SUNDAY SERMON II

The Space Adventures of Russian Orthodox Saints

By Elodie Phillips Posted May 7, 2021
In Analysis, Culture, Russia

Russian cosmonaut and practising Orthodox Christian Sergey Ryzhikov may have been born on Earth but currently, he resides among the stars, firmly in God’s territory, on the International Space Station (ISS). Earthly parishioners of St Vladimir’s Orthodox Church in Houston, Texas were treated to a glimpse at the cosmos when Rhzhikov teleconferenced worshippers from the ISS, answering questions about Russia’s scientific discovery of the heavens. This technological link between terrestrial and sky-dwelling Orthodox Christians speaks to a greater connection growing between the earthbound church hierarchy and those Russians exploring the realms above.

Since the shattering of Soviet state atheism, icons and relics have frequently passed between Earth and the cosmos as patterns of religious engagement changed in the new Russian Federation. As an extension of this, the expressed personal religious beliefs of the cosmonauts themselves have become entangled with earthly political agendas.

Noting how Russians in space have created a culture of religious observance on the ISS allows us to recognise patterns of interaction between the crew, the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). In the post-Soviet era, the display of religious icons and relics is an increasingly common societal performance, which has become interwoven with meanings related to Russian identity and patriotism. These rediscovered religious practices on earth take on new significance when transported to outer space.

As the Cold War ended and a tentative, cooperative relationship began between the USA and the new Russian Federation, both states agreed to form the International Space Station. The ISS was initially created from a merger of the USA’s Freedom Station and the Russian Mir-2 designs. Russian cosmonauts living aboard the ISS have resided in the Zvezda space module since Expedition 1 arrived there in November 2000. The Zvezda living quarters comprise two sleeping areas, exercise equipment, a toilet and a galley which are used not only by Russians but all astronauts living on the ISS. Zvezda is therefore a hub for multiple forms of international activity on the ISS.

Orthodox practices in the Zvezda module create a distinct Russian culture in space and reflect changes in church-state relations on earth. It is especially significant that US-controlled modules ban the display of religious imagery. Although, since retiring the Space Shuttle in 2011, NASA has relied on Russia’s Soyuz rockets and Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to launch transportation shuttles and as a result has willingly turned a blind eye to Russian religious displays onboard the ISS. The International Space Station Archeological Project notes that religious items have yet to be displayed in the US, European or Japanese modules (aside from those related to Christmas), meaning the practices on Zvezda are a uniquely Russian phenomenon.
Iconography in the cosmos

The importance of the display of icons in Russian public spaces did not disappear during the Soviet Union as images of Soviet leaders were replete in public life. Even in Soviet space stations, Salyut and Mir, images of Lenin and other important Communist figures were displayed on the aft wall of the module. Yet God was absent from the public Russian discovery of the cosmos. As Khrushchev once said: “I sent cosmonauts to space, but they didn’t see God”.

NO GOD

God entered the Russian experience of space by joining other national icons on the aft wall. This is a flat space in Zvezda’s living quarters often used as the backdrop of broadcasts back to earth. This area continues to be used for the display of images and symbols with special importance for the cosmonauts residing there such as on Mir. This personal practice reflects changes in post-Soviet religious engagement where private Russian domestic spaces are more likely to contain religious displays.

The aft wall is prominent in broadcasts to earth by all ISS crew members, not only the Russians. Moreover, there is an additional political significance to the icons chosen by both the cosmonauts and terrestrial organisations such as Roscosmos and the ROC. On the ISS, therefore, personal expressions of Orthodox Christianity coincide and interact with institutional and even state-sponsored ways of conveying faith.

The wall of the Zvezda module. Since the disintegration of the USSR, Orthodox saints have begun replacing old Soviet heroes / NASA

NASA posts publicly accessible photos of Zvezda’s interiors on Flickr and a close examination of 48 photos taken between 2000 and 2014, revealed variations in the icons adorning the aft wall mirrored developments in Russian religious and political life on earth. It can be concluded that alterations in the icons on display reflect the changing religious practices of Russians in the post-Soviet era as well as events occurring in Russian foreign and domestic politics.

Trends can be noted in how the display of icons is used to benefit the changing policies of the ROC and the Russian Federation. Through its closer relationship with the cosmos, the ROC connects itself to national institutions constituting part of “Greater Russia”, such as the space programme. In terms of the Russian Federation, changes in the conspicuousness of icons can be observed at times when the regime requires the consolidation of Russian patriotism at home.

Co-operation earthside

Prior to Zvezda, the ROC began collaborating with Roscosmos in ways that reversed the atheist rhetoric typically used by the state to describe Russian adventures in the cosmos. The patriarchate of Alexiy II (1990-2008), which began as the Soviet Union was collapsing, represents a key period in this varying relationship. At this time, the Orthodox Church resumed its central position in Russian society accompanied by a revival in Russian religious life. The institutional efforts of the ROC to establish a presence in space evoke a sense of missionary zeal.

The frequent transportation of icons and relics into space began under Alexiy II. In July 1995, the Patriarch blessed two print icons of Saint Anastasia (one Orthodox and one Roman Catholic), which were then sent on a “peace mission” to the Mir Station. Saint Anastasia was chosen as a symbol of peace as she is a saint common in both Eastern and Western Christianity as well as a protector against international warfare. Hence the project’s name: “Project Anastasia- The Hope of Peace”.

Seven months later, the icons returned to earth and embarked on a pilgrimage across Europe to all places associated with Saint Anastasia. The impact of this move by the Church hierarchy was significant to the Russian cosmonauts living on Mir. It empowered them to adorn their own personal space with icons. Consequently, photos between 1996 and 1998 demonstrate that icons were informally stuck to the walls of the Russian quarters.

