Russian press loves to poll celebrities as same people, who have something to tell, fortified by the authority of their achievement and attraction. Here is the poll by one of the oldest popular newspapers “Arguments and Facts” on the occasion of the “International” Women’s Day March 8.
“What’s a Woman’s Happiness to you?”
A Russian pop song says that “Woman’s Happiness is to have the loved man near, and nothing else is needed.” It describes the quiet family happiness of husband and wife walking hand in hand and just doing anything together, the “who-would-have-thought” pleasure of weaving coziness and giving love to the man with a back as “strong as wall” (Russian top qualifier, meaning “safe as house” in English) where you can hide away.
Real women’s answers were different, for the reasons that being happily married is a thing so essential that it goes without saying (the more that quotes are nothing new), but not the only thing in the world to make a Russian woman happy.
- Valentina Matviyenko, St. Petersburg Governor:
“I doubt the sincerity of women who insist that only work can make them happy. There’s no 100% iron ladies in the world, believe me. Yes, there’s no room for sentimentality at the workplace. But I myself am a sentimental person, and it’s hard not to cry when I see the grieves of old people or children, or watch a sentimental film.
Where can a businesswoman derive her inner strength? Only at home: when you come back to the coziness, put on gown and slippers, and owerflow in family warmth. Yes, it’s ordinary slippers and a breakfast at a warm kitchen that make a woman’s happiness. There is no controversy between career and the joy of Motherhood.
But I feel rather reserved about March 8. I believe that women deserve to be given flowers and told compliments all year round, not once in a year on the occasion of Women’s Day.”
- Irina Lobacheva, Olympic figure skater:
“Four years ago, Ilya (Averbuch, husband and skating partner) and I have already got tickets for the training session. Suddenly he comes home and says: “So much for skating! I’ve bought a tour to the Maldives, let’s go make us a child!” This desire sounded fantastic. Many figure skaters struggle to get pregnant for years. One pair had to go for it 10 years. Two more fellow women couldn’t ever bear a child. Now and then, we’ve been suffering injuries, hypothermia, dieting. In sportive anxiety, you can sit on ice thoughtless of once wanting to become a mother.
But my case was a miracle. No other words to call it. The son was born exactly 9 months after that romantic voyage, in March, so we named him Martin. He already skates, but doesn’t want to go in for this sport. He says he wants to drive cars. Well, Ilya also told me that his childhood dream was to drive long hauls. Our Olympic victory was a tremendous joy, but a nothing compared to the birth of the child.
- Lyudmila Artemieva, actress
“Any kind of happiness is ability to treasure the moment and to wonder at someone’s kindness. Once, a stranger namesake from deep province, having watched the series “Taxi woman”, decided to give me her house. She was diseased, had no relatives, she wanted to do something good for my taxi driver character Nadia. Sure I refused but I was so happy that such people exist.”
(During the Russian version of “Ugly Betty”, women were buzzing with compassion all over – as much as most men were pissed off at “this craze”. In towns, people pooled to bigboard ad posters reading: “Katya, hold on, we’re with you! Andrey, you are wrong!”)
“One more woman came up to me and asked if she might hold my hand. As she did, she thanked and went away. However minor occasion for an actor it could seem, I felt incredibly happy.
One should look around more often, to see beauty. Here’s a bunch of lilac, looking like a broom. Vase it into hot water – and what fragrance it gives! At this moment, unbutton the uniform of your “importance”, tear off the straps, and feel how it breethes! What more? Seems like we are sometimes dozing awake. When it really sucks, when you feel sad or angry – write down 50 points by which you are happy. Can’t fill the list – then you are sleeping, not living. Wake up!”
- Oksana Fedorova, former police lieutenant, Miss Universe-2002
Resigned from the title for disapproval of its vulgarized commercialization, also in favor of her family and academic prospects. Became a TV hostess (children’s “Evening Tale” and extreme contest “Fort Boyard”) and an actress. Behaves with perfectionistic responsibility and balance (that urge me to translate some of her interviews). Draws joy from art and theater. And…
“Happiness is when you are alive and healthy. I understood it early. Near my school, in my native Pskov, I was playing ball with other kids. The ball disappeared in the grass, I ran to look for it and – fell down into a sewage vent. I was plummeting through the air with a horrified yell, bidding farewell to life. I could die or get crippled if I weren’t as lucky as caught on a reinforcement bar.
I survived, with my knee and lip seriously injured. My face was all swollen. “Mama, how I live on?!” – I was weeping, afraid to remain monstrous for ever. Fortunately, I got off without scars. Since then, when anything is going to upset me, I recollect that time and think: “God, what a trifle’s going on as compared with the gift of life and one more spring to meet!””
I wish happiness to my readers and their wonderful loves!
Sincerely,
Comrade Natalia
Translator’s copyright notice: link here, please. )
March 19, 2007 at 4:45 pm
And an interesting poll on what makes a Russian woman at all.
(Answers given at job interviews for a female security agency)
Q. What does it mean to be a woman?
- To be a multitasking “Caesar” who manages five things simultaneously.
