Domestic Service in the Soviet Union: Women's Emancipation and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor (New Studies in European History)

This innovative study is the first to explore the evolution of domestic service in the Soviet Union, set against the background of changing discourses on women, labour, and socialist living. Even though domestic service conflicted with the Bolsheviks' egalitarian message, the regime embraced paid domestic labor as a temporary solution to the problem of housework. Analyzing sources ranging from court cases to oral interviews, Alissa Klots demonstrates how the regime both facilitated and thwarted domestic workers' efforts to reinvent themselves as equal members of Soviet society. Here, a desire to make maids and nannies equal participants in the building of socialism clashed with a gendered ideology where housework was women's work. This book serves not only as a window into class and gender inequality under socialism, but as a vantage point to examine the power of state initiatives to improve the lives of household workers in the modern world. Cover Half-title page Series page Title page Copyright page Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: A Kitchen Maid to Rule the State The Domestic Service Dilemma and the Gendered Hierarchy of Labor Voices and Sources The Scope of This Book Prologue: Domestic Service and the Bolsheviks before 1917 Part I Servants into Workers, 1920s Part I Introduction Chapter 1 From Exploitation to Socially Useful Labor: The Early Soviet Discourse on Domestic Service Domestic Service under War Communism Domestic Servants as Female Workers Can a Bolshevik Have a Servant? The Value of Domestic Labor Conclusion Chapter 2 Just Like Any Other Worker? Class, Gender, and Labor Rights Protecting Domestic Workers’ Rights The Law of 1926 The “Right for Living Space” Conclusion Chapter 3 Kitchen Maids in the School of Communism: Union Work and Political Mobilization  Domestic Workers and the Union  The Aktiv Problem  The Appeal of “Productive” Work  A Path to a New Life  Conclusion Chapter 4 The New Soviet Domestic Worker: The Enlightenment Campaign and Domestic Workers’ Subjectivity Reading Writing Socialist Leisure Domestic Workers’ Revolutionary History Conclusion Part I Conclusion Part II In the Land of Victorious Socialism, 1930s–1950s Part II Introduction Chapter 5 The Turn to Production: Domestic Workers and the First Five-Year Plan Domestic Workers as a Labor Reserve From Protection to Mobilization Bread and Passport Conclusion Chapter 6 Serving in a Socialist Home: Paid Domestic Labor and Etatization of the Home The Soviet Home as the Site of Socialist Reproduction Domestic Service as a Profession Employers as Managers Conclusion Chapter 7 Like One of the Family: Domestic Service as a Site of Intimate Negotiations Making Domestic Workers Cultured Taking Care of Your Domestic Terror and the Family Conclusion Chapter 8 The Meanings of Privilege: Domestic Workers in Postwar Society The War Return to Normalcy The Limits of Labor Laws Class, Gender, and Privilege Conclusion Part II Conclusion Conclusion Bibliography Index