Cosmonauts in Zvezda, 2014, with icons of Saint Sergius of Radonezh / NASA

The missionary enthusiasm of the Church also found a pathway to the cosmos through the thoughtful cultivation of personal relationships with key personnel in Russia’s space programme. For example, Head of Roscosmos Anatoliy Perminov enjoys a close, personal relationship with the ROC, established during the patriarchate of Alexiy II. Perminov met repeatedly with Patriarch Alexiy and continually expressed a desire for mutual cooperation with the Church. Indeed in 2008, Perminov gifted him with a GLONASS System Satellite navigator as a Christmas gift. The evidence of deeply personal relationships between ROC and Roscosmos is also noticeable in the friendships between Russian cosmonauts and Father Yov Talats, rector of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration. This church is located in Star City where the Russian cosmonaut training facilities are located.

Father Yov is present when Russian cosmonaut teams are sent off from Baikonur, and meets them upon their return. In his public engagements, the clergyman often recounts his childhood dream of becoming a cosmonaut and, even after becoming a priest, took part in aspects of cosmonaut training. Yov works from the Trinity Laura of St. Sergius, an extremely significant centre for the ROC, where departing Russian ISS crew members are blessed before they leave for Baikonur. Recently, Father Yov has acted as a religious mentor for members of the Russian ISS crew and has arranged for holy relics to be sent into space in the care of his flock.
Heavenly journeys, earthly implications

The ROC under Alexiy II forged close ties with Roscosmos and oversaw the initial transportation of icons and relics into space. After “Project Anastasia”, a cult began to form around these icons that had travelled to space upon their return to earth. These icons took on a new power for Orthodox believers due to their exposure to space. Head of Roscosmos Perminov himself announced, “already the icons of Kazan Mother of God and the Archangel Michael, after many times orbiting our planet … will come to reflect the combination of traditional spiritual symbols and contemporary achievements in the field of space exploration”.

An example of this is the icon from the Valaam monastery, which orbited the earth over 1000 times in the company of Russian cosmonaut and ISS crew-member Sergey Krikalev in 2005. On its return to earth in 2006, Valaam monks and the cosmonauts who accompanied it home claimed that the icon was capable of miracles and had ensured a difficult landing was carried out safely.


Icon of Christ Pantocrator and gold cross floating in front of the front hatch of Zvezda / NASA

In this way, the transportation of religious icons and relics to the ISS is seen as a new form of the Orthodox krestnyy khod [Crucession or Cross Procession] The Crucession is a religious event that takes place on important dates in the liturgical calendar and involves large processions for the veneration and public conveying of icons or relics. As the abbot of the Valaam monastery himself stated, “the tradition of the religious procession is ancient,” yet also “these days, this tradition takes new forms and we encounter an icon that has completed an even more unusual religious procession”. Like the cosmonauts themselves, the icons take on a certain significance having endured the tribulations of space.

ROC Church officials deliberately referred to the transportation of relics of St. Serafim of Sarov to the ISS in 2016 as a krestnyy khod. The box containing the relics was strapped to the chest of the aforementioned Sergey Ryzhikov, parishioner of St Vladimir Orthodox Church and at that time the commander of the Soyuz rocket travelling to the ISS. Upon returning to Earth, the relics were given a place of honour at Father Yov’s church, the Cathedral of the Transfiguration. Crucessions have historically been seen as displays of a national communal faith and therefore new manifestations of the practice have very real implications for creating a sense of national patriotism.

The krestnyy khod has appeared in contemporary Russian legend during times of national insecurity. In 2013, gossip circulated that Vladimir Putin had carried an icon in a helicopter over Volgograd after the suicide bombings in the city. This reflects similar rumours that spread as the Nazis were about to capture Moscow during the Second World War that Josef Stalin himself had flown over the city accompanied by an icon.
To infinity… and beyond?

It follows that displays of religiosity on the ISS differed from the peace-building sentiment behind “Project Anastasia”. Rather, icon displays were more connected with political life and religious revival on earth. Icons and relics from Russian Orthodox saints continue to travel to the celestial domain but their journeys speak more to terrestrial dynamics of power as Russia and its national church extend their influence into the cosmos.

Parishioners watching Sergey Ryzhikov from their pews in Houston must have felt him very far away as he floated among the stars, an awe-inspiring personification of Russia’s expansion into all realms of human activity. Yet the relationship between Russian cosmonauts and the earthly politics of religious engagement remains much closer than the yawning void of space between them would make it seem.

Featured image: Saints in Space / Amanda Sonesson

The Space Adventures of Russian Orthodox Saints | Lossi 36

 SUNDAY SERMON

The Land of the Green Man. A Journey Through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles, by Carolyne Larrington

This enchanting, immensely readable book can be read in several ways: it is a vastly entertaining thematic collection of folktales and fairy stories, perfect for autumn reading at a time of fallen leaves, dark evenings, mist and woodsmoke; a field guide to the supernatural creatures that inhabit a parallel world to ours; a literary guide to the supernatural tradition, up to the present day; and a travel guide to supernatural landscapes. It is light, witty and pacy, written for the general reader on a solid foundation of expertise and scholarship.

Carolyne Larrington is Professor of Medieval European Literature at Oxford University, and her works for the general reader (which I must now look out) link literature to legend through various themes. Her latest book is Winter Is Coming. The Medieval World of Game of Thrones. One of the things that most impressed me about The Land of the Green Man is her compelling case for seeing supernatural literature as a continuum, right up to present day and the works of Alan Garner, J K Rowling, Susan Cooper, A S Byatt, among many others, seen not as plundering the tradition, but continuing, developing and keeping it alive. One traditional strand that interests me is touched on only lightly, and that is the emergence of these themes in folksongs – though the Child Ballads are regularly mined as literary sources.

The chapters are thematic, covering landscape, love and lust, death, luck, humans and beasts, and changelings and transformation. The field guide element starts with a map of the supernatural locations in the book – not all remote, but some like Windsor Forest and Alderley Edge lapping the edges of great cities, others unpicturesque and workaday places, such as Burton on Trent with its walking dead, and Tolleshunt d’Arcy in Essex with its monster Black Shuck, a ghostly black dog that has terrorised an innocent cyclist in living memory. The first chapter lays the book’s foundation in the landscape, with tales of monsters and giants who created or formed natural features – who hurl rocks into the sea to form islands, or lie down on the earth to make hills. Giants toss unliftable stones in the air and they land as stone circles. These stones might dance when not observed, or refuse to be counted. Barrows have magical inhabitants and concealed treasure. Sluices are opened and wells carelessly uncapped, and the land is drowned. This is a great start to the book, and an introduction to its sweeping scale, embracing the oral tales clinging to these places, the early writings such as Beowulf, up to the works of Neil Gaiman and A S Byatt.

