When I visited St. Petersburg, Russia I noticed that women, more than men, came to visit the local churches to light candles, offer a prayer, and kiss the church’s icons. It was not as though I had never seen this before in the United States, but there, the ratio of women to men was overwhelming. I usually saw one or two men and fifteen to twenty woman. When I visited the same church daily, I started to see the same five or six women at the same time every day. These women, probably between the ages of sixty and eighty, were regular fixtures in the church community. In Russian Orthodoxy, women cannot become priests, so they constantly find other ways to serve their community. Their dedication serves a very unique purpose in the laity. For example, most churches had a counter in the back at which people could buy candles to place near the icons. I went to more than twenty churches during my weeks in Russia, and I never saw a man working at the booth; women . Women were the dedicated, constant lifeblood of their religious community.
For my Watson project, I would like to speak with these women and ask them why they are so loyal and faithful to their churches and compile these answers into a collection of interviews. What motivated them to stay involved in their churches through the tumultuous times of Communism, when religion was first illegal, then legal again? It cannot have been easy to love God and church. Did they go underground? Did they pray in their homes? Russian literature points to families having icons in their houses. Did the government try to remove them, and if they did, how did people hide them? What motivated these women to return to their churches once religion became legal again? And most importantly, if they did maintain their faith, what did it give them? Did they find strength in it?
My sophomore year of college I read A Revolution of their Own, edited by Barbara Alpern Engel and Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck. Posadskaya-Vanderbeck interviewed eight women who were alive during the 1917 Communist Revolution and asked them about their experiences. Some of them were dedicated to the Communist Party, while others were active in the opposition. No matter which side of the conflict each woman was on, I could feel their passion through the interview. I also appreciated how these women, probably for the first time in their lives, had an avenue to tell their stories. I want to produce a manuscript that would make a similar contribution to the historical narrative of Soviet history. I also want to offer these women a similar opportunity—to have a voice where they have never had one before.
The project has a certain timeliness because these women are nearing the ends of their lives. Once these women die, the information that could be gathered from these interviews will be lost. Although I want to do historical research, by the time I complete graduate school and find a permanent research position that would allow me to do a project of this magnitude, these women may no longer be alive.
In my travels, I would like to visit several Russian communities. My goal is to visit cities and towns of several different sizes—some large, and some small, so that I can compare different conditions of Russian religious women. I will compare urban and rural settings as well as examine the importance of distance from Moscow, the ideological center of Russia. I also plan to conduct interviews in some sites of particular historical importance, such as Novgorod and Kotlas, which played important roles during World War II and the period of Stalinist oppression.
My housing throughout this one-year period is flexible. Three of the cities I plan to visit Saint Petersburg, Novgorod, and Moscow, have hostels. To begin, I will live with a Russian family in Saint Petersburg to strengthen my language skills. The Colby Russian program has connections that would allow me to stay with a family. Beyond these cities, I am open to many options. The people who will lead me to interview subjects may also lead me to housing. I could stay in university dorms in Arkhangelsk and find housing through my direct connections in Kotlas. Part of the Watson is not knowing exactly what will happen next. My housing situation fulfills this requirement of the Fellowship.
I hope to begin my travels in Saint Petersburg. It is the city where I have the most contacts, and where I could find someone who would help me connect to a church, priest, or even directly to an interview candidate. While in Saint Petersburg in 2001, I participated in services with a Christian Science community. I also know several people from the Gimnazia, where I attended school. I also lived with a host family. All of these people could potentially link me with someone to interview, even outside the city.
To obtain a visa from the Russian government, a foreigner must have a sponsoring Russian institution. The Gimnazia in Saint Petersburg, where I studied in January of 2001, will most likely be my sponsoring institution, although I am open to other options. As most Watson Fellows seem to discover, plans change, and I am prepared for this possibility.
