Being acquainted with all “Varorud” publications concerned with the role and place of woman in society published under the heading “On Bitter Destiny of our Women”, taking much to heart certain facts and getting indignant with others I decided to share my own opinion.
“Let you live in an epoch of great changes!” - the ancient Chinese damnation sounded to this effect. The sense of this locution is utterly clear for us, citizens of the post-Soviet CIS space. It is that same anguish we have been sustaining bitterly and painfully for the whole decade already. We do live in the epoch of great changes. And this is the frustration of all former life together with its gone benefits. Here I adduce a citation from the very strong novel “The Conquered” devoted to one of such epochs when in the first years of the Soviet power “the former class of exploiters was swept away” (ordinary intellectuals being referred to the same category too); the authoress of the novel is Irina Golovkina, granddaughter of famous Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov: “The acuteness of the moment will have gone, new forms will be gradually established, history will give its own evaluation, but as for us, spasmodic tortures at the juncture of the epochs fell to our lot… It’s our painful fate!” Now spasmodic tortures at the juncture of the epochs fell to our lot too. We don’t know when the epoch of future stability comes and what generation may lay accounts with it.
In the 30-ies of the century passed the novel “Gone by the Wind” written by Margaret Mitchell was issued in America having been at once a bestseller all over the world. And only in the first socialist country nothing was known about it. We acquainted with Scarlet O’Hara, protagonist of the novel who appealed to our sympathies and worship, only in the years of perestroika. Oh, how she does resemble our today’s women who bear the brunt of family relations in the period of unemployment, poverty, misery, homeless children. Scarlet O’Hara and her contemporaries also sustained “spasmodic tortures at the juncture of the epochs which fell to their lot”. This book from quite a different life turned out to be wonderingly congenial to our time and the image of the main heroine may prompt us what is to be done under these circumstances.
The milieu of Scarlet O’Hara consists of owners of southern plantations, rich, well-to-do people having an army of colored servants working for them. Respective paraphernalia of secular modus vivendi - dancing parties, picnics, splendid attires. And suddenly all this disappears having dissolved in the irretrievable past. The civil war breaks out, the movement of abolitionism takes the upper hand, slavery is canceled, America entered a different path. Northern militaries who came to the south are not only representatives of the progressive army as it was unilaterally treated by the Soviet historical science. Among them there are no few bandits, thugs who found themselves in these ranks by chance, people with the proclivity of sadists who killed defenseless old people, women and children. Scarlet’s parents perish, she herself remains a young, seventeen-years-old widow.
At times the impoverished society assembles at the parties of reminiscences about former prosperity in half-ruined houses of one another, they are famished, being out at elbows. They continue to be living with the past vilifying the new power, accusing it of all their afflictions. But they don’t want to understand one thing - that past will have never returned. And only some of them rack their brains - something is to be done simply to survive. Scarlet belongs to the latters. And also Rett Buttler who fell in love with her. That is the utterance of this sound-minded man who rejected mercilessly the pain of reminiscences: “It’s not for the first time when everything goes topsy-turvy in the world and not the last one. It happened earlier, it will happen afterwards. And when such things happen people lose everything and become equal. Having nothing they start anew from zero point”.
Scarlet decided to start from zero point. And the following lines are the thoughts of the authoress who wrote this great book: “Man can’t move forward if his soul is lacerated with the pain of reminiscences”. In the novel all those who consigned themselves to the pain of reminiscences dissolved in oblivion. Only those ones remained who tackled some job. Scarlet began its activity going to the plantation to pick up cotton, she drove there her younger sisters by force, disdaining for this labor they ended their destinies miserably. She got down to setting in order the destroyed household having overcome her aversion to chores, she even decided to go further - she tested herself in made business. Aren’t we undergoing the same now?
She tried her hand at saw-mill business, urgently going into details, all day longs she spent in the company of businessmen being on a par with them. But she was a young fragile girl of a feminine constitution, she displayed the staunchness of masculine character because the understood that doing nothing would have eventuated in perdition. Her constant sojourn in the male company caused gossips in society, she was reprehended for the saw-mill. One should not forget that is was still the XIX-th century, emancipation didn’t come into the proverb in society yet and the moral code was exclusively strict towards a woman even in the western world. And only Rett Buttler respected Scarlet: “You try only not I have told you already, it’s a sin no society would forgive. You only do dare not to be like others and you will be anathematized!”