All the other thematic chapters are structured in the same way, elegantly interweaving oral folktales with collected and written-down sources, and reinterpretations by classic and contemporary writers. Carolyne Larrington lightly touches as she goes on the deep human concerns and preoccupations that might underpin these phenomena and beliefs – fear of death, of poverty, of famine, of losing children, joy of human love, of natural beauty and of plenty. All this is woven into the texture of a book written with a storyteller’s gift and a page-turning pace. A number of sub-themes struck me as a reader – the agency given to so many supernatural females – and human too – is one, and another is the moral framework of the supernatural world we inhabit. Some monsters and hybrid creatures just exist for no discernible reason, and visit meaningless and undeserved pain and terror; but many reward empathy and kindness, or bravery in overcoming disgust or fear (as in the trope of loathly ladies, or handsome young people turned into monsters and freed by a kiss on their foul lips).

The book starts with a promise, and deals a surprise at the end. On the cover and in the title is the Green Man – that powerful symbol of human and tree melded. The Green Man as always depicted emerges in the book only in the final chapter, Continuity and Change, and by the author’s account, it has no deep, hidden, ancient roots. There are no legends; some supernatural creations are green, such as Green Children or The Green Knight; the nearest equivalent woodland creature to interact with humans is my person favourite, the Wodewose, and though wild and forest bound, he is not green. The classic Green Man does not emerge to meet walkers in the woods. It does not steal things or people or give things or shapeshift. The roundel image is known from medieval iconography, mainly in churches, and also as I found to my delight, medieval embroidery. But what the Green Man has done, Carolyne Larrington says, is acquire huge meaning and power for 19th, 20th and 21st century humans, providing a vision of living in the natural world with harmony and mutual care. Which neatly rounds off her survey, telling us that though we can forget the supernatural world and ignore the supernatural landscape, it does not cease to exist and to exert a subtle influence on us.

Reading this book has been a sheer delight – the best book of fairy, ghost and horror stories I have read for a very long time, a thought-provoking study of the enduring power over the imagination of the supernatural, and a subtle study of its effect on our culture and psychological make-up. It is a rapid trip around the subject, leaving me wanting more. You may have a favourite legend that is not here, or only tangentially covered (I was looking for and and didn’t find my beloved Lady Maisery, the Machrel of the Sea, who refused to be changed back to a beautiful girl by her wicked stepmother because she didn’t want to be beholden to her). Sources are in endnotes, and there is a manageable reading list, plus many titles in the text of novels I have neglected to read, to go on my impossibly long reading list. There is a super back-catalogue of Carolyne Larrington’s work to catch up on, too. The only down-side? The realisation that at my age, it will be a life’s work to catch up with Game of Thrones from scratch.

Carolyne Larrington: The Land of the Green Man. A Journey Through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles. Pbk ed. New York, London: I B Tauris, 2017.
ISBN 9781784538484

The Land of the Green Man. A Journey Through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles, by Carolyne Larrington | Vulpes Libris (wordpress.com)

Colombian govt invites protest leaders to talks as mass demonstrations continue

Colombian govt invites protest leaders to talks as mass demonstrations continue
Demonstrators take part in a protest demanding government action to tackle poverty, police violence and inequalities in the health and education systems, in Bogota, Colombia, May 6, 2021. © Nathalia Angarita, Reuters

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Video by: Yena LEE

Colombia’s government on Thursday invited protest leaders to a dialogue in an attempt to calm tensions following more than a week of deadly demonstrations against President Ivan Duque.

At least 24 people have died in clashes between protesters and security forces while hundreds more have been injured.

Thousands of Colombians including indigenous people, unions and students have taken to the streets to express anger over the government’s policies on health, education and inequality.

They have also denounced what they see as a heavy-handed and lethal response from security forces.

“We have to listen to all sectors of the country but the country also has to listen to the government,” presidential advisor Miguel Ceballos told Blu Radio. “That includes those marching but also those not marching.”


Ceballos said the government would meet protest leaders, including the National Strike Committee, on Monday.

“The government first wanted to invite those that organize the National Strike Committee although understanding that the mobilizations are not exclusive to this group,” said Ceballos.

The National Strike Committee represents various groups including indigenous people, unions, environmentalists and students.

Ceballos later wrote on Twitter that Duque and Vice President Lucia Ramirez would attend the meeting.

Protest leaders have said they would be prepared to have talks directly with Duque, but not with intermediaries.

“The dialogue needs to be those on the streets, which is young people,” said Bogota Mayor Claudia Lopez, one of the protesters’ main targets.

02:20

Duque has faced occasional mass protests against his rule since 2019 and the latest social movement began on April 28, initially against a tax reform that has since been withdrawn.


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Although the demonstrations have largely been peaceful, there have been violent clashes throughout the country.

The government blames the violence on armed groups including left-wing rebels and drug traffickers.

The United Nations, European Union, United States and NGOs have accused security forces of using excessive force.

Speaking to journalists in Washington on Thursday, Interior Minister Daniel Palacios said various government agencies were collaborating to determine who was responsible for the violence and “if there has been any use of excessive force for them to be held accountable.”

(AFP)

FOR MOTHERS DAY; MAXIM GORKY'S REVOLUTIONARY NOVEL; 'MOTHER'

 MOTHER - ENGLISH - MAXIM GORKY 

Gorky meanwhile had Written The Lower Depths and The

Philistines two plays that had great world-wide success , 

The authorities began to see how’ difficult it was to deal with a man of

European reputation, but reaction after Bloody Sunday (1905) became

so acute that he would have been arrested again had the revolutionaries not elected to send him to America to collect money for the revolution. 

