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Rassvet (1859-1862) and the Woman Question

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Barbara Heldt Monter
Barbara Heldt Monter*
Affiliation:
Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of British Columbia
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Extract

The woman question, which produced some of the best polemical writing of the nineteenth century, was an international phenomenon. In the 1850s, in Europe, essays on different sides of the question were written, published, translated, paraphrased, or reacted to, all in short order. Russia soon joined in the debate. The woman question, under different names, had existed previously in Russia, especially during the 1830s when some of the fiction published revealed women as victims of society. But, in the post-Crimean War period, what had been part of a more general preoccupation of Russian liberals, a striving toward general enlightenment, gave rise to a new civic sense of women's role in the general betterment of society and a debate on the education that would be necessary to fulfill that role.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 76 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1977

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References

1. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, Essays on Sex Equality, ed. Alice S. Rossi (Chicago and London; University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 107.

2. Ibid., p. 112.

3. Ibid., p. 115.

4. Jules Michelet, L'Amour (Paris : Calmann-Levy, 1923), p. SO.

5. See the chapter “Zhenskaia lichnost’ v staroi russkoi zhurnalistike,” in Shchepkina, E. N., Iz istorii shenskoi lichnosti v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1914), pp. 151–97Google Scholar.

6. The leading writer of society tales was Prince Odoevskii. In his “Princess Mimi” (1834) and “Princess Zizi” (1839), women trained to manipulate others ruin several lives. Odoevskii clearly points the finger at their society education.

7. Two of her poems have been translated into English in Russian Literature Triquarterly, no. 9 (Spring 1974), pp. 29-33.

8. Rassvet, June 1862, p. 337.

9. Rassvet, January 1859, p. 148.

10. Plotkin, L. A., Pisarev i literaturno-obshchestvennoe dvizhenie shestidesiatykh godov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1945), p. 119 Google Scholar. Plotkin argues that Pisarev wrote the entire bibliographical section for the first six issues- (the only ones that Plotkin seems to have read). He cites inner references from issue to issue and the unity and size of the section as proof. Clearly, Pisarev's style dominates the writing. His rhetorical phrases, well-shaped sentences, and varied lexicon were already present in his early writing. On the other hand, Krempin was proud of the fact that he himself reworked and read page proofs for the entire journal.

11. Simkin, la., Zhizn’ Dmitriia Pisareva : Lichnost’ i publitsistika (Rostov, 1969), p. 28 Google Scholar. Simkin tells us that, contrary to the ideas he espoused while working for Rassvet, Pisarev refused to read books with his sisters when they sought his intellectual aid (p. 41).

12. Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vols. 25-26 (1936), p. 648.

13. Rassvet, January 1859, p. 12.

14. Ibid., p. 13.

15. See Barbara Heldt Monter, “Introduction to Pavlova's A Double Life,” Russian Literature Triquarterly, no. 9 (Spring 1974), pp. 337-53.

16. Pisarev, D. I., “Zapiski dobroi materi ili poslednie eia nastavleniia pri vykhode docheri v svet Sochineniia v shesti tomakh (St. Petersburg, 1894), 1 : 2–3Google Scholar. Plotkin, who cites this passage minus the final sentence, makes Pisarev into more of a feminist than he actually was. Because Rassvet is available only in Moscow and Leningrad libraries, I have quoted from the complete works of Pisarev when a review is reprinted there. All subsequent quotations of Pisarev refer to this edition.

17. Pisarev, Sochineniia, 1 : 481.

18. Ibid., p. 486.

19. Pisarev, “Mysli Virkhova o vospitanii zhenshchin,” Sochineniia, 4 : 447.

20. N. K. Mikhailovskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 10 (St. Petersburg, 1913), p. 387.

21. Mikhailov, M. L., Sochineniia v trekh tomakh (Moscow, 1958), 3 : 369 Google Scholar. Mikhailov mentions in a footnote his regret that most of his article had already been printed before he read Mill (see p. 425 n.). Soon afterward, he translated Harriet Taylor's “Enfranchisement of Women,” published under her husband's name in 1851. The translation appeared in Sovremennik in November 1860 and was reviewed in Rassvet (January 1861) by V. Stoiunin.

22. Mikhailov, Sochineniia, 3 : 403.

23. Pisarev, Sochineniia, 1 : 115.

24. Rassvet, September 1861, p. 355.

25. Ibid., p. 89.

26. See T. A. Bogdanovich, Linboz/ liudei shestidesiatykh godov (Leningrad, 1929).

27. E. A. Stakenshneider, Dnevnik i sapiski (1854-1886) (Moscow-Leningrad, 1934).

28. Sovremennik, May 1862, p. 10.

29. Ibid., p. 35.