When we think about book history carefully, we begin to question the processes behind the physical cover and the printed pages inside. What are the publisher’s reasons for choosing a specific book? What motivates an editor’s choice of one translator over another? Robert Darnton presented the system of relationships between authors, publishers, editors, and booksellers as a cornerstone of
1 Women’s Imagined Community
In 1875, Nadezhda Belozerskaia, a 37-year-old journalist and translator, received an offer to collaborate with the journal Ancient and New Russia (Древняя и Новая Россия). The editor appreciated her style, diligence, and attention to detail. He had only one condition: Belozerskaia had to use the editor’s name to sign her work because “the public would not accept [a female name]; a woman, the first case”4 Having declined the humiliating offer, Belozerskaia nevertheless agreed to publish under the pseudonym Without Fury (Б. Гнв). In the eight years that followed, she signed her real name, N. Belozerskaia, to the article “Royal Weddings in Russia” (“Царское венчание в России”).5 That
In the mid-nineteenth century, Belozerskaia was a rare example of a woman journalist who demanded that her texts be properly attributed. Most women who worked in the print market as authors, journalists, rewriters, and translators in the mid-nineteenth century remained silent, unnamed, and excluded from the historical record and the public sphere. The phenomenon of remaining unidentified in the public sphere was not unique to Russia: Nineteenth-century Canada, for example, was characterized by women’s exceptional anonymous participation in the printing market.6 Like their Russian counterparts, Canadian women were highly engaged in book production as translators, bookbinders, and authors. In both countries, they promoted philanthropic initiatives rather than fought for political rights as suffragists.7 They predominantly published literature for children and rarely intervened in political debates or discussions. The result of their labour was not appreciated publicly; in exceptional cases, critics emphasized the accuracy of a translation, but for the most part, women’s work in the publishing industry remained unnoticed. George Eliot highlighted the gender-specificity of translators’ work, advising her colleagues, that is, “all young women [italics, mb] and some middle-aged gentlemen”: “We had meant to say something of the moral qualities especially demanded in the translator—the patience, the rigid fidelity, and the sense of responsibility in interpreting another man’s mind.”8
The main feature that made Russian women translators different from their Canadian counterparts was that Russians found a way to institutionalize their labour activity. They created the Women’s Publishing Cooperative, a union of anonymous intellectuals who nevertheless identified themselves as women. With the concept of imagined community, Anderson underlined the importance of shared individual experience.9 Incapable of expressing their agency (and identities) openly, translators, illustrators, and editors replicated their individual experiences in the books they published. The shared anonymous working experience addressed the challenge of women’s inclusion in the public sphere better than the public debates around the so-called “woman question” (женский вопрос).10 Nameless as individuals, women entered a hitherto
As a gender-based imagined community, the wpc relates to the concept of self-definition through the establishment of book standards. In order to go into production, a book had to be attractive for children and ease the teaching process for mothers. Before the wpc decided to translate a book, the original volume had to be approved by the wpc’s informal scientific board. It had to reflect the latest scientific discoveries in history, geography, and physics and communicate it in age-appropriate ways. For the first five years of its existence, the wpc focused exclusively on the publication of children’s literature. Later, it published works that would provide a comparative perspective on women’s labour conditions and professional lives. By addressing women as professionals and organizing the labour process as an enterprise, the wpc moved away from the established representation of women as mothers. As individuals, the Russian women translators who were members of the wpc were very similar to their anonymous Canadian colleagues. As a community, the wpc pursued the goal of helping women enter the public sphere. In this respect, they acted like British feminists, who openly fought for their rights. The Russian case study allows for a better understanding of the transformation of the anonymous precarious intellectual worker into a collective public actor and the creation of an imagined community based on gender.
The wpc was first mentioned in an article by historian Josef Barenbaum.11 Barenbaum traced the wpc’s connections with the revolutionary print market and revealed that the same shops that sold wpc books were also involved in the publication of uncensored literature. Beyond Barenbaum, the wpc is mentioned only in the memoirs of members. The first was a biography of Nadezhda Stasova, one of the most active members of the wpc and a prominent lobbyist for women’s higher education.12 Referring to Stasov, other memoirs mention the artel occasionally as one of the symbols of the liberal era during the reign of Alexander ii, without analyzing the nature of the union. In this chapter, I draw on the correspondence between wpc members, which is preserved in
2 Prototypes
Known today as the Women’s Publishing Cooperative, the Women Translators Publishing House (издательство переводчиц), the Women Translators’ Artel (work collective) (женская издательская артель), and the Stasova and Trubnikova Publishing House (издательство Стасовой и Трубниковой) were different names of the same enterprise that existed in St. Petersburg (later Petrograd, Leningrad, now St. Petersburg again) between 1863 and 1879.15 This initiative was the realization of another project that had remained only on paper. In 1861, Anna Engelhardt, a chemist and the first Russian woman to work as a seller in a bookshop, and Petr Lavrov, one of the founders of Russian socialism, developed the founding principles for a future society that would offer women of any social class the opportunity to become independent breadwinners. They called it the Women’s Labour Society (Общество женского труда) and drafted the charter:
- 1.Women occupy one of the most unfortunate positions in our society.
