Nadezhda Stasova
Born(1822-06-12)June 12, 1822
Tsarskoye Selo, Russia
DiedSeptember 27, 1895(1895-09-27) (aged 73)
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Occupations
  • Activist
  • philanthropist
MovementFeminism in Russia
Parent
Relatives

Nadezhda Vasilievna Stasova (Russian: Наде́жда Васи́льевна Ста́сова; June 12, 1822 – September 27, 1895) was a Russian educator, activist and feminist. Born into a noble and wealthy family, she dedicated herself to women's education and economic empowerment. Alongside Anna Filosofova and Maria Trubnikova, Stasova was one of the earliest leaders of the Russian women's movement. Together, the three friends and allies were referred to as the "triumvirate".

They founded and led a number of organizations designed to promote women's cultural and economic independence, including a publishing cooperative. Subsequently, they successfully pushed government officials to allow higher education for women, although continuing opposition meant that their successes were sometimes limited or reversed. Stasova eventually became the director of the Bestuzhev Courses in 1878, but a decade later was forced to resign under political pressure. In her final years, she continued to support the cause of women's rights in Russia. Stasova died in 1895.

Early life

Stasova was born at Tsarskoye Selo on June 12, 1822.[1]: 526 [2] Her parents were members of the Russian nobility. Her father, Vasily Stasov, was a prominent architect, while her mother, Mariia Abramovna Suchkova, was from a military family.[1]: 526 [2] Tsar Alexander I of Russia was her godfather.[3]: 75  Stasova was the fourth of seven siblings; she had five brothers (including Vladimir and Dmitry) and a sister, Sofya (nicknamed Sonya).[1]: 526 [3]: 75–76 [4] One of her nieces, Elena, became a well-known revolutionary and Bolshevik official.[5]

Stasova's mother died in 1831 of cholera, when Stasova was nine years old.[3]: 75  In later years, she regarded the childhood education she received as frivolous and recalled that her father and brothers did not feel women required serious education.[3]: 75  However, she was privately tutored by professors hired by her family, and studied foreign languages, music, art, and etiquette.[1]: 526  Stasova also frequently borrowed her father's books and read much French literature, as well as the work of feminist George Sand.[1]: 526 [3]: 75 

As a young woman in her twenties, Stasova was engaged to a military officer. Shortly before their wedding, her fiancé, under severe parental pressure, left her and married another woman.[3]: 75  Stasova, desolate, subsequently vowed that she would never marry.[3]: 75  She spent a number of years abroad caring for her sister Sofya, with whom she was very close.[2]: 671  Sofya died of consumption in 1858, at which point Stasova returned to Saint Petersburg. Stasova decided to direct her energies away from her own family and towards the "universal family" of the needy and dispossessed.[2]: 671 [3]: 76  Stasova, discussing the limited options available to women at the time, later wrote that Russian feminists desired "not the moonlight, but rather the sunlight."[6]

Career

Through Maria Trubnikova's salon, Stasova became connected with a large group of wealthy women concerned with the economic and educational status of women in Russia.[3]: 76  Stasova, Trubnikova, and Anna Filosofova became close friends and allies, and were referred to by their contemporaries as the "triumvirate".[1]: 527 [7]: 12 [8]: 57–58  The three spent much of their lives working to advance the cause of women, leading the first organized feminist movement in the Russian Empire.[2]: 672 [7]: 12 

The triumvirate, alongside a number of others, founded the Society for Cheap Lodgings and Other Benefits for the Citizens of St. Petersburg in 1859.[2]: 671 [3]: 76  The group had two factions, the "German party" and the "Russian party", which differed on their preferred approach.[8]: 76  The "Germans" favored a then-traditional method of philanthropy that involved close supervision of the poor. The "Russians" focused on self-help and direct aid, attempting to avoid patronization and maintain the privacy of those aided.[3]: 76–77 [8]: 58–59  In early 1861, the organization split in two, with the Stasova-Trubnikova-Filosofova triumvirate leading the "Russians".[3]: 76–77 [8]: 58–59  The reduced group's charter was approved in February 1861.[3]: 76–77 [8]: 58–59  The organization provided housing and work as seamstresses to its female clients (primarily widows and wives whose husbands had abandoned them).[8]: 59  It included a day care center and a communal kitchen.[8]: 59 

