Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society: 2016/1: Gender, Nationalism, and Citizenship in Anti-Authoritarian Protests in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine

ibidem Press, Stuttgart

Contents

Introduction

Olesya Khromeychuk

Articles

Negotiating Protest Spaces on the Maidan: A Gender Perspective

Olesya Khromeychuk

Sexuality and Revolution in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Human Rights for the LGBT Community in the Euromaidan Protests of 2013-2014

Tamara Martsenyuk

Ethical Concerns in Activist Ethnography: The Case of Ukrainian Protest Activism in London and a Russian Female Researcher

Darya Malyutina

Between Being Witty and Being Pretty: Paradoxes of Female Political Participation in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe

Evgenia Ivanova

I’m a Feminist, Therefore…: The Art of Gender and Sexual Dissent in 2010s Ukraine and Russia

Olenka Dmytryk

Perspectives & Reflections

Feminist Art in Russia in 2014–15: The Problem of the Turn to the Right

Nadia plungian

Wait a Minute, You’re a Woman! Interview with Maria Berlins’ka

Olesya Khromeychuk

Review Article: East Europe’s Women in World War II

Iryna Kosovs’ka

Reviews

Francesca Stella, Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia: Post/Socialism and Gendered Sexualities

Cai Wilkinson

Jenny Kaminer, Women with a Thirst for Destruction: The Bad Mother in Russian Culture

Katherine Bowers

Stephen Amico, Roll Over, Tchaikovsky! Russian Popular Music

and Post-Soviet Homosexuality

Catherine Baker

Irina Mukhina, Women and the Birth of Russian Capitalism:

A History of Shuttle Trade

Laura A. Dean

Marian J. Rubchak (ed.), New Imaginaries: Youthful Reinvention of Ukraine’s Cultural Paradigm

Dafna Rachok

Russell Scott Valentino, The Woman in the Window: Commerce, Consensual Fantasy, and the Quest for Masculine Virtue in the Russian Novel

Connor Doak

Valerie Sperling, Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia

Rustam Gadzhiev

Jennifer Utrata, Women without Men: Single Mothers and Family Change in the New Russia

Anna Shadrina

***

Steven Lee Myers, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of

Vladimir Putin

Anders Åslund

Thomas W Simons, Jr (ed.), Islam in Eurasia: A Policy Volume

Shahram Akbarzadeh

Ieva Astahovska et al (eds.), Revisiting Footnotes: Footprints

of the Recent Past in the Post-Socialist Region

Ulrike Gerhardt

About the Contributors

Introduction

Olesya Khromeychuk

In April 2014, a senior Russian politician who is known better for his scandalous outbursts than his political work was filmed ordering two male aides to violently rape a female journalist, Stella Dubovitskaia, who had asked a slightly prickly question about the crisis in Ukraine during a press conference inside the state Duma.[1] Noticing that the journalist in question was not only a female, but a pregnant female, Vladimir Zhirinovskii found another reason to silence her: [t]his is no place for you if you’re pregnant. […] Pregnant women should not show up at work. Sit at home and look after your child, got that? yelled Russia’s former deputy speaker of the Duma.[2] He then added that it was thanks to women like the journalist that the protests in Ukraine had erupted, and assessed the female protesters as suffering from uterine frenzy. Without that uterine frenzy there wouldn’t have been Maidan, concluded the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia.[3] The politician’s diagnosis was echoed by Russia’s National Television (NTV), one of the main state-backed channels, which produced a program dedicated to the women of the Maidan with the unambiguous title The Furies of the Maidan: Sex, Psychosis, and Politics.[4] This televised celebration of open misogyny demonized a number of female political figures, such as Ol’ha Bohomolets’, Lesia Orobets’, Iryna Farion, and Tetiana Chornovol who gained some visibility during the protests in Ukraine, but who have little in common apart from their gender. In a pseudo-scientific analysis of the women’s political and personal lives, the program’s experts labelled the women as furies, whose unsatisfied libido drove them into the protest movement.[5]

Both Zhirinovskii and the NTV documentary reduced the women who dared enter the public and the political spheres to their uteruses. The women’s desire to participate in political life was equated with an exaggerated and unsatisfied sexual appetite. They were presented as animals who needed to be tamed or as people suffering from an illness that needed to be cured. It is remarkable that such a description of half of the Ukrainian protesters could be voiced by a high-ranking politician and supported on national television in the twenty-first century with no repercussions for either of the two parties. It is precisely because such a reduction of politically active women continues to be possible that this special issue is not only timely, but also urgent.