- 2.Most jobs are inaccessible to women. This is the case because of the discomfort of society related to encountering women in men’s spaces rather than women’s inability to do these jobs.
- 3.The consequences of women occupying this [unfortunate] position negatively influence the social order.
- 4.Women’s difficulty in achieving financial security degrades them in the eyes of man. He looks at woman as a dependent, a lesser creature. All
these troubles—ethical and economic—provoke us to establish a society that will organize women’s workplaces on [the basis of] equitable principles.16
Engelhardt and Lavrov saw the Women’s Labour Society as a prototype for a women’s labour union. The enterprise was considered an experiment that would prove women’s ability to do the same jobs as men. Although numerous wives helped their husbands write and edit books (Anna Dostoevskaia, for example), this job was considered a reliable wife’s responsibility rather than a professional job deserving of payment. The founders believed that the idea that women were incapable of performing men’s work was a product of social bigotry and had nothing to do with any innate attributes of women. The Society planned to open a bookbindery and publishing houses for children’s literature and academic scholarship. The emergence of an enterprise run exclusively by women could move the discussion concerning women’s rights to a new level. The problem was that both Engelhardt and Lavrov were considered disloyal to the Russian government and could not receive permission from the censor’s office to initiate such enterprise; thus, the project was never realized.
When I proposed, in 1859, to open a printing-office for women, I was told that setting up type would degrade and injure them, and that I could scarcely suggest a more suitable employment; yet, even while these warnings were being given, girls were extensively employed, in an inferior capacity, in printing establishments as machine feeders; a branch of the business which appeared to me so unsuitable, that I never allowed it to be undertaken by girls in the office I eventually started for female compositors.18
3 The Women’s Publishing Cooperative
Various features of the unrealized Women’s Labour Society became the starting points for another activist, Mariia Trubnikova (1835–1897). The daughter of Camille Le Dentu,20 a translator and a mother of four children, Trubnikova was fully aware of Engelhardt and Lavrov’s unsuccessful attempt to organize a women’s union. Still, she believed that a similar project was feasible. Trubnikova was a member of the so-called Female Triumvirate (Женский триумвират), the informal alliance of three women: Nadezhda Stasova, Anna Filosofova, and Mariia Trubnikova.
Nadezhda Stasova (1820–1896) was known as the sister of music critic Vladimir Stasov, the latter of whom advocated for musical realism and the Five (Могучая Кучка)21 in the press. Sometimes she is remembered as the daughter of architect Vasily Stasov. Another relative, Dmitry Stasov, was a lawyer who defended Karakozov’s group.22 As for her mother, we know that she died of cholera when Nadezhda was a little girl. In 1859, after returning from a European voyage, during which Stasova had been treated for depression, she engaged in charity work and later joined the struggle for women’s access to higher education.
Anna Filosofova (1837–1912) was the daughter of Anna Sulmenova and Pavel Diagilev, members of the hereditary nobility. As she later wrote, she joined Trubnikova’s circle out of curiosity: she had not received a decent education during her childhood and was trying to fill in the gaps. In 1855, she married
Trubnikova suggested a humble but more feasible plan as compared to Engelhardt and Lavrov’s proposal. She designed a cooperative for women translators. The charter of her project contained five paragraphs:
- 1.The maximum number of members of the Women’s Publishing Cooperative is 100.
- 2.Members elect, by mutual agreement, two head managers, a secretary, and an accountant who will manage the Cooperative’s affairs.
- 3.The Cooperative’s principal affairs consist of publishing academic and children’s books, both original and translations.
- 4.At its founding, each member of the Cooperative should make a deposit.
- 5.The deposit may be paid in money or labour: original or translated articles are acceptable.24
Mariia Trubnikova and Nadezhda Stasova were elected the managers of the wpc. Trubnikova was responsible for managing relationships with authors and editors, and Stasova organized the work of bookbindery and book distribution. Trubnikova’s sister, Vera Cherkesova (Ivasheva), worked as an accountant.
