Foreign Countries of Old Age: East and Southeast European Perspectives on Aging 9783839445549

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Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl, Oana Hergenröther (eds.) Foreign Countries of Old Age

Aging Studies  | Volume 19

The series Aging Studies is edited by Heike Hartung, Ulla Kriebernegg and Roberta Maierhofer.

Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl (PhD) is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. She specializes in literary and cultural studies. Oana Hergenröther (PhD) is researcher at the University of Graz, Austria. Her focus is on literary studies and on plurilingualism in contemporary cultures and societies.

Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl, Oana Hergenröther (eds.)

Foreign Countries of Old Age East and Southeast European Perspectives on Aging

The printing of this book was supported by the Department for Science and Research of the Federal State of Styria and by the University of Graz.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http:// dnb.d-nb.de

© 2021 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover concept: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover photo: una.knipsolina & john krempl, courtesy of National Geographic Maps Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-4554-5 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-4554-9 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839445549 Printed on permanent acid-free text paper.

Contents

Preface | 9 Introduction

Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther (Graz) | 11

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES Old Age in the Balkans Increasing Life Expectancy – Decreasing Regard

Karl Kaser (Graz) | 33 Co-Residence of Elderly Persons with Children and Grandchildren in Eastern and Southeast Europe 18th and 19th Centuries

Siegfried Gruber (Graz) | 51 “University Elders,” “Young Professors” and Students A Generational Approach to the History of Higher Education in Russia in the Late 19th Century

Tatiana Saburova (Bloomington) | 71 Changes in Soviet Academia’s Age-Related Personnel Policies during the Cold War

Kirill Levinson (Moscow) | 91

QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE INQUIRIES No Country for Old People Ethnography of Traditional and Contemporary Conceptualizations of Old Age in Rural North Macedonia

Ana Aštalkovska Gajtanoska & Ilina Jakimovska (Skopje) | 111 Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia A Gender Perspective

Natalija Perišić & Nadežda Satarić (Belgrade) | 127

On Nearness and Distance Seniors’ Lives in Urban Areas in Slovakia

Ľubica Voľanská, Marcela Káčerová & Juraj Majo (Bratislava) | 149 The Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Family Communication Dialogues with Grandmothers from Romania

Loredana Ivan (Bucharest) | 179 The Elderly in Russia A Socio-Psychological Approach

Olga Krasnova (Moscow) | 207

LITERARY REPRESENTATIONS Aging in Soviet Utopian and Dystopian Literature

Rafaela Božić (Zadar) | 235 Ageless, Vital, Immortal Human Transformation in 20th-Century Russian Science and Literature

Tatjana Petzer (Berlin/Halle) | 253 Noticing Signs and Stereotypes of Aging Representations and Performance of Mind and Body in Tolstoj’s War and Peace

Jane Gary Harris (Pittsburgh) | 271 Does Genre Matter? The Role of Literary Genre and Narrator in Contemporary Russian Caregivers’ Narratives

Maija Könönen (Helsinki) | 291 Traumatic Aging in Borisav Stanković and Miloš Crnjanski The Symptomatic Body in the Modern and Expressionist View on Soul and Society

Ingeborg Jandl (Vienna) | 311

The Dark Past of Family Age Roles and Superstition in Southeast European Literature and Popular Culture

Natalia Stagl Škaro (Dubrovnik) | 335 The Hag and the Egg Slavic Mythologies of Old Age as Reflected in Dubravka Ugrešić’s Novel Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl (Graz) | 357 Commemorating Russia’s Great Old Women An Interview with Ludmila Ulitskaya

By Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl | 371 Contributors | 379

Preface

This volume was made possible through the support of a number of people and institutions. First of all, we would like to thank Roberta Maierhofer, who introduced us to each other on the occasion of the first joint conference of the European and North-American Networks in Aging Studies in Graz in April 2017 and strongly encouraged us to collaborate and edit this essay collection. We are also grateful to Roberta’s series co-editors Heike Hartung and Ulla Kriebernegg for agreeing to include this book into the “Aging Studies” series. Our special thanks go to the Department for Science and Research of the Federal State of Styria as well as the University of Graz for their generous funding of this publication. The authors of the essays in this collection were partly invited by us to contribute and partly responded to our call for papers. All contributions have undergone a double-blind peer review process. We are grateful to all the reviewers from Austria, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Poland, Russia, Serbia and the United States who invested their time and provided their expertise to help assure the quality of this publication. We would like to thank all of our contributors for their cooperation and their patience during the different stages of the reviewing and editing processes. Peter Kenny deserves our special thanks for proofreading so thoroughly and thoughtfully the major part of the articles. We are also very grateful to Mark Shuttleworth for his excellent translations from Russian. This publication is directed toward aging researchers, specialists in the fields of Slavic, East and Southeast European studies as well as a broader audience. Both original quotations and their English translations are, therefore, provided. For titles, personal names (except contributors’ names), place names, terms and the like, the scientific transliteration of Cyrillic alphabets (ISO/R9:1968) is used. Graz, July 2020

Introduction Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther

AGING STUDIES IN THE TIME OF CORONA We were finalizing the editing of this essay collection, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck Europe, rapidly spreading all over the continent and paralyzing it in an unprecedented lockdown for more than two months. As we are writing these lines, infection curves are, finally, flattening in the countries hit hardest, such as Italy and Spain, whereas the World Health Organization (WHO) is reporting the largest single-day increase in confirmed coronavirus cases since the outbreak of the disease, with two-thirds of them registered in only four countries of the world – the Russian Federation being among them (WHO 2020a; 2020b). The WHO informs us that “Older people, and people of all ages with preexisting medical conditions […] appear to develop serious illness more often than others” (WHO 2020c). Correspondingly, WHO-Europe’s COVID-19 report of, for instance, week 19/2020 (4-10 May 2020) indicates that 79 percent of all intensive care unit admissions were in persons aged 50-79 years of age, and 94 percent of all deaths were in persons aged 60 years and more. It is, however, noteworthy that 97 percent of all deaths caused by a COVID-19 infection in week 19/2020 had at least one underlying condition, with cardiovascular disease being the leading comorbidity (66 percent) (WHO-Europe 2020). The decisive parameter for getting seriously ill, obviously, is not old age per se; it is preexisting medical conditions, which often, but not necessarily, come with old age.1 Consistently, we read about centenarians and even supercentenarians hav-

1

In absolute numbers, the majority of people with multimorbidity are middle-aged. However, the proportion of the population with multimorbidity increases with age. See, for instance, Yarnall et al. 2017.

12 | Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther

ing fully recovered from a COVID-19 infection, the most famous case being that of Spain’s oldest woman, the 113-year-old María Branyas (Rössler 2020). Nevertheless, in the time of “Corona” – a heading that has come to denote not only the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the infectious disease it provokes but also the global crisis that the pandemic has entailed –, chronological age in the first place underlies government policies, social behavior as well as individual decisions. However, it does so differently in different countries. There is no global response to the challenges of fighting the pandemic. In some regions, chronological age appears to count more than it does in others. In some regions, older people seem to be more in need of protection than they are in others. In some regions, the lives of the elderly matter more than they do in others. This, in fact, is cultural aging and thus strongly requires age/aging studies’ investigation.

