

She can hold the hammer and sickle, but at the same time she will get a manicure, be an academician, and have your dinner ready. There is even a popular quote from Nikolay Nekrasov, a Russian writer of the 19th century, who said that a Russian woman “will stop a horse in full stride and walk into a burning house.”

So, you can say there is just a lot more to the Russian women than a hammer and a sickle. My grandmother is a perfect example. She was head of the laboratory that inspected water purification facilities all over the European part of Russia. She had to wade through bogs and swamps in rubber boots, but at the same time she was known all over town to have the most fashionable dresses, which she made with her own hands, since buying decent clothes at stores was not an option at the time.

Russian women dream about becoming an American housewife, circa 1950s, and as portrayed in the film “Mona Lisa Smile” (2003). But at the same time they are scared of that dream because, overwhelmed by this sick, obsessive love for everything western, not to mention all the articles about “successful women” found in Cosmopolitan magazine, she would say that she wants to be like the girls from “Sex and the city.” The reality is she doesn’t.

Russian women can’t be independent from men, not because they can’t survive without them, but because she knows that a woman should be with a man. And furthermore, that relationship is natural. They really can’t imagine their lives without a strong man by their side. Taking up a job for them ideally should be something they do out of pleasure, not because they have to feed and provide for the family - with nobody to back them up in times of crisis (which Russia has experienced in great number).

Perhaps this sort of thinking derives from an old Russian book from the 16th Century, entitled Domostroy (“The Household Code”). In it, it is written that a wife must obey her husband – and run the house. Furthermore, she should be modest, raise the children, and respect her husband. Some of the clauses even provided that a man could beat a woman. Of course, nobody agrees with that today, yet the saying “If a man strikes a woman, it means he loves her" is still heard.

The picture you painted of a Russian woman, “Natasha,” is just one type, and what we would call ‘a Rublevka wife’ [Rublevka is an upscale suburb of Moscow], who never says ‘thank you’ and runs the city around with her Gucci purse. When you describe “femininity,” which seems to strike your eye so much, you should concentrate on the Russian woman’s grace, on her posture, on the way she moves and talks, and on how she carries herself, not how trendy the restaurant is.

At first, you say that the Soviet (Russian) woman is nothing more than a proper tool to survive in a famine, for example, and then you say you never expected them to look like fashion models. But that’s not a contradiction. A woman with a sickle can by all means be attractive (Look at your American movies with Angelina Jolie, for example. In every shot she is holding something that could be equally dangerous as a sickle, but that doesn’t stop her from being attractive). Here, it seems that you confuse good looks with femininity. I think you meant to say that, to the Western mind, Russian women didn’t look any different from a man driving those tanks and tractors (by the way, crane operators in Russia are usually women; it’s a tradition!).

Today, Russian women are said to be the most beautiful in the world. Like I said, the “sickle and balalaika” stereotype is partially true: Russian women do save lives in the trenches and they do lay railroads, but at the same time, in their souls, they are weak and feminine, fragile and credulous, in search for their prince… Perhaps, your friend has a valid point, arguing that Russian women dream of a composite of Vladimir Vysotsky and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But don’t Western men dream of an Angelina Jolie-Scarlett Johansson hybrid? Some dreams are just never meant to come true…

My friends’ foreign husbands were struck by the versatility of the Russian women combined with their beauty. They were shocked to have such feminine treasures, without all of those complications you were writing about (like going to court over some little misunderstanding). The Russian girls seem very sincere and loving, and, as you correctly mentioned, real women. Five of my close friends found their husbands abroad – in Italy, Great Britain, Belgium, and Canada – and are very happy. They are not at all demanding and are very realistic, and don’t think foreign men are swimming in platinum credit cards they can now lay their manicured hands on. They studied at university and are now happy to build their future life together, with mutual support “in sickness and in health.”

Oh, and on an unrelated issue: can you change goat to cow, because all romantic Russian girls normally milk cows and confide their secrets in them, while a goat in Russian folk tales usually ends up being the aforementioned girl’s young brother turned into a goat by a witch, so I doubt she’d be milking her brother. And instead of picking potatoes, can she gather mushrooms or raspberries?

Today, female Russian businesspeople and politicians are not really in favor with people, and the reason is that, if they are in politics or fighting for their rights, well, that means the woman is unsuccessful in her personal life and hasn’t found the right man.

Personally, I think there is an ideal Russian woman, (my friend and I agree that it is to be found in Tatyana from Pushkin’s classic poem, “Evgeny Onegin”) who has a list of qualities typical of the “pure” Russian woman, the way she was meant to be. She is romantic, vulnerable, sincere (the important thing which has been most violated by the glossy magazine industry: they write all these sordid tips about how to be a real bitch; how to scheme to catch the right man, what set of lies should be told, thus turning the natural female intellect into something dirty and nasty. When men read these tips, and they do, they are horrified to learn what lengths women will go to catch them). At the same time, the Russian woman is very willing to stand by her man and to sacrifice anything for her true love, which, she believes, exists.

Over the years, however, tortured by a number of external factors, as well as dishonest, weak, and indecent men, Russian women have generally become less open, and more suspicious, less happy and more desperate. Again, like I said before, true love is very important for her, and despite being weak and vulnerable, she will follow her man and share all of his ordeals with him. Even worship him, if he deserves worship, and – what’s more important - is that he loves and respects her in return. A perfect example is one of my friend’s parents. Her father served in the army all his life, and being a real hero, he was always dispatched to the most dangerous and distant hot spots where his life was constantly at risk. His wife, having no hope to settle down any time sooner than the date of his retirement, never uttered a word of complaint. She followed him everywhere, raised his children and supported his every decision.

Over the years, though, Russian men have changed a lot, and it is a different story… but even in the 19th Century, the Decembrists wives went into exile with their husbands, and Cossacks’ wives were waiting faithfully for their men to return from war. Perhaps Russian men are not used to the idea that they can be a hero in everyday life as well, so they get depressed because there are no great exploits for them to perform. Of course, there are exceptions; I am just outlining the tendency.

About male clubs like Night Flight, well, these have very little to do with Russian women, and I would say it’s actually the problem of foreign men. There is the assumption that foreign men can come here and entertain, and they can, just like in any other place. But the so-called gentlemen’s clubs and Russian women are apples and oranges. What you need to do is to get rid of that stereotype; stop surfing the Internet in search of those long-legged piranhas who actually created that ugly stereotype in the first place, because they are the ones who want to rip off poor foreigners.

So if you really want to meet a decent Russian girl, just go down to the metro or visit the campus of the local university.