Moscow does not believe in Tears(Dir. V. Menshov, 1980)

• 2nd half takes place in the late 1970s during the “zastoy”, i.e., “stagnation” of the Brezhnev period.

Questions

• How does the film present the 1950s?• How have the lives of the three women

changed in the late 1980s?• What social issues do we see in the film?• What messages did the film send to Soviet

audiences?• What are the “significant silences” in the film?

Social issues in film

• The hidden class system in the USSR• The control of labour and place of residence• The difficult life of single mother• Alcoholism• Youth gangs• Shortage of eligible men• Adultery• Poor quality and disorganization of industry

Folkloric structure

• Three princesses set out on the journey of life• The one who overcomes the most obstacles is

rewarded the prize• Gosha’s appearance to Katia on the

elektrichka (suburban train) as she is returning home after a weekend at Tonia’s dacha is a “miracle”

Katia’s eventual reward: Gosha, the intellectual working-class guy with the golden hands

“Ever Higher”(Serafima Riangina, 1934)

The Message of the Film

• It’s the serious, working-class girl who triumphs.

• Woman, even an independent career woman, needs man for a complete life.

• The man is the boss in the household.• If you work hard and are loyal, you will get

your reward: an apartment, a Lada, and a husband who only drinks sometimes (it’s a guy thing…).

Tatiana Tolstaya

• B. 1951• Writer of short stories,

television personality (talk-show), blogger

• Began literary career in 1983

• Outspoken on women’s issues, political questions.

Women’s Lives (1990)

“Home, hearth, household, children, birth, family ties, the close relationship of mothers, grandmothers, and daughters; the attention to all details, control over everything, power, at times extending to tyranny – all this is Russian woman, who both frightens and attracts, enchants and oppresses. To imagine that Russian women are subservient to men and that they must therefore struggle psychologically or otherwise to assert their individuality vis-à-vis men is, at the very least naïve.” (Pp. 7-8)

Why Russian women are not feminists…

“Men are the property of women; if this property betrays, or runs away, or decides to lay down its own law – it will receive its just deserts.” (P. 9.)

On American and Russian women

“We are too different; in many respects we are opposite.”Russian women’s sympathy for men – persecuted, sent to wars, made to conform to Soviet life. Resigned acceptance of infidelities: being a wife still confers status.“A Soviet woman’s dream is not to have to work.”

Changes since 1991

• Women’s hygiene products available• Contraceptives instead of abortions• Post 1991: many rich, independent

“businessladies” • Women have entered politics: Martina

Matvienko, governor of St Petersburg• Three women ministers in Putin’s cabinet• Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine

On the other hand…

• Many women were obliged to seek husbands abroad (“mail order brides”)

• After the end of Communism, prostitution was a common way to survive

• The “white slave trade” – many women ended up in the “sex industry” in Western countries.