Julia Ioffe on Russian Women, Missing Men, and the Roots of Autocracy (Ep. 285)

If you were part of the intelligentsia or the upper bourgeoisie or the artistically inclined aristocracy, you often traveled to the West, were exposed to Western culture, but also you were very much engaged in wrestling with a question that they called the woman question, and how to emancipate women.

如果你是知识分子、上层资产阶级或有艺术倾向的贵族，你经常到西方旅行，接触西方文化，但你也非常热衷于解决他们所谓的妇女问题，以及如何解放妇女的问题。

There were various directions of thought in the late 19th, early 20th century, and some of them were quite radical.

19世纪末20世纪初有多种思潮，其中有些相当激进。

One of the main masterminds of the plot to kill Tsar Alexander II, for instance, was a woman, Sophia Perovskaya, the daughter of a well-known Russian general.

例如，刺杀沙皇亚历山大二世阴谋的主要策划者之一就是一位名叫索菲亚·佩罗夫斯卡娅的女性，她是一位著名的俄罗斯将军的女儿。

A lot of the revolutionaries were women.

许多革命者是女性。

There were, in fact, so many political radicals that were women that the Tsars had to build a second women’s prison just to hold all the female radicals.

事实上，由于女性政治激进分子太多，沙皇不得不建造第二座女子监狱来关押所有女性激进分子。

When the Bolsheviks took power, and before that, when the Tsar abdicated in February of 1917, women were ready to go.

当布尔什维克掌权时，以及在此之前，当沙皇于 1917 年 2 月退位时，女性已经做好了离开的准备。

The women artists you mentioned fit into this tradition because there was so much intellectual ferment around the time, and women were at the forefront of that, and they were the subjects of the theorizing around that.

你提到的女性艺术家符合这一传统，因为当时有如此多的知识分子骚动，而女性处于其中的最前沿，她们是围绕这一传统进行理论化的对象。

What is the proper role of a woman?

女人的正确角色是什么？

Can a woman work the way a man does?

女人可以像男人一样工作吗？

Can a woman parent the way a man does?

女人可以像男人一样养育孩子吗？

Can a woman opt out of being a parent altogether?

女人可以选择完全不做父母吗？

There was this push and pull constantly in Russia.

在俄罗斯，这种推拉不断。

In some ways, yes, they could inherit property.

在某些方面，是的，他们可以继承财产。

The medical piece is very interesting, actually.

实际上，医学文章非常有趣。

For my family, that medical tradition started after the revolution.

对于我的家人来说，这种医学传统是在革命后开始的。

It was made possible by the revolution.

革命使之成为可能。

Without the revolution, it could not have happened.

没有革命，这一切就不可能发生。

The tradition of Russian women, or women from the Russian Empire, more accurately, going into medicine is also intertwined with the radical tradition.

俄罗斯女性，或者更准确地说，来自俄罗斯帝国的女性从事医学的传统也与激进的传统交织在一起。

Women who were inclined politically toward socialism, toward revolutionary activity, were banned from these institutions, but they were also drawn to, what is the thing I can do to help people?

政治上倾向于社会主义、倾向于革命活动的女性被禁止进入这些机构，但她们也被吸引到，我能做些什么来帮助人们？

They could go into nursing, they could go into medicine, and they were lobbying constantly to be allowed into the medical institutes of the Russian Empire.

他们可以从事护理工作，也可以从事医学工作，而且他们不断游说，希望被允许进入俄罗斯帝国的医疗机构。

They toggled back and forth between allowing them, not allowing them, allowing them to audit classes, not allowing them to audit classes.

他们在允许、不允许、允许听课、不允许听课之间来回切换。

The women who had the means went to Switzerland to study medicine.

有经济能力的妇女前往瑞士学习医学。

They were often women who were politically radical.

她们通常是政治上激进的女性。

Because of that, the Tsar’s secret police noticed that there were all these women who were radically inclined, going to Switzerland to study medicine, and they said, “Wait a minute, no, no, no, we need to keep a closer eye on them.

正因为如此，沙皇的秘密警察注意到所有这些女性都非常倾向于去瑞士学习医学，她们说：“等一下，不，不，不，我们需要密切关注她们。

Let’s force them back to the Russian Empire, open a medical institute for them, and keep a close eye on them here.” That’s how that started.

让我们把他们逼回俄罗斯帝国，为他们开设一家医疗机构，并在这里密切关注他们。”事情就是这样开始的。

Once the revolution came in 1917, free higher education was allowed for everybody, including women, including Jews, which affected my family doubly because we were Jewish.

1917 年革命爆发后，所有人都可以接受免费高等教育，包括妇女，也包括犹太人，这对我的家庭产生了双重影响，因为我们是犹太人。

Institutions were legally mandated to take any kind of gendered terms out of their names.

法律规定机构必须从其名称中删除任何类型的性别术语。

They couldn’t be the Women’s Institute of something something or the Gentleman’s Institute of this or that.

他们不可能是某事的妇女学院，也不能是某事的绅士学院。

For my family, it started with the revolution, but the groundwork had been laid beforehand through this radical tradition.

对于我的家庭来说，它是从革命开始的，但基础是通过这种激进的传统预先奠定的。

On Bolshevik feminism

论布尔什维克女权主义

There were some socialists starting with Bebel, with Engels, who said, “Okay, but we can’t have a revolution without women.

从倍倍尔开始，有一些社会主义者，从恩格斯开始，他们说：“好吧，但是没有妇女，我们就不可能进行革命。

Women have a specific kind of existence, they have specific issues that need to be addressed.” Mostly, though, they were vague.

女性有一种特殊的存在，她们有需要解决的特殊问题。”但大多数情况下，它们都很模糊。

I joke that it’s like in Seinfeld, they yada yada’d the details.

我开玩笑说，就像《宋飞正传》里的那样，他们对细节了如指掌。

They would say, “Yes, women have specific issues, and we can’t have a revolution without activating women workers, but basically, there’ll be a revolution, socialism will come, yada, yada, yada, and women will be emancipated as part of the emancipated proletariat.”