LOCKDOWN MEASURES ACROSS EUROPE AND BEYOND: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE Don’t be an idiot! You’re not the others, you’re an exclusion! / Choreograph the furniture, essay wall-paper fusion. / Make that wardrobe a barricade. The fates require us / to keep out Cosmos, Chronos, Eros, Race and Virus! (Не будь дураком! Будь тем, чем другие не были. / Не выходи из комнаты! То есть дай волю мебели, / слейся лицом с обоями. Запрись и забаррикадируйся / шкафом от хроноса, космоса, эроса, расы, вируса.) Joseph Brodsky: “Don’t leave your room, don’t commit that fateful mistake…” (1970)

The overwhelming relevance of the research that went into all the articles in this collection is revealed in the context of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed, among many other things, a deep-set ageism – that is, people’s discrimination on the basis of their age. Lockdown measures have aimed to protect the “older generation” in the first place, whom infection statistics had shown to be the most vulnerable part of the population. However, the consequence has been a far-reaching “locking-up” of members of all population segments not considered systemically relevant. Several countries chose to decree a rigorous curfew without even giving citizens the

Introduction | 13

permission to take a walk or do sports. As the results of a sociological survey conducted by the Levada-Center in Russia in April 2020 show, what respondents missed most during curfew were the possibility of moving freely (42 percent) and leisure (35 percent), such as sports (Levada-Centr 2020). In Austria, the editors’ country of residence, regulations were not so strict in this respect. Different restrictions for different segments of the population had been discussed but were finally discarded as ageist (John/Schnauder/Thaler 2020). The Austrian government, like other European governments, limited itself to giving strong recommendations for older people to stay at home and self-isolate. In other countries, the curfew was more severe for the elderly (mostly, people aged 65 years and over) than it was for younger cohorts. The Swedish government at a certain moment even deliberated introducing different regulations for men and women: as older men, according to Swedish statistics, run a higher risk of being infected with COVID-19 and more often die from the disease, certain restrictions had been considered targeting men aged 70+ on one hand and women aged 72+ on the other (ORF 2020). While at the beginning of the pandemic, a rhetoric of solidarity with society’s weakest members prevailed, social gaps have now become even more striking. The crisis has brought forward inequalities and inequities in living conditions, health status and income, all of which are affecting seniors to an even greater extent. As Jane G. Harris puts it with regard to the U.S., COVID-19 “has wreaked havoc in communities of color, among the poor, and the ‘undocumented’.”2 What went rather unnoticed on a global scale is the disproportionally high mortality rate among seniors on the Navajo and other reservations.3 Not least, COVID-19 has exacerbated the inequalities that exist between those elder people living in long-term care facilities as opposed to those living at home independently. As many of the first COVID-19 deaths occurred in nursing homes, visits to senior institutions were prohibited or at least restricted in many countries. As a consequence, the Corona crisis has made visible the weaknesses of institutional care for the elderly, frail and disabled persons. In countries like Slovakia, for instance, it relies on large-capacity facilities where clients have only minimal space for individual plans and needs. Under the circumstances, the spatial and, hence, the social isolation of seniors in these institutions may cause even more harm than the virus itself. However, while some assert that those living at home have been fortunate in that they can regulate their lives, using telephones and/or the Internet, without

2

E-mail to the editors by Jane G. Harris from June 3, 2020.

3

See, for instance, Chatham 2020.

14 | Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther

having to leave the safety of their home space, others draw the attention to the situation worsening for those seniors living alone in single households. In Russia, for instance, older people often do not even have simple mobile phones, let alone smartphones or computers, which made them unable either to order food and medicine online or to download or print the necessary permission, during curfew, to go shopping or visit a hospital. Previous studies regarding ICT use by older people in Romania (see Loos/Nimrod/Fernández-Ardèvol 2018; 2020) show that although there was an increase in technology use among older people between 2017 and 2019, still no more than 25-35 percent of people aged 65 and above are using the Internet; the differences between rural and urban areas are also consistent. In addition, the use of Internet-based services (e.g., online shopping or online medical assistance) is below 10 percent among older people in Romania.4 Being exposed to the stress of a suddenly changed life, locked in and alone with frightening news in their apartments, deprived of their daily routines such as going for a walk and chatting with their neighbors, many old people’s physical, moral and mental condition seems to have deteriorated rapidly. Psychologist Olga Krasnova points to media reports indicating an increase in the number of calls to psychological support helplines in Russia with complaints of anxiety during curfew; the number of people contacting psychologists was four times bigger in May 2020 as compared to May 2019. However, no analysis of those individuals by age, gender or social status has been carried out thus far.5 Further investigation of the consequences of the measures taken will certainly be needed.

4

The lockdown raises questions that need further exploration. First, how did older people manage to get basic goods and medicine during this time? Did they acquire new ICT skills during lockdown, as a result of the pressure to access different online applications for information, shopping and communication with family and friends? Did they start to use different media and mobile applications as compared to the time before the pandemic? And, consequently, did they use some of the media (including social media) and mobile applications to a greater extent as compared to the time before the COVID-19 crisis? To answer these questions, a cross-national online survey has been launched in English, French, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Spanish and German. The project reunites an international team led by Hannah Marston. It is the first study during the COVID-19 pandemic focusing on technology use in everyday life. See

https://healthwellbeing.kmi.open.ac.uk/covid-19/technology-social-connections-

loneliness-leisure-activities/ [accessed June 1, 2020]. E-mail to the editors by Loredana Ivan from June 1, 2020. 5

E-mail to the editors by Olga Krasnova from June 18, 2020.

Introduction | 15

The general assessment is that in Russia, the elderly successfully coped with the period of self-isolation and communication restrictions. Employed elderly people continued to work remotely, fully satisfied with not having to invest their time and efforts into getting to their places of work – which, in megacities like Moscow, can take up to three hours. Those who own a dacha in the countryside also experienced a moderated regime. However, official statistics are contradictory. Among the countries that were most successful in flattening the infection curve was Slovakia. However, it was so at a high cost: there were shopping hours designated only for seniors – from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. –, with no possibility for the younger generations to enter the shops, which caused heated debates in the public discourse. Indicative for the government’s paternalistic stance toward the elderly was prime minister Igor Matovič’s announcement: “We will protect them till the very end…”6 Still, seniors in Slovakia were lucky with their shopping time slots. In Serbia, as part of the measures included in the state of emergency declared on March 15, all people over 65 years of age were in strict quarantine until the beginning of May, being entirely forbidden to leave their homes, except for the period between 3 and 7 o’clock in the morning, once a week (most frequently a night between Saturday and Sunday). This measure, although undertaken with the idea to protect the oldest and, reportedly, most endangered generation from the virus, resulted, however, in numerous fines and even arrests of people older than 65 in Serbia – a striking paradox, if the primary declared intention of protecting them is taken into account. Being over the age boundary meant no exercise, no fresh air and no contact with families for an age group that is constantly reminded that these are precisely the things needed for healthy and “successful” aging. On the contrary, the inability to leave their homes, socialize, move and exercise, to see their children, grandchildren and friends, all in a society that still holds the institution of the family in high regard and reverence, will, most probably, have serious and lasting physical and psychological consequences for the age cohort that makes up more than 20 percent of Serbia’s population (Anđelković 2020; Eurostat 2020). The authorities’ patronizing approach has been criticized as the harshest set of restrictions in Europe, though lauded by outside observers for its efficiency.7 COVID-19 measures also had a profound impact upon the elderly at the height of the pandemic in North Macedonia. Starting from March 24, persons over 67 years of age were allowed to move freely from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m., which

6

E-mail to the editors by Ľubica Voľanská from June 3, 2020.

7

See, e.g., Wehrschütz 2020.

