Maria Trubnikova
Black and white portrait of a seated woman in formal 19th-century clothing, looking to the left of the frame
Born(1835-01-06)January 6, 1835
DiedApril 28, 1897(1897-04-28) (aged 62)
NationalityRussian
OccupationActivist
MovementFeminism in Russia
SpouseKonstantin Trubnikov (married 1854–1876)
Children7

Maria Vasilievna Trubnikova (Russian: Мари́я Васи́льевна Тру́бникова, née Ivasheva [Ивашева]; January 6, 1835 – April 28, 1897) was a Russian feminist and activist.

Of mixed Russian and French heritage, Trubnikova was orphaned at an early age, and subsequently raised by a wealthy relative. At 19, she married; she and her husband, Konstantin, had seven children. In adulthood, Trubnikova hosted a women-only salon which became a center of feminist activism. She also maintained international connections to fellow feminists in England, France, and other countries. Alongside Anna Filosofova and Nadezhda Stasova, whom she mentored, Trubnikova 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. In later life, Trubnikova experienced severe illness and personal difficulties, and died in 1897.

Early life

Trubnikova's mother and father

Ivasheva was born in Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai in far eastern Russia, on January 6, 1835, the second of four children.[1][2] Her father, Vasily Ivashev [ru], had been a participant in the Decembrist revolt ten years earlier, and consequently been sent to a Siberian exile.[3] Ivasheva's mother, Camille LeDentu [ru] (alternately "LeDantieux"), was of French descent.[4] Ivasheva grew up alongside three siblings. Both her parents passed away when she was very young (in 1839 and 1840); her mother died in childbirth.[3][1]

Subsequently, Ivasheva was raised by a wealthier aunt, the Princess E.N. Khovanskaia. She received an education from private tutors, described by historian Richard Stites as "superb" according to the standards of the time.[2][3] At age 19, in 1854, she married Konstantin Trubnikov, a landowner and government official, and took his name (in feminine form, Trubnikova).[1][4] Trubnikov "impressed her with his liberalism," according to the historian Rochelle Ruthchild.[1] Another historian, Stites, notes that he wooed her by "reading [her] passages of Herzen", a Russian radical writer.[2] She and Trubnikov had seven children (including Olga [ru])—although only four, all daughters, survived to adulthood.[3] Trubnikov, using Trubnikova's inheritance for funding, later became a stock trader and founded a newspaper, Birzhevyie Vedomosti.[1][4]

Career

Trubnikova was influenced by the writings of French writers such as Jules Michelet and Henri de Saint-Simon.[3] A strong personality, Trubnikova mentored other women interested in feminism. She hosted a salon that included a large group of wealthy women concerned with the economic and educational status of women in Russia.[1] Trubnikova's woman-only salon, established in 1855, was an offshoot of a larger mixed-gender salon.[1][2] The scholar Rochelle Ruthchild writes that women who hosted these mixed-gender salons were "often idealized as muses inspiring male creativity." Trubnikova, however, actively sought to educate fellow women on feminist issues, seeing her new salon as a "venue for empowering" them.[1] She used any opportunity to recruit women to her cause; for instance, during a routine medical appointment, she convinced her doctor to send his wife to the salon.[1] The historian Natalia Novikova describes her as "candid, considerate, [and] a convincing speaker."[4]

Trubnikova, Nadezhda Stasova and Anna Filosofova became close friends and allies, and were referred to by their contemporaries as the "triumvirate".[5][6] Both Filosofova and Stasova wrote that they had been "empty-headed" before they met her.[1] The three spent much of their lives focusing on the "woman question", as it was then-called, leading the first organized feminist movement in the Russian Empire.[1][7] In contrast to the Russian nihilist movement, Trubnikova and the other members of the triumvirate were not radical in style or fashion, and retained their status in the upper class.[1][7]