He left in 1906 While m America he wrote Mother.

Gorky Maxim : Alcott Louisa M,

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Celebrate Mothers Day For Peace: Before Hallmark Cards and Fin de siecle 19th century capitalism commercialized Mothers Day it was originally a celebration of Peace and a ca...

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MOTHERS DAY 

 

The Ultimate Teacher’s Guide: reviewing The Women’s Revolution: Russia 1905-1917 by Judy Cox9 min read

By Katherine Leung

  Posted April 25, 2021 

 In Culture, Review, Russia

The Women’s Revolution by Judy Cox is a short primer on women of the Russian Revolution. Pocket-size and only 132 pages, it acts as an informative little pamphlet into some of the lesser-known heroes of the Russian Revolution. Some of the women that Cox includes in the book are Elena Stasova, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Inessa Armand, Sophie Krukovsky, Anna Jaclard, Elizabeth Dmitrieff, Vera Figner, Vera Zasulich, Feodosiya Drabkina, Maria Spiridonova, and Alexandra Kollontai – to name a few. Cox includes detailed biographies of many of these women organizers and writers at the end of the book.

Cox introduces the uprisings of the Russian Revolution by writing that “the 1904 war with Japan brought terrible conditions to the countryside and thousands of peasant women rebelled in what were sneeringly known as ‘Babi Bunti’: peasant women’s riots.” When 900,000 workers striked in the Vyborg District of Petrograd on International Women’s Day, they were told that protest was “‘not the business of Babas’.” Women were infantilized and belittled even as critical figures in organizing effective large-scale protests. Either they were pitted against each other the way Nadezhda Krupskaya and Inessa Armand were (as Lenin’s wife and possible lover) or reduced to cranky old grandmothers. 

Cox writes that “the language used to describe socialist women is frequently steeped in sexist assumptions. Women revolutionaries are judged by how sexually attractive they were. Ugly old maids and irritating mothers-in-law are dismissed while the physical attributes of beautiful women are lingeringly dwelt on.” This could explain how a century later, why not many continue to be recognized for their accomplishments. This could explain why many were silenced early on for a gender-blind industrial workers-only narrative of the Russian Revolution. 

The lives of Russian revolutionaries to counter neoliberalism

What I loved about this book is that it explores a revolutionary kind of feminism that is for everybody, not just the working woman. It is a critical lens for redefining the role of women in society. I would argue that a 21st-century approach to feminism, at least in the Western world, is about closing the pay gap and filling the ranks of leadership at important companies or nations as somehow the answer to misogyny. However, in what we have seen in the West is women in higher positions failing to adequately address basic material needs, through gross, often ironic, exploitation.

Is it really feminism when a woman president enacts austerity measures on her people? Is it really feminism when a female CEO exploits sweatshop workers or if a female Defense Attorney incarcerates parents for low-level drug offenses? Between 1914-1917, thousands of Russian women were thrusted into the industrial workforce to replace the men who were conscripted and while they rightly fought for paid leave, adequate working conditions, and rioted when there were food shortages- the neoliberal ideal of “men’s jobs are for women too!” seem a little misplaced. 

In sharing the lives and works of these women, Cox writes that women in the villages and cities frequently organized uprisings when they observed a food shortage or the unnecessary military draft between 1905 and 1917. To say that women are acutely attuned to the needs of their children and families may seem antiquated, but Cox seems to suggest that that is exactly what women have done in all the rebellions of the Russian Revolution. Their earnest protection of the family, marriage, and schooling is exactly how they championed so many causes. 

Nadezhda Krupskaya developed the first socialist public education model. Free and universal education was mandated for all children and “the number of schools at least doubled within the first two years of the revolution… for the first time, schools were created for students with learning and other disabilities. Literacy campaigns were launched… In the Red Army, illiteracy rates decreased from 50 percent to only 14 percent three years later.” Feminist policies are at the core, the most humane policies. Education, literacy, child labour, and rights for children should not solely be the plight of women, but rather, of society as a whole.

Much memorable legislation was enacted by women, with a demand to create the legal precedent for they yearned for in and out of the household. In April of 1917, the first All Russian Muslim Women’s Congress took place, with 59 delegates meeting in front of 300 women to debate sharia law, polygamy, and the role of the hijab. Cox goes on to describe that “six weeks after the revolution, civil marriage was legalized, and divorce was made legal and accessible for all… the couple could choose either surname when they married… allowed both spouses to retain the right to their own property and earnings, abolished all distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate children, and made divorce available… By 1920, Russian women had the right to abortion – 53 years before the USA and 47 years before Britain. The Ministry for the Protection of Maternity and Childhood included support for working mothers, including 16 weeks paid maternity leave.” 

While some of this legislation might have been difficult to uphold, women were involved in every step of the decision-making process, especially in bringing these issues to light. However, Cox did not think that these policies constituted actual liberation. Actual freedom and feminism, in the context of The Women’s Revolution is freedom from domestic duties. That’s why the Provisional Government “launched a drive to create communal laundries and canteens to free women from the burden of washing. They established creches and schools to free women from childcare and enable them to participate in the workforce.” Such a communal-based program, if enacted today, would be absolutely life-changing for so many families. 

Liberation for women is having adequate material resources to raise a thriving family. The women of the Russian Revolution were multifaceted in their numerous riots for a better life. A better life for them was a better life for everyone in their household. Patriarchal violence has no place in any home. Ending gender-based violence is one of the many steps towards smashing the patriarchy. I do hope that given the advances of Russian revolutionaries, that a feminist future looks at including sex-workers, nonbinary women, and women of the Global South who may not be so-called productive to society.