16 | Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther

was later reduced to only two hours, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Their city transport privileges were temporarily revoked. Lines of pensioners formed in front of the markets and the banks during those two “free” hours. On May 14, the Supreme Court canceled the two-hour limitation on free movement for the elderly and minors, rejecting it as unconstitutional. Red Cross volunteers had been active in providing for the elderly in need, isolated in their – often tiny – apartments. Many seniors had left the cities for their village houses, where they could move more freely, although this meant risking more difficult access to proper medical care and regular food supply. Extended families living under one roof were able to socialize, but with a significant risk to the elderly dwelling in the same space with younger members who did not have the possibility to work from home. In Romania, older people also became the main target of the Romanian government’s measures. At the beginning, from March 16, elders were not allowed to leave their houses. Later, they were permitted to go out exclusively to shop for food and medicine, but only for two hours per day. Finally, there was an extension of the time period they could shop for basic goods. In Croatia, the authorities’ response to COVID-19 was considered successful by most inhabitants; the public opinion coincided with the government’s decision to save lives at all costs. What went rather unnoticed outside Croatia was an earthquake that strongly hit the Croatian capital Zagreb on March 22 – that is, during lockdown. It made people run out of their houses, which made it difficult for them to comply with the social distancing measures imposed by the authorities. Nevertheless, infection and death rates clearly remained below the European average and those of other Southeast European countries. Luckily, the need for elective case triage – whose implicit ageism Margaret Morganroth Gullette (2020) has so forcefully criticized as a “crime against humanity” – could, thus, be avoided.8

8

We are grateful to our contributors Ana Aštalkovska Gajtanoska, Rafaela Božić, Jane G. Harris, Loredana Ivan, Ilina Jakimovska, Maija Könönen, Olga Krasnova, Kirill Levinson, Natalija Perišić, Nadežda Satarić, Natalia Stagl Škaro and Ľubica Voľanská for the information provided on lockdown measures in their respective countries of residence. For further details on COVID-19 response in the Western Balkans see OECD 2020.

Introduction | 17

CORONA GENERATION(S)? Currently, there is an increasing debate about which age group of those “lockedup” has suffered more from the restrictions. Children are, rightly, said to have been the forgotten ones for not being regarded as systemically relevant. In Austria, while do-it-yourself and hairdresser’s shops were among the first ones to reopen, kindergartens and schools restarted only in mid-May – the latter with reduced class sizes, an obligation to wear face masks outside the classroom, oneway systems in hallways, the interdiction of sports and singing and harsh hygiene regulations. The more the younger generation, at last, becomes the center of attention, the more often the question is raised of the future psychological impact of the confinement and the economic consequences of the measures taken “for the sake” of the elderly. The young are said to be the “Corona generation”9 who will pay the bill for the protection of their elders. From the point of view of aging studies, it is important to ask what the use of the label “generation” in the current context implies and for what purposes it is used. The notion of “generation” is akin to that of “age” in that neither of them can be reduced to biological facts: both are means of expressing cultural meaning by marking difference. In social sciences, generations are often equated with age cohorts, i.e., with groups of people who were born within the same range of years. However, generations refer just as much to the socio-historical situation in which they take shape as to biological reproduction. The problem with defining the term lies in its varying usage: On the one hand, the notion of “generation” has become a powerful point of reference for people who wish to publicly declare themselves as groups with particular interests and to argue their case. On the other hand, it is used as a category of analysis in various academic disciplines, where generations are treated as identifiable communities of coeval socializing experiences. Scholars have repeatedly called into question the theoretical value of the concept, since by using it one reasserts a group’s claim to social affiliation and power instead of investigating its purpose and argument. One of the first to have rejected a biologistic notion of generation and drawn attention to its thoroughly social dimension was the German sociologist Karl Mannheim, with his seminal essay on “The Problem of Generations,” published in 1928 (Mannheim 1952). Mannheim stated that the precondition for a generation to emerge is people’s location (Lagerung) in the same socio-historical context. Mere coexistence in time does not suffice to create generations; to be part

9

For links to media coverage see Großegger 2020.

18 | Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther

of what Mannheim calls an actual generation (Generationszusammenhang), people have to participate in a common destiny, be exposed to the same key historical events and experience the same historical problems. Those groups within an actual generation that work up their common experiences in different specific ways constitute separate generation units (Generationseinheiten). What is striking in Mannheim’s essay is that the term “generation” is used throughout synonymously with that of “youth”; Mannheim’s study has proved paradigmatic in this sense, too. There is a tradition in generation studies of focusing on the young who come to replace their predecessors. Processes of generation-building among the elderly have thus far been widely ignored. The current use of the label “Corona generation” confirms these findings. Furthermore, in a historical perspective, generational affiliation seems to be a specifically male experience. The German historian Ulrike Jureit has rightly asked what the category of generation is actually able to identify and shed light on, and what it tends to ignore (Jureit 2006: 34). A notable feature of the term “generation” is its obvious ambiguity, its “double semantics” (Weigel 2005: 116), for it is used to denote belonging in two different senses – a vertical and a horizontal sense. On the one hand, generations can be seen vertically in the context of genealogical succession. Speaking of generations, then, brings to the fore the aspect of continuity and cohesion. On the other hand, generations can be used to signify genealogical rupture between the “young” and the “old.” This meaning has come to prevail with the advent of modernity in the late 18th and 19th centuries. In this perspective, brought into focus by Mannheim, old values start giving way to new ones, and “sons” start replacing their “fathers” as political driving forces, for the elderly are no longer considered able to represent actual and future concerns and thus lose their privileged social position. Generations in their vertical sense are a way of conceptualizing the relationships between parents, children and grandchildren. These intergenerational relations within the family are the main focus of much psychological, pedagogical and, not least, aging research. At the center of a familial understanding of generation is the idea of passing down knowledge, traditions and values. Through intergenerational relations, familial and cultural memory is shared and preserved. This holds true even more for suppressed memories: family is also the site of unconscious transmission of trauma over generations. As an expression that serves to frame non-familial social relations, the term “generation” usually highlights change and most often conflict. In 20th-century generation discourse, there is an obsession with the generation gap, and in the 21st century, we are even told to prepare ourselves for a clash of generations.

Introduction | 19

The latter is said to be a predictable consequence of living beyond our children’s means. Obviously, the notion of generation has become a popular formula for discussing social crises. Right before the outbreak of the Corona crisis, a focus on climate justice had started to dominate the public discourse. Environmental ethics had come to be seen as implying responsibility for the welfare of future generations. What is being evoked is inter-generation fairness and fulfillment of the intergenerational contract. This is even more true of the actual debates around the future costs to be expected as a consequence of the economic shutdown induced by the pandemic. The paternalistic discourse on protecting the elderly from the beginning of the crisis is increasingly giving way to a discourse on the need for distributive justice between generations. In any case, the concept of generation is a means of describing social relations and imagining communities, thereby presenting itself as a quasi-natural phenomenon. Shared chronological age is not what “makes” a generation. Nevertheless, it has consistently been claimed as a reference point in generational discourse. Speaking of a “Corona generation” while having in mind the young, one ignores that, at present, people of all ages are affected by the pandemic, however differently. It might be that the actual experience will unite present-day pensioners more than experiences they made in their youth would do, thus building another – elderly – “Corona generation,” and a number of separate generation units among them.

(RE-)MAPPING EUROPE What are the Balkans? If nobody asks me, I know. If they ask me to explain, I don’t. (Šta je Balkan? Ako me niko ne pita, znam; ako neko traži da objasnim, ne znam.) Muharem Bazdulj (2007)

This volume aims at contributing to a developing body of critical work on the topics of age and aging as seen in and from the perspectives of East and Southeast European societies and cultures. To many aging researchers, East and Southeast Europe still are blind spots; the exploration of what May Sarton calls “the foreign country of old age” does not go far beyond the familiar. This essay collection intends to make the region’s marginal status productive. Since the study of age and aging has heretofore been primarily developed in academia in Western Europe and North America, certain topics have been explored more

