Dorothy Thompson Speaks of the Modern Russian Woman

• The most exploited class in modern Russia is the women.

• The Russian woman sweeps and cleans the streets and gutters of filth and snow...

• Moscow's porters and mine workers are women.

• The Russian woman takes on only the menial jobs.

• 60% of the work of agriculture rests on women's shoulders.

• The Russian woman often looks older than her husband.

• She is sober, but attaches no great importance to her outward appearance.

• Poetry, love, and tenderness are forbidden things in Russian life.

It is not in any way logical to measure the Soviet Union by the Western yardstick; yet we can still understand Russia, since Russian socialism is Western in its foundation, even though it has developed into something entirely different from that foundation.

World socialism called for exempting woman from exhausting labor; in the Soviet Union, however, this means "the right to work" — indeed, compulsory work for everyone between the ages of 18 and 50; and the most exploited class in modern Russia is the women!

In India, for example, the cleaning of the streets fell to the caste of slaves; but in Russia we see this caste made up of women — this quite apart from the small wage they receive in return for eight hours' work, six days a week.

You always find the streets of Leningrad and Moscow clean — cleaner, even, than the streets of New York. In the freezing cold weather you see in the streets phantoms muffled in heavy clothing and heavy boots, in the hand of each a long broom... The woman bends to clean the sidewalks and gutters of filth and snow... then lifts the refuse into the municipality's trucks. All this is woman's province — but the driver of the truck is usually a man.

This although the Soviet statutes provide that woman is to perform light work only.

It happened, while I was in Russia, that a musical troupe arrived from France to play in a Moscow theater; and when the members of the troupe asked for some porters to carry their baggage, two women appeared and carried the bags wherever the members of the troupe wished... In an iron mine not far from Moscow, you find that most of the miners are women; likewise I saw women working in a great bank in Leningrad; and the hotel where I stayed employs women to carry the travelers' suitcases and play the part of porters... Woman works in the translation bureaus; and if the school principals are men, the teachers are usually women!... And though girl students are in no way less intelligent than their fellows, the number of university women is very small, and there is no woman among the eleven persons who run the government in Russia; even the wives of these persons do not appear at the public functions that foreigners attend. Woman is present in any corner where work is needed — otherwise, she vanishes from the stage of existence!

The director of a model farm told me that 65% of the work on his farm rests on the shoulders of women. The woman feeds the animals, milks them, weighs the milk, distributes it, and cleans away the muck... The curious thing is that each woman is responsible for thirty cows, which she milks by the modern machine; and if the yield of milk exceeds the average, the woman responsible receives extra pay in return...

It is worth mentioning that these women are married — mothers who fill the role of motherhood and wifehood most excellently, over and above the "light work" in the fields, the farms, and the streets... Each of them returns in the evening to prepare her family's food, wash the clothes and the dishes, and tend her own garden and her chickens. I was told that the men prefer to work in the factories and the mills; yet I saw women in that field as well.

I must describe the model dwelling of these families: it consists of two rooms and a kitchen, and contains only the necessities of life. The mother's work outside may be made easier, since she can deposit her children at the day nursery until she returns in the evening.

I could not help noticing the premature lines on the women's faces; every woman looks a good deal older than her husband — not among the working class only, but among the men of politics as well. When I mentioned this to my escort, he answered: But we see it the other way around.

The Russian woman is strong of build, and she bears strong children. The reader will ask: where do the men work, then?... Are they all in the army barracks and the camps?...

Likewise, there shows on the women's faces a cast of misery that a woman cannot hide; and the Russian woman attaches no great importance to her outward appearance. She wears sober dresses, and that is all that concerns her. She may well be the reverse image of the Western woman — the American in particular — who today cares for nothing but herself and the improvement of her looks, to draw the other sex to her surface charms.

Throughout my stay in Russia, my eye never fell on smartly dressed young men, or on a smiling mouth; nor did I ever chance to see two lovers in a restaurant or a café exchanging looks of love...

Beautifying oneself and the use of powders are detested things in Russia, and it did not enter woman's head to use them until lately, when the press mounted a campaign of encouragement...

As long as I live I shall not forget the look of a man sitting near me when he saw me freshening my lipstick, then lighting a cigarette... this, of course, being unfamiliar among their ladies...

Love and tenderness and poetry are things forbidden to the Russian people; there is no trace of them in the lexicon of its life!... And I recall reading a poem by a well-known poet: My beloved... my tractor!!...

The Russians call their homeland the Mother Land, for the mother is truly the backbone of this homeland!...

But does this labor lessen woman's femininity?... Not at all... It happened once that I was shivering with cold on one of the farms, when a kindly old woman took my hands and began rubbing them, then seated me in a warm corner and brought me a glass of hot milk and some bread, then sat chatting with me on all manner of subjects. She made me feel that she was incapable of spite and hatred — capable, rather, of crossing the boundaries politics has drawn... boundaries powerless to shatter the standards of humanity...

The Russian woman's sacrifice, and her denial of self, melted my heart. She is patient and humble, strong and gentle at once. She alone stirred my inmost feelings and made me feel a strange emotion; and I longed to be with her, to climb with her the mountain paths of life and the roughness of the trails, and to wave a red flag against laziness and sloth... And tomorrow a new day will rise... I wish it a happy one for the Russian woman!..