Women's Rewards In Russia: Attempt Of A Research In Sociology Of Rewards

Abstract

The article deals with women’s state rewards, which existed in Russia in 1714-1917 and 1944-1995; the symbolic social and ethic significance of state women’s rewards is considered; the characteristics of women’s nature, to which they appeal, are revealed. The following questions are discussed in the article: did the division of state rewards into men’s and women’s presuppose gender discrimination, was it the consequence of male chauvinism. The author calls his direction of sociological search, which lies between sociology of knowledge, historical sociology and faleristics, sociology of rewards. In the first part of the article the author gives a general characteristic of the rewards system in the Russian empire and considers 11 women rewards. The rewards system of the Russian empire, established at the beginning of the XVIII-th century by Peter I was an integral part of the public service. It functioned as a subsystem of state-bureaucratic system. Its main purpose was moral and material stimulation of loyal subject service to the emperor personally, to the state and the whole feudal and official social order. The reward system of the Russian empire rendered the greatest advantages to men, usually at the age of over 25, ethnic Russians, Orthodox, noblemen, military service men. It was they who constituted the elite of the society and exemplary value model. Women in the Russian empire could not aspire to getting the same rewards as men. They could not serve in the forces of regular army, and their opportunities of working at the civil state service were rather limited. However, women had an opportunity to work at the public field. Special women medals, decorations and orders were instituted for them in order to reward their public activity. The analysis of the history of their institution and end use allows the author to make the conclusion about the way the authorities of the Russian empire with Romanov house at the head viewed the place and role of women as citizens of the state during 300 years. They saw woman as faithful assistant, capable of helping man in case of need; unquenchable social worker (at time of peace); self-denying nurse (at time of war); and finally mother-patriot, who brought up sons-heroes, ready to die for the faith, the tsar and the motherland (a tendency which took shape at the beginning of the XX-th century). Women’s rewards of the Russian empire stimulated in women the development of the supreme moral virtues by appealing to genuine Christian philanthropy, faithfulness, kindness, duty of serving to high ideals, active help to the sick, the miserable, the injured and the poor. The participation of women (including wives of emperors) was either limited or excluded from those spheres of state and public life, in which decisions were taken or actions were made, leading to death, murder, injuries, deprivation and limitation of people’s freedom. And vice versa, the participation of women was expanded or was considered as specific “women” activities in those spheres of social life, in which decisions were taken and actions were made, aimed at the preservation, reproduction and growth of human life. Woman as life keeper: mother, sister, teacher, wife, assistant – here is the dominating value example-model of woman, which underlies the reward system and the practice of rewarding in the Russian empire. The author thinks that one cannot give a strictly negative estimation of the inequality of the rights of men and women, which existed in Russian monarchic feudal-bureaucratic state and was reflected in its reward system. The accusations of Romanov house in “gender discrimination” and “male chauvinism” have no grounds, because they represent a transfer of values and norms of one cultural and historic epoch onto values and norms of the other one. The absence of equality of genders in the reward law in tsarist Russia and “gender discrimination” (or “male chauvinism”) are not the same things. But the author is not inclined to idealize tsarism in a romantic way. Woman as the keeper of hearth and life was held in the family (according to Domostroi), she was protected from men’s bloody battles and dirty political intrigues, but it was carried out at the expense of limiting her civil rights and opportunities for free self-assertion. In the second part of the article the author gives a general characteristic of the reward system in Soviet Russia and in the USSR and considers three women rewards of the Soviet Union, which were issued in the period between 1944 and 1995 for the possession of many children. In the Soviet reward system women were equalized in rights with men. De jure it meant that women could aspire to getting the same rewards as men. De facto there traditionally existed the so-called “men” and “women” professions, which considerably expanded the opportunities of getting a certain range of rewards by men and consequently greatly constrained these opportunities for women. As a result of the analysis of the history of women rewards institution and end use in the USSR, the author comes to the conclusion that the possession of many children in the USSR meant heroic deed, which required woman’s selflessness, mobilization of all vital forces and, maybe, all the life. The author does not think that the reward system of the USSR discriminated women. If the facts of discrimination really took place, it was not owing to the reward law but owing to its application. At the same time the author mentions that Soviet women, as well as Soviet men, became the instrument of political and ideological manipulation on the part of the ruling authorities, which did not promote the softening of their temper, the development of real philanthropy and charity. Many women were forced to distance themselves from families and hearth, from appropriate education of own children and entertainments. As a result of general proletarianization of the way of life and the dissolution of morals since 1917, Russian woman partly lost the so-called “femininity”. Soviet women, as well as Soviet men, were sincerely enthusiastic about that heroic burst to the bright future, which was stimulated by the Soviet reward system. The author finds in it the cult of a hero, and he devoted to this cult a special research. The Soviet authorities, which drove woman into a peculiar socio-cultural dead end, were forced to appeal not to Christian love but to the “moral substance” of women, i.e. to their civil and patriotic consciousness. In fact this appeal was on socio-biological or population level. New social and historical epoch, which began since the First World War, is characterized by the elimination of the distinctions between war and peace, by their growing interpenetration. Women rewards of the USSR, against the background of other rewards, which formally were equally accessible for men and women, stimulate the development of one of the main inherent inclinations in women. One can hardly give an unambiguously positive estimation of the fact that the founders of the supreme “women” reward in the USSR saw in a woman not only human and patrimonial origin but a specific and gender one. The status “Mother-heroine” appeals not to supreme aspirations of individual human spirit peculiar both to woman and man (though, perhaps, in different ways), but to common to all mankind instinctive inclinations. The latter, if one accepts them as value example-model, average, firstly, all people in their patrimonial substance, and secondly, all women in their gender nature. In the final part of the article the author makes comparative analysis of the two native reward systems and makes conclusions. From his point of view, the reward system of the USSR, in contrast to the conservative feudal-aristocratic and state-bureaucratic reward system of the Russian empire, was a more liberal and democratic one. The establishment of special women rewards in the USSR, which make mothers heroines, was a measure, which was forced by the consequences of the Great Patriotic War. Formally it broke the principle of equality of genders, because men unlike women could not get women rewards for having many children. However, the social discrimination of men, which was established de jure, meant de facto the creation of social and moral incentives for more intensive exploitation of genital function of women organism. Though, the establishment of a special women reward block and the heroization of “maternity” hardly promoted the liberation or emancipation of Soviet women, it really (including the factor of appreciable privileges) raised the prestige of women who had many children in the society, and it follows that it also raised their honor and dignity. But one can also talk about the opposite tendency of devaluation of honor and dignity of mothers with many children. Their heroic spirit had in the USSR the ideological character of “total mobilization”: since 1944 until 1953 it was evident, since 1953 it became less evident. In the totalitarian perspective a Soviet woman was a universal worker, which besides had a special working task – the reproduction of the basic productive force, birth and education of a Soviet individual. The progress in equality of genders, achieved in the reward system of the USSR, turned out to be the regress in social and ethical content of its special women rewards as compared with predominant ethos of women rewards of the Russian empire.