20 | Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther

than others, bringing them into the forefront of the scholarly discussion and discourse of what it means to age, to become or to be old and what the conceptualizations of age in the collective imagination are. There are phenomena and topoi that have been ubiquitous in the study of age and aging over the last decades; they are, in part, being taken for granted, although they might, in fact, be not so much universally valid as culturally specific. The title of this essay collection indicates a focus which implies a danger that we are well aware of: it seems to suggest that Europe’s East and Southeast are a sort of “o/Other” than the rest of the continent and, at the same time, that they form a homogeneous region with a unified or, at least, unifiable view on aging, old age and the elderly. Of course, this is not the case. We do not intend to assert an Eastern Europe as a homogeneous whole with clearly identifiable borders and reaffirm images of a seemingly backward East that has to tackle problems which the “progressive West” has long overcome. Scholars have explored the discourses that create such images with the objective – or, at least, the consequence – of implicitly defining a Western Self and often claiming the latter’s superiority (see Kaser/Gramshammer-Hohl/Pichler 2003). Larry Wolff (1994) has argued that Eastern Europe was “invented” as an uncivilized, backward Other against an allegedly civilized West only in the age of Enlightenment; before this time, Europe was conceived to be divided into a North and a South, respectively. Drawing on Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism, Maria Todorova (1997), on her part, has identified and analyzed the discourse of Balkanism, which produces the mental map of the Balkans as an internal Other of (Western) Europe – a semi-civilized, semi-backward, semi-Oriental, semi-European imaginative space. By highlighting the history and historicity of these mental maps, Wolff’s and Todorova’s works have, among others, contributed to a re-mapping of Europe – at least, in academia. Due to the Corona crisis, we are currently witnessing a novel re-mapping of Europe. As a first reaction to the threat of the pandemic, Europe saw a reemerging nationalism, which some have even labeled “coronationalism” (Ozkirimli 2020, cited in Bieber 2020). A tendency toward reclaiming national rights and pursuing exclusionist policies had already existed; however, the pandemic has made this tendency more visible, as it has made visible a number of other imbalances in society. Until now, Europe’s countries most affected by the pandemic have been Italy and Spain; those states, such as Austria, which proved to be quite effective in fighting COVID-19 thanks to strict lockdown measures, prompted their citizens to support the measures by constantly evoking an “Italian scenario” that must be prevented. Within the EU, those countries that claimed to be most successful in

Introduction | 21

battling the pandemic are now forming a Central European alliance – the “Central Five” – with Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, and thus, some kind of Visegrád+ (though without Poland) (Schallenberg 2020). Croatia, which, at the beginning, also succeeded in containing the spread of the virus, seems to have “imported” new cases from neighboring countries and is now, at the beginning of summer tourism, confronting a closing of borders to its North. For the Western Balkans, borders with the EU are already shut. Though border closures certainly have their medical reasons, they also bear symbolic meaning: infection curves are now the basis of a new kind of “nesting Orientalisms,” as Milica Bakić-Hayden (1995) termed this phenomenon. In the actual case, countries compete in proving that the bearer of the disease is not the Self but the Other – namely, their respective Southern and Eastern neighbors. However, speaking of Eastern and Southeastern Europe does not necessarily mean reproducing problematic mental maps; a focus on this region is justified if we consider the latter’s historical legacies, such as communism and postsocialist transformation. Recognizing these legacies helps us understand specific – though no less diverse – conditions, experiences and perspectives on old age and aging in the region this volume investigates. As one of the key texts in aging studies claims, one is “aged by culture” (Gullette 2004), and what and where this culture is determines, then, the ways in which local, regional, national or crosscultural communities might frame their answers to the basic question of what it means to grow old. Circumstances produced by the post-socialist switch to open markets, EU integration and globalization are leaving piercing traces on societies in the region, also in terms of age. For example, the accelerating trend of migration from countries on the Balkan peninsula, predominantly of the young population seeking better opportunities and a higher standard of living in Western Europe, leaves – to use the metaphor referring to another ex-centric world region, South America – open veins in the migrants’ home countries, which are increasingly populated by older generations and which have, thus far, not come to comprehensive or farsighted responses to the brain- and power-drains and changes in population structures taking place. Since its accession to the EU in 2007 and a free exchange of people and goods made possible, in Romania, e.g., entire generations are growing up with their grandparents, while parents leave for seasonal work as strawberry pickers, care workers or construction workers to the UK, Spain, Italy, Austria and other EU countries. When David J. Ekerdt delivered his keynote speech at the conference Cultural Narratives, Processes and Strategies in Representations of Age and Aging

22 | Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther

in Graz in 2017 with the title “Aging in a World of Things,”10 the very valuable insights he offered in his talk about the accumulation of objects over time and its meaning and evolution in meaning in US-American culture did and could not resonate with topics that scholars in Slavic or Southeast European studies might encounter in their analysis from the perspective of age and aging studies. The recently increased interest in the “material turn” in field research would provoke quite different responses in the societies of Eastern and Southeastern Europe, where the population of 65 and over is probably rarely preoccupied with liberating themselves of the “stuff” they have acquired over time, but instead has difficulties in obtaining “basic stuff” for a decent living in the first place. The phenomenon of the so-called “pension shock,” considered a primarily male experience in Western countries, has an impact on women in Eastern and Southeast European societies as well, seen as how women in socialist countries took active part in wage-work (see Voľanská 2017). Another phenomenon that is notably different in countries in Eastern and Southeastern Europe is the idea and study of the spaces of old age. The Swedish best-selling novel The HundredYear-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2009) or films like the British comedy The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) and other immensely successful cultural products having at their center a narrative about aging characters might be understandable in Sweden or Great Britain, but in other cultural spaces, Eastern and Southeastern Europe among them, the issues around and about aging and old age are substantially different in focus. A huge success of a novel dealing with an escape from a care home can hardly be imagined, seen as how the care for the elderly very often still remains within the family circle: the old are cared for at home, making the space and context of old age quite different. Similarly, the cultural narratives, as well as cultural models and norms and what is considered acceptable or transgressive behavior, are very different, so that a comedy about old age romance, such as in the aforementioned film, might be seen, quite literally, out of place. As a basis for comparison with the said novel and film, we might think of Daša Drndić’s novel Belladonna, or of the very well received film The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu by the Romanian director Cristi Puiu, both devastating critiques of systemic discrimination against (gendered) old age in their specific contexts. In the same way, for example, masculinity and its performance in the context of war is a burning topic for the countries of former Yugoslavia that went through a civil war merely 25-30 years ago, and the character of the war veteran

10 The entire talk is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkAONmwLcOQ [accessed June 1, 2020].

Introduction | 23

is very much present and re-imagined in cultural products in these societies – a character that would probably be out of focus in the present cultural production in Western Europe.11 In the light of such disparities, the development of a body of critical literature on themes of age and aging in Europe’s East and Southeast is, therefore, crucial and timely.

MULTI-DISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVES ON OLD AGE AND AGING This essay collection consists of three parts, whose present organization is based on the authors’ approach to the topic of age and aging in their respective regional and academic foci. While Part 1 includes articles approaching their material from a historical perspective, the contributions to Part 2 are based on data obtained through quantitative and/or qualitative methods, whereas Part 3 involves analyses of literary representations of old age and aging. Part 1, “Historical perspectives,” opens with KARL KASER’s paper entitled “Old Age in the Balkans: Increasing Life Expectancy – Decreasing Regard,” which also gains an added value after the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In his contribution, Karl Kaser points to the changes in generational patterns that took place in the Balkans around the middle of the 20th century, and as a result of the mixed effects of industrialization, urbanization and migration taking place. Covering the historical development of a radical change in status of the elderly in societies with centuries-old patriarchal systems, the author analyzes two phenomena that show continuity in the region: women acting as caretakers and institutional caretaking remaining a marginal phenomenon – both issues mentioned and analyzed in other papers as well. The history of intergenerational relations is also the topic of the chapter authored by SIEGFRIED GRUBER: “Co-Residence of Elderly Persons with Children and Grandchildren in Eastern and Southeast Europe: 18th and 19th Centuries.” Using historical microdata, the author discusses in detail the positions of different family members in traditional households in East and Southeast European countries, going on to analyze the patterns of the elderly’s co-residence with children and grandchildren. The author defines six rural areas (Russia, Baltic,

11 For an analysis of social constructions and representations of aging masculinities across European cultures see the ongoing ERA Gender-Net Plus Project “MascAge”: https://www.mascage.eu/ [accessed July 15, 2020].