The difference between Lavrov’s and Trubnikova’s initiatives was scale. Lavrov and Engelhardt were interested in a grand experiment that would lead to a renewed society. Although theoretically achievable, the project ended before the realization of the plan because of a lack of practical organizational skills: organizers could not reach agreement on the question of whether noblewomen could join the Women’s Labour Society. Trubnikova, on the contrary, was not a prolific theoretician of women’s labour; rather, she was invested in efforts to employ women in her close circle and to publish books for children. In terms of practical questions concerning the creation of distinct positions, wpc members did not openly declare gender independence or class equality. While exclusively women performed the translation work, men participated in other stages of production.25 The gradual inclusion of women into male institutions met with less resistance from the conservative public because it addressed the woman question more subtly than the open confrontation
The choice of the cooperative as the form of corporation was natural for the organizers: a fair salary based on workers’ contributions and collective management of the enterprise was a key feature of organizations of this type.27 Stasova’s brother recalled: “All [new] enterprises tended to take this form … Partnership and equality was the maxim of the era.”28 Another reason for choosing to work collectively was that it was subject to relatively simple regulations. Though the term cooperative (артель) had existed in Russia since the 1830s, this form of enterprise was most popular among peasants or seasonal workers.29 Because collective agricultural work or mutually beneficial construction projects (like watermills) were private affairs and did not interfere with the state’s interests, the legal regulation of artels was laissez-faire. In the case of the wpc, however, the relaxed regulation enjoyed by other cooperative enterprises remained elusive because wpc organizers stepped into a politically sensitive field: the government zealously controlled book printing. Multiple bureaucrats scrutinized each stage of the publishing process. A censor could remove pages from a printed book, prohibit the circulation of a released book, and destroy all copies. A permit for the organization of the enterprise had to be acquired.
The case of this exclusively female cooperative was help up in bureaucratic red tape for three years, and the decision was ultimately unfavorable. Although the censorship bureau of the Third Department of Imperial Chancellery did not find any reason to prevent the establishment of the cooperative in principle, the Minister of Internal Affairs rejected the wpc’s application: “The minister does not accept it as possible to solicit the approval of a society established
4 Members
The precise number of women translators who joined the artel fluctuated annually. Barenbaum mentioned thirty-six women,31 Cherkesova, twenty-seven women,32 while Shtakenshnaider mistakenly counted one hundred members33—the artel never reached the limit defined by the charter. In 1865, according to Tyrkova, there were fifty-four women members,34 and in the opinion of Iukina, there were fifty-three members.35 Poliksena Stasova, a wpc member, gives the following numbers:
Membership of the Women’s Publishing Cooperative
Year |
Members |
|---|---|
1863 |
36 |
1864 |
54 |
1865 |
63 |
Vladimir Stasov identified “the most active translators and editors” as follows: Nadezhda Belozerskaia, Anna Engelhardt, Anna Filosofova, Mariia Ermolova, Elizaveta Beketova, Alexandra Markelova, Vera Pechatkina, Poliksena Stasova, Mariia Men’zhinskaia, Vera Ivasheva, Anna Shakeeva, [no name given] Tiblen, Olga Butakova, Elena Shtakenshnaider, Anna Shulgovskaia. In his list of the most active members, Stasov included only those members of the artel who were part of the Russian nobility. He did not mention those who were not members of the old nobility or those who could compromise the enterprise’s liability.36 Submitted as a list without commentary, wpc members symbolize
A closer look at the list of translators paints a picture that does not fit the existing coordination system proposed by Richard Stites and which was taken for granted by historians of the Russian women’s movement. Stites finds the conflict between “aristocrats” and “nihilists” to be one of the definitive characteristics of the Russian women’s movement.38 Borrowed from fictional literature, this division obscures the long period of coordination that was based on gender solidarity rather than political alliances or social origin. The wpc united women from across the socio-political spectrum. For example, at one pole, we find the aristocrat Mariia Ermolova (1825–1905). A socialite, as Tyrkova describes her,39 Ermolova was appointed the first inspector of medical courses in St. Petersburg. Her presence in the field guaranteed that medical courses would be seen as respectable in the eyes of the conservative public. Considered by organizers as someone who would enforce moral conduct, Ermolova was not taken seriously by liberal critics. A humorist wrote the following about her:
At the middle of the spectrum was Alexandra Markelova-Karrik (1832–1916), the partially deaf daughter of a middle-class nobleman and a single mother. After moving to St. Petersburg, she joined the Znamenskaia commune, the most well-known Fourierist experimental community in Russia. Her ties to the commune and single motherhood raised suspicions among tsarist authorities, and she was placed under police surveillance permanently. At the same time, Poliksena Stasova considered Markelova-Karrik one of “the most important and active members” of the artel.41 Apart from working for the wpc, Markelova-Karrik also translated for St. Petersburg News (Ведомости). She worked at the newspaper daily, including Sundays. In a letter to Polinksena Stasova, she wrote that she is a “hunted nag,” overwhelmed by the amount of work at the newspaper.42 In another letter, apologizing for unfinished work, she called herself “the animal, prohibited in Talmud. I could refer to work, to my ‘unhealthy heart,’ as you ironically wrote, but anyone could remind me that I had had to complete the work [the text] beforehand and do not bother people, from whom I’ve never seen anything less than compassion.”43 These letters reveal her modesty, which is less the hysterical humility of a desperate person but rather the sardonic modesty of a self-respecting woman who realizes the limits of her potential and yet continues to conduct herself with dignity.
