Being Soviet: Identity, Rumour, and Everyday Life Under Stalin 1939-1953 (40 page)

112
Being Soviet

true Soviet woman.
^{151
The same principles applied to the visiting}
convoyers. The anxieties of the local Bolshevik administrators focused on the widespread practice amongst British and American servicemen of providing their girlfriends with gifts of food, cigarettes, or clothes.
^{152
Internal party reports described this practice as prostitution. The girls}
who hung around outside the International Club were of ‘loose beha- viour’ (
Jl
turjuj gjdtltyb
e), or more explicitly prostitutes.
^153
Within
the view of the local administrators, their behaviour undermined the honour of Soviet civilization. It was not solely economic but also social ‘prostitution’. A local party report in June 1943 objected that the conduct of the young women in the International Club was ‘damaging the honour and dignity of Soviet girls’.
^{154
Reflecting on the wartime}
experience, the Secretary of the Arkhangel’sk
oblast’
Komsomol lament- ed that, ‘There were very bad cases when our girls established friend- ships with foreign sailors in order to obtain silk stockings, or dresses, or shoes, but in the process undermined their honour, their dignity as Soviet citizens.’ Such behaviour was a betrayal of the Motherland. When they received a gift from a foreign sailor, they actuated all the Soviet government’s concerns about the convoyers as gift-givers in the USSR. They had allowed themselves to become indebted to the foreign servicemen, threatening the honour of the Soviet Union as a whole.

That relations between the convoyers and Russian women became
the cause of tension with local officials is hardly surprising. Competition over sexual honour often generates conflict between occupying forces and local populations, as it did in post-war Japan or Germany.
^{155
The fact that the resident aliens were allies also did little to mitigate}
the tensions in wartime Britain and Australia.
^{156
Nonetheless, the}
recurrent emphasis on honour within this inter-allied war of words reflects the particular concerns of the Official Soviet Identity of the USSR as a civilization. Honour, status, and dignity were not simply abstract

^{151
See: RGASPI f. 17, op. 122, d. 38, l. 6 for the denunciation of a}
komsomolka
who had attended parties with German and Italian forces.

^{152
Inf. RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 124, ll. 93–4.}

^{153
Inf. G f. 1649, op. 2, d. 3, l. 1; RGASPI f. 17, op. 125, d. 219, l. 150b.}

^{154
Inf. GAOPDiFAO f. 296, op. 1, d. 1344, l. 32.}

^{155
See: J. W. Dower,}
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Aftermath of World War II
(London, 2000); V. A. Kozlov and S. V. Mironenko, eds.,
Spetsial’nye lageria NKVD,
MVD SSSR v Germanii. 1945–50 gg. Sbornik dokumentov i statei (Moscow, 2001), 334–47.

^{156
Reynolds,}
American Occupation;
Potts and Potts,
Yanks Down Under,
102–30.

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
113

concepts. They were the interpretative categories that Soviet officials
turned to when articulating their response to their foreign guests.

The girls themselves seem to have perceived their relationships differ-
ently. Whether their liaisons were pragmatically or emotionally moti- vated, they did not inhere a renunciation of their dignity as Soviet citizens. Some local girls did work as prostitutes.
^{157
The only distinction}
they drew between Soviet and foreign clients was that they demanded the convoyers pay in foreign goods rather than cash. In some cases they even had Soviet and foreign men at ‘parties’ on the same evening. One woman charged 100 roubles to Russian men, but took payment in kind from convoyers.
^{158
Foreign chocolate, cigarettes, and laundry soap fetched}
high prices on the black market.
^{159
In a time of extreme material hardship,}
the foreign sailors provided an opportunity for some women to supple- ment their diet and income. Their behaviour was typical of the ‘tactic’ of
bricolage
whereby Soviet citizens used official and unofficial means to

obtain enough food.
^{160
Many wartime prostitutes in Arkhangel’sk and}

Murmansk were older women with families, who saw the foreign visitors
as an opportunity to provide for the needs of their dependants.
^161
What
evidence there is suggests that some girls actively preferred foreign men, perhaps because they paid more.
¹⁶²

Many of the local girls also seem to have made no distinction between
the American and British sailors. One American convoyer remembered that the best way to enjoy a night out was with the British sailors. They knew the best places in town and they got on with the local population better.
^{163
The memoirs of the British veterans speak, if anything, rather}
more about their successes with the local girls than those of their US contemporaries. At least some of the female population of the Arctic ports took a rather different view of the convoyers from that of their government. They did not consider a relationship with a foreign sailor

^{157
Mem. Lund and Ludlum,}
PQ 17,
182.