This special issue is based on papers given at a workshop held at the University of Cambridge in June 2015.[6] The participants included not only scholars who study the region, but also academics and activists who have participated directly in anti-authoritarian protest movements. The workshop brought together scholars and practitioners who dealt with the questions of gender inequality first hand and who could share their in-depth knowledge with each other. The workshop was of great benefit to those present, but, as is often the case with a discipline that positions itself, deliberately or otherwise, outside of the mainstream, the knowledge at the workshop was mostly shared among the converted. Therefore, it was agreed that the findings of the workshop should be voiced through a publication that could bring the discussions of gender to a larger audience. The Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society seemed like a perfect outlet for this task. The articles that comprise this issue deal with questions that receive little attention outside of the field of gender studies. By disseminating them through a publication that deals with broad issues relevant to the region we hope to reach a wider readership, and demonstrate that the understanding of gender perceptions, relations, and representations is vital for the understanding of the region and its political, social, and cultural processes.

The focus on protest movements is highly suitable for this purpose. Revolutions, protests, and demonstrations tend to arise when there is an urgent need for change, and when a critical mass of the population is ready to bring this change about. The countries that form the focus of this issue have all witnessed numerous attempts to bring about such changes in the post-Soviet years of their existence. Those who set the agendas of the protests, participate in them, and deliver the outcomes often include a cross-section of their respective societies, yet the general perception of the protest activity tends to be associated with certain individuals, usually heteronormative males, who become the emblems of the anti-authoritarian struggle of their nations, and who rarely aim to represent the interests of groups that also stand against authoritarian regimes, but which, at the same time, are against patriarchy. Alexei Navalny, for instance, one of the leaders of the opposition in Russia, who describes himself as nationalist democrat, is a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin, yet as an Orthodox believer he condemned the actions of his fellow critics of Russia’s President, Pussy Riot, as repulsive, stating that he would be angry if his daughter behaved similarly.[7] At the same time, Navalny argued that the women of Pussy Riot should not have been imprisoned, not because he supported their protests, but because he believed that it was not right to keep mothers of small children in prison.[8] By comparing his fellow protesters to either naughty daughters or pitiful mothers, the leader of the opposition, similarly to Zhirinovskii, deprived them of their political agency. Examples of similar attitudes from other countries discussed in this issue serve as evidence that even though women can be politicians, protesters, and revolutionaries, the attitude towards them is shaped by the perceptions of gender that are prevalent in society.

All papers in this issue discuss protest activity in one form or another. Given the temporal proximity of the Maidan events in Ukraine, it is unsurprising that this particular protest movement is discussed in several contributions. Tamara Martsenyuk’s paper and my own article look at various groups within the Maidan protest movement. Martsenyuk examines the experiences of LGBT activists during the Maidan and demonstrates that, in order to be able to participate in what has been termed the Revolution of Dignity unhindered by their fellow-protesters, some of them chose to suspend their LGBT activism for the duration of the revolution, while others promoted the notion of the correct gay identity and the idea of homonationalism. Martsenyuk also assesses the outcomes of the Maidan protests and the degree of their success in defending human rights, including those of the LGBT community. In my own article I examine the use of the protest space through the lens of gender. While women were certainly present at the Maidan, the space they occupied was often regimented by the male protesters. That said, the female protesters managed to find certain pores in the physical and ideological boundaries of the Maidan and succeeded in going beyond them, both in the process of challenging the patriarchal order, and while obeying its rules. Comparing perceptions and representations of gender relations on the Maidan with those in other protests, in particular the Arab Spring, I conclude that the active participation of women in the protest movements does not necessarily guarantee their liberation.

The question of protests is continued in Darya Malyutina’s article, but her focus is drawn to the difficulty of conducting qualitative research in the middle of politically charged atmosphere while maintaining a balance between the researcher’s academic and political interest in the protest movement. Malyutina explores how her ethnicity and her gender impacted her work as a researcher of protest activism among the Ukrainian diaspora in London in 2013–14. Malyutina concludes that the participation of a researcher in protests as a supportive interlocutor allows for a more intimate look at the movement and, to a degree, enables the researcher to become part of this movement. At the same time, she stresses the vitality of critical reflection on the researcher’s own experiences.