他们会说，“是的，妇女有具体的问题，如果不动员女工，我们就不可能进行革命，但基本上，将会有一场革命，社会主义将会到来，雅达，雅达，雅达，妇女将作为解放的无产阶级的一部分获得解放。”

I think it was specifically women, like Alexandra Kollontai and some others, but mostly Kollontai, who really thought deeply about this, because it was obviously quite personal to her, about how specifically a revolution would emancipate women.

我认为特别是女性，比如亚历山德拉·柯伦泰（Alexandra Kollontai）和其他一些人，但主要是柯伦泰（Kollontai），真正深入思考了这个问题，因为这显然对她来说是非常个人化的，关于革命将如何具体地解放女性。

She had some of the most specific and innovative ideas about how it would help women be equal members of a socialist utopian society.

关于如何帮助妇女成为社会主义乌托邦社会的平等成员，她有一些最具体和创新的想法。

On birth control, abortion, and prudery

关于节育、堕胎和假正经

Once it was safe and free and legal, it became popular in the ruling class.

一旦它安全、自由、合法，它就在统治阶级中流行起来。

The men who were the ruling class, the Bolsheviks were quite egalitarian when they were in the underground and the stakes were low.

布尔什维克是统治阶级，当他们处于地下且赌注很低时，他们是相当平等的。

But once they got into power, the top positions were generally not given to women.

但一旦掌权后，高层职位一般不会授予女性。

The men in the positions of power were quite worried that if abortion were legalized, women would take a frivolous approach to it and not give birth because, as one of them said, they’d be worried about their figure.

掌权的男性非常担心，如果堕胎合法化，女性会轻率地对待堕胎而不生育，因为正如其中一位男性所说，她们会担心自己的身材。

They knew they needed women to have babies, to keep having babies, otherwise this country wouldn’t work.

他们知道他们需要女性生孩子，继续生孩子，否则这个国家就无法运转。

They needed workers, they needed soldiers, they needed people to produce things and defend the country.

他们需要工人，他们需要士兵，他们需要人们来生产东西并保卫国家。

They were worried that if they legalized abortion, women would make too much use of it.

他们担心如果堕胎合法化，女性会过度利用堕胎。

When Stalin came to power, he made it illegal in 1936 after he died.

1936年斯大林去世后，他上台后将其定为非法。

Kollontai was talking about liberating it from those two constraints and saying that a woman should be free to not only work for a living and be free that way, be economically free so that she doesn’t have to get married to live, and to go from her father’s house to her husband’s house.

柯伦泰正在谈论将其从这两个限制中解放出来，并说女性不仅应该自由地工作以谋生，而且应该以这种方式自由，经济上自由，这样她就不必结婚来生活，也不必从她父亲的房子到她丈夫的房子。

But she should be sexually free, in the sense that she can fall in love, find sexual pleasure in this relationship for a few days, a few weeks, a few years.

但她应该有性自由，也就是说她可以坠入爱河，在这段关系中找到性快感几天、几周、几年。

Then she says, when she’s drunk from cup’s love and she is satisfied, she can say, “Okay, that was great.

然后她说，当她喝醉了杯子的爱并且感到满足时，她可以说：“好吧，那太好了。

Thank you,” and go back to what Kollontai thought was the most important part of a woman’s life, which was her work.

谢谢你”，然后回到科伦泰认为女性生活中最重要的部分，那就是她的工作。

She wrote this in 1911.

她于 1911 年写下此文。

This was quite radical, quite revolutionary.

这是相当激进、相当革命性的。

As soon as she is marginalized and pushed out of power and becomes the Soviet Union’s ambassador to Norway, a man comes in, Aron Zalkind, who says, “Actually, we need to clamp down on the sexual freedom that Soviet young people have discovered.” All we see in the Soviet university and factory dormitories is equality, liberty, and maternity—equality for the sexes, sexual liberty for the men, and maternity for the women.

当她被边缘化并被赶下权力并成为苏联驻挪威大使时，一个名叫阿伦·扎尔金德的男人进来了，他说：“实际上，我们需要压制苏联年轻人发现的性自由。”我们在苏联的大学和工厂宿舍里看到的只是平等、自由和母性——男女平等，男性的性自由，女性的母性。

They said, “We need to clamp down on this.” They instituted basically the commandments, the sexual commandments for any young Bolsheviks.

他们说：“我们需要对此进行严厉打击。”他们基本上为所有年轻的布尔什维克制定了戒律，性戒律。

They were extremely prude, that you should have as few partners as possible, that you shouldn’t have too many sexual positions, that thinking too much about sex and having too much sex saps your revolutionary energy.

他们非常拘谨，认为你应该有尽可能少的伴侣，你不应该有太多的性姿势，过多地考虑性和进行过多的性行为会削弱你的革命能量。

This idea that you have a limited amount of energy.

这个想法表明你的能量是有限的。

We hear this from Donald Trump sometimes.

我们有时会从唐纳德·特朗普那里听到这样的说法。

“You have a limited amount of energy, and any energy that you use for sex, you’re not using for the revolution.

“你的能量是有限的，你用于性的任何能量，你都不会用于革命。

We got to keep that to a minimum.”

我们必须将其保持在最低限度。”

As you said, it became so prude, Igor Kon, who was a very famous, incredible sociologist, sexologist in the Soviet Union and then Russia, he wrote that the Soviet Union became so prudish that it would make Victorian England look promiscuous.

正如你所说，它变得如此拘谨，伊戈尔·康（Igor Kon），他是苏联和俄罗斯一位非常著名、令人难以置信的社会学家、性学家，他写道，苏联变得如此拘谨，以至于维多利亚时代的英国看起来很混乱。

I think in part that’s because these are authoritarian regimes and sexual freedom, sexuality is a kind of freedom, and it’s a lack of inhibition.

我认为部分原因是这些都是独裁政权和性自由，性是一种自由，而且缺乏抑制。

These are regimes that don’t allow for any kind of freedom in anything.