In 1860, meanwhile, Stasova and her sister-in-law, Polixena Stasova, taught at and helped lead a school aimed at teaching literacy to blue collar women, as part of the brief Sunday school movement in Russia.[1]: 527 [9]: 154  The school was closed by the Russian government in 1862.[9]: 154  In response, Stasova began teaching classes at her home instead.[1]: 527  Stasova, along with Maria Dondukova-Korsakova, was also involved with a shelter at the Kalinkinskaya Hospital treating prostitutes affected by sexually transmitted infections.[1]: 527  In 1863, the triumvirate, along with Anna Engelhardt, founded the first Russian Women's Publishing Cooperative.[1]: 125, 527 [3]: 78 [10] Employing upwards of thirty women, the cooperative focused on writing and translation. It published a wide variety of books, including textbooks, scientific works, novels such as Little Women, and children's stories.[4][10] Stasova's role focused on handling business with "printers, binders, and suppliers."[4]

Higher education

A portrait of Stasova by Ilya Repin, painted for an event in her honor at the Bestuzhev graduation in 1889[11]: 39 

Trubnikova and Stasova also began pushing, in 1867, for Russian universities to create courses for women.[2]: 671  Demonstrating "considerable skill in rallying popular support", according to the historian Christine Johanson, the women wrote a carefully-worded petition to Tsar Alexander II.[12]: 37  They gathered over 400 signatures among middle- and upper-class women.[12]: 37  However, there was widespread opposition to the education of women, including by the relevant minister, Dmitry Tolstoy.[1]: 528 [12]: 37  Tolstoy argued that women would abandon education after being married, and dismissed the signatories by stating that they were "sheep" merely following the latest fashion.[12]: 38  He rejected the petition in late 1868, but allowed mixed-gender public lectures which women could attend, under pressure from the Tsar (then Alexander II).[1]: 528 [12]: 37–38  However, these were rapidly taken up, overwhelmingly by women.[12]: 38–39 

The triumvirate also appealed to war minister Dmitry Milyutin, who agreed to host the courses after being persuaded by his wife, daughter, and Filosofova. Tolstoy countered by allowing the lectures at his own apartments, where he could monitor them.[12]: 38–39  The political movement in favor of women's education continued to grow, and by October 1869, the Russian government permitted a limited set of courses for women on advanced subjects (including "chemistry, history, anatomy, zoology, and Russian literature").[1]: 528 [2]: 671 [12]: 39  Stasova organized these and recruited the professors to teach them; the courses began in January 1870. Attended by over 200 women, they became known as the Vladimirskii courses, after their host beginning in 1872, the Vladimir college.[1]: 528 

Stasova spent 1871 to 1876 in Germany, caring for two of her nieces, who were ill.[1]: 528  During Stasova's absence, she remained in frequent contact with Filosofova and Trubnikova. The Vladimirskii courses were shut down in 1875, to Stasova's dismay.[1]: 528  After her return to Russia, she resumed her activism, and eventually became the first director of the Bestuzhev Courses, beginning in 1878; this was a "permanent educational institution for women."[1]: 528  Stasova organized charitable support for the students and helped allow the admission of Jewish students, as well as locating permanent lodgings for the courses in 1883. The radicalism of some of the students led to criticism, and the courses were shut down in 1886.[1]: 528 [2][12]: 49, 74–76, 96  By 1889, Stasova persuaded the Tsar (then Alexander III) to permit the courses to reopen. However, as part of Konstantin Pobedonostsev's efforts to bring educational institutions under government control, Stasova was forced to step down as director, officially accused of "inefficiency and muddleheadedness."[1]: 528 [2]: 671  She and her colleagues were replaced by "more compliant" government bureaucrats.[1]: 528 