- To be doomed to feel insufficient.
- To be able to cry when tears are needed.
- To make others think that being a woman is something special.
- To be able to perform in 30 years what a man is given 60 for.
- To be always responsible for everything.
May 11, 2007 at 2:30 am
“Real women’s answers were different, for the reasons that being happily married is a thing so essential that it goes without saying”
I can only smile when I read these words. As a Western man who has had to endure being considered a social pariah for even suggesting that a girl’s most essential happiness is to have her beloved man at her side, to see these very words are like water to a man who has walked for decades through the desert.
In the West it “goes without saying” because it is considered an outmoded concept and nearly trivial by a Feminazi—rather than the timeless and successful union of the lives of a man and his girl.
Yes, people still marry. But it is fundamentally a minor circumstance, relative to career success, and lived according to an entirely different perception of the role of the husband and wife than it is in Russia.
Only career and material success are considered important enough to be shared publicly with others.
Tell people how happy you are to have your beloved husband in your life, when at a city dinner party and you may get some blank looks from those who heard you.
Of course you will be congratulated for marrying. But there is little genuine respect for your happiness found in a man.
“So, when do you go back to work?” is the usual way of exiting such an awkward moment.
Aw, but tell them that you just found a place to drop off your six month old child to StrangeCare/ChildCare so that you could then have the time to accept your new promotion at work and people will shower smiles and congratulations with enthusiam. Oh, how excellent!
Understand?
Happiness by having a beloved husband? Please now tell me something truly worthy of happiness. Understand?
May 11, 2007 at 11:24 am
How sad. Don’t they even consider a happy home hinterland an asset for career anymore? )
Dinner accountability… In Russian culture, you would screen your personal life from public, to protect it and not to confuse others. It’s about privacy, same as the care you normally take of body and soul. Exceptions – when you are interviewed by the media; but even then many public figures keep stone silence about their relationships and significant others if any, or declare All Right (because a sound family is still a mark of sound personality).
Yet, in talking with friends, the #1 topic is Partners and Family. I mean, when girls talk.
Russian women account to their friends and pals for their work as well. And the first question exchanged by people is, “What’s your occupation?” Dinner party introductions ask each other. Trainers and doctors ask their clients. Craftspeople ask demanding, jovial or peculiar customers…
But it’s a common (and sometimes sore) question asked when people haven’t heard of each other long (or, tactlessly enough, even when they are just acquainted): “So, are you married yet” or “Do you have kids?”
A Russian woman can consider herself successful, and be envied, when she’s happily married. She regards her husband’s success as her own success. And often, some talented women prefer to hide from the risks of outer life behind the “strong shoulder”, and fulfil their potentials and ambitions in the capacity of promotion consultants, tacticians and generators of ideas to their men (Raisa the wife of Gorbachev was not the finest but the most visible of them, thus incurring public disapproval).
To be developed into the post “Why an intelligent Russian wife is a vital asset for the family”…
Now imagine that men’s praise of women’s love and loyalty is a rare spring of fresh water to our women, too!
In the modern culture, taking deep interest in the other is deemed indecent, dreams of lifetime love – unrealistic, a desire for marriage and children – an assault on the Man’s Freedom.
Those Russian men who can’t provide may consider women “parasites”, themselves being such. Men who have potential to struggle through the current business environment are trained to be “lone wolves”. And men who by any measure strive up are lured there by the image of “harvesting predators” at the top.
Even as early as in XIX c. the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy said something like, “Man strode easily over the fields, then attached a woman to his leg…” like a cannonball at a convict’s ankle. Impressive, eh?
So, the current East-West matchmaking situation is truly unique…
May 28, 2007 at 10:16 am
“…being happily married is a thing so essential that it goes without saying…”
WOW!!!!
This is like sweet, sweet music to a Western man’s ears.
Being happily married is an optional extra for Western women. If the wife becomes bored with it then they simply get divorced. Their friends will most likley encourage them to get divorced. For Wertern men it is often the opposite. Men want to feel needed and divorce is disasterous for men.
January 4, 2008 at 3:59 pm
How do Ukrainian women define “Having Achieved Success in Life”, on a female part?
(1986 respondents, aged above 18, all over Ukraine,
polled in February 2007 by Kiev International Institute of Sociology
and the ages-famous National University “Kyiv Mohyla Academy”.
No more than 3 variants of answers allowed.)
To have raised and cultivated children – 55%
To love and be loved – 36%
To have built a marriage – 33%
To be a happy person – 29%
To be the master of her fate – 16%
To have an interesting occupation, that takes creativity – 15%
To have good, loyal friends – 11%
To be respected, of authority to her surrounding – 7%
To have reached peace of mind and harmony of soul – 7%
To lead an interesting life, full of events / experiences / learning – 6%
Undetermined or failing to answer – 10%
March 9, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Another poll result… Only 3 out of 100 Ukrainian women can imagine a happy life without a man and family. Yet they get married, too – because “all” do so.