24 | Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther

Belarus and Ukraine, Romania, South Slavic and Albania) and two groups of cities (Albanian and non-Albanian). These areas consistently show discrepancies in household patterns, which, as the author concludes, demonstrate that from the perspective of historical demography, Eastern Europe is a highly diverse region that cannot be categorized into a discrete unit. TATIANA SABUROVA’s essay, “‘University Elders,’ ‘Young Professors’ and Students: A Generational Approach to the History of Higher Education in Russia in the Late 19th Century,” explores the notion of generation, the various approaches used in generational studies and their links with aging studies. Generational identity, the author argues, was unquestionably significant within university culture in late Imperial Russia for both students and professors, who interacted and situated themselves within a designated generation, both real and imagined, and described the mutual relations of professors and students in generational terms. Entering into dialogue with the chapter authored by Tatiana Saburova is KIRILL LEVINSON’s contribution “Changes in Soviet Academia’s Age-Related Personnel Policies during the Cold War,” which investigates how age as a category shapes academia and scientific development. It analyzes data about personnel planning and selection based on certain age prerequisites at the USSR Academy of Sciences research institutes and the Moscow State University between 1945 and 1991. However, as these practices were never formulated in any policy papers and no mention could be found containing explicit age-related benchmarks, the author draws on unpublished, to date, archive material that reflects the main guidelines for personnel policy, including talks and speeches by highranking functionaries, by heads of departments and research institutes or by the president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The articles in Part 2, entitled “Qualitative and Quantitative Inquiries,” are based on field research conducted by academics who come from the fields of sociology, social psychology, ethnology and human geography. This section of the essay collection opens with a chapter by ANA AŠTALKOVSKA GAJTANOSKA and ILINA JAKIMOVSKA on traditional and contemporary conceptualizations of old age in a rural environment in the Balkans, “No Country for Old People: Ethnography of Traditional and Contemporary Conceptualizations of Old Age in Rural North Macedonia,” which, thus, resonates with Karl Kaser’s paper from Part 1. The authors discuss the rapid and sudden change that occurred in notions of both male and female aging in North Macedonia in the 20th century. With changes in the political, economic and social systems in the country as a whole, rural communities of both Orthodox Macedonian and mixed Orthodox-Muslim communities went through a shift, from a reverence for

Introduction | 25

old age as the age of wisdom and authority to a narrative and practice of old age as an age of uselessness and unproductivity, regarded as a burden for the young and working population. Serbia is also a country that has undergone transformation and radical changes of system, and NATALIJA PERIŠIĆ and NADEŽDA SATARIĆ analyze the results of their combined-method research conducted in the municipality of New Belgrade, in a chapter entitled “Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia: A Gender Perspective.” The special focus here is on the disparity of social roles and individual destinies depending on gender, while underlining the extreme pressure on the elderly in Serbia, brought on by the changes in public policies – most importantly, the pension policy reforms. Furthermore, the authors discuss their findings from parts of their research that included a survey and focus groups about topics such as violence and both the systemic and the cultural discrimination against older women. The situation of the elderly in urban environments is also at the center of attention in the chapter “On Nearness and Distance: Seniors’ Lives in Urban Areas in Slovakia” by ĽUBICA VOĽANSKÁ, MARCELA KÁČEROVÁ and JURAJ MAJO. The social pressure, moral discourse and intergenerational behavior patterns are analyzed in treating the topic of lonely older adults in different living arrangements in the urban environments of Slovakia. Combining statistical data from censuses with findings from narrative and semi-structured interviews with seniors in “aging cities,” this interdisciplinary team of authors also provides an interesting insight into the challenges of interdisciplinary work and co-authorship. LOREDANA IVAN writes about seniors and their use, relationship to and view of technology in “The Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Family Communication: Dialogues with Grandmothers from Romania.” This chapter also outlines findings from field research with a focus on family practices. Ivan’s chapter contributes to a growing body of work that investigates how older adults use and understand ICTs in their everyday lives, including social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), blogs and other communication platforms such as Skype or WhatsApp. OLGA KRASNOVA’s chapter “The Elderly in Russia: A Socio-Psychological Approach” analyzes the elderly’s situation in the Russian Federation from the perspective of social psychology. After giving an overview of the development of a social-psychological approach to the study of aging, the author provides an analysis of how differently aging and old age are perceived and experienced by members of distinct age cohorts in Russia, with all the political, social and economic upheavals the country and its citizens have seen during the so-called short 20th century. The author also points to the extreme difference in life expectancy

26 | Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther

between women and men, which makes old age largely a female experience in Russia. Part 3 of this essay collection, entitled “Literary Representations,” is dedicated to literary works and other artistic production that in many different ways deal, overtly or not, with the issues of age and aging. RAFAELA BOŽIĆ writes about “Aging in Soviet Utopian and Dystopian Literature,” giving special attention to literary production between the October Revolution and the ending of World War II. The chapter analyzes the specific meanings of age and aging in both utopian and dystopian universes and characters, the focus being on Evgenij Zamjatin’s We and Andrej Platonov’s The Foundation Pit and Chevengur. One of the important conclusions the author comes to is that literary constructs of age and aging are genre-specific and deliver particular messages about and to the time they are written in. In “Ageless, Vital, Immortal: Human Transformation in 20th-Century Russian Science and Literature,” TATJANA PETZER addresses the important intersections of science and literature, as well as the intertwining notions and enduring imagined relation of aging and (im)mortality. The article treats the issues of physicality, mortality and longevity, embodiment and discourse through analyzing three distinct literary thought experiments from 1910, 1920 and 1970 (one of them, as in Rafaela Božić’s article, by Andrej Platonov). The author shows how these three texts can be used to trace specific changes in the scientific and social discourses on the creation of spheres of immortality. Analyzing Lev Tolstoj’s well-known novel from the vantage point of age and aging studies, JANE GARY HARRIS in “Noticing Signs and Stereotypes of Aging: Representations and Performance of Mind and Body in Tolstoj’s War and Peace” goes on to write about Tolstoj’s very concrete, empirical observations of what age means, how he recognizes age and aging and how he then codifies them in aesthetic, sociological and psychological representations. Youth, aging and old age are all central topics for an author who, claims Harris, shows his fascination with change in building an expansive fictional portrait gallery in War and Peace that undergoes, among other things, also the transformations that the passing of the fictional time brings. In “Does Genre Matter? The Role of Literary Genre and Narrator in Contemporary Russian Caregivers’ Narratives,” MAIJA KÖNÖNEN combines a narratological analysis with elements from critical gerontology in arguing that the contradictions and presumptions embedded in narratives of aging can be revealed with the tools of narratology and that narratives of dementia are indeed, as age and aging in a more general sense, a constructed, social and political affair. The author explores the value of narrative techniques used in a literary text

Introduction | 27

in enhancing our understanding and empathy toward a protagonist with dementia and the ethical and aesthetical implications thereof. By attributing to senility the now predominant cultural stigma of disease and anomaly, the biomedical mainstream narrative has radically changed the discourse around memory loss from the cultural sphere to biology. How this mainstream narrative is then embedded and reconstructed within a narrative text is, however, a consequence and result of the surrounding cultural practices and models, the author claims, and goes on to examine this claim in two Russian short stories from the beginning of the 21st century. Whereas the first four essays in this section deal with the Soviet and Russian cultural spaces, the last three articles focus on the South Slavic context, analyzing some of the distinct, even stock, characters of this region’s cultural production. INGEBORG JANDL’s article “Traumatic Aging in Borisav Stanković and Miloš Crnjanski: The Symptomatic Body in the Modern and Expressionist View on Soul and Society” provides a close reading of two novels written in Serbian at the beginning of the 20th century – one in a realistic tradition and the other in a modernist aesthetic form. Pathological family dynamics within the traditional patriarchal system in Serbia are shown to produce patterns of traumatic aging in both male and female characters, albeit in a different form and with different consequences. The author also explores the phenomenon of transgenerational trauma as illustrated by often rigid social norms and unyielding structures, which produce tragic, timeless heroes. Similarly, the way popular imagination, relationships between generations, collective attitudes toward age and aging and established social practices form and inform, subsequently, certain characteristics of narratives is explored in the chapter by NATALIA STAGL ŠKARO, “The Dark Past of Family: Age Roles and Superstition in Southeast European Literature and Popular Culture.” The author traces the paths along which collective imagination in South Slavic cultures gave rise to certain stereotypes and stock characters in myth, fairy tales, literature and films. Analyzing the way in which a stage of life would be associated with specific magic or otherworldly figures (the mischievous girl with the fairy; the middle-aged man with the werewolf; the old woman with the witch and the old man with the vampire etc.), Stagl Škaro localizes these characters in different narrative forms, all the while keeping to comparative methods, using the Classical Greek myth, Central European, Russian and other cultural contexts as mirrors. Another inquiry into the myths of old age – and the myths of female aging in particular – is found in DAGMAR GRAMSHAMMER-HOHL’s chapter, entitled “The Hag and the Egg: Slavic Mythologies of Old Age as Reflected in Dubravka Ugrešić’s Novel Baba Yaga Laid an Egg.” The article traces different embodi-