这些政权不允许任何事情有任何形式的自由。

On the Russian mating market

俄罗斯婚配市场

By the time you get to 1945 and over 50 million Soviets were killed in the intervening three decades, many of whom were men, you have places where the gender imbalance was 100 women to every 19 men.

到了 1945 年，在这三十年里有超过 5000 万苏联人被杀害，其中许多是男性，有些地方的性别失衡是每 19 名男性对应 100 名女性。

There were villages where all the men left for war, and one came back and the women literally passed him around, or that man’s wife passed him around, to the other women if they wanted to have a child.

在有些村庄里，所有的男人都去打仗，有一个男人回来了，女人就把他传给其他女人，或者那个男人的妻子把他传给其他想要孩子的女人。

In 1944, the Soviet Union rolls out this policy designed by Khrushchev to make divorce very, very difficult, so trapping men in marriages, but encouraging them to impregnate women in addition to their wives and saying, basically, don’t worry about it.

1944年，苏联推出了赫鲁晓夫制定的这项政策，使离婚变得非常非常困难，因此将男性困在婚姻中，但鼓励他们除了妻子之外还让女性怀孕，并说，基本上不用担心。

These women were not allowed to put a man’s name on the birth certificate if they were not legally married to these men.

如果这些妇女没有与这些男人合法结婚，则不允许将男人的名字写在出生证明上。

They were not allowed to seek child support from these men.

她们不被允许向这些人寻求子女抚养费。

The state said, “We’ll do it for you.

该州说：“我们会为你做的。

For every child you have, even if it’s out of wedlock, we will give you money every month until the child is of a certain age.

对于您拥有的每个孩子，即使是非婚生孩子，我们也会每月给您钱，直到孩子达到一定年龄。

The more children you have, the more money we’ll give you.

你的孩子越多，我们给你的钱就越多。

We’ll give you military-style medals the more children you have,” which is an idea they took directly from Nazi Germany.

你的孩子越多，我们就会给你军事风格的奖章。”这是他们直接从纳粹德国借鉴的想法。

Ironically, they said, “We’ll count children that were killed in World War II, we’ll count them toward your total.”

具有讽刺意味的是，他们说：“我们将统计在第二次世界大战中丧生的儿童，我们将把他们算入你们的总数中。”

Basically, what it ended up doing was incentivizing and institutionalizing bad male behavior and single motherhood.

基本上，它最终的结果是激励不良男性行为和单身母亲并使之制度化。

It created the social and legal category, a protected legal category, of the single mother.

它创造了单亲母亲的社会和法律类别，即受保护的法律类别。

The Soviet Union did get its baby boom.

苏联确实迎来了婴儿潮。

There was a bumper crop of babies in the years after World War II, but a third of them were born out of wedlock, which is not what happened in the US.

二战后的几年里，婴儿丰收，但其中三分之一是非婚生，这在美国并非如此。

A whole generation of Soviet children grew up not knowing who their fathers were because there was just a blank on their birth certificate where the father’s name would go.

整整一代苏联儿童在成长过程中都不知道自己的父亲是谁，因为他们的出生证明上只有一个空白，上面写着父亲的名字。

Also, the men who were around, who were fathers, were just slowly made irrelevant in their own homes.

此外，周围的男人，即父亲，在自己的家里慢慢变得无关紧要。

They focused maybe on the workplace, more on the bottle, and parenthood became synonymous with motherhood in the years after World War II.

他们可能更关注工作场所，更多地关注酒瓶，而在二战后的几年里，为人父母就成了母亲的代名词。

Again, if you think about how you make a baby boom with very few men is you have women hunting for men, many of whom are probably still married, their wives trying to fend off these women who are trying to take their man from them, and you still have this 80 years later in Russian society.

再说一次，如果你想想如何在男性很少的情况下创造婴儿潮，那就是女性在寻找男性，其中许多人可能仍然已婚，她们的妻子试图抵御这些试图从她们手中夺走男性的女性，而80年后的俄罗斯社会仍然存在这种情况。

This idea you get it with your mother’s milk as a girl and as a young woman that there are not—if I had a dollar for every time one of my grandmothers told me that men don’t grow on trees.

这个想法是你在小时候和年轻女人的时候从母乳中得到的，而这是不存在的——如果我的祖母每次告诉我男人不是长在树上的时候我就能得到一美元的话。

And my mother told me when I was in college, she said, “Find a husband in college because before you know it, all the good ones will be taken.”

当我上大学时，我妈妈告诉我，她说：“在大学里找个丈夫，因为在你意识到之前，所有好的丈夫都会被夺走。”

Then you hear Russian women talking about how you have to be maximally attractive, otherwise another woman will come and take your husband.

然后你会听到俄罗斯女性谈论你必须具有最大的吸引力，否则另一个女人会来抢走你的丈夫。

In Russian, you say она его уведёт, she’ll lead him away.

用俄语，你说 она его уведёт，她会把他带走。

This amazing Russian sociologist was like, “What is he, a veal calf that you could just take his rope and just move him over here to a different barn?” It’s bone-deep at this point among Russian women.

这位了不起的俄罗斯社会学家说：“他是什么？一头小牛，你可以拿着他的绳子，把他移到另一个谷仓吗？”在这一点上，这一点在俄罗斯女性中已经根深蒂固。

It does originate in the postwar years, when the pressure was on women to find a man to procreate with.

它确实起源于战后年代，当时女性面临着寻找男性共同生育的压力。

There weren’t many around.

周围人不多。

There was also a whole generation of Soviet women who just were never able to get married or have children because there were no men to do it with, and they didn’t want to be single moms.

还有整整一代苏联女性永远无法结婚或生子，因为没有男人可以与之共事，而且她们不想成为单亲妈妈。

I think that’s also a trauma that everybody has spinster aunts or spinster great-aunts who were a subject of great pity because they were never able to, as Raisa Gorbacheva said, “Know the joys of love and motherhood.”