The other pole of the spectrum was occupied by Mariia Mariia Beteva- Turgeneva (before 1839–1892), one of the first revolutionaries in Russia.
Comparing these three members’ lives and experiences demonstrates that the wpc cannot be described as a proto-political enterprise whose members held similar political views. Furthermore, it is not true that women united exclusively for financial independence. Nadezhda Stasova and Mariia Menzhinskaia were wealthy enough already and did not need to work. Still, for most members, the wpc was one of the only opportunities they had to work. Along with joining the wpc, they also worked for multiple newspapers. Such was the case of Nadezhda Belozerskaia; after her divorce, she wrote: “I didn’t want to ask for child support. With youthful cockiness, I decided to raise them by myself and give them secondary and higher education [the last was achievable in her sons’ case only, mb]. And I did.”48 She combined her work in the wpc with her position as Nikolai Kostomarov’s secretary; he was a prominent—and prolific—historian.
Because of the symbolic discontinuity resulting from the tradition of changing surnames after marriage, another wpc member, Ekaterina Il’ina-Tsenina-Zhukovskaia (1841–1913), might be mistaken for three different people in the sources. Ekaterina Il’ina became Tsenina to escape from her parents. As Tsenina, she joined the wpc49 and Znamenskaia commune. She joined the commune after she fled from her first husband. Later, as Zhukovskaia
What united these very different women? The key threads that tied them together were gender solidarity and their shared need to confront prejudices about women’s lack of “fitness” for institutionalized intellectual work. The note “Women’s Publishing Edition” printed on the book cover was a means to highlight women’s exit from the private sphere while simultaneously proclaiming their public agency. Through this imprint, the wpc absorbed the names of all its individual members and promoted the labour of the entire gender. At the same time, individual members preserved their traditional roles as mothers, concealing the agentic dimensions of their public identities. This blend of the traditional and activist roles of women is important for understanding the nature of an imagined community: whereas motherhood was visible, only a few devoted members emphasized their translation work. In wpc correspondence, members explained their absence from meetings by citing sick children and, in the very same letters, debated whether or not to pay dividends. In other words, anxiety about a child’s health was combined with a discussion about the health of the enterprise. The integration of motherhood into activism was also reflected in the wpc’s selection of books to publish, which I will discuss below.
Cross-referencing archival data makes it possible to confirm who worked on specific books. The challenge, however, is that even for a double translation (a translation made from another translation instead of the original), whereas the name of the English or German translator is listed in the introduction, the female translator remained anonymous,52 despite the fact that male translators were usually identified in books in the nineteenth century.53 The wpc did not mention translators’ names on the cover or front pages or in the editorial
While the translators’ names remained unknown, the wpc benefited from its association with famous men. In some cases, the inability to list a man’s name on the book cover was grounds for refusing to translate an important text. For example, the wpc did not translate William Kampenter’s book because the most famous Russian physiologist, Ivan Sechenov, did not share his view. Sechenov agreed to supervise the translation anonymously, but the wpc decided that without his name on the cover, the book would sell poorly and did not translate it in the end.54 The single exception to the rule of anonymity might be An Old-Fashioned Girl by Louisa May Alcott. The Russian State Library Catalog lists Elizaveta Beketova as translator. Still, all the original copies of that edition are lost, and we cannot confirm whether Beketova’s name was actually on the cover page.
5 Why Did It Last So Long?
How was the Women’s Publishing Cooperative able to operate for as long as it did despite its status as a partially unofficial enterprise? Statistics offer one possible answer to this question. Despite the common belief that rural men represented the majority of migrants to St. Petersburg after the abolition of serfdom, this was not the case. In 1860, the population of the city was 464,656 people. Of this number, only 176,320 (38 percent) persons were women. Five years later, the number of women had increased to 221,415 (41 percent), whereas the number of men remained almost the same (318,060). So, 45,000 women migrated to the capital within five years,55 and these women were looking for jobs. We do not know how many were literate, but the increasing number of women’s magazines proves the active participation of women in the economic life of the city. Most of these magazines did not cover politics or social problems,
Another answer concerns the flourishing print market. New typographic technologies drastically decreased the costs of printing. The wpc’s books cost between ten kopecks and two to three rubles and were affordable for the literate citizenry.58 The cooperative, thus, was part of a movement that transformed books into instruments of enlightenment rather than symbols of prosperity or a hobby. The government included wpc books on the official list of literature recommended to schoolteachers. This decision was only partially an economic choice; mostly, this inclusion was a genuine attempt on the part of the state to increase opportunities for mothers and future generations of women. Poliksena Stasova, a wpc member, linked the lack of appropriate literature to the low level of girls’ primary education and their consequent exclusion from public life; she saw it as her duty to fill this lacuna.59
The third answer to the question of why the wpc was able to operate for ten years, whereas other similar enterprises operating at the same time barely survived for two years was the organizers’ wealth and connections. Family ties did not guarantee financial prosperity, but they did give the whole enterprise a certain level of stability other corporations did not enjoy. The cooperative was never criticized for being (too) radical, and its success was partially due to the support it received from moderately progressive men. There were also some rather famous men among the wpc’s scientific advisers: Dmitry Mendeleev, Ivan Sechenov, and Andrey Beketov, whose names appeared on the title pages or in the prefaces of wpc books. Collaboration with famous men played a dual role in the destiny of the enterprise. On the one hand, wpc academic advisers were the most advanced professors in Russian higher education. The enterprise shielded itself due to the presence of men and stood above reproach because of these men’s pro-emancipatory goals. On the other hand, men’s