The triumvirate, alongside a number of others, founded the Society for Cheap Lodgings and Other Benefits for the Citizens of St. Petersburg in 1859.[1][3] The group had two factions, the "German party" and the "Russian party", which differed on their preferred approach.[6] 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.[6][1] In early 1861, the organization split in two, with the Stasova-Trubnikova-Filosofova triumvirate leading the "Russians".[6] The reduced group's charter was approved in February 1861, with Trubnikova unanimously selected as its first chairwoman.[6][1][4] The organization provided housing and work as seamstresses to its female clients (primarily widows and wives whose husbands had abandoned them).[6] It included a day care and a communal kitchen.[6]

International connections and push for education

While abroad in France in the summer of 1861, Trubnikova read Jenny d'Héricourt's La femme affranchie, and began corresponding with its author.[4] Through d'Héricourt, she also became connected with Josephine Butler and John Stuart Mill.[4] Mill became a supporter of her efforts in Russia, and their correspondence provided a source of inspiration for his work The Subjection of Women.[2][3] In 1863, Trubnikova, Stasova, and Anna Engelhardt founded the first Russian Women's Publishing Cooperative.[4] Employing upwards of thirty women, the cooperative focused on writing and translation; it published a wide variety of books, including textbooks, scientific works and children's stories.[8] The cooperative lasted until 1879.[1] Trubnikova also worked at the paper founded by her husband, Birzhevyie Vedomosti, as a translator.[4]

Trubnikova and Stasova began pushing, in 1867, for Russian universities to create courses for women.[3] The campaign began with a meeting at Trubnikova's apartments between "some thirty women and forty-three scholars", where a plan of action was agreed upon.[2] Demonstrating "considerable skill in rallying popular support", according to the historian Christine Johanson, the women wrote a carefully-worded petition to Tsar Alexander II.[7] They gathered over 400 signatures among middle and upper-class women.[7] However, there was widespread opposition to the education of women, including by the relevant minister, Dmitry Tolstoy.[4][7] 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.[7] 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).[4][7] However, these were rapidly taken up, overwhelmingly by women.[7] Throughout the campaign, Trubnikova kept foreign correspondents apprised of their progress, and received support from Mill and the French feminist writer André Leo.[4]

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.[7] 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").[3][4][7] 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.[4]

Later life

In 1869, Trubnikova left Russia temporarily to seek treatment for mental illness, and to meet Butler and Marie Goegg in Switzerland.[1][3][4] Novikova writes that Trubnikova "was regarded by many European feminists as a leading figure of the Russian women's movement."[4] However, by this time, her husband had grown less liberal, becoming actively opposed to her work.[1][4] He had also lost much of her inheritance from her aunt in the stock market.[1] Upon her return to Russia in 1876, Trubnikova and her husband separated, and she struggled with money.[3][4] Her daughters, who were radical activists, began to support her, and she also worked as a writer and translator.[1][4] Trubnikova hosted meetings of illegal societies at her house, and once helped hide the revolutionary Sophia Perovskaya.[1] By 1878, her illness resulted in her becoming much less active, although she did work for the release of two of her daughters following their arrest in 1881.[3] She moved to the countryside near Tambov in 1882, returning to Saint Petersburg only two more times in her life.[4] A severe flu over the winter of 1893 to 1894 worsened Trubnikova's condition, and she was moved to an asylum.[4] She died at St. Petersburg's asylum "in the arms of her youngest daughter" on April 28, 1897.[4] Trubnikova was interred at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Saint Petersburg, and remembered by her colleagues as "the heart and soul" of feminist activism in Russia.[4]

General references

Citations

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u 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. pp. 69–84. ISBN 978-0-7425-3737-8.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Stites, Richard (1977). The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilsm, and Bolshevism, 1860–1930. Princeton University Press. pp. 66–70. ISBN 978-1-4008-4327-5.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Rappaport, Helen (2001). Encyclopedia of women social reformers. Vol. 2. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO. pp. 715–716. ISBN 978-1-57607-101-4.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Novikova, Natalia (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. 584–587. ISBN 978-615-5053-72-6.
  5. ^ Ruthchild, Rochelle G. (2010). Equality and Revolution. University of Pittsburgh Press. pp. 11–25. ISBN 978-0-8229-7375-1.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g 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.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j 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. pp. 28–50. ISBN 978-0-7735-0565-0.
  8. ^ 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.
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