Scarlet did dare not to be like others - those others gathered in their worn-out garments whose former splendor they were doing nothing devoting their time to gossiping, condemning such women as Scarlet. She appeared at one of such gatherings in a new elegant dress; 20 meters of fabric being required for it in conformity with the XIX-th century fashion. The local society looked upon it as top indecency. But the dress had been earned due to that same business Scarlet ran at the saw-mill. She never paid attention to scandalous gossip-mongers, she knew that the saw-mill provided daily bread for her, the family with the remained faithful servants and even her lazy sisters, and as for these former bright ladies, converting into querulous old cats, they were out of need for anyone. Scarlet pursued the goal - to restore that living standard she had enjoyed in the parental house, she achieved it relying only on herself.
In some years she meets her former neighbor who lived in the same vicinity, granny Fontaine whose family had also chosen the way of intensive activity - “Whatever may happen, agues come on horseback but go away on foot. And do you know why? We kneel before the inevitable.
Of course, our changes are uncorrelatable either with the epoch of Scarlet O’Hara or with that one in which the characters depicted by Irina Golovkina were tossing in agony. And still there are some things being common for epochs of great changes damned by Chinese. Only that one rides the whirlwind who kneels before the inevitable.
And that is a history of a woman who didn’t kneel before the inevitable. I know this woman only from the mouths of my relatives. It was a sister-in-law of my deceased aunt. My aunt’s husband was a Professor of Humanities known all over Kazakhstan. Once reading the article devoted to him in a scientific journal I was surprised that he was considered to be a son of a poor dekhan. It was not true. His father and all their clan possessed Karaganda mines nationalized naturally after the October revolution. The family was precipitated to the very bottom of life. There grew the children who were good for nothing as since infanthood were oriented only for consumption. Out of all this crowd only uncle Darigool comprehended that one had to adapt oneself to the new life. Having concealed his social origin he entered an ordinary Pedagogical Institute (such children were not enrolled in higher schools by the Soviet power up to 1936).
When my aunt came to this house it consisted exclusively of hangers-on. The roaring 30-ies were attacking violently, but these grown-up fellows and girls could not join the wining Soviet reality and they even didn’t want to do it. they were only engaged in eating the meals cooked by the kelin who appeared in the house (wife brought by a male representative of a family). The aunt studied at the Pedagogical Institute at the faculty of biology and served the house, the girls didn’t help her, their tenacious memory about servants in the home of their childhood prevented them from doing something about the house. Thousands of Kazakh women who had been oppressed in old times went to work in industry. My uncle suggested that one of his sisters should go to the factory. This “bayake-kyzy” got indignant how would she go to the factory with the daughters of those who served in their house?
What about her life? Listening to my cousin-sister gathered the impression of a somnambular image living in two dimensions. She devoted her life to pre-revolutionary reminiscences, wandering from ones relatives to others she reached old age. Once in the 70-ies when milk in the USSR was hardly available and you had to get up at 6:00 in the morning to stand in a line to buy a bottle she was refused from a glass of it. “Bayake-kyzy” was shocked. They told she was sitting with an air of estrangement, gazing into some vacant space she uttered: “Why didn’t I go to the factory? I would have pension now”.
We have our own “epoch of great changes”. It has nothing in common with other changed epochs. Still we pass not from capitalism to socialism but vice-versa. Many people are employed in vigorous activity. And it is fine. And don’t reprehend our businesswomen and women-shuttlers, dear men, if you haven’t managed to provide a worthy life for them. Of course, it is sinful to reproach you in it too. Any “epoch of great changes” being singularly peculiar denudes the essence of people’s characters bringing to light all inner qualities of a person. We shall have chances to proceed with this topic on the pages of our newspaper, I hope.

P. S. We bring apologies for the sequences from M. Mitchell’s novel “Gone by the Wind”. Insomuch as the English original is non-available for us we can’t reproduce their precise text. We resorted to back translation from Russian.