我认为这也是一种创伤，因为每个人都有老处女阿姨或老处女阿姨，她们是一个令人非常遗憾的对象，因为她们永远无法像赖莎·戈尔巴乔娃（Raisa Gorbacheva）所说的那样，“了解爱和母性的乐趣。”

To what I was saying before is that men became so irrelevant as fathers that women came to see them, on one hand, they’re competing for men and it’s like a blood sport among Russian women.

我之前说过，男人作为父亲变得如此无关紧要，以至于女人来看他们，一方面，他们在争夺男人，这就像俄罗斯女人之间的一场血腥运动。

On the other hand, they’re treated with quite a bit of condescension and they’re seen as glorified sperm donors.

另一方面，他们却受到相当高傲的对待，并被视为光荣的精子捐赠者。

It’s great to get married, but mostly what you need them for is insemination and money.

结婚是件好事，但你需要他们的主要目的是授精和金钱。

He’s certainly not going to be a friend.

他肯定不会成为朋友。

He’s certainly not going to be a real partner.

他肯定不会成为真正的合作伙伴。

On Russian superwomen

论俄罗斯女超人

When they implemented the policy to try to get a baby boom after the war, they tried to make sure that women wouldn’t just be stay-at-home moms by tying food places and daycare nurseries to a woman’s workplace to keep them in the workforce because, given the catastrophic losses they suffered in World War II and the years preceding it, they couldn’t afford to have women stay at home the way they could in the West.

当他们实施战后试图实现婴儿潮的政策时，他们试图通过将食品场所和日托托儿所与女性的工作场所联系起来来确保女性不仅仅是全职妈妈，以让她们留在劳动力队伍中，因为考虑到她们在第二次世界大战及其前几年遭受的灾难性损失，他们无法让女性像西方国家那样呆在家里。

Women worked outside the home, they did all the household chores, they did all the cooking, they did all the child-rearing.

妇女在外面工作，她们做所有的家务、做饭、抚养孩子。

Let me give you an example.

让我举个例子。

My grandmother, who died about a year ago, this time last year, at 96, she was a chemical engineer who ran the lab at a water filtration plant outside of Moscow in a little suburb called Rublyovka.

我的祖母大约在一年前去世，即去年的这个时候，享年 96 岁。她是一名化学工程师，在莫斯科郊外一个叫鲁布廖夫卡的小郊区的一家水过滤厂负责实验室。

It provided drinking water for a lot of Moscow and the Kremlin.

它为莫斯科和克里姆林宫的大部分地区提供饮用水。

She oversaw a team of about a dozen people.

她管理着一个大约有十几人的团队。

She had to be at work at about 8:00 in the morning, having dropped off my father and his sister at school or daycare.

她必须在早上 8:00 左右上班，送我父亲和他的妹妹去学校或托儿所。

Then she would work.

然后她就去工作。

Then, at her lunch break, she would go into the surrounding forest and forage for mushrooms and berries.

然后，在午休时间，她会去周围的森林里寻找蘑菇和浆果。

Mushrooms, I don’t know if you know, are pretty dirty, so when you come home, you have to wash them, you have to dry them, then you have to marinate them or preserve them in some way, cook them, very labor intensive.

蘑菇，我不知道你是否知道，很脏，所以当你回家时，你必须清洗它们，你必须干燥它们，然后你必须腌制它们或以某种方式保存它们，煮它们，非常劳动密集型。

She’d go back to work.

她会回去工作。

Then at the end of the work day, she’d race to pick up my father and my aunt from school or from daycare, from kindergarten, then they’d go to the store, the first store, let’s say the bread store, the bakery.

然后在一天的工作结束时，她会跑去学校、托儿所、幼儿园接我父亲和阿姨，然后他们去商店，第一家商店，比如说面包店、面包店。

They’d have to wait in line to order, then they’d have to wait in the second line to pay, then they’d have to pay in the third line to pick it up.

他们必须排队点餐，然后他们必须在第二条线上等待付款，然后他们必须在第三条​​线上付款才能取货。

Then they’d go to a different store to get the milk and wait in three lines, then they’d go to a different store to get meat if they could find any scraps or vegetables.

然后他们会去另一家商店买牛奶并排三队等待，然后如果他们能找到任何残渣或蔬菜，他们就会去另一家商店买肉。

Once they did that, they’d stop by their little cellar to get the potatoes or cabbage they had been growing in the brief growing season, come home, my grandmother would make dinner, feed the kids, try to help them with their schoolwork, and wash the dishes, get them to bed, then do laundry.

一旦他们这样做了，他们就会到他们的小地窖去拿他们在短暂的生长季节里种植的土豆或卷心菜，回到家，我的祖母会做晚饭，喂孩子们，尽力帮助他们做功课，洗碗，让他们上床睡觉，然后洗衣服。

She didn’t have a washing machine, so she was doing it by hand, boiling pots of laundry on the stove, using a washboard, then drying it all.

她没有洗衣机，所以她只能用手洗，在炉子上煮一盆盆衣服，用洗衣板，然后把它们全部烘干。

If you’ve ever done that, it gets pretty stiff, so you have to iron every piece of laundry.

如果你曾经这样做过，它会变得非常僵硬，所以你必须熨烫每件衣服。

Then you have to figure out what needs repair, what socks need darning, what holes need sewing because you couldn’t just go and get a new pair of kid socks in the store.

然后你必须弄清楚哪些地方需要修理，哪些袜子需要补补，哪些洞需要缝制，因为你不能直接去商店买一双新的童袜。

She said she was just always so tired.

她说她总是那么累。

All she thought about was how she wanted a little bit more sleep.

她满脑子想的就是自己想要多睡一会儿。

My grandfather, meantime, who was an engineer and worked in the city, he’d be coming back from Moscow to Rublyovka.

与此同时，我的祖父是一名工程师，在城里工作，他将从莫斯科回到鲁布廖夫卡。

He would take the bus home.