Evgenia Ivanova’s work retains the focus on political activism, but takes her readers away from the emblematic protest activity of taking to the streets to another medium: political calendars, which have appeared in Belarus and Russia. Ivanova argues that, the female political calendar format proves to be a fruitful platform for exploring and performing issues surrounding women’s political agency in Belarus and Russia. At the same time, she states that the manifestation of political agency via one’s own, explicitly female, body is like walking on eggshells, as while appearing on political calendars can present an opportunity for women’s engagement with politics, at the same time, the presence of female bodies in the calendars can also further the objectification of women.

Visualized political activism is the subject of Olenka Dmytryk’s contribution. In her assessment of the Ukrainian and Russian feminist art scenes Dmytryk identifies a recent shift in the position of the artists raising issues of gender in Russia and Ukraine from I’m not a feminist, but… to I’m a feminist, therefore… She argues that the 2010s have brought a new wave in the development of feminist art in these two countries. Dmytryk states that the I am a feminist, therefore… stance has been adopted as an instrument of gender and sexual dissent, and that it has become a way of resisting conservative neo-traditionalist trends in Ukrainian and Russian societies.

Changing trends are the focus of the somewhat experimental, non-academic part of this special issue. As the workshop on which the issue is based included practitioners from outside of academia, so does this issue. One of the three contributions that comprise this section discusses the metamorphosis of feminist art in Russia from within, as it is written by an active participant of these developments, Nadia Plungian. Plungian identifies the clear turn to the right in Russian society as a whole and in the arts in particular. She then gives her understanding of how this new conservative trend has affected the art scene in Russia. Plungian observes the tendency to use gender as a trendy device by artists who have little to do with feminism and who, in fact, support the regime and promote its traditionalist stance.

Another non-academic contribution to this journal is an interview with Maria Berlins’ka, an active participant of the Maidan protests and someone who has been fighting against the systemic discrimination of women who have joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces since the start of the conflict in the Donbas region. This interview offers an assessment of the Ukrainian protests from inside, as experienced by a female protester, and identifies some of the key difficulties women faced during the Maidan. The final piece in this section is by Iryna Kosovs’ka, a member of the Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, and is also based on a personal story. In her review of Central and East European Women in the Second World War (2015), Kosovs’ka compares her own experience of political violence with that experienced by women in the Second World War.[9]

While each article in this issue naturally offers an in-depth analysis of the question it studies, reading them alongside one another also offers a cross-national and cross-disciplinary look at the region, raising questions that find resonance in all three countries discussed here. After all, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine have a similar past when it comes to gender relations: they all went through the pseudo-emancipation of communism. The post-Soviet idea of gender equality entails both disillusionment with something that existed on paper but had little implementation in practice, and nostalgia for times when women and men had similar opportunities, at least in theory. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant the collapse of even the perception of gender equality that had existed for decades. Inequalities, double and multiple burdens carried by women, glass ceilings and overt discrimination resurfaced and were exacerbated in the post-Soviet times. Economic calamities and political upheavals meant that the question of gender equality was deemed untimely. The transition from communism experienced by Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine had a different impact on men and women. In their assessment of the status of women after communism Janet Elise Johnson and Jean C. Robinson state that

[a]cross Central and Eastern Europe, there have been more benefits for men than for women from the transition: men are richer, more men head new companies, more men own privatized firms, and […] many more men hold political power. Women have suffered more from the loss of social services, women dominate professions that remain in the resource-starved state sector, and women and women’s issues have not been a central part of the postcommunist political landscape.[10]

The tackling of these inequalities through the formation of feminist initiatives has not been particularly successful in the countries in question, as feminism remains a dirty word for much of the population there. The collapse of the communist ideology meant that it could be replaced by other ones, most notably nationalism, which brought their own patriarchal values and norms, and with them, what Dubravka Ugrešić labels the three ‘Ps’: the Politician, the Priest and the Poet.[11] The fourth P Ugrešić adds is the Policeman who facilitates the work of the other three.[12] These four Ps, i.e., the state, the church, the conforming arts, and the punitive system are all patriarchal and often authoritarian. They have been dominating Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine for the entire post-Soviet period. It is of little surprise, therefore, that the generations that grew up or matured on the ruins of communism have been regularly rebelling against these four Ps.

This issue invites its readers to consider the concept of another P: the Protester. While it exists to oppose the other four, does it succeed in opposing patriarchy and authoritarianism? The issue does not aim to definitively answer this or many other questions that arise in the articles it contains. Its purpose is to keep the discussions of the coexistence of feminism and nationalism, gender and citizenship, anti-authoritarianism and patriarchy burning and make them spill over from the field of gender studies into other disciplines.