6 What Did the wpc Publish?
The first book released by the wpc was Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairytales (1864). Often mentioned in memoirs and research, this book is considered the most significant achievement of the cooperative. The first Russian edition of Fairytales that came out was missing two tales—“Heaven’s Garden” and “Angel”—because of censorship. Furthermore, all illustrations of angels, queens, and kings had to be redrawn because their crowns and wings had to be removed.60 Despite these difficulties, Fairytales received a great deal of public interest. Released right before the New Year holidays, the first edition sold within a month, and two more editions were published, with an overall print run of 6,800 copies. The book also received favorable reviews from critics, who remarked on the quality of the translation and Anderson’s style and language. The influential journal in the Russian Empire The Contemporary (Современник) remarked that this book was the first Russian book to be produced entirely by women. wpc members carried out all aspects of the process, from the translation, to the illustrations and editing, to the printing and binding.61 The enterprise repeated its success in 1868 by releasing New Fairytales.
The following three books also addressed children education: translations of Augustin Thierry’s Stories of Time Merovingian (1864), Hermann Wagner’s In Nature (1864), and Henry Walter Bates The Naturalist on the River Amazons (1865). The challenge of choosing specific books to translate was dictated by limited sources that overlapped with ambitious goals. The cooperative volumes aimed to address the need to disseminate an accurate and deep knowledge of European history, the foundations of geography and life science, but at the same time, they had to be captivating works. Educators understood the lack of such readings.62 The artel met this challenge. Critics wrote about the translation of Thierry that it was “a brilliant volume on the time of the first French kings, which combines a deep historical excavation of sources and vivid narration.”63 Bates’ volume soon became famous because of the news that Charles
The next volume, Tales of Ancient People (1865), was written by Ivan Khudiakov, a folklorist and future revolutionary. Tales included five booklets on history, starting with Ancient Rome, and the wpc published three of them. The book, addressing the social order of ancient times, contained thoughts on the welfare state, social order, and the nature of power. Discussing Massalia, one of the ancient Greek colonies, Khudiakov mentioned: “This city was perfectly organized. There was no king but a people’s government.”64 Underlying the idea of the commonwealth, the author constantly referred to differences between ancient and modern times in favor of modern-day civilization that “tends to educate hundreds of millions of people, whereas Greek society was limited to hundreds of thousands.”65 Though memoirists do not doubt the authorship of these booklets, the book itself did not contain author’s name; only the titles, “Women Translators’ Edition” and “O. I. Bakst Printing House,” were printed on the cover page.
Next, the wpc released The Book of Travel Novels, a series of stories based on Theodor Dielitz’s writing (1868), and Оttо Ule’s Why and Because (1868), an illustrated physics encyclopedia for children. This book answered questions about the nature of heating, crystallization, mixtures, etc. The last two books, which published for children, were two novels by Louisa May Alcott: An Old-Fashioned Girl (translated in 1875) and Little Women (translated in 1876).
It is difficult to accurately access the wpc’s impact on the market because the book history of the Russian Empire does not have enough data concerning print runs of works published in the mid-nineteenth century. However, there are a few examples that might be useful as points of comparison: in 1864, forty-one books for children were printed in the Russian Empire, and the wpc published three of them.66 As for the number of copies printed, in some cases, wpc editions were comparable to copies of The Contemporary, the most famous magazine of the time,67 and exceeded the number of copies of Herzen’s The Bell (Колокол), which had print runs of 500 to 2,500 copies, respectively, between 1857 and 1867.68
7
Two books diverged from the general book selection policy of the wpc and addressed women as professionals. Women’s Labour and A Handbook for Hospital Sisters were some of the first examples of Russian nonfiction literature “for women” that neither addressed motherhood nor offered moralizing advice on women’s public behavior. Further, there has been no analysis of these works, which prompted me to take a closer look at their content.
On the one hand, the book introduces the reader to the current conditions in different industries in which women can work. On the other hand, [the volume] demonstrates women’s roles in many fields of work and proves that it is possible to expand women’s labour rights and use women’s labour power in different types of technological industries. The weakness of the book is the absence of a rational understanding of the woman’s question. The book points out the realistic chances that women will gain the equal right to work in different industries. Still, it misses the consequences of such equality, and how women themselves may contribute to an ultimate solution to the woman question.69
As with the wpc’s other books, translators’ names remain unknown to the public. Only the authorship of the introductory article is mentioned: Petr Tkachev.