28 | Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl & Oana Hergenröther

ments of the old woman in Slavic mythologies, with Baba Yaga as the pervasive character, and their enactment in the contemporary Croatian writer’s well-known novel. By analyzing the narrative devices used in the text, the author shows how Ugrešić’s novel unmasks aging as a social construct that can, and must, be demythologized. Rounding the discussion on age and aging in East and Southeast European social and cultural imaginations is an interview conducted by Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl in July 2018 with contemporary Russian writer and certainly one of the best-known voices of Russian literature abroad, LUDMILA ULITSKAYA [Ljudmila Ulickaja]. The author provides an insight into her motivation to introduce aging characters and the subject of aging into her work and also takes a firm stand on the elderly’s situation in present-day Russia. The authors of this essay collection, thus, invite their readers to take a closer look at the Eastern and Southeastern European regions, which, for the majority of aging researchers, still are “foreign countries,” whose histories, experiences and images of old age usually escape broader academic consideration. By highlighting these culturally specific contexts of aging and old age, this volume aims to show how multifaceted the “foreign country of old age” is, thus contributing to a deeper understanding of the aging process in all its diversity.

REFERENCES Anđelković, Nataša (2020): “Korona virus i penzioneri: Kako će dobiti penziju, ako ne mogu napolje”, in: BBC News na srpskom, 24.03. https://www.bbc. com/serbian/lat/srbija-52017341 [accessed May 29, 2020]. Bakić-Hayden, Milica (1995): “Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia”, in: Slavic Review 54/4, 917-931. Bazdulj, Muharem (2007): “Prilozi za novo mišljenje zavičaja: Sekavanje na Balkanot”, in: Vreme 886-887, 27.12. https://www.vreme.com/cms/view. php?id=554579 [accessed June 4, 2020]. Bieber, Florian (2020): “Global Nationalism in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic”, in: Nationalities Papers, 1-13. doi:10.1017/nps.2020.35 [accessed June 3, 2020]. Brodsky, Joseph [Brodskij, Iosif] (1970): “Don’t leave your room, don’t commit that fateful mistake…” (“Не выходи из комнаты, не совершай ошибку…”). English translation by Thomas de Waal (2020): https://www. pushkinhouse.org/blog/2020/3/24/tom-de-waal-brodsky-virus [accessed May 26, 2020].

Introduction | 29

Chatham, Joshua (2020): “Navajo Nation: The People Battling America’s Worst Coronavirus Outbreak”, in: BBC News, 16.06. https://www.bbc.com/news/ world-us-canada-52941984 [accessed June 17, 2020]. Eurostat (2020): Proportion of Population Aged 65 and Over. 2008-2019. https:// ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/tps00028/default/table?lang=en [accessed May 29, 2020]. Großegger, Beate (2020): “Generation Corona: Rückzug vom Rückzug?” https://jugendkultur.at/generation-corona-rueckzug-vom-rueckzug/ [accessed May 31, 2020]. Gullette, Margaret M. (2004): Aged by Culture. Chicago. Gullette, Margaret M. (2020): “Ageist ‘Triage’ Is a Crime Against Humanity”, in: Los Angeles Review of Books, 21.03. https://lareviewofbooks.org/shorttakes/ageist-triage-covid19/?fbclid=IwAR3Xfg0VeVueQiPS14VsD0AVLer g0jHps6g0dZRnrtroYGZEu03QdA-D7D0 [accessed April 1, 2020]. John, Gerald/Schnauder, Andreas/Thaler, Selina (2020): “Der teure Schutz der Alten”, in: Der Standard, 24.05. https://www.derstandard.at/story/20001176 40844/der-teure-schutz-der-alten [accessed May 24, 2020]. Jureit, Ulrike (2006): Generationenforschung. Göttingen. Kaser, Karl/Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar/Pichler, Robert (eds.) (2003): Wieser Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens. Vol. 11: Europa und die Grenzen im Kopf. Klagenfurt. Levada-Centr (2020): “Žizn’ na karantine”. https://www.levada.ru/2020/04/30/ zhizn-na-karantine/ [accessed May 31, 2020]. Loos, Eugène/Nimrod, Galit/Fernández-Ardèvol, Mireia (2018): Older Audiences in the Digital Media Environment: A Cross-National Longitudinal Study. Wave 1 v1.0. Project Report. ACT Project, Montreal. http://spectrum.library. concordia.ca/983866/ [accessed April 26, 2020]. Loos, Eugène/Nimrod, Galit/Fernández-Ardèvol, Mireia (2019): Older Audiences in the Digital Media Environment: A Cross-National Longitudinal Study. Wave 2 v1.0. Project Report. ACT Project, Montreal. https://spectrum. library.concordia.ca/986444/ [accessed April 26, 2020]. Mannheim, Karl (1952): “The Problem of Generations”, in: Mannheim, Karl: Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London, 276-322. OECD (2020): The OECD and South East Europe. Tackling Coronavirus (COVID-19). https://www.oecd.org/south-east-europe/ [accessed July 17, 2020]. ORF (2020): “Schweden erwog härtere Regeln für Männer”, in: ORF News, 27.05. https://orf.at/stories/3167338/ [accessed May 27, 2020].

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Rössler, Hans-Christian (2020): “113-Jährige von Covid-19 geheilt”, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 13. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/gesellschaft/ menschen/113-jahre-alt-aelteste-frau-spaniens-von-covid-19-geheilt-167681 46.html [accessed May 26, 2020]. Schallenberg, Alexander (2020): “‘Wir sind keine schlechten Europäer’. Interview by Stefan Winkler”, in: Kleine Zeitung, 05.07., 12-13. Todorova, Maria (1997): Imagining the Balkans. New York. Voľanská, Ľubica (2017): “Aging and Old Age in Popular Autobiographies from Bratislava and Vienna”, in: Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar (ed.): Aging in Slavic Literatures: Essays in Literary Gerontology. Bielefeld, 65-88. Wehrschütz, Christian (2020): “Der erfolgreiche Krisenweg der Balkanländer”, in: Kleine Zeitung, 03.06., 4-5. Weigel, Sigrid (2005): “Familienbande, Phantome und die Vergangenheitspolitik des Generationsdiskurses: Abwehr von und Sehnsucht nach Herkunft”, in: Jureit, Ulrike/Wildt, Michael (eds.): Generationen: Zur Relevanz eines wissenschaftlichen Grundbegriffs. Hamburg, 108-126. WHO (2020a): WHO Director-General’s Opening Remarks at the Media Briefing on COVID-19. 20 May 2020. https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/ who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19--20-may-2020 [accessed May 21, 2020]. WHO (2020b): Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard. https://covid19. who.int/ [accessed May 21, 2020]. WHO (2020c): Q&A: Older People and COVID-19. 8 May 2020. https://www. who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-on-on-covid-19-for-older-people [accessed May 21, 2020]. WHO-Europe (2020): COVID-19 Weekly Surveillance Report. Data for the Week of 4-10 May 2020 (Epi week 19). http://www.euro.who.int/en/healthtopics/health-emergencies/coronavirus-covid-19/weekly-surveillance-report [accessed May 21, 2020]. Wolff, Larry (1994): Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford. Yarnall, Alison J./Sayer, Avan A./Clegg, Andrew/Rockwood, Kenneth/Parker, Stuart/Hindle John V. (2017): “New Horizons in Multimorbidity in Older Adults”, in: Age and Ageing 46/6, 882-888. https://doi.org/10.1093/ageing/ afx150 [accessed May 30, 2020].