[1] See Adam Withnall, Ukraine Crisis: Russian Pro-Kremlin politician Vladimir Zhironovsky [sic] Filmed Ordering Aides to ‘Violently Rape’ Pregnant Journalist Stella Dubovitskaya, The Independent, Monday 21 April 2014, http://www.in

dependent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russian-prokremlin-politician-vladimir-zhir

onovsky-filmed-ordering-aides-to-violently-rape-pregnant-journalist-stella-dubo

vitskaya-9273041.html (accessed 28 January 2016). The actual phrase Zhirinovskii used was zhestko nasilovat’.

[2] Ibid.

[3] In Terrence McCoy, Russian Parliament Deputy Speaker tells Aide to ‘Violently Rape’ Pregnant Journalist on Live TV, The Washington Post, 21 April 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/

04/21/russian-politician-orders-aide-to-violently-rape-pregnant-journalist-on-live-tv/ (accessed 28 January 2016). Zhirinovskii refers to the protests that took place in Ukraine in 2013–14 and which are commonly known as the Maidan or the Euromaidan.

[4] See The Furies of the Maidan: Sex, Psychosis, and Politics, NTV, 19 April 2014, http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/914656 (accessed 28 January 2016).

[5] Ibid. The program focused on Ukrainian women, but also mentioned Dalia Grybauskaitė, the President of Lithuania, the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and other Western female politicians whom the filmmakers accused of being lesbians and thus pathologically ill.

[6] The workshop Gender, Nationalism and Citizenship in Anti-Authoritarian Protests in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine was funded by the Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS) and Cambridge Ukrainian Studies. It took place on 20 June 2015 at Robinson College, University of Cambridge.

[7] Marc Bennetts, Did Pussy Riot Destroy Russia’s Anti-Putin Movement?, Lacuna Magazine, 12 March 2014, para. 11, http://lacuna.org.uk/openlacuna/

did-pussy-riot-destroy-russias-anti-putin-movement/ (accessed 28 January 2016).

[8] Ibid.

[9] See Gelinada Grinchenko, Kateryna Kobchenko, and Oksana Kis’, eds., Central and East European Women in the Second World War: Gendered Experiences in a Time of Extreme Violence (Kyiv: Art Knyha, 2015).

[10] Janet Elise Johnson and Jean C. Robinson, Living Gender after Communism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), vii.

[11] Dubravka Ugrešić, What is an Author Made Of? in Europe in Sepia (Rochester: Open Letter, 2013), 188–214 (204).

[12] Dubravka Ugrešić in a public lecture On Women in Politics, Men in Power and Obstinate Ways of Misogyny and Xenophobia, at University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London, 12 January 2016.

Negotiating Protest Spaces on the Maidan: A Gender Perspective

Olesya Khromeychuk

Abstract: The paper discusses the gendered use of space during the 2013–14 Maidan protests in Ukraine. While women were certainly present at the Maidan, the space they occupied was often regimented by the male protesters. Many women adopted traditional feminine roles of cooks, cleaners and peaceful messengers and were often perceived by their fellow-protesters as well as the general public as helpers of the male protesters rather than revolutionaries in their own right. At the same time, many female protesters managed to go beyond the physical and ideological boundaries of the Maidan, both in the process of overtly challenging the patriarchal order and while obeying its rules. The paper assesses the various ways in which women occupied the protest space, how they interacted with the often hostile spaces outside of the Maidan, and how they contributed to the construction of the meaning of the Maidan as a place of revolution. The paper also assesses whether the active participation of women in the protest movements foreshadows their liberation.

I saw online that Hrushevs’kyi Street was burning and that the situation had reached its peak. The next day I told my mother that I was on my way to college. I packed some clothes, booked my flight on the way, popped in to the Labour Party office and told them that I wasn’t sure how long I was leaving for, when I would be back or if I would be back at all, stopped by my college and told them that I might need a gap year, because I had to leave, and left. I left a very long letter for my mother saying mum, I love you very much, I am sorry I did this, I hope you forgive me one day, but I cannot stay here when my country is going through such events. I don’t want my children or grandchildren to ask me one day where I was [during the protests] and I would have to answer that I was very concerned [for my country], but I spent this time in London.[1]