Some remarks on the independent publishing of this book

Due to the nature of the editing, I found a few things confusing about Cox’s narrative. The information about Rabotnitsa throughout the book seemed contradictory. In chapter six, Cox writes about how the publication “Rabotnitsa (Women Worker) grew out of the Bolshevik paper Pravda when a special women’s issue was inundated with letters from women, expressing their grievances and demands… On the eve of publication, however, the police raided an editorial board meeting and arrested all the members except for Anna Ulyanova who arrived late for the meeting. Undeterred, she produced the first edition single-handedly. It sold out of 12,000 copies but the paper was definitively shut down in June after seven issues.” In chapter six, Cox writes that “the first issue of Rabotnitsa immediately sold out of 40,000 copies. Rabotnitsa rallies overflowed with thousands of women workers” and goes on to explain how Rabotnitsa worked as an organizing center. It’s unclear which issue of Rabotnitsa sold 12,000 (or 40,000 copies) and who was initially involved in the production. 

A few other things about the book are disorienting for the reader. There are multiple typos and grammatical mistakes. With the nature of leftist literature, the emphasis is on spreading the information rather than polishing it in a professional way. Marx-style leaflets are anything but production from a buttoned-up publishing house. The mistakes in The Women’s Revolution were jarring at first, as most readers don’t expect spelling mistakes in a professionally published book. However, I still applaud Haymarket Books for editing and publishing such a great text, especially in the hyper-capitalist literary scene that is the United States. 

Another aspect regarding professionalism is that the photos are inserted in the pages at random places, and not fluid within the text. They were also images from a simple Google search since photographers and archives were not credited, as well as they appeared pixelated and in poor resolution. Many were tilted in a different direction, in an aesthetically displeasing way for the reader. It reminded me of the awkward placement of images that most personal computer word processing programs generate. 

Aesthetics aside, I still think it’s a great book with great potential as a teaching tool. 

For teachers, by a teacher

Cox is a primary school teacher in London. I feel a kind of warm affiliation with Cox as I’m also a school teacher. The language is simple – no academic jargon or unnecessary facts. Each biography is simple and straight-to-the-point. For that reason, I think this would make a great teaching tool in a primary classroom, especially in assisting students to conduct research. The chapters are also short and the book ends with the biographies of many of the women introduced in the book. 

Many fourth-grade classes where I first taught in Texas have a Live Museum project where students take on the identities of historical figures and “talk” as if they are those characters. This would make a great opportunity for students who want to choose a revolutionary woman as their character. Teachers can make the material accessible for fourth graders by only including pertinent facts. 

Many twelfth-grade students in California take an Advanced Placement US History class simultaneously with an Advanced Placement English Literature class. This book could also serve as a tool for cross-curricular collaboration between teachers with turn-of-the-century literature at the age of industrialization, as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is already frequently taught in American classrooms. 

Many students read Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed as part of International Baccalaureate World History courses and this book serves as a counter-narrative to many of the mainstream accepted stories within that book. It certainly would make an easily digestible anecdote for students who may be critical of what is taught to them about Russia in World History courses, which we know to be dominant of Eurocentric patriarchal narratives. 

I’ve used similar books in a Title I art classroom to make my curriculum more academically rigorous and expose students to more “heroes” outside of American figures. Students respond really well to women, especially political agitators, as many students already feel themselves a political dissident within the confines of traditional schooling. Russian history is very fascinating to American students, at least in my observations as a teacher. 

The Women’s Revolution was a quick read and I’m interested in the instructional and elementary research capabilities of this short text. I hope to explore this text with students in the future, to use it as a springboard for further primary source research.

Book details: Cox, Judy. The Women’s Revolution: Russia 1905-1917, 2019. Haymarket Books. It is available to buy here. 

Featured image: The women’s revolution / On the Woman question

The Ultimate Teacher’s Guide: reviewing The Women’s Revolution: Russia 1905-1917 by Judy Cox | Lossi 36

Communism and the Family, by Alexandra Kollontai

In the popular conception of Soviet culture, Kollontai equals sex.  This is hardly surprising, because in her own lifetime this remarkable and complex woman – a Commissar and later a diplomat – was arguably most famous for the ways people understood, and misunderstood, her views on sexuality.  As the historian Sheila Fitzpatrick demonstrates in her study of four sex surveys carried out among university students between 1922 and 1927, even in this period Kollontai was known for a distortion of her views: the famous “glass of water” misquote.*  No wonder that this distortion has persisted.  And yet our generation is one that, to some extent at least, lives the lifestyle Kollontai was advocating: it is now perfectly commonplace for women to live with their partners before marriage; to have short term relationships; to form those relationships and to marry out of love and desire rather than social or economic considerations, or not to marry at all.  This is not to say that we’re living Alexandra Mikhailovna’s dream.  If anything, Kollontai would be dismayed at the extent to which casual sex is accepted as the stuff of modern, liberated female life; she believed promiscuity to be emotionally and physically harmful to the individual and to society as a whole.  I can only imagine how she might have felt about the fad for poledancing classes, extreme depilation practices and other manifestations of, let’s be frank, porn culture.  (I would give a great deal, in that alternative universe, to be a fly on the wall when she picked up a copy of Cosmo.)

Counter-history aside, the principal aim of this short article is to shed some light on aspects of Kollontai’s thought that have nothing to do with personal sexual morality.  For this reason I have chosen to consider Communism and the Family, an article published in Komunistka in 1920 (and in translation in The Worker).  The focus of this article is one of Kollontai’s strongest convictions: the necessary obsolescence of the traditional family model.

Communist society has this to say to the working woman and working man: “You are young, you love each other. Everyone has the right to happiness. Therefore live your life. Do not flee happiness. Do not fear marriage, even though under capitalism marriage was truly a chain of sorrow. Do not be afraid of having children. Society needs more workers and rejoices at the birth of every child. You do not have to worry about the future of your child; your child will know neither hunger nor cold”… Communist society will take upon itself all the duties involved in the education of the child, but the joys of parenthood will not be taken away from those who are capable of appreciating them. Such are the plans of communist society and they can hardly be interpreted as the forcible destruction of the family and the forcible separation of child from mother.

