Lives in Transit: Recent Russian Women's Writing

by Helena Goscilo

Featuring twenty-five diverse writers from this turbulent era, Lives in Transit is a collection of stories and poems that strive to make sense of the female experience. Sexual awakening, romantic love, parenthood, politics, family structures, abortion, rape, and the struggle to integrate domestic and professional responsibilities are deftly handled here in stunningly vibrant verse and prose.

Lives in Transit not only gives voice to a generation of talented Russian women authors, but also provides readers with a glimpse into a unique time and place. Within its pages are found a cobbler with an undying love, an immigrant family living in France, an elderly woman intrigued by a younger man, and other memorable characters, while several remarkable poems round out this collection.

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Anthologies

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 29, 2013

About the author

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Helena Goscilo received her early education in England at Rugby Grammar School, her BA from Queens College in New York, and her graduate degrees from Indiana University. After teaching many years in the Slavic Department at the University of Pittsburgh, in 2009 she accepted a position as Professor and Chair of Slavic at the Ohio State University, which she currently holds. Most of her scholarship in recent years has focused on gender and culture in Russia, with an emphasis on the contemporary period, though she has published on 18th, 19th, and 20th -century culture, the topics ranging across art, music, graphics, gesture, gender politics, celebrity studies, and film. Her volumes in the last five years include Gender and National Identity in 20th Century Russian Culture (2006; with Andrea Lanoux), Preserving Petersburg: History, Memory, Nostalgia (2008; with Stephen Norris), Cinepaternity: Fathers and Sons in Soviet and Post-Soviet Film (2010; with Yana Hashamova), Celebrity and Glamour in Contemporary Russia: Shocking Chic (2011; with Vlad Strukov), Putin as Celebrity and Cultural Icon (2012), and Embracing Arms: Cultural Representations of Slavic and Balkan Women in War (2012; with Yana Hashamova). Currently she is working with Vlad Strukov on a collection of articles on the visual depiction of Russian/Soviet aviation.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was lent this collection of Russian women's writing from the late 1980s and 1990s five years ago. I've only just got round to reading it as it seemed likely to be depressing. Lo and behold, it really was. The volume consists largely of short stories, with some brief poetry at the end, for the most part depicting bleak vignettes of women's daily struggles. The decades before and during the collapse of the USSR were clearly not a great time to be a woman in Russia. Given the recurrent themes of work, romance, family, ageing, illness, and the trauma of all five in quite similar contexts, not many of the stories stood out despite being well written and translated.

The main exception to this was 'After Goat Antelopes' by Svetlana Vasilenko, which included by far the most striking writing and was my favourite in the collection. Although the setting and incidents aren't strikingly different to those of other stories, the lyrical and digressive way it is told really stands out:

My body grew conscious of itself and, because it did not believe what was happening, it observed intently and with difficulty the desire forming within - a desire that you could touch and smell, that was sweet, tormenting, and obscure. The body dimly remembered that this was precisely how it had felt billions of years earlier when it was a cell that had only just emerged from inanimate matter, in precisely this way the cell had felt exhausted from solitude, and, prepared simultaneously for death and for happiness, it had torn itself in half, remembering that instant forever and making a gift of this memory to my body.

'The Loser's Division' by Marina Palei was another distinctive story, as it included horribly brutal and memorable images and happenings in the gynaecological and obstetrics wards of a rural hospital. It reminded me that in the latter half of the twentieth century abortion was the most popular and easily available form of contraception in Russia. Women and babies get no gentle treatment whatsoever in this story and die arbitrarily due to lack of care. The title is indicative of the attitude towards anyone, doctor or patient, unlucky enough to end up in these wards. However the most chilling story has to be 'A Bus Driver Named Astrap' by Tatiana Nabatnikova, which depicts the psychology of rape unflinchingly and dispassionately.

In short, there is lots of insight into the daily experiences of women at all ages in Soviet and immediately post-Soviet Russia in this collection, but nothing light or fun. A couple of stories have slight fantastical touches, although the vast majority are written in a realist style. One, 'Albinos' by Bella Ulanovskaia, is extremely fragmentary and full of nature imagery that I wanted to like more than I did. Literary references and plays on words that don't come through in translation are helpfully footnoted. It isn't a great idea to include the word 'contemporary' on your book cover, though, as times will always move on. 28 years after Lives in Transit: Recent Russian Women's Writing was first published Russia, and doubtless its literature, have changed considerably. I cannot say I enjoyed this collection, although it includes a few striking stories and gives a powerful overall impression, as the experience is so bleak.