When labour was a difficult, unavoidable responsibility, men tried to avoid it and shifted [work] to women, or at least did not exclude women from the labour market. When labour became “a right,” one began to feel
the lack of it; women had to leave the market, and their ability to compete with men was taken away.74
As one of the first Russian Marxists, Tkachev expanded the definition of inequality to include gender and proposed that women’s opportunities be understood in terms of rights rather than obligations. He placed gender inequality in labour on a similar level as class inequality—and was harshly criticized for it. Aleksei Suvorin (under the name Stranger [Незнакомец]) accused Tkachev of amateurism and a lack of knowledge of French history. He shamed Trubnikova and Stasova for cooperating with a revolutionary romantic.75 The popular journal Fatherland Notes (Отечественные записки) criticized the book for unnecessary theorization, asserting that the books by Penny and Daul were written as reference books with useful addresses and numbers, whereas the Russian edition criticized the current social order without providing any guidance for women looking for work.76 In response to critics, Tkachev insisted on the economic basis of women’s oppression and desperately attempted to link gender inequality with women’s economic conditions.77 He formulated what we would call intersectional oppression—overlapping class and gender oppression—the concept Gayatri Spivak introduced to political and cultural theory in the twentieth century.78
Vladimir Stasov, Nadezhda’s brother and a reliable memoirist, meticulously traced Stasova’s life path. Still, he mentioned the publication of Daul’s and Penny’s volumes only once, providing the translators’ names: Mariia Malysheva, Nadezhda Belozerskaia, A. N. Shulgovskaia, and Olga Pushkareva.79 The absence of any mention of the scandalous public debate involving all the liberal newspapers in the capital must have been an intentional omission. Tkachev had a reputation as a radical, whereas Stasov described the artel as a progressive charitable and educational enterprise without a revolutionary bent.
A Handbook for Hospital Sisters (1877) by Florence Sarah Lees was the second book published by the artel that was addressed to female professionals rather than to mothers. Lees wrote this book after years of practicing under Florence Nightingale’s supervision. It was the first professional literature for nurses
The erasure of the single book that addressed women’s professional problems from public memory is significant. The question of education and children’s literature was frequently discussed in the media and attracted considerable public attention. Theoretical discussions about women’s moral destiny were also of interest to men. What stayed hidden from the public eyes, then, were women’s professional lives. Medicine was a new profession open to women; public concerns about women in the field included proposals to dress corpses during anatomy classes to ensure the maintenance of moral standards.82 The fact that the wpc addressed the book to female medical professionals and not mothers has heretofore been ignored by historians.
8 Conclusion
The Women’s Publishing Cooperative existed from 1863 until 1879, when its board decided to officially shut down the enterprise because the artel had not published a single book for two years. The cooperative boasted several features that determined the destiny of the enterprise and the direction of the Russian feminist movement that emerged in the 1860s. Attaining public visibility without open confrontation was one of them. The Female Triumvirate tended to remain in the shadows of men, following traditional patterns established by women engaged in public life, i.e., charity work. But their interpretation of charity work went far beyond its typical conceptualization. Instead
The Women’s Publishing Cooperative was not a single enterprise initiated by pioneers of the Russian feminist movement. The artel also successfully lobbied for the establishment of the first university for women. By opening up opportunities for women to study and work, the wpc improved the lives of the next generation of Russian women and taught and supported them. In a stance that was unimaginable for men, they resisted the myth that there was a perpetual conflict between parents and children, signaling their readiness for the changes their future daughters—both real and symbolic—were going to make to the existing system. The generation of the Figner sisters and Vera Subbotina, the best-known women rebels, was raised by the women who published books and organized study courses rather than by the men who dreamed about new utopias.
The case of the wpc offers a broader perspective on the history of women’s unions in the nineteenth century. It encourages researchers to revise the existing chronology of the feminist movement and search for other evidence
The author dedicates the chapter to all invisible women of the Feminist Antiwar Resistance. Darnton 1990, 107–135.
Belozerskaia 1913, 933.
Gersons 2010. See the chapter “Women and Print in Canadian Colonies.”
Fraisse 2015, 84.
Eliot 1855, 1014–1015.
Anderson 2006, 37–40.
In Russia, the “woman question” was an umbrella term that united all spheres of life not marked as men’s: childbirth, family, women’s education, marital legal rights, and prostitution. I oppose applying the concept of the “woman question” to the wpc’s activities because in Russia, “the question” was publicly posed and resolved without attention to the perspective of women who joined the discussion. See, for instance, Stites 1978, 29–64.
Women’s Translation Artel was the name used by its members between 1863 and 1867. Stasova and Trubnikova Publishing House was the official name of the wpc between 1867 and 1879. The Women’s Publishing House was the name mostly used by critics and memoirists. The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History translates the title as Women’s Publishing Cooperative. To avoid misunderstanding, I use the Oxford translation in the text.