This short citation encapsulates Kollontai’s perspective on the family.  At no point does she deny the emotional bonds involved in parenthood; those, like romantic love, are never in question.  To her, it is the traditional family structure that must be questioned, broken down, replaced with something better.  Firstly, because the economic reasoning that once justified this structure no longer applies:

The circumstances that held the family together no longer exist. The family is ceasing to be necessary either to its members or to the nation as a whole. The old family structure is now merely a hindrance. What used to make the old family so strong? First, because the husband and father was the family’s breadwinner; secondly, because the family economy was necessary to all its members: and thirdly, because children were brought up by their parents. What is left of this former type of family? The husband, as we have just seen, has ceased to he the sole breadwinner. The wife who goes to work earns wages. She has learned to earn her own living, to support her children and not infrequently her husband. The family now only serves as the primary economic unit of society and the supporter and educator of young children.

With so many women working – and in 1920 this is not so much a lifestyle choice as a necessity – the division of labour has shifted.  To Kollontai, the only sensible solution is to ensure that women would not continue to be burdened by default with the work of looking after the children and the house in addition to earning wages.  (On paper this seems perfectly obvious and commonsensical, but in practice, almost ninety years later, this idea has still not fully sunk in.)

Secondly, because for Kollontai, as for other Marxist thinkers, the traditional family is founded on economic interest and the principle of ownership, which is inimical to family love in the same way that the practice of marriage as an economic exchange is inimical to romantic love.  Love in all its incarnations is a central theme in Kollontai’s writing; to her it is something to be preserved and prioritised rather than treated as a commodity.  This informs her writings on motherhood as strongly as it does her writings on sex and marriage.

How does Kollontai propose to solve the problem of the family?  Simple: the job of the parents would be to love their child, and to care for his or her welfare.  The work of raising and educating the child would be the job of the State (and ultimately, when the State is no longer necessary, of society).  Kollontai had already been able to put this into practice to some extent in her capacity as People’s Commissar of Social Welfare:

Under capitalism children were frequently, too frequently, a heavy and unbearable burden on the proletarian family. Communist society will come to the aid of the parents. In Soviet Russia the Commissariats of Public Education and of Social Welfare are already doing much to assist the family. We already have homes for very small babies, creches, kindergartens, children’s colonies and homes, hospitals and health resorts for sick children. restaurants, free lunches at school and free distribution of text books, warm clothing and shoes to schoolchildren. All this goes to show that the responsibility for the child is passing from the family to the collective.

Even the parents would be looked after by the collective, with access to mass catering, central laundry facilities, cleaning services.

Essentially, Kollontai is not suggesting anything that has not traditionally been at the disposal of the comparatively wealthy.  The simple but radical difference is that this would be administered centrally and accessible to all social and economic strata.   Childcare would be a social responsibility rather than an individual one; in sheerly practical terms, while the bond between parents and children would be left intact, the nuclear family would be replaced by a collective family:

The woman who takes up the struggle for the liberation of the working class must learn to understand that there is no more room for the old proprietary attitude which says: “These are my children, I owe them all my maternal solicitude and affection; those are your children, they are no concern of mine and I don’t care if they go hungry and cold – I have no time for other children.” The worker-mother must learn not to differentiate between yours and mine; she must remember that there are only our children, the children of Russia’s communist workers.

Here Kollontai expresses an idea which, in Russia and abroad, has been instrumental in the creation of many things modern mothers take for granted (although they are increasingly being eroded): state childcare provision, public education, maternity leave.  For this reason alone, Kollontai’s writings on the family ought not to languish on the shelves, filed under Political Theory or Soviet Cultural History.  At a time when women’s writing so often addresses the questions of children or no children, work or home, single or married; at a time when student debts, unemployment or low wages make these questions academic for many women; at a time when the mass media inundates us with school dinners and how to be a domestic goddess and critiques of celebrity motherhood, the issues raised by Alexandra Kollontai, Bolshevik and feminist, are still very much current.

A comprehensive selection of Kollontai’s work in translation is available at the Marxists Internet Archive.

You can see VL’s review of Red Love here.

* Kollontai is often believed to have said that satisfying the sexual urge should be as easy as drinking a glass of water.  She actually said – in her Theses on Communist Morality in the Sphere of Marital Relations – that “the sexual act must be seen not as something shameful and sinful but as something which is as natural as the other needs of healthy organism, such as hunger and thirst.”  Quite a difference there.

Communism and the Family, by Alexandra Kollontai | Vulpes Libris (wordpress.com)

Alexandra Kollontai 1920

Communism and the Family

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Source: The Communist, October 15, 1920;
Transcribed: Sally Ryan for marxists.org, August, 2002.
Note: Some words unreadable, noted by [???].

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Will the family be maintained in the Communist State? Will it just be as it is today? That is the question which is tormenting the women of the working class, and which is likewise receiving attention from their comrades the men. In recent days this problem has particularly been agitating all minds among the working women, and this should not astonish us. Life is changing under our eyes; former habits and customs are gradually disappearing; the entire existence of the proletarian family is being organized in a manner that is so new, so unaccustomed, so "bizarre", as to have been impossible to foresee. That which women at the present day all the more perplexed is the fact that divorce has been rendered easier in Soviet Russia. As a matter of fact, by virtue of the decree of the People's Commissaries of December 18th, 1917, divorce has ceased to be a luxury accessible only to rich; henceforth the working woman will not have to petition for months, or even for years, for a separate credential entitling her to make herself independent of a brutish or drunken husband, accustomed to beat her. Henceforth, divorce may be amicably obtained within the period of a week or two at most. But it is just this ease of divorce which is such a hope to women who are unhappy in their married life, which simultaneously [???] other women particularly those who have become accustomed to considering the husband as the "provider", as the only [???] in who do not yet understand that women must become accustomed to seek and to find this support elsewhere, no longer in the person of the man, but in the person of society, of the State.