他会坐公共汽车回家。

He would get off a couple of stops early because there were beautiful forests in this area, and he would walk home through the forest because he wanted to clear his head and breathe some fresh air.

他会提前几站下车，因为这个地区有美丽的森林，他会穿过森林回家，因为他想清醒一下头脑，呼吸一些新鲜空气。

He’d come home, have dinner, lie on the couch, read the paper, watch the TV, once they got one, while my grandmother was doing all of this.

他会回家，吃晚饭，躺在沙发上，读报纸，看电视，一旦他们有了报纸，而我的祖母正在做所有这些事情。

This was not out of the ordinary.

这并不奇怪。

By the end of the Soviet period, the average Soviet woman, after her working hours outside the home, spent about 40 hours a week doing domestic labor, which was pretty good because if you were a woman in the countryside, and you had even fewer modern conveniences, and you had farm animals and a garden to tend to or a plot of land to tend to, they did about 55 hours of domestic labor in addition to the work they did outside the home.

到苏联时期末期，普通苏联妇女在外出工作后，每周会花大约 40 个小时做家务劳动，这已经相当不错了，因为如果你是一名农村妇女，现代化的便利设施甚至更少，而且你有农场动物和花园或一块土地要照料，那么除了在家里做的工作外，她们还要做大约 55 个小时的家务劳动。

On top of that, as we said, you have to look good.

最重要的是，正如我们所说，你必须看起来不错。

You have to make it look easy.

你必须让它看起来很容易。

You don’t want to be a nag because you don’t want to drive your husband away, or you want to be able to catch a man.

你不想成为一个唠叨的人，因为你不想赶走你的丈夫，或者你想能够抓住一个男人。

By the end of the Soviet period, as one woman who wrote into a Moscow newspaper said, “Soviet women can do it all, we just don’t want to anymore.”

到苏联时期末期，正如一位在莫斯科报纸上写信的女性所说，“苏联女性可以做到这一切，我们只是不想再这样做了。”

The women like me, Western women who were living and working in Moscow at the time, said, “We’ll just wait till we get home.” I think it’s because of what I talked about before, or what you and I talked about before, which is that so many men were killed in the first half of the 20th century, and so few demands were placed on them because they were seen as an endangered species, in general.

像我这样当时在莫斯科生活和工作的西方女性说：“我们就等着回家吧。”我想这是因为我之前谈到的，或者你和我之前谈到的，那就是20世纪上半叶有那么多人被杀，而对他们的要求却很少，因为他们总体上被视为濒临灭绝的物种。

They were a resource to be fought over and protected.

它们是一种值得争夺和保护的资源。

In 1968, when the West was undergoing a sexual revolution, and women were fighting for more rights, more equality, the Soviets were talking about saving the men, protecting the men, and saying, “We’ve done enough for the women, but our men die young.” That’s after a lifetime of alcohol abuse, smoking, being largely irrelevant in the home, and obviously politically, because it’s a totalitarian system, so let’s work on protecting them.

1968年，当西方正在经历一场性革命，女性正在争取更多权利、更多平等时，苏联人却在谈论拯救男性、保护男性，并说：“我们为女性做了足够多的事情，但我们的男性却英年早逝。”那是在酗酒、吸烟、在家里基本上无关紧要之后，显然在政治上，因为这是一个极权主义制度，所以让我们努力保护他们。

Soviet men, and then Russian men, became these coddled, spoiled children essentially, where on one hand, so little was asked of them that it’s the bigotry of low expectations.

苏联男人，然后是俄罗斯男人，本质上变成了这些被娇惯、被宠坏的孩子，一方面，对他们的要求太少，这是低期望的偏执。

So little was asked of them, and very little was expected of them, and they rose to meet those very low expectations.

对他们的要求很少，对他们的期望也很少，而他们却奋起以满足那些非常低的期望。

On top of that, the idea of what made a man a manly man in Russia is he’s physically strong, but he dies a young death, or he dies an early death.

最重要的是，在俄罗斯，一个男人之所以有男子气概，是因为他身体强壮，但他死得早，或者死得早。

He drinks a lot, he smokes a lot, he’s reckless, he’s careless, and takes a lot of risk, and that usually means an early death.

他酗酒、抽烟、鲁莽、粗心、冒很大的风险，这通常意味着早逝。

If you have fewer men to begin with, and as a Russian woman, you see them dying early, and you’re fighting over them, what is the impetus for men to take care of themselves, to act better, be better, if there’s always going to be a beautiful, super competent woman to take him if you don’t want him?

如果你一开始就拥有较少的男人，而作为一名俄罗斯女人，你看到他们早死，你正在为他们而战，如果你不想要他，总是会有一个美丽、超级有能力的女人来带走他，那么男人照顾自己、表现得更好、变得更好的动力是什么？

On the importance of flowers

论鲜花的重要性

When else?

还有什么时候？

New Year’s.

新年的。

If you’re coming over just for dinner, you give the woman of the house flowers.

如果你只是过来吃晚饭，你可以给女主人送花。

You see Putin doing it all the time.

你看到普京一直在这样做。

If he gives a medal, any kind of state medal, to a woman, like Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT, he gives her flowers with the medal.

如果他向一位女性颁发奖章，无论是任何类型的国家奖章，比如 RT 的负责人玛格丽塔·西蒙尼扬 (Margarita Simonyan)，他都会在奖章的同时向她献上鲜花。

I know that when Toria Nuland and Celeste Wallander were negotiating with the Russians in the Minsk negotiations over Ukraine during the end of the Obama administration, after Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time in 2014, Surkov at the time, who was in charge of this stuff, arrived each time with a big bouquet of flowers, the national flower for the Donetsk People’s Republic, and a bouquet of the national flower of the Luhansk People’s Republic for each of the two women, kind of signifying, trolling them, saying, “You’re women first, and then you’re maybe the negotiators.” I think the role is—how would you articulate it?