Historical Perspectives

Old Age in the Balkans Increasing Life Expectancy – Decreasing Regard Karl Kaser

The generation of old people is in an unenviable situation. When we were young we strived to please our elders, and now we must please the young. And when are we to live?

Andrei Simić1

INTRODUCTION This bitter statement made by an elderly village informant in Yugoslavia (present-day Serbia) around 1970 is indicative of the crucial changes of generational relations taking place not only in the Yugoslav countryside but also in the Balkans in general: the principle of seniority that had privileged the older generation over the younger lost its meaning. The centuries-old patriarchal order was questioned not only by a political regime that was envisaging the establishment of a modern and fair society but also by young men and women who represented the traditional disadvantaged of the hierarchical social order constitutive of agrarian societies. In the middle of the 20th century, a massive societal change resulted from comparatively late industrialization, urbanization and migration with its spillover effects on gender and generational relations. My paper attempts to establish an overview of the changing patterns of old age in the previous two centuries. This time span includes approximately four decades of socialism and enforced industrialization in Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia and serious attempts at industrialization under capitalist cir-

1

Simić 1978: 78.

34 | Karl Kaser

cumstances in Greece and Turkey. Industrialization in both forms resulted in significant changes of the status of the elderly, which can be summarized by tendencies of “increasing life expectancy – decreasing regard” being aggravated in the previous decades. Since my contribution will cover a long period, I will consider temporal dynamics as well as their impact on men and women and on regional ethnoreligious differences with regard to the share of elderly in society. Until World War II, the rural patterns of caretaking for the elderly prevailed, whereas afterwards new forms emerged. However, at least two remarkable continuities remained: women as caretakers and institutional caretaking as a marginal phenomenon. I will divide my chapter into three sections. In the first section, I will sketch out the concept of honor for the elderly in agrarian societies with their low life expectancies and high mortality rates. Since reliable statistical data hardly exist for the period before 1800, this overview begins around 1800 and ends with the onset of industrialization in the middle of the 20th century. The second section will cover the period of emerging industrial society, which was characterized by the onset of increasing life expectancy and a value change from the inactive old age to an emphasis on active generations. The industrializing state still considered caregiving a family duty. The third section deals with the post-socialist period, which is characterized by rapidly increasing life expectancy, the economic miseries of the Third Age and the challenges of caretaking in a region where traditionally institutional caretaking had been avoided.

THE HONOR OF OLD AGE IN AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES The traditional life-course pattern, embedded in agrarian society, was based upon strict obedience in youth and increasing honor and respect for both men and women in old age under two conditions: one or more sons were born and alive, and the family, consisting of the older couple, their married son(s) and their children, remained intact. This also included economic and moral control by the elderly male household head and the exclusion of women from inheritance. An institution such as the farmer’s life interest (Ausgedinge), which was frequently practiced in Western and Central Europe, was unknown in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe in general. Whereas in the former the entry to old age was clearly marked by the transfer of the farmstead to one of the sons (or a daughter if necessary), this was not the case in the latter. A formal transfer did not take place

Old Age in the Balkans | 35

because the farmstead was considered joint property of all adult male members of household. Growing old did not mean stepping back and letting the successor step into the foreground, but rather was a phase of increasing honor. The elderly father, the patriarch in the strict sense, remained household head until his death; he controlled all economic activities and decided on the distribution of material flows to his sons. Ideally, only after his death were sons morally permitted to split the household (Kaser 2000: 220-221). Male honor in old age is related to the idea of a fulfilled life, which includes having several married sons remaining in the household, having prolonged the patriline and, hopefully, having sons continue the line by having their own sons. In doing so, he has provided for his old age. His sons’ wives will take care of him because he still controls the joint wealth and represents the household in the council of village elders. Honor of age was also related to the veneration of the patriline. He was closest to the already diseased, was considered able to keep contact with them and would be counted among them soon. Honor of age and veneration of age constituted a preliminary stage of ancestor worship (ibid.: 221). However, women’s honor also increased in old age. As a young wife, a woman was in an extremely difficult situation. Married at a young age, she had to adapt to her husband’s father’s household, had to work hard and was pressured to give birth to sons. Only after she had passed reproductive age did her position improve, as there was no reason for her sexuality to be controlled any longer. Her position also improved because her son(s) married and his wife (or their wives) would start on the bottom of the women’s hierarchy as she had done a generation before. She thus took over coordinating household functions and increasingly occupied an honorary position analogous to her husband’s (ibid.: 222223). In agrarian society, only a small portion of the population reached old age. A study from a nearby country (for the Balkans we do not have data) proves that Hungarian mortality rates were on the European average, but life expectancy was low. Life expectancy at birth in four Hungarian villages (1821-1830) was only about 30 years on average. The author assumes: (1) mortality did not decline in the course of the 19th century, as it did in Western Europe and (2) female mortality was higher than male mortality (Andorka 1995: 131-133). The percentage of population at age 60 or higher in the four Hungarian villages was low – only between 3.7 and 6.0 percent of the respective village population, with considerably more men among them. The percentage of population over age 60 is near to those found in Austria, Estonia and Serbia but lower than in English, French, Italian, Icelandic and Japanese localities. The most conspicu-

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ous difference as compared to English communities, however, is that in Hungarian villages no person over age 60 lived in an institution, and no person lived alone. It is clear that no institutions for the care of old and poor persons existed in these villages, and apparently no children were willing to let their widowed parents live by themselves. Old, widowed parents either continued to live in their households together with their unmarried and married children or entered the households of married children after having become widowers. Not only the parents of the household head but in some cases also the widowed mother of the head’s spouse lived in the household (ibid.: 137-145). Both married and unmarried old people lived much more frequently with their married children than was the case in England: in Hungary, 76 percent of the men and 82 percent of the women over age 60 lived together with married children and in most cases with grandchildren. In consequence, the generational depth of the households in which old people lived was great: in 73 percent of these households, members of three generations lived together. Most old persons thus had everyday contact with their grandchildren. The other aspect of the same phenomenon is that most of the households in which old people lived were of complex structure. Only 13 percent belonged to the simple family household type, 26 percent to the extended family household type and 57 percent to the multiple family household type (26 percent of which belonged to the stem type);2 4 percent were not classifiable (ibid.: 145). Andorka’s hint of a majority of elderly living in multiply structured households is important. The life of the older population was organized rather differently in these four Hungarian villages from that of Western Europe and even in Western-Central Europe (e.g., the Habsburg Monarchy). Most of the old people lived in households with their married children or at least with one married child. They shared with them not only housing but also the costs of living. In case of need, adult children were able to care for their old parents (ibid.: 150). In the history of Europe, there have been only a few primary family contexts for the elderly. The first is the nuclear family, in which two elderly spouses care for each other; the children have left the household. The second is the solitary household, in which one elderly person is left to care for (usually) herself or (less often) himself. Third is the arrangement in which a surviving parent lives with a married child. This arrangement can occur when one senior surviving spouse in a two- or three-generation household dies. It can also occur if on the death of one

2

The multiple and stem family household type differed insofar as in the multiple type all sons (and the father, if still alive) were included; in a stem-family type only one son stays with the parents and takes over the farmstead after the father passes away.