Mazovetskaia 2001, 53–54.
Faithfull 1871, 6.
See, for instance, Public Opinion, 39.
Camille Le Dentu is known for following her husband Vasilii Ivashev into exile after the Decembrist revolt of 1825 (Pavliuchenko 1986, 69–70).
The union of five composers: Mily Balakirev, César Cui, Modest Mussorgskii, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alexander Borodin.
Dmitry Karakozov was an early Russian terrorist who attempted to kill tsar Alexander ii in 1866.
The military reforms included, among other things, the abolition of physical punishment in the army and a transformation of the nature of service: Instead of recruits who served in the army for 20 years, the reforms called for a period of conscription ranging from 1 to 12 years depending on the educational level and family status of the conscript.
Barenbaum 1965, 227–228.
Compare with Faithfull, who also did not exclude male labour in her factory and emphasized that a working woman should still be a benevolent mother and a loyal wife.
Stasov 1899, 127.
Isaev 1881, i–vi. The author follows the transformation of the term artel from collective work in which all members were united by their lower class origins and their common goal to finish work to the form of an enterprise based on the principles of equality, joint capital, and collective physical effort.
Stasov 1899, 122–123.
Isaev 1881, iii.
Barenbaum 1965, 226.
Barenbaum 1965, 226.
Cherkesova 1899, 27.
Shtakenshnaider 1934, 332.
Tyrkova 1915, 136.
Iukina 2007, 179.
Stasov 1899, 125.
Stites 1990, 64–115.
Tyrkova 1915, 135.
Martʹianov 1891, 87. In original: Благотворить она умела/ И знала всяческое дело/ Но женские взяв в руки курсы/ Создала что-то вроде бурсы. I’m grateful to Katya Knyazeva for an appropriate translation.
Stasova 1900, 28.
Письма от Каррик Александры Григорьевны к Поликсене Степановне Стасовой [Letters from Karrik, Alexandra Grigorievna to Poliksena Stepanovna Stasova] Case 294, Inventory 5, Fond 294, Institute of Russian Literature, IRLI (Институт Русской Литературы, ИРЛИ), St. Petersburg.
Письма от Маркеловой Александры Григорьевны к Поликсене Степановне Стасовой [Letters from Markelova, Alexandra Grigor’evna to Poliksena Stepanovna Stasova]. Case 292, Inventory 5, Fond 294, irli.
Ovsiannikov 1999, 266–277. Though Ovsiannikov’s text corresponds with other sources, his essay does not contain any references or bibliography and should be treated with caution.
Other sources confirm that Beteva was Trubnikova’s cousin. Serno-Solovievich writes in a letter to Mariia Trubnikova that “In Zurich, they definitively don’t ask for any records or diplomas to listen the lecture. Please, discuss it with M. Turgeneva” (Serno-Solovievich 1935, 400).
Pavluchenko 1988, 228–229.
Sofia Perovskaia: Russian terrorist, the organizer of the successful assassination of tsar Alexander ii (1881). The first woman in Russia executed by hanging.
Belozerskaia 1913, 925–941.
Pavliuchenko 1988, 133.
Chukovskii 1967, 311.
For the reconstructed list of translators, and the sum of members’ dividends, see Appendix 2.
Levin 1985, 9–10. According to Levin, the translator’s anonymity was a specific feature of the 17th and 18th centuries but not later.
Barenbaum 1965, 231–232.
Karnovich 1865, 61.
Tishkin 1984, 127.
Kufaev 2003, 157.
Strahov 1937, 118–119.
Stasova 1918, 5–7; “Мои воспоминания” [My memoirs], Folder 4, Case 286, Fond 2711 Российский государственный архив литературы и искусства (Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts, rgali), Moscow.
Stasov 1899, 135.
Stasov 1899, 131.
Stasova 1918, 7.
Stasov 1899, 137.
Khudiakov 1865, 22.
Khudiakov 1865, 8.
Frolova 1988, 28.
In 1861, more than 7,000 copies of The Contemporary were printed; 6,800 copies of the wpc’s Andersen’s Fairytales were printed. For details, see Appendix 1.
Frolova 1988, 60.
Zlatkovskii 1875, 10.
Tkachev 1990 [1869], 393–405.
Stasov 1899, 146.
Abramov 1886, 9.
Women had voluntarily participated in wars as sisters of mercy since the Crimean War (1853–1856). In 1872, four years before the Turkish war, the first women’s medical course was established at the Medical Academy. One of the wpc’s members, Mariia Ermolova, became its first director.
Svatikov 1916, 13.
For instance, Iukina and Guseva 2004, 109–112; Likhacheva 1899, 483–487.
About parallel historical narratives, see Anderson 2006, 204.
