Kurze Inhaltsangabe
Drei Babuschki gegen die Diktatur Eine unfreiwillige Wohngemeinschaft im Leningrad der Sechzigerjahre: Antonina zieht mit ihrer kleinen Tochter Susanna in eine Gemeinschaftswohnung, in der drei alte Damen ein strenges Regiment führen. Nach anfänglichen Reibereien raufen sie sich zusammen. Doch bald gerät ihr Arrangement in Gefahr, denn Susanna spricht nicht - ein lebensgefährlicher Makel in der Sowjetgesellschaft, ihr droht die Einweisung ins Heim. Die drei alten Damen nehmen den Kampf mit der Staatsmacht auf.

I deleted my original review because I got a little overactive in my support of the passage, basically about the effects of people without any wealth or sense of how to get it, (which, in their circumstances, obviously would have required some extreme actions, of course), watching bad TV naively, or whatever. My own personal history probably made this stance inevitable at some point, but it was a bit much. It was a real experience, though, that she was writing about. I didn’t highlight it as a Russia vs. America thing, you know. (I guess for me it was almost a class thing: intellectuals vs lumpenproles…..). There is a reason why people move from Russia to the USA and not the other way around, but nationalism is weird and distorting. Nationalism will always make a liar out of you, in the end. But yeah, as the title probably implies, it wasn’t a nationalist novel. Not even close. The average political writer is quick to say that everything in the world is political—‘there’s nothing that’s not political; nothing is apolitical’—but he’s very slow to recognize many things as, existing in the world, basically. Everything has to be nationalism vs anti-nationalism, or something like that…. But yeah, it was a good book. At one point my library was probably too international, or something—I had nothing against Americans, but I was semi-driven to color in countries on that map—so I was like, “I need a female Russian author to go with the great male Russian authors and their great books, right….”. Now I wouldn’t be so quick to assume that an author useful for the map is more…. Better…. than Elin Hilderbrand, but this was, it’s true, a book that stands on its own merit, apart from its wrapping in the history of the nations, right. If I were to go back in time and lose my memory of it, I’d probably want to read it again.

…. N.B. It’s funny, I actually don’t have any “great Russian books” at the moment, just this book, a tennis player book, and two entries by an internet guy. I have read Tolstoy, but not the good Tolstoy, during the goosecap years. I was very naive at one point, but not all Tolstoy is good, some is bad—ironically the stuff written during the, “all my past work is shit”, era. A lot of pedants, actually, believe that, for conformity’s sake: it must be a hard t to cross, since they think that all famous crap is ~famous~, but conformity to intellect-town is the point of fame. Tolstoy could be a very disturbed personality, though, and at the end of his life, he wanted to punish people…. He wanted to be the head of the Russian church and persecute people in Jesus’ name, (the people who filled that very office in their own way weren’t thrilled by that idea), and the masses were like…. Like he ~would have been~ the abusive husband, but he was like the boyfriend they had the affair with, that they never married, so when he died, they got 1000% romantic-nostalgic…. People talk about nationality, but it’s amazing how Tolstoy can be like the worst of Dickens, basically. “Opening line thing, okay…. ‘People are all supposed to be the same; it’s because they’re different, that they suffer.’ (pause) Nailed it! (fist pump)”—although I would like to read, at least some of Dickens, and “War and Peace”, although the longer Count Leo lived, the stronger his misery got, the less he was willing to be happy, right….

Born in 1957 in Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Elena Chizhova is a Russian author who explores the scars of 20th century Russian history. I have previously read and reviewed Little Zinnobers (2000) which followed this novel, The Time of Women, (Время женщин) first published in 2009 and in English translation in 2012. The Time of Women won the 'Russian Booker' and is about the domestic culture of resistance and remembrance amongst three generations of women in Soviet Russia.

The book has multiple narrators across its nine chapters, which require close attention in order to identify the narrators' identities. This is made easier by the distinctive voices of the grannies and by the italic text used for the daughter Suzanna/Sofia who is an elective mute. The first part of the novel is as described in the blurb:

Life is not easy in the Soviet Union at mid-20th century, especially for a factory worker who becomes an unwed mother. But Antonina is lucky to get a room in a communal apartment that she and her little girl share with three old women. Glikeria is the daughter of former serfs. Ariadna comes from a wealthy family and speaks French. Yevdokia is illiterate and bitter. All have lost their families, all are deeply traditional, and all become grannies to little Suzanna. Only they secretly name her Sofia. And just as secretly they impart to her the history of her country as they experienced it: the Revolution, the early days of the Soviet Union, the blockade and starvation of World War II. The little girl responds by drawing beautiful pictures, but she is mute. If the authorities find out she will be taken from her home and sent to an institution. When Antonina falls desperately ill, the grannies are faced with the reality of losing the little girl they love unless a stepfather can be found before it is too late. And for that, they need a miracle.

The characterisation of the three grannies allows Chizhova to depict a varied response to the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, as well as the harrowing effects of the Nazi blockade of Leningrad. It also shows that (quite apart from more favourable lifestyles for party members) class distinctions and resentments still remain in the so-called classless society. Though the grannies argue — sometimes comically — about how to bring up the child because their traditions vary, what unites them is their love for her.

However, the novel takes a much darker turn when Tonya becomes seriously ill and the child's future is at risk. To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/08/28/the-time-of-women-by-elena-chizhova-translat... ( )

The time of women has a foreground story set in Leningrad in the early 1960s, when post-war housing shortages were still making life very difficult. A single mother and her small daughter move in with three elderly women, who are happy to give them houseroom in exchange for granny rights. Chizhova exploits the classic device of viewpoints-of-three-generations to look at a century of Russian history as seen by those on the receiving end: the grannies, who come from different strata of society but have all now lost their families, have memories that go back to Tsarist times; the mother was a child during the second world war, and the daughter is able to look back on her childhood from a post-Soviet perspective. But this isn't a historical epic: it's a book about how ordinary women find the physical, social and psychological strength to live through both ordinary and extraordinary hardship, and in particular how religion, storytelling and art play their part in that process.

There's a lot of reference to particularly Russian experiences, but there's also a lot there that is common to people who've lived through extreme situations anywhere in the world. When the mother describes a dream she's had about the communist paradise where money will become obsolete, the grannies immediately conclude that there's another currency reform coming, and want to rush out to hoard food. Exactly what my grandmother would have done. Some things are so painfully engraved in memory that the brain can't cope with jokes or fantasies about them any more.

I found the subject-matter very interesting, but I wasn't so sure about the style and technique. The viewpoint and the first-person narration jumps about between the characters, and this is often not very clearly signalled in the text, so I found myself going back a paragraph or two to try to work out who was speaking. Some of the confusion is obviously intentional, a way of stressing the alliance between the three generations, but I don't think it quite comes off. Maybe the different voices come over more clearly in the Russian original, but in the translation it felt unnecessarily irritating. On the other hand, I thought the use of interpolated stories was very effective (even if it has become something of a cliché of feminist writing...). ( )

I found this book interesting. the oppression of women, russian politics were overshadowed by the well written characters. I had a hard time getting into reading this book, and was able to put it down easily, but that isn't to say it wasn't good. It gave a really good sense of what life was like for the characters during this period of russian history. ( )