我知道，奥巴马政府末期，托里亚·纽兰和塞莱斯特·沃兰德在乌克兰明斯克谈判时，2014年俄罗斯首次入侵乌克兰后，当时负责这件事的苏尔科夫每次都带着一大束鲜花到来，顿涅茨克人民共和国的国花，为每个国家都送了一束卢甘斯克人民共和国的国花。两个女人，有点暗示，戏弄她们，说：“你们首先是女人，然后你们可能才是谈判者。”我认为这个角色是——你会如何表达它？

I remember when I lived in Russia, a Westerner made a joke that all Russian women look like Jessica Rabbit.

我记得当我住在俄罗斯时，一个西方人开玩笑说所有俄罗斯女人都长得像杰西卡兔。

What do all women want?

所有女人都想要什么？

They want jewelry.

他们想要珠宝。

They want flowers.

他们想要鲜花。

They want chocolate.

他们想要巧克力。

They want manicures.

他们想要修指甲。

It’s just part of this gender essentialism that you see.

这只是你所看到的性别本质主义的一部分。

What do men want?

男人想要什么？

Men want alcohol.

男人想要酒精。

They want cars.

他们想要汽车。

They want cigarettes.

他们想要香烟。

They want prostitutes in the banya.

他们想要桑拿里的妓女。

They want hunting and fishing trips.

他们想要狩猎和钓鱼之旅。

When I was able to travel to Russia, when I lived there, all I heard was, “In Russia, men are men and women are women,” as opposed to you androgynous weirdos in the West.

当我能够去俄罗斯旅行时，当我住在那里时，我听到的只是“在俄罗斯，男人是男人，女人是女人”，而不是你们西方的雌雄同体的怪人。

I think flowers are very much a part of that, that this is what you do for women.

我认为鲜花是其中的一部分，这就是为女性所做的事情。

By the way, I had people I would interview for work.

顺便说一句，我有一些我会面试的人。

We’d meet for clearly a work lunch.

我们显然会一起吃工作午餐。

They would bring me flowers because I was a woman first.

他们会给我送花，因为我首先是一个女人。

That’s why I told the story of Surkov bringing bouquets of flowers for two of the most senior American diplomats in the Obama administration.

这就是为什么我讲述了苏尔科夫为奥巴马政府中两位最高级的美国外交官送花的故事。

He knew that he was trolling them with that by saying, “Yes, you think you’re a diplomat, but you’re a woman first and foremost.”

他知道他这样说是在戏弄他们，“是的，你认为你是一名外交官，但你首先是一个女人。”

On common Russian names

关于常见的俄罗斯名字

On Russian vs. American feminism

论俄罗斯女权主义与美国女权主义

One Russian feminist scholar put it this way.

一位俄罗斯女权主义学者这样说。

She said, “Western feminism comes in and says, we need to take care of the women, we need to protect the women and not the men.

她说：“西方女权主义进来并说，我们需要照顾女性，我们需要保护女性而不是男性。

The men have too much.

男人拥有的太多了。

We need to give women more.” In the Russian reality, it’s like, but it’s the men who are pathetic.

我们需要给女性更多。”在俄罗斯的现实中，情况确实如此，但可悲的是男人。

The women are doing just fine.

女人们做得很好。

The women will always be fine because they’re strong, resourceful.

女人永远都很好，因为她们坚强、足智多谋。

We need to worry about the men.

我们需要担心男人们。

It’s seen as having the wrong priorities for the place.

人们认为这个地方的优先事项是错误的。

Yes, there’s this idea that Western women aren’t feminine enough, that they don’t take care of themselves.

是的，有一种观点认为西方女性不够女性化，她们不会照顾自己。

So many Russian women would ask me this, how come American women, how come European women don’t take care of themselves?

很多俄罗斯女性会问我，为什么美国女性、欧洲女性都不会照顾自己？

Meaning, how come they don’t always have their nails done?

意思是，为什么他们不总是做指甲呢？

How come they always don’t have a full face of makeup on?

为什么她们总是不化全脸？

They don’t have their hair done.

他们没有做头发。

They’re not always perfectly dressed, put together.

他们并不总是穿着完美、组合在一起。

The joke I heard living in Russia was, you have to be dressed to the nines all the time, even when you take out the garbage, because what if you run into a single oligarch when you take out the garbage?

我在俄罗斯听到的一个笑话是，你必须一直穿着得体，即使你倒垃圾时也是如此，因为如果你倒垃圾时遇到一个寡头怎么办？

You want to look good.

你想看起来不错。

You never know.

你永远不知道。

It was a hashtag years before #MeToo, where Ukrainian women and then Russian women took to social media and said, “I’m not afraid to talk about my experience.

这是一个话题标签，早在 #MeToo 之前几年，乌克兰女性和俄罗斯女性就在社交媒体上表示：“我不害怕谈论我的经历。

My mother, my grandmothers, my great-grandmothers whispered about this, but I’m going to speak honestly about the harassment I encountered, the sexism I encountered, the rape, the assault that I encountered.”

我的母亲、我的祖母、我的曾祖母低声谈论过这件事，但我要诚实地讲述我遇到的骚扰、性别歧视、强奸和攻击。”

There was that, but when the #MeToo movement came from the West, there was also a class of people, including in the Western-oriented intelligentsia, that saw this as this kind of prudishness that they saw in the Soviet Union, which you and I spoke about, and they saw it as a lack of due process that they saw not just in the Soviet period, but under Putin.

确实如此，但是当 #MeToo 运动来自西方时，也有一个阶层的人，包括面向西方的知识分子，他们认为这是他们在苏联看到的那种拘谨，你和我谈到过，他们认为这是缺乏正当程序，不仅在苏联时期，而且在普京统治下也如此。

They were conflicted between, yes, women should be speaking out.

他们之间存在矛盾，是的，女性应该大声疾呼。

There were Russian women who were saying, “Yes, this is great, and we’ve been trying to push this for years.”

有些俄罗斯女性说：“是的，这太棒了，我们多年来一直在努力推动这一点。”

In this, some Western-leaning liberals and pro-Kremlin people were in alignment, which is, this is a lack of due process, and these are beloved cultural figures like Woody Allen and I’m trying to think who else.

