Moscow does not believe in tearsPart One

Moscow does not believe in Tears(Dir. V. Menshov, 1980)

• Better title: “Spare me the sob story”• An example of Socialist-Realist film brought up

to date with social criticism• One of the most successful Soviet films of the

period known as “The Stagnation” (Zastoy). • Oscar as BFF 1981

• Film opens in the 1950s during the “Thaw”.• Lives of three young women from elsewhere

who have come to Moscow as “limitchitsy,” i.e., temporary workers, and are looking to better themselves

• Live in a dormitory • The three have to find a husband so that they

can stay in the big city.

Tonia (right) the simple country girl)

• Works as a house painter

• Unpretentious, plain Soviet girl

• Marries a simple, reliable guy

• Linked with the land – cottage

Liudmila

• The bourgeois go-getter • Works in service

industries (bakery, drycleaners)

• Marries hockey star

Katia, the machine operator who gets pregnant

Question

• What aspects of the “Thaw” do you see in this film?

• What surprised you the most about the film?

• How different are these Russian women from young Canadian women?

Tatiana Tolstaya

• B. 1951• Writer of short stories,

television personality (talk-show), blogger

• Began literary career in 1983

• Outspoken on women’s issues, political questions.

Women’s Lives (1990)

“Home, hearth, household, children, birth, family ties, the close relationship of mothers, grandmothers, and daughters; the attention to all details, control over everything, power, at times extending to tyranny – all this is Russian woman, who both frightens and attracts, enchants and oppresses. To imagine that Russian women are subservient to men and that they must therefore struggle psychologically or otherwise to assert their individuality vis-à-vis men is, at the very least naïve.” (Pp. 7-8)

Why Russian women are not feminists…

“Men are the property of women; if this property betrays, or runs away, or decides to lay down its own law – it will receive its just deserts.” (P. 9.)

On American and Russian women

“We are too different; in many respects we are opposite.”Russian women’s sympathy for men – persecuted, sent to wars, made to conform to Soviet life. Resigned acceptance of infidelities: being a wife still confers status.“A Soviet woman’s dream is not to have to work.”

Changes since 1991

• Women’s hygiene products available• Contraceptives instead of abortions• Post 1991: many rich, independent

“businessladies” • Women have entered politics• Three women ministers in Putin’s cabinet• Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine