The Man Question
Loves and Lives in Late 20th Century Russia

316 p.
 University of Helsinki
Department of Social Policy
Research Reports 1/2000

ISSN 0356-1267
ISBN 951-45-9239-5
Copyright Anna Rotkirch
First published 2000

Order from: Ritva Kekkinen, Department of Social Policy
P.O.Box 18
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
fax: +358-9-191 7764

TABLE OF CONTENTS
   Acknowledgements 
   Introduction
 Framing questions - Outline of contents - Ethical problems - On intellectual defaults
1  Extending the case to Russia
1.1  Research method
The cognitive wall - The extended case method - The flower and the ant:
A comparison with grounded theory
 1.2  Subjects of research: Everyday sexuality and family life
 The neglected everyday - Everyday morality - Sexuality and the semi-public
1.3 Soviet family and sexual policy (historical background)
Wage working motherhood - Love in the socialist family - Four periods of sexual policy
- Three sexual generations
2  Analysing autobiographies 
2.1 Autobiographies about love and sexuality
The use of autobiographies in social research - Social profile of the authors 
 2.2 Genres and leitmotivs
 Intimate confessions and sexual memoirs - Love, laments and identity quests
 2.3 Reading with the experiential triad
 Script theory: a critique - The Peircian triad of experience - Feelings -
 Practices - Interpretations - An example: Viktoria’s two introductions

PART I  THE LIFE COURSE OF THE SOVIET FAMILY
3  Growing up with the norm 
 3.1 Romantic courtship
 The first love of ‘Softhands’ - Playing love
3.2 Dating and sinning - the ambivalence of sexual norms
The moral grey zone - ‘Purification through sin’ - Confusion and violence – Summary
4  The frailty of the heterosexual relation
 4.1 The obligation of marrying
 Reasons for marrying: Getting away - Pregnancy
4.2 Variations on the norm
Nina’s story - Reasons for not marrying - Divorces: The rocks of everyday life
- Emotional abandonment - Illegal abortions  - Second chances
4.3 Love of children
‘Becoming my own mother’ - Longing for a second child - Which basic instinct? - Summary
5  Extended mothering 
 5.1 Intensive and extended mothering: a comparison
 5.2 Cross-generational help 
 5.3 Power and persuasion 
 Deciding about abortions - The passive hero and the seeker
5.4 Gender conventionalism 
Revising the traditionalism thesis - Why complain?
– Summary: ‘The ideal Soviet mother’

PART II  SOVIET SEXUAL CULTURES
6  Transmissions of sexual knowledge 
 6.1  The silenced generation (age cohort of  1920-44)
 The Event of finding out - Peer groups and curiosity - The Joys of Art:
 Michelangelo and Maupassant - Learning by doing - Oral culture and the
 question of milieus
 6.2  The generation of personalization (age cohort of 1945-1965)
 Living by passion: The different 1960s - The behavioural revolution -
 The generation that was not one 
 6.3  The generation of articulation (age cohort 1965- )
 Opposing shame -Two phases of the sexual revolution
7  Journeys as Sexual Tansgression 
 7.1  The travelling maiden
 Escaping the everyday - Trips to the South - Threats to the travelling maiden
 7.2  Men with parallel lives
 Komandirovki and double morality - Summary
8  Working poor: social marginality and sexual promiscuity 
 8.1  Discussing the margins
 Workers, lyumpen and the rest
 8.2  Postwar promiscuity
 Ivanov, the taxi driver - Problems of reliability - Fallen women and social ascent
 - Sexual blat and prostitution - Muzhik or knight?
 8.3  Suburban gang culture
 In the cellar - Attempts at social ascent - Misogyny and male bonding
 8.4  From acculturation to blurred mobility
9  The behavioural revolution of the 1970s
 9.1  Loving With and Without Words
 Learned ignorance - Same-sex love: Tatyana and Nadia
 9.2  Milieu, subculture, hegemony...?

Part III  THE MAN QUESTION
10  Monetarization of family life 
 10.1 From dual employees to family entrepeneurship
 10.2 Fissures in the Soviet life course
 Housewives and singles - The taxi driver, the DJ and the New Age therapeut 
 10.3 The man question - a geological shift?
 Men’s stress - Anxious masculinization 
11  Articulation of sexuality 
11.1 Going public
In search of consensus - Sexual enlightenment - Family planning
- Resisting sexual violence
 11.2. Hyphenated intimacy
 Naturalization of sexuality - Psychological quests - Feminist and homosexual identities
11.2  Is there love in Russia?
 Commercial sex - Fairytale castles

CONCLUSION 
LIST OF AUTOBIOGRAPHIES 
ANNOUNCEMENT TEXT OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL COMPETITION 
LITERATURE