在这方面，一些倾向西方的自由主义者和亲克里姆林宫的人是一致的，那就是，这是缺乏正当程序的，而这些人都是像伍迪·艾伦这样受人喜爱的文化人物，我想知道还有谁。

Kevin Spacey, et cetera.

凯文·史派西等。

These people that they loved because of House of Cards, because of all the Woody Allen films that were taken down without the due process that they had come to respect the West for.

他们因为《纸牌屋》而爱这些人，因为所有伍迪·艾伦的电影都在没有经过正当程序的情况下被撤下，而他们已经开始尊重西方。

Also, the Russian opposition was quite sexist and quite essentialist too.

此外，俄罗斯反对派也相当性别歧视和本质主义。

You saw when Pussy Riot was first jailed in 2012, Alexei Navalny, who had already become the standard bearer for the Russian opposition, said, “These were stupid girls.

你看，2012年“暴动小猫”第一次入狱时，已经成为俄罗斯反对派旗手的阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼说：“这些都是愚蠢的女孩。

They should have not done that, but they’re stupid, and the state should let them out because they need to be with their little kids.” They’re mothers first.

他们不应该这样做，但他们很愚蠢，国家应该让他们出去，因为他们需要和他们的小孩在一起。”她们首先是母亲。

They’re not activists first.

他们首先不是活动家。

They’re not opposition figures first.

他们首先不是反对派人物。

They’re mothers first and foremost.

她们首先是母亲。

They’re women first and foremost.

她们首先是女性。

I think that also informed things.

我认为这也说明了一些事情。

On gender attitudes and Russian politics

论性别态度和俄罗斯政治

Russia also put out an ad aimed at Western Europe and portrayed Western women on dating sites, huddled by their phone in the cold with no light because there was no Russian energy coming into Europe, matching with Russian men in Russia who are like, “Oh.

俄罗斯还针对西欧推出了一则广告，在约会网站上描绘了西方女性在寒冷的天气里挤在手机前，没有灯光，因为没有俄罗斯的能量进入欧洲，而在俄罗斯的俄罗斯男性则表示，“哦。”

Look, it’s so warm here.” Then, they fly over, and the man is in this apartment that’s so warm.

你看，这里多温暖啊。”然后，他们飞过去，那个男人就在这间温暖的公寓里。

He has the windows open in January, and there’s all these girls running around in bikinis and their underwear because it’s so warm in his apartment, and how all these frigid Western women, in both senses of the word, would be flocking to Russia because the men there are so masculine and have all the heat and electricity.

一月份他把窗户打开，所有这些女孩都穿着比基尼和内衣跑来跑去，因为他的公寓里太暖和了，所有这些冰冷的西方女性，从这个词的两个意义上来说，都会涌向俄罗斯，因为那里的男人是如此阳刚，拥有所有的热量和电力。

Under the cover of the war, Russia has pushed, Putin has pushed even more pro-natalist measures, even more restrictions on abortion.

在战争的掩护下，俄罗斯推动了，普京推动了更多的支持生育的措施，甚至更多的堕胎限制。

They’ve criminalized the child-free movement, the LGBT movement.

他们将无儿童运动、LGBT 运动定为犯罪。

The government is pushing messages that the most important thing for a young girl to learn is how to cook borscht and take care of her man.

政府正在宣传这样的信息：对于一个年轻女孩来说，最重要的是学习如何煮罗宋汤和照顾她的男人。

That was the speaker of the Duma saying that.

这是杜马议长说的。

One of Putin’s cabinet ministers is going around saying, “Hey, young girls, you don’t need a college education.

普京的一位内阁部长到处说：“嘿，年轻女孩，你们不需要大学教育。

What you do need is to get married young and start having kids as early as possible.” She herself, meanwhile, has no children and is on her second marriage.

你真正需要的是尽早结婚并尽早生孩子。”与此同时，她自己没有孩子，正在经历第二次婚姻。

The state is upping payments for women per child.

该州正在提高妇女每生一个孩子的补助金。

They’re even literally financially incentivizing teen pregnancy because they want women to have more children.

他们甚至在经济上鼓励青少年怀孕，因为他们希望女性生更多的孩子。

Ironically, Vladimir Putin announced that 2024 was to be the year of the family.

具有讽刺意味的是，弗拉基米尔·普京宣布 2024 年将是家庭年。

In September of 2024, Russia hit its lowest birth rate since Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999.

2024 年 9 月，俄罗斯的出生率创下 1999 年弗拉基米尔·普京上台以来的最低水平。

Six years before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia decriminalized domestic violence.

在全面入侵乌克兰之前六年，俄罗斯将家庭暴力合法化。

When I was reporting on this for the book, I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

当我为这本书报道这一点时，我就是无法理解它。

I kept asking lawyers, activists, victims, or survivors, “What was the point of this?

我不断地问律师、活动人士、受害者或幸存者：“这有什么意义？

Why decriminalize domestic violence?” Some said, “Oh.

为什么家庭暴力非刑事化？”有的说：“哦。

It’s to reinforce the traditional family order that the man is the head of the household, that he’s allowed anything, and that this is the traditionalist way that husbands behave.

这是为了强化传统的家庭秩序，即男人是一家之主，他可以做任何事情，这是丈夫的传统行为方式。

They beat their children, they beat their wives, and that’s how they enforced order in the home.”

他们殴打孩子，殴打妻子，这就是他们维持家庭秩序的方式。”

One said something really terrifying, which was that it was to be a kind of steam valve, that in an increasingly stagnant economy, in an increasingly authoritarian system, men who were being told to be more and more macho and more masculine weren’t able to actualize themselves economically, weren’t able to make themselves heard politically, and where was all that aggressive masculine energy supposed to go?

有人说了一些非常可怕的事情，那就是它就像一种蒸汽阀，在日益停滞的经济中，在日益独裁的体系中，那些被告知要越来越有男子气概、更有男子气概的男人无法在经济上实现自己，无法在政治上让自己被听到，所有那些咄咄逼人的男性能量应该去哪里？

Well, here was a steam valve, you could beat your wife.

