Russian Women in Time of WarBy Sarah Kropotkin-Lebedeff(In “The Outlook” for October 21, 1914. Madame Lebedeff is the daughter of the Russian Prince, Peter Kropotkin, known the world over for his brilliant books, and his revolutionary ideas.)
By Sarah Kropotkin-Lebedeff
(In “The Outlook” for October 21, 1914. Madame Lebedeff is the daughter of the Russian Prince, Peter Kropotkin, known the world over for his brilliant books, and his revolutionary ideas.)
It is not for nothing that the Russian peasant woman is respected by her men and counted as their equal in all labor. She plows and sows and reaps with them, rising before the sun and ceasing work only when the day fades. And the work she has to undertake when her men have gone to war is no light one. Each family has at least five or six acres to cultivate. The pasture land the village holds is common. It is usually the custom in time of stress for the workers to do all the field work in common. At three in the morning the women, and even the children, turn out to work; at eleven they have a mealof dry black bread and perhaps a small cucumber. Then, while the sun is high, they sleep; and from four o’clock they work again, till sunset.... There is other work for the women to do—shoeing horses, mending plows, scythes, wheels, and so on. The blacksmith has gone to the war, the wheelwright also; so the peasant woman wields the hammer and sends the chips flying with the ax. In the summer she fells the trees and shears the sheep. And all the winter she spins and weaves, waiting for her men to come back, hoping always, and teaching her children to love their country and their father, who has gone to defend them against a strange foe.