From the Genetic Family to the Present Day

There is no reason for concealing the truth from ourselves: the normal family of former days in which the man was everything and the woman nothing – since she had no will of her own, no money of her own, no time of her own – this family is being modified day by day; it is almost a thing of the past. But we should not be frightened by this condition. Either through error or through ignorance we are quite ready to believe that everything about us may remain immutable while everything is changing. It has always been so and it will always be so. There is nothing more erroneous than this proverb! We have only to read how people have lived in the past, and we shall learn immediately that everything is subject to change and there are no customs, nor political organizations, nor morals, which remain fixed an inviolable. And the family in the various epochs in the life of humanity has frequently changed in form; it was once quite different from what we are accustomed to behold today. There was a time when only one form of family was considered normal, namely, the genetic family; that is to say, a family with an old mother at its head, around whom were grouped, in common life and common work, children, grand-children, great-grand-children. The patriarchal family was also once considered the sole norm; it was presided over by a father-master whose will was law for all the other members of the family; even in our days, such peasants families may still be found in Russian villages. In fact in those form of the family, its customs, vary according to race. There are peoples such as, for instance, the Turks, Arabs, Persians, among whom it is permitted by law to have many wives. There have been, and there still are at present, tribes which tolerate the contrary custom of permitting a wife to have several husbands. The habitual morality of the present day man permits him to demand a young girl that she remain a virgin until legitimate marriage; but there were tribes among whom the woman, on the contrary, made it a matter of pride to have many lovers, decorating her arms and legs with rings to indicate their number.

Such practices, which could not but astonish us, practices which we might even qualify as immoral, are found among other people who in their turn consider are laws to be "sinful". There fore there is no reason for our becoming terrified at the fact that the family is undergoing a modification, that gradually the traces of the past which have become outlived are being discarded, and that new relations are being introduced between man and woman. We only have to ask:

"What is it that has become outlived in our family system and what, in the relations of the working man and working woman and the peasant and the peasant woman, are their respective rights and duties which would best harmonized with the conditions of life in the new Russia, in the workers' Russia which our Soviet Russia now is?" Everything compatible with this new condition would be maintained; all the rest, all the superannuated rubbish which has been bequeathed to us by the cursed epoch of servitude an domination which was characteristic of the landed proprietors and the capitalist, ??? shall be always held together with the exploited class [???]...[???] of the proletariat and of the poor.

 

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Kollontai Archive

Down to Earth

City bees: Hungry hives

By:

Mairead DUNDAS

Follow Antonia KERRIGAN

|Valerie DEKIMPe

|Romain CALVETTI

8 min

Paris is abuzz with the hungry hives of hard workers: safe from pesticides, bees feast on the floral diversity of the French capital and beekeepers hail the superior honey. But at what cost? With 20 hives per square kilometre, Paris is at capacity.

Moving three new hives onto the roof of a Paris youth hostel, urban beekeeper Gaël Cartron is sure that these colonies will find everything they need along the tree-lined boulevards, but some neighbourhoods are now saturated and the bees are producing less and less honey.

What we often don't think of, though, is the locals: domestic honey bees are only one of nearly a thousand French bee species. Scientist Isabelle Dajoz warns that food is finite and that the competition brought by domestic colonies leaves wild species struggling to survive.

The answer is simple: more food, fewer hives. We need to plant nutritious bee-friendly crops known as melliferous plants.

Revolutionary Ideals in Fiction: a review of Alexandra Kollontai’s Love of Worker Bees | Lossi 36

Red Love, by Alexandra Kollontai | Vulpes Libris (wordpress.com)

Reporters

Maldives: On the climate front line

 Located in the Indian Ocean, the 1,200 islands of the Maldives are famous for their crystal clear waters and pristine white sandy beaches. Yet this stunning archipelago risks being submerged by rising sea levels. At the current rate of global warming, 80 percent of the Maldives could become uninhabitable by 2050 as most of the land at one metre above sea level risks being submerged. The archipelago also faces another major problem: plastic pollution, which ends up on beaches and in the ocean, destroying the marine ecosystem. Our regional correspondents report.

UK's ruling Conservatives strike early 'Super Thursday' blow with win in Labour stronghold

LABOUR CAN'T  BLAME CORBYN FOR THIS ONE

Issued on: 07/05/2021 - 
Text by: FRANCE 24

Voters in an opposition stronghold turned en masse to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives, boosting his parliamentary majority on Friday despite a high Covid-19 death toll, last year's record economic slump and cronyism charges.

Conservative Jill Mortimer beat Labour's candidate in Thursday's ballot by 15,529 votes to 8,589 to take the parliamentary seat for Hartlepool, a victory once unthinkable in a northeast English port town that for decades backed Britain's main opposition party.

The "Super Thursday" regional and local elections could reshape the UK as pro-independence forces in Scotland, where voting for the devolved parliament was also held, bid to break away. Results in Scotland are due on Saturday.

The overwhelming victory in Hartlepool for an oft-criticised governing party increases pressure on Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has struggled to revive his party's fortunes since a disastrous national election in 2019.

PM Johnson celebrated by quickly visiting Hartlepool, where he ascribed his party's success to its policies of delivering Brexit and ploughing money into areas where many voters have felt neglected by successive London-based governments.

"I think what this election shows is that people want a party and a government that is focused on them, focused on delivering change," he told reporters, standing in front of a giant inflatable version of himself.

"I think what's happened now is they can see that we did get Brexit done and to a certain extent they can see that we delivered on that. And I think what people want us to do now is to get on with delivering with everything else."

Hartlepool, a rust-belt constituency deep in traditional Labour heartlands that has never voted Conservative since its creation in 1974, saw a 16 percent swing to the Tories.

"It is a truly historic result and a momentous day," said Mortimer. "Labour have taken people in Hartlepool for granted for too long."

Her win continues the trend from the last election in December 2019, when Brexit was the dominant issue and Conservatives grabbed a string of seats across Labour's so-called "Red Wall" heartlands in northern England.

'Shattering'

The vote in strongly pro-Brexit Hartlepool was held alongside local elections across much of the country after the town's Labour incumbent quit over allegations of sexual harassment.

In 2019 – Labour's worst election result since 1935, under the left-leaning leadership of Jeremy Corbyn – a quarter of Hartlepool's electorate opted for the upstart Brexit Party.