好吧，这里有一个蒸汽阀，你可以打败你的妻子。

That women now in addition to everything else they were doing for society, could also be society’s whipping boy.

现在的女性除了为社会所做的一切之外，还可能成为社会的替罪羊。

Some of the best snipers the Soviet Union had were women.

苏联最优秀的狙击手中有一些是女性。

They were tank drivers.

他们是坦克驾驶员。

They were fighter pilots.

他们是战斗机飞行员。

There were all-female squadrons of fighter pilots in the Soviet military.

苏联军队中有全部由女性战斗机飞行员组成的中队。

They did everything.

他们做了一切。

They were sappers, machine gunners, spies, paratroopers.

他们是工兵、机枪手、间谍、伞兵。

Over 800,000 Soviet women fought in active combat in World War II.

超过 80 万苏联妇女在第二次世界大战中积极参战。

You see Ukraine doing that, so in some ways, that’s a historical norm, whereas Russia is not doing that.

你看到乌克兰这样做了，所以在某种程度上，这是一个历史常态，而俄罗斯却没有这样做。

Russia is sticking to that very reactionary essentialism, that essentialism we talked about.

俄罗斯坚持那种非常反动的本质主义，也就是我们谈到的那种本质主义。

Men are men, and men do man things like fight wars, and women are women, and they do woman things like have babies back at the home front.

男人就是男人，男人做男人的事，比如打仗；女人就是女人，他们做女人的事，比如回到家乡生孩子。

On Russian novels

论俄罗斯小说

I would also recommend—it’s not really a novel even though the author won the Nobel prize for literature in 2015, Svetlana Alexievich.

我还建议——尽管作者是2015年诺贝尔文学奖获得者斯维特兰娜·阿列克谢耶维奇，但这并不是一本真正的小说。

People may know her as the author of the Chernobyl Diaries which was basically pillaged by the makers of the HBO show, Chernobyl.

人们可能知道她是《切尔诺贝利日记》的作者，该日记基本上被 HBO 电视剧《切尔诺贝利》的制作者掠夺。

The book Secondhand Time completely turned my head around and made me realize that I had been writing about Russia all wrong.

《二手时间》这本书彻底改变了我的想法，让我意识到我一直在写关于俄罗斯的事情，这完全是错误的。

I would specifically recommend her book The Unwomanly Face of War, which is about these teenage Soviet girls joining the fight in World War II as machine gunners, as fighter pilots, as paratroopers.

我特别推荐她的书《战争中的非女性面孔》，这本书讲述了这些十几岁的苏联女孩作为机枪手、战斗机飞行员和伞兵加入第二次世界大战的战斗。

What’s amazing about it is it shows these young girls, they’re 16, 17, they’re girls, doing these very male things.

令人惊奇的是，它展示了这些年轻女孩，她们16岁、17岁，她们是女孩，做着这些非常男性化的事情。

If you’re talking about gender essentialism, what more male thing than being a soldier.

如果你谈论的是性别本质主义，那么还有什么比当一名士兵更适合男性呢。

Here you have these teenage girls doing all these things, and they don’t see it at all as, “Here I am doing a boy thing.

在这里，这些十几岁的女孩在做所有这些事情，她们根本不认为，“我在这里做的是男孩的事情。

I’m just doing my thing.” Because of how they were raised, because they were the first generation born after 1917, after the revolution, after all these radical reforms, they don’t see it as anything out of the ordinary, that this is something girls do too.

我只是在做我的事情。”因为他们的成长方式，因为他们是1917年之后出生的第一代，在革命之后，在所有这些激进的改革之后，他们并不认为这有什么不寻常的，这也是女孩做的事情。

I think it’s an absolutely extraordinary book.

我认为这绝对是一本非凡的书。

Then, the third that I would recommend is Mary by Vladimir Nabokov.

然后，我要推荐的第三个是弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫的《玛丽》。

It’s a book I’ve been discussing a lot with my friends from Russia, so many of whom are in exile and who miss home and want to go home.

我和来自俄罗斯的朋友们经常讨论这本书，他们中的很多人都在流亡中，想念家乡，想要回家。

I think it’s also a book that I’m sure a lot of my friends who are Iranian exiles would appreciate.

我想这也是一本我相信很多伊朗流亡朋友都会喜欢的书。

I think it’s one of the first novels Nabokov wrote in exile when he was still in Berlin.

我认为这是纳博科夫还在柏林时流亡期间写的第一部小说之一。

It’s about living with your head turned and wanting to go back to a place that doesn’t exist anymore.

这是关于你转过头去生活并想要回到一个不再存在的地方。

Going back to a place, a person, a time that exists in your memory that just doesn’t exist anymore.

回到你记忆中的一个地方、一个人、一段时间，但现在已经不存在了。

What does that mean for being happy, for living your life?

这对于快乐、过你的生活意味着什么？

It’s a really poignant, beautiful, heartbreaking book.

这是一本真正令人心酸、美丽、令人心碎的书。

Because so much of what I was writing about at the end of Motherland, my American readers, first my editors, my agent, and then people who read the book once it was released into the wild, were saying, “Oh, my God, this is so scarily prescient.

因为我在《祖国》的结尾写了很多内容，我的美国读者，首先是我的编辑，我的经纪人，然后是在这本书出版后阅读过这本书的人，都在说：“哦，天哪，这太有先见之明了。

It seems like this is the path we’re on in the US.

看来这就是我们在美国走的路。

Is this where we’re going to end up in the US?” I said, “I don’t know, but it’s not looking good.” I would love to write about that from the American perspective, but I’m doing other things now.

这就是我们最终要到达美国的地方吗？”我说：“我不知道，但看起来不太好。”我很想从美国人的角度来写这个，但我现在正在做其他事情。

Photo credit: Max Avdeev

照片来源：Max Avdeev