^{158
G f. 1649, op. 2, d. 3, l. 1; d. 4, ll. 62, 31.}

^{159
Ibid. d. 1648, l, 184; d. 1210, l. 18.}

^{160
On wartime ‘hawking’ see: Hessler,}
Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy,
Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953 (Princeton, 2004), 251–83.

^161
Woodman,
Arctic Convoys,
174–5; Lund and Ludlam,
PQ 17,
182. This was not

always the case, however. The average age of 35 girls expelled for ‘prostitution’ in 1944
was 28. One was only 16 years old. GAOPDiFAO f. 296, op. 1, d. 1459, ll. 2–34.

^{162
Some girls had almost exclusively foreign clients: ibid. ll, 5, 16, 26, 30.}

^{163
Mem. M. Scott,}
Eyewitness Accounts of the World War II Murmansk Run
1941–1945 (Lewiston, 2006), 136. Some Americans, on the other hand, boasted of their closer friendships with local Russians.

114
Being Soviet

to be more dishonouring than that with a Soviet citizen, nor did they
draw distinctions between them on the basis of nationality.

Futhermore, not all wartime liaisons were established on the basis of
economic interests. They frequently made up for the deficiency of companionship or intimacy on the female-dominated home front, and some were entirely platonic. Tania became the regular dance partner of Maurice Irvin of the
Empire Elgar
. They used to take the ferry home across the river every evening together. Irvin remembered that, ‘Each night followed the same routine with furtive contact in the cafe
^{´
and on the ferry [home]. Never would I have imagined that such an}
existence would bring happiness but it did.’ They ended each evening with a secret squeeze of the hand before going their separate ways.
^164
Of
the thirty-five girls expelled from the city for ‘prostitution’ in 1944, a number were in long-term relationships, and the evidence against them does not include any indication of economic exchange.
¹⁶⁵

Severodvinsk journalist Ol’ga Golubtsova’s research emphasizes the
centrality of love, excitement, and genuine attachment in these wartime relationships. Valentina Evleva’s wartime diary testifies to the romantic exhilaration of her relationship with the American sailor Bel [Bill?]:

The day has just begun and all my thoughts are about Bel.

. . . I died from happiness.

In my heart a wonderful light had come on, true love.
¹⁶⁶

Jimmy and Vera met in 1943. He used to row her out to the sandy islands
on the Dvina, but was posted away to France in 1944.
^{167
A poem Jimmy}
sent to Vera, six months after he left, demonstrates that his ardour had not dimmed.
^{168
However, communication became impossible after the end of}
the war. When Golubtsova interviewed Vera in the 1990s she still had the only gift Jimmy had given her, a Russian–English Dictionary.
^169
Kapito-
lina Panfilovna did not tell her son Steve (changed to Stepan after the war) that his father had been a British sailor until the end of the Cold War. She never married because she was ‘remaining faithful to her loved one’.
¹⁷⁰

^164
Woodman,
Arctic Convoys,
180.

^{165
GAOPDiFAO, f. 296, op. 1, d. 1459, ll. 2–49.}

^{166
Golubtsova,}
Voennaia liubov’
, 46–8.

^{167
Ibid. 13–16.}

^{168
Poleznaia Gazeta}
(Severodvinsk), 22.06.2001.

^{169
Golubtsova,}
Voennaia liubov’,
13–15.

^{170
Severnyi Rabochii}
(Severodvinsk), 5.11.2002; 11.01.2003.

Patrons or Predators? 1941–45
115

Despite the hardships of the intervening years, many of the Russian women
remembered their wartime sweethearts with fondness, and enthused about the love they had shared.

For those who did not fall in love, contact with the foreign visitors
provided a romantic and exotic alternative to the drudgery of wartime life. Valentina Arkhinovna remembered John as a ‘refinedly polite gentleman’ who walked her home at the end of an evening.
^171
The
convoyers brought their own styles of music with them, turning the Arkhangel’sk into an unlikely hub of Western music and dance.
^{172
The club’s Director, Gluzman, repeatedly gave assurances that the}
foreign sailors were learning Russian folk dances (
pliaski
).
^173
However,
an Arkhangel’sk
oblast’
Central Committee report in mid 1943 noted that, ‘At the dance evenings, as a rule, they employ European dances— foxtrot and others.’
^{174
Percy Price, one of my interview respondents,}
remembered that his ship’s crew set up a gramophone in a small shed on the quayside. The music attracted crowds of hangers on, who came to listen to foreign as well as familiar tunes.
^{175
Regular nights of foreign}
films, the foxtrot, and jazz exerted a powerful attraction in the otherwise dull world of wartime Arkhangel’sk.
^{176
The convoyers’ appeal as pur-}
veyors of unfamiliar culture went beyond the local female population. But it was amongst them, on the dance floor at the International Club, that they exerted their most powerful attraction.