While in Saint Petersburg, I hope to forge connections that will enable me to work in the walled city of Novgorod. During World War II, the churches of this city were ravaged, as is cited in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal documents. If anyone were willing to talk about these events, this is where I want to begin. World War II is often a touchy subject for Russians, especially those living in and around St. Petersburg, because of the brutality of the siege on Leningrad. Everyone knows at least one person who died. No one had anything to eat; photographs and narratives from this period are heartbreaking. The siege of Leningrad during World War II is a traumatic memory that many older Russians have not been able to forget. If I can find women in Novgorod who will speak with me, I will ask them why they were not disheartened by the destruction of their churches.
From Novgorod, I would head north, to visit Arkhangelsk and Kotlas. Both of these cities are several hundred miles away from Moscow. In Russian history, unlike American history, loyalty to the government is directly tied to distance from the political center, the Kremlin in Moscow. The further away from the Kremlin Russians live, generally, the less loyalty they feel and express. I am curious to see if this same principle holds true in religious life. Did the women of Arkhangelsk and Kotlas worship more openly because of their location?
The university city of Arkhangelsk is named after a monastery and is considered a major center of learning in the west. The city has a population of about 420,000, making it a good deal smaller than Saint Petersburg. Professor Paul Josephson my academic advisor who regularly conducts research at Arkhangelsk University, has offered to put me in contact with people active in the church near the university. I am interested to see if the science studies at the university had any affect on the religious life of the women in the city. Did the women in Arkhangelsk feel pressure to drop their mystic religion for scientific fact?
Kotlas is totally unique in its history. Kotlas was a main stop on the railroad to the GULAG, the network of prison camps in the north. I wonder if seeing these political prisoners on a regular basis had any effect on the Kotlas religious population’s morale. Could watching fellow countrymen be sent to prison every day cause the Russian religious to feel like God had failed them? Or, did their faith give them the strength to cope? The other benefit of visiting Kotlas is that I am guaranteed to find someone to interview. Kotlas is Waterville, Maine’s sister city in Russia. Sheila McCarthy, a professor in Colby’s Russian department helps to keep the two cities connected. She has offered to put me in contact with Kotlas citizens.
From Kotlas, I would like to visit Moscow. In preparation for preparing my project proposal, I spoke with Barbara Engel, the editor of A Revolution of their Own. When I explained my project she suggested that I visit the “Narodnyi arkhiv” in Moscow. This archive houses the oral histories of what she calls “ordinary Russians.” This archive has exactly the sort of papers that I am looking for. To supplement my interviews, I will spend some time doing additional research. While working in the archive, I will focus all my attentions there, and spend time conducting interviews after. I believe taking this time would give me an opportunity to figure out Moscow—I have looked at the metro map, and it made my head spin. I cannot imagine trying to read this map while trying to be on time for a meeting with someone who has offered their own time to speak with me.
To conduct my interviews, I will contact the Moscow Center for Gender Studies. Engel and Posadskaya-Vanderbeck used this center as a resource for their book. I hope they will be able to help me find interview subjects within Moscow. I am interested in my subjects’ feelings toward the government. These women practically sat on the Kremlin’s doorstep, in contrast with those in Kotlas and Arkhangelsk. Did it affect the way they viewed their God and church?
During my travels, I would like to visit small villages where I will see if the government impositions had any effect at all. Considering Russia’s history it is likely that people in small villages did whatever they wanted and ignored the government. I would love to hear some stories of how they managed to subvert government orders. The best way to get information about these places is to ask once I get to Russia—these kind of villages seem to be almost impossible to locate on a map. Although I have no contacts for these sorts of places right now, perhaps one person will lead me to another, and I will find myself taking a train out into the middle of rural Russia to conduct an interview.
My year in Russia as a Watson Fellow will, I hope, make a new contribution to the narrative of Russian women’s history. This older population of Russia is an overlooked resource. These women are reaching the end of their lives, and once they die, this valuable primary source will be gone. How can we pass these women’s stories over, when Engel writes that “[t]hey demonstrate the variable effects of state policy and the importance of individual character…in shaping a person’s life course, even in Soviet society, where life was intensively regimented and personal choice narrowly circumscribed” (Engel, 221). I hope to capture these unique women’s voices and memories and add them to the canon of religious practices in Russian history.