Later career

Despite this setback, Stasova kept working. She helped create the Children's Aid Society in St. Petersburg, and served as chair of the Society for Assistance for Higher Women's Courses.[1]: 528–529 [2] She served as a mentor to Liubov Gurevich and other younger feminists; the historian Rochelle Ruthchild writes that Stasova "achieved almost saintlike status among those who knew her, as they noted with awe her unquenchable fervor."[3]: 80 [7]: 23–24  In 1893, Stasova and others sent an exhibit focusing on the progress of women to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.[7]: 19  In 1895 Stasova, along with Filosofova and others, founded the Russian Women's Mutual Philanthropic Society (RWMPS), which, under the restrictive laws of the Tsarist autocracy, was limited to philanthropic ventures such as a kindergarten, hostel, and employment service.[1]: 500  Stasova led the organization as chair until her death the same year, and was replaced by Anna Shabanova.[2]: 672 

Despite illness, Stasova continued working hard until her death on September 27, 1895.[1]: 529 [7]: 12–13  Close to the end of her life, she wrote that Russian women "still have not learned to stop being men's slaves."[7]: 13  She continued: "In everything they restrain themselves, are frightened, subordinate ... This is bad, very bad! There is much work ahead for women before they will achieve their liberation."[7]: 13 

General references

  • Arsenyev, Konstantin Konstantinovich, ed. (1900). "Стасова, Надежда Васильевна" [Stasova, Nadezhda Vasilievna]. Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона [Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary] (in Russian). Vol. XXXI: София — Статика, с. St. Petersburg: F. A. Brockhaus & I. A. Efron. p. 465.

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Muravyeva, Marianna (2006). de Haan, Francisca; Daskalova, Krassimira; Loutfi, Anna (eds.). A Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms: Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe, 19th and 20th Centuries. Central European University Press. pp. 125, 526–9. ISBN 978-615-5053-72-6.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Rappaport, Helen (2001). Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers. Vol. 2. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. pp. 671–2. ISBN 978-1-57607-101-4.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Ruthchild, Rochelle G. (2009). "Reframing Public and Private Space in Mid-Nineteenth Century Russia: The Triumvirate of Anna Filosofova, Nadezhda Stasova, and Mariia Trubnikova". In Worobec, Christine D. (ed.). The Human Tradition in Imperial Russia. The Human Tradition Around the World. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-3737-8.
  4. 1 2 3 Ruthchild, Rochelle Goldberg (2008). "Stasova, Nadezhda". In Smith, Bonnie G. (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Oxford (GB) New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514890-9.
  5. ↑ Uglow, J.; Hendry, M., eds. (2005). "Stasova, Nadezhda". The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography. Springer. p. 515. ISBN 978-0-230-50577-3.
  6. ↑ Stites, Richard (1977). The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilsm, and Bolshevism, 1860–1930. Princeton University Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-1-4008-4327-5.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Ruthchild, Rochelle G. (2010). Equality and Revolution. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 11–25. ISBN 978-0-8229-7375-1.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Engel, Barbara Alpern (2000). "Searching for a Politics of Personal Life". Mothers and Daughters: Women of the Intelligentsia in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Studies in Russian Literature and Theory. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press. pp. 49–61. ISBN 978-0-8101-1740-2.
  9. 1 2 Zelnik, Reginald E. (1965). "The Sunday-School Movement in Russia, 1859-1862". The Journal of Modern History. 37 (2): 151–170. doi:10.1086/239634. ISSN 0022-2801. JSTOR 1878307. S2CID 143782960. Archived from the original on September 28, 2023. Retrieved September 28, 2023.
  10. 1 2 Kaufman, Andrew D. (2022). The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky. Penguin Books. p. 209. ISBN 978-0-525-53715-1.
  11. ↑ Hilton, Alison (2009). "Iaroslavna's Lament and Its Echoes in Late Nineteenth-Century Russian Art". In Mardilovich, Galina; Taroutina, Maria (eds.). New Narratives of Russian and East European Art: Between Traditions and Revolutions. Routledge. pp. 32–48. ISBN 978-0-429-63978-4.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Johanson, Christine (1987). "Chapter II: The Politics of Minimal Concessions - Women's Courses in Moscow and St. Petersburg". Women's Struggle for Higher Education in Russia: 1855–1900. Kingston, Canada: McGill University Press. ISBN 978-0-7735-0565-0. JSTOR j.ctt813c7.
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