The table is created based on a compilation of several sources. The first is Poliksena Stasova’s article about the wpc (1900). The second set of sources includes invoices preserved in Stasova’s archive (Case 349, Inventory 5, Fond 294, irli) and the wpc financial report (case 242, inventory 5, Fond 294, IRLI). The third source is Stasov’s memoirs (1899). Since none of sources is complete, I have included the translator’s name in the list in case it is mentioned in at least one source.
Рукописи Поликсены Стасовой об артели. Дело 352, опись 5, фонд 294, ИРЛИ [Poliksena Stasova’s notes about the artel. Case 352, Inventory 5, Fond 294, irli]. Two separate pages of contributions are preserved. Apparently, the first part of the list (Belozerskaia-N. V. Stasova, lines 1–16) reflects the very first contributors. The second part of the list (Beketova-Ivanova, lines 17–28) is titled “Contribution of those who were wpc members from 1863 until 1869.” The second part of the list should be interpreted as a list of those who joined wpc when it was already operating.
Appendixes. From Anonymity to Public Agency: The Women's Publishing Cooperative in Saint Petersburg, 1863–1879
Appendix 1.
Translators’ names and number of books copies85
Title |
Year |
Translators |
# of copies |
|---|---|---|---|
Hans Christian Andersen, Fairytales |
1864 |
Mariia Malysheva Alexandra Markelova Anna Shulgovskaia Anna Engelhardt Ekaterina Tsenina |
6800 (including two additional editions) |
Augustin Thierry, Stories Of Time Merovingian |
1864 |
No data |
4000 (including additional edition) |
| Hermann Wagner, In Nature |
1864 |
Kudinovich (no name given), Elena Vistelius, Dzichkovskaia (no name given) Anna Engelhardt |
4800 (including additional edition) |
Henry Walter Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons |
1865 |
Anna Shulgovskaia, Schults, Munt, Babkina |
4000 (including additional edition) |
Ivan Khudiakov, Tales of Ancient People |
1865 |
No data |
3000 |
Hans Christian Andersen, New Fairytales |
1866 |
Alexandra Markelova Anna Shulgovskaia Ekaterina Tsenina Mariia Ermolova Mariia Malysheva |
2000 |
Theodor Dielitz, The Book of Travel Novels |
1868 |
Alexandra Markelova |
2000 |
Оttо Ule, Why and Because |
1868 |
Anna Shulgovskaia Anna Engelhardt Nadezhda Belozerskaia Mariia Malysheva |
6000 |
Anton Daul, Women’s Labour |
1869 |
Mariia Malysheva Olga Pushkareva Nadezhda Belozerkaia A. N. Shulgovskaia |
1200 |
Louisa May Alcott, An Old-Fashioned Girl |
1875 |
Elizaveta Beketova |
No data |
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women |
1877 |
Alexandra Markelova Olga Klark |
No data |
Florence Sarah Lee, A Handbook for Hospital Sisters |
1877 |
No data |
No data |
Total number of copies |
33 800 |
Women’s Publishing Cooperative members’ financial contributions
No |
Name |
Initial contribution in rubles86 |
Dividends in rubles in 1872 |
|---|---|---|---|
1 |
N. A. Belozerskaia |
75 |
38.79 |
2 |
M. G. Ermolova |
60 |
31.04 |
3 |
A. N. Engelhardt |
120.46 |
62.32 |
4 |
A. P. Filosofova |
75 |
38.79 |
5 |
M. S. Olhina |
75 |
38.79 |
6 |
M. V. Trubnikova |
72 |
37.24 |
7 |
V. V. Cherkesova |
62 |
32.23 |
8 |
M. A. Menzhinskaja |
77 |
39.82 |
9 |
O. A. Kobeko |
60 |
31.04 |
10 |
M. V. Turgeneva |
45 |
23.26 |
11 |
E. I. Tsenina |
33 |
26.96 |
12 |
P. S. Stasova |
75 |
38.79 |
13 |
M. E. Markelova |
15 |
7.77 |
14 |
V. I. Pechatkina |
100 |
51.72 |
15 |
E. A. Shtakenshnaider |
77 |
39.82 |
16 |
N. V. Stasova |
60 |
38.79 |
17 |
E. G. Beketova |
30 |
15.53 |
18 |
Livotova (no name given) |
60 |
31.04 |
19 |
Rostovtseva (no name given) |
60 |
31.04 |
20 |
A. N. Shulgovskaia |
75 |
38.79 |
21 |
L. I. Stasulevich |
75 |
38.79 |
22 |
E. N. Voronina |
60 |
31.04 |
23 |
O. N. Butakova |
45 |
23.28 |
24 |
A. I. Ivanova |
15 |
16.56 |
25 |
M. I. Malysheva |
45 |
23.28 |
26 |
E. I. Vistelius |
15 |
7.77 |
27 |
[Mariia] Babkina |
45 |
No data |
28 |
O. I. Ivanova |
32 |
7.77 |
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