Now, with Britain's withdrawal from the European Union complete and that party rebranded, those voters appeared to flock to the Conservatives rather than back to Labour.

The result will ratchet up the pressure on Starmer, elected leader a year ago promising to rebuild the party and reconnect with its traditional voters.

"There's no hiding from the fact this is a shattering result for Labour," senior Labour MP Steve Reed told the BBC.

"It tells us that the pace of change in the Labour Party has not been fast enough. We need to quicken it up."

Ahead of the official results in Hartlepool, the giant inflatable version of Johnson appeared outside the building where the vote count was taking place.

The balloon prime minister, complete with trademark scruffy blond hair, gave two thumbs up.

The outcome suggests Johnson continues to enjoy popularity in former Labour strongholds and has benefited from a "vaccine bounce" – even while Britain has suffered one of the world's worst death tolls from Covid-19.

'Vaccine bounce' helps UK's Conservatives win parliamentary seat, FRANCE 24's Bénédicte Paviot reports
03:09

"The work to repay that faith starts right now, as we continue with our agenda to level up and build back better from the pandemic," said Conservative Party co-chair Amanda Milling.

'Mountain to climb'

Johnson, who has been dogged in recent weeks by several corruption scandals, has campaigned on his record as the leader who finally "got Brexit done", supported the economy during the pandemic and rolled out a successful vaccine drive.

With early results showing his Conservatives also enjoying success in councils in the northeast as well as in the Midlands and southeast, Labour's Starmer is facing an increasingly daunting task to unseat him at the next general election, due to take place May 2024 at the latest.

"Let's not forget: Johnson delivered Brexit, the PM is popular among Leave voters, the Tory govt spent staggering amounts of £ in the pandemic and overseen an amazingly successful vaccine rollout," Jane Green, Oxford University politics professor, said on Twitter.

Starmer had already played down expectations for Labour, stressing: "I never thought we would climb the mountain we have to climb in just one year."

"We've got to rebuild into the next general election – that is the task in hand," he said ahead of Thursday.

Results of voting that took place for local councils in England, regional mayors including in London, and for the devolved assemblies in Wales and Scotland, are expected later Friday and over the weekend.

In Edinburgh, the Scottish National Party (SNP) is seeking a pro-independence majority to put pressure on Johnson to permit another referendum on splitting from the UK, after most Scots voted in 2014 to stay in.

"It really is on a knife edge," SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted Thursday, appealing for turnout as she campaigns to hold a second plebiscite once the pandemic subsides.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

Variant accelerating India's Covid explosion: WHO top scientist

Issued on: 08/05/2021 -

World Health Organization's chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan lamented that India appeared to have let down its guard down, with "huge social mixing and large gatherings" Fabrice COFFRINI AFP

Geneva (AFP)

A Covid-19 variant spreading in India is more contagious and may be dodging vaccine protections, contributing to the country's explosive outbreak, the World Health Organization's chief scientist said Saturday.

In an interview with AFP, Soumya Swaminathan warned that "the epidemiological features that we see in India today do indicate that it's an extremely rapidly spreading variant".

India on Saturday for the first time registered more than 4,000 Covid-19 deaths in just 24 hours, and more than 400,000 new infections.

New Delhi has struggled to contain the outbreak, which has overwhelmed its healthcare system, and many experts suspect the official death and case numbers are a gross underestimate.

Swaminathan, an Indian paediatrician and clinical scientist, said the B.1.617 variant of Covid-19, which was first detected in India last October, was clearly a contributing factor to the catastrophe unfolding in her homeland.

"There have been many accelerators that are fed into this," the 62-year-old said, stressing that "a more rapidly spreading virus is one of them".

The WHO recently listed B.1.617 -- which counts several sub-lineages with slightly different mutations and characteristics -- as a "variant of interest".

- Resistant to antibodies? -

But so far it has stopped short of adding it to its short list of "variant of concern" -- a label indicating it is more dangerous than the original version of the virus by being more transmissible, deadly or able to get past vaccine protections.

Several national health authorities, including in the United States and Britain, have meanwhile said they consider B.1.617 a variant of concern, and Swaminathan said she expected the WHO to soon follow suit.

"B 1.617 is likely to be a variant of concern because it has some mutations which increase transmission, and which also potentially could make (it) resistant to antibodies that are generated by vaccination or by natural infection," she said.

But she insisted that the variant alone could not be blamed for the dramatic surge in cases and deaths seen in India, lamenting that the country appeared to have let down its guard down, with "huge social mixing and large gatherings".

Mass election rallies held by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other politicians have for instance partly been blamed for the staggering rise in infections.

But even as many in India felt the crisis was over, dropping mask-wearing and other protection measures, the virus was quietly spreading.

- 'Taking off vertically' -

"In a large country like India, you could have transmission at low levels, which is what happened for many months," Swaminathan said.

"It was endemic (and) probably gradually increasing," she said, decrying that "those early signs were missed until it reached the point at which it was taking off vertically."

"At that point it's very hard to suppress, because it's then involving tens of thousands of people and it's multiplying at a rate at which it's very difficult to stop."

While India is now trying to scale up vaccination to rein in the outbreak, Swaminathan warned that the jabs alone would not be enough to gain control of the situation.

She pointed out that India, the world's largest vaccine-making nation, had only fully vaccinated around two percent of the 1.3 billion-plus population.

"It's going to take many months if not years to get to the point of 70 to 80 percent coverage," she said.

With that prospect, Swaminathan stressed that "for the foreseeable future, we need to depend on our tried and tested public health and social measures" to bring down transmission.

The surge in India is frightening not only due to the horrifying number of people who are sick and dying there, but also because the exploding infection numbers dramatically increase the chances of new and more dangerous variants emerging.

"The more the virus is replicating and spreading and transmitting, the more chances are that... mutations will develop and adapt," Swaminathan said.

"Variants which accumulate a lot of mutations may ultimately become resistant to the current vaccines that we have," she warned.

"That's going to be a problem for the whole world."

© 2021 AFP