What did women want? Khrushchev and the revival of the zhensovety

In recent years, Russian television has been broadcasting a daily lunchtime soap opera called Ne rodis0 krasivoi (Don’t be Born Beautiful).1 The setting for the programme is a fashion design company. The company was originally headed by a male boss, but most of the employees – the secretaries, administrators, accountants, etc. – are women. These women office workers are portrayed in the programme as spending most of their day standing around talking together and listening in on meetings in the president’s office. Eventually, the male boss was ousted and replaced by one of the female secretaries, who set about ordering smart clothes for her colleagues. The point of interest in the soap opera for this chapter is that this particular group of women office workers is often referred to in the programme – harking back to the Soviet period of Russia’s history, and in a rather ironic and derogatory tone – as the zhensovet (zhenskii sovet; women’s council). The text of the soap opera, then, portrays these women as time-wasting and eaves-dropping gossips. Yet the subtext provides a more intriguing story: the zhensovet serves to preserve and promote women’s interests at the company, as well as to pursue their own ends, both individually and collectively. This chapter aims, through a study of the zhensovety, to explore the impact

of what might be considered women-centred and family-friendly thinking on political, economic and social decision-making and policy formation during Khrushchev’s period of office. So far, most of the Western literature on the Khrushchev period, up to recently at least, has paid scant attention to Soviet social policy in these years, and few published studies focus exclusively on women.2 Some more extensive work has been published on the role of women in the Soviet economy and labour force participation under Khrushchev.3 The zhensovety themselves have also already received a limited degree of coverage in the Western literature, but their role and function in policy formation and governance under Khrushchev now warrants further attention.4