Iryna Ovchar left her studies and her job as a volunteer for the Labour Party in London and went to Kyiv on 20 January 2014 as soon as the clashes on the Maidan intensified. The day after she arrived, the first protester, Serhii Nihoian, was killed. Soon after, what had been a peaceful protest since the start of the demonstrations at the end of November 2013 turned into a scene of violent clashes that claimed over a hundred lives and left hundreds of people injured. Much of the coverage of the most intense phase of the protests, which lasted until the end of February 2014, focused on images of burning barricades, state-hired snipers, and exploding Molotov cocktails, all situated in a largely male-populated world of urban warfare. Ovchar, like hundreds of female protesters, was actively involved in this phase of the events, but as is the case with other women, her story is hard to tell because it does not fit in the generally accepted portrayal of the male-dominated protests where women featured only symbolically. Nevertheless, her story is a valid part of the history of the Maidan, and one of many similar stories, the exclusion of which creates a distorted depiction of the events, concealing some of their most remarkable dimensions. Not least among these was the fact that the Maidan became a space of the dynamic negotiation of gender roles, in which the latter were both reinforced and challenged.

This paper focuses on the participation of women in the 2013–14 protests in Ukraine, paying particular attention to the use of physical space on the Maidan and the construction of symbolic place. The paper assesses how women and men were expected to function within the small state into which the Maidan was transformed, and how the chances of establishing connections outside of this space differed for male and female protesters. The paper examines the practice of what I call enforced protection and the variety of reactions to this practice, including the acceptance of traditional gender roles by many protesting women. The paper also attempts to assess the impact gender relations had on the protests as a whole and on the way gender is perceived and presented in post-Maidan Ukraine. The paper examines recently published analyses of the Maidan’s gender politics and refers to literature that discusses gender in protest movements elsewhere in the world. The main bulk of data consists of female protesters’ testimonies, which I gathered in Kyiv in April 2014, soon after the protests ended, and in London in August 2015.[2]

Europe starts with you[3]

The events that have come to be known as the Maidan were a wave of protests, demonstrations and civil unrest that began on the night of 21 November 2013 following the then-President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych’s failure to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union. At first the protesters, mostly students, took to the streets to demand the signing of the Agreement and establishing closer ties with the EU. The main slogan at this point was Ukraine is Europe. This, however, changed after the violent quashing of the protest by the riot police on the night of 30 November 2013. The brutal dispersal of the protesters gave rise to unprecedented waves of demonstrations at first in Kyiv and then all over the country demanding the resignation of Yanukovych and his government. This came to be known in Ukraine as the Revolution of Dignity. It was not a question about Europe, explained Ovchar. [We protested] because the children were hurt: people who were supposed to defend my country hurt the children of this country.[4] For almost two months the protests stayed peaceful. Around 800,000 Ukrainians took to the streets in Kyiv and other cities by December.[5] At this time the participation of women and men on the Maidan was nearly equal. Later, as the demonstrations acquired a more violent character, they became much more male-dominated.[6]

Even when the demands of the demonstrators shifted from the Association Agreement with the EU to more pressing domestic problems, the focus of the Maidan continued to be a fight for respect for human rights and dignity. Protection of human rights, however, was understood differently by different protesters. In her assessment of the LGBT participants of the Maidan, Tamara Martsenyuk quotes one of her interviewees who concluded that the ‘Revolution of Dignity’ was not the time to wave the rainbow flags on the barricades.[7] Even in the early days of the protests, slogans calling for equality for the LGBT community, or feminist mottoes such as Europe = Equal Wages for Women did not gain the acceptance of some protesters, in particular of nationalistically inclined men.[8] I stood with a slogan that said ‘Liberty Equality Sisterhood’, explained Ruslana Panukhnyk, a human rights activist.[9] We stood for about five minutes when some people approached us and said: ‘you are provocateurs! What are you doing?’ and started to pull these [placards from us], and break them.[10]

Here the comparison with the protests in Egypt is highly relevant. In her assessment of the role of women in the Arab Spring, Nadje Al-Ali notes that

Egyptian women who participated in demonstrations during International Women’s Day on 8 March 2011 were harassed and accused of taking away attention from main issues. Some men who attacked the female protesters claimed that they were seeking to destroy Egypt and undermine family values and the sanctity of the family by telling women to desert their husbands.[11]

In Ukraine, women who joined the protests were usually marginalized, but not expelled from the protest space, yet as soon as their agenda included slogans referring specifically to