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senior spouse in a nuclear household, the survivor is reincorporated into the household of a married child. The fourth is the complex household, in which the elderly couple resides with one or more married children. The so-called stem family household is a variety of the third and fourth form. In the stem family, usually the youngest male child of a household remains in his parents’ home after marriage (Hammel 1995: 109-111). Given the fact that in Western Europe multiple household systems were rarely practiced,3 the first three constellations were frequent, whereas in the Balkans the chance for an elderly person to go through the last phase of life in the framework of a stem family or a multiple household with children, grandchildren and other relatives was high. In the Hungarian case, not a single example documents a couple that, having lived during the course of their lives in a multiple household constellation, would live alone in old age without any children or other relatives present. The multiple compositions of households with elderly members demonstrate the desire to care for them as well as possible. At the same time, this reflects also old-age authority, which prohibited the partition of the household in a phase when the couple approached old age. Therefore, many households split after the death of the household head (Andorka 1995: 147-159). This form of household organization and caretaking for elderly prevailed in rural areas, where the overwhelming portion of the population lived before World War II. Societies remained strongly kinship oriented, and though there had been some erosion of traditional social forms in the interwar period, the extended family remained the primary unit of production and social identification. In regions characterized by this system, since the beginning of the 20th century, there has been a decline in both the size and economic significance of extended households, though the change has been less one of function than form with a tendency toward lineal, rather than lateral extension (Simić 1977: 58-60). I will exemplify this with an individual life cycle that spans from the second half of the 19th to the second half of the 20th century. Mileta Stojanović (18741972) was born in the village of Orašac in Central Serbia. When Mileta was born, the household comprised 18 persons, consisting of three married brothers, their ten children and their parents. Four years after the death of the household head the three brothers split the household into three parts. At that time, Mileta was 15 years old; he lived with his parents, a sister and a brother. Two years later, his mother and again after two years his sister died. The household consisted of the father and two sons. Mileta married at age 22 and had two sons; his

3

However, the stem-family system was widespread – not only in Western and Central Europe but also in Japan (see, e.g., Fauve-Chamoux/Ochiai 2010).

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younger brother married in 1923. They remained united with their father until 1937. In this year, his brother split from the joint household; the father remained with Mileta’s family. In 1945, Mileta’s father died at age 81, his younger son left the village with his family, while the older one remained with his wife and children. After his grandchildren had migrated to a nearby city, he lived together with his older son and his daughter-in-law until he passed away at nearly 100 years old (Kaser 1995: 384-387). Approximately 20 family members, predominantly horizontally extended, surrounded his grandfather when he died; when his father died, fewer than ten family members were present. Only two family members accompanied him in his last years – a typical lineally extended stem-family constellation. This constitutes a remarkable change of household composition with elderly embedded over three generations in one century. Does this decreasing household size for elderly people indicate an emerging crisis in caretaking?

INDUSTRIALIZATION AND CAREGIVING AS WOMEN’S DUTY This question cannot be answered all too easily. The politics of enforced industrialization, massively accelerated urbanization, internal and external labor migration, obligatory schooling for young men and women and the ideology of socialist modernity significantly affected family composition and herewith the framework for living in old age. In the socialist countries, the elderly were connected to traditional patriarchal gender relations that had to be overcome. The veneration of the elderly changed to the veneration of the worker hero. In addition, demographic changes began to play a role. Improved medical provision of the population caused, after many decades of stagnation, increased life expectancy. Whereas socialist ideology, industrialization, migration, urbanization and modernization polities can only be mentioned rather than extensively discussed within the limited framework of this article, I will focus on crucial family changes and the increase of life expectancy and herewith the extension of the phase of old age in individual and collective life cycles. The infrastructural, social and political transformations in Europe and many non-European parts of the world after World War II to the present have been enormous. In the Balkans, this includes a shift from a predominantly rural to an industrial economy, from predominantly agrarian to predominantly urban family structures, an alteration of the political organization and a radical transformation of the economic and social structures. Such was the case in the former Yugosla-

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via: in 1948, e.g., after the war, 79 percent of the economically active population were still engaged in agriculture. In 1953, this proportion had dropped to 75 percent, by 1961 to 64 percent and in the late 1980s the percentage decreased to fewer than 20 percent in most of the republics. All the Balkan countries were pushed into these half-industrialized societies after World War II, which was responsible for a rapid social transformation (Kaser 2012: 410). Decrease in the agricultural population was accomplished by an increasing migration of former peasants to cities and towns and to other countries in Europe and overseas (the latter being the case especially in the former Yugoslavia, Turkey and Greece) since the 1960s. Labor migration fundamentally affected the traditional family systems. As a basis for wealth and well-being, money started substituting more and more for immovable property. The previous practice of dividing land equally among male family members as inheritance was given up; brothers and sons were no longer interested in what were very often small and not very fertile pieces of partitioned land, and often left them to the one brother who remained at home while they went abroad to find work (ibid.: 411). The collectivization of land in the socialist countries except Yugoslavia caused a rapid decrease of large families, because the minimum of land a household was allowed to hold was, in most cases, not sufficient to provide a large family with enough property to survive. The nuclear household as an ideal became more and more universal, but extended kin ties remained important. Laws regarding equal rights for women were enacted and inheritance customary laws, where they acknowledged only a male right of inheritance, were turned into equal inheritance rights (ibid.: 410-411). As already mentioned, a combination of stem and nuclear family became more and more important in the second half of the 20th century. Previously mentioned Mileta Stojanović had been living in a stem-family constellation when he passed away in 1972. Only one son, in this case his older son with his wife, remained with the senescent father. For taking care of the father in old age, the son inherited his father’s farmstead, movables and immovables. The other son had opted to live with his wife in a nuclear household in a nearby city. This combination was the result of the indicated social, administrative and economic processes of modernization, especially after World War II and the adaptation of traditional family structures to a new form of industrial society. This type represents one of various transitional stages from a multiple to a nuclear household and family system. Neither the stem nor the nuclear household constellations were completely new experiences, for they had been part of traditional household cycles of fusion and fission (ibid.: 407).

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These developments on the household level were intrinsically linked to the challenges of increasing life expectancy and decreasing mortality rates. In the second half of the 20th century, mortality of all Balkan countries was converging with Western European countries. After World War II, there was still a large difference in life expectancy at birth between the Balkan countries and Western Europe. Thus, except for Greece, the difference in life expectancy at birth for males in the Balkans to those from Western Europe amounted to about seven years, while for females the gap was about twelve years. This sex differential of life expectancy at birth is mainly due to the life expectancy at birth for women in Albania, which was lower than that of men. The mortality rates of these countries start converging after 1970, in contrast to what was happening at the same time in Europe. The most substantial improvement in mortality rates during this period occurred for Yugoslavia and Albania. Life expectancy at birth for Yugoslavia improved for males by 14.6 years and for females by 17.6 years; while for Albania it improved for males by about 16 years and for females by about 23 years. Improvement of mortality in Romania has been slow compared to other Balkan countries, while in Bulgaria mortality has even worsened since the 1970s, in particular for males. The experience of Greece is different from that of the rest of the Balkans. After World War II and at the end of the 20th century, life expectancy at birth in Greece was much higher compared to the other Balkans, in particular Romania and Bulgaria. This increased gap comes mainly as a result of an increase in mortality in these countries. Thus, in 1990 the difference in life expectancy at birth between Greece and Bulgaria was about 6.4 years for males and 4.8 years for females, while in 1960 the mortality rate in Bulgaria was better for both sexes. Interestingly, life expectancy of women, which was behind that of men in the 19th century, improved significantly after World War II and superseded that of men; in Kosovo this improvement set in only in the 1970s, however (Gjonҫa 2001: 60-64; 2004: 667-671). There is evidence of a significant rise in the elderly population in Southeast Europe, where the percentage of individuals aged over 60 years increased from 9.8 percent in 1950 to 19.6 percent in 2010, whereas the percentage of individuals aged over 80 years increased from 0.9 percent in 1950 to 3.1 percent in 2010. The rate of population aging in the second 30-year period (1980-2010), however, was much higher compared to the first 30-year period (1950-1980): 8.1 percent to 1.4 percent, respectively. After the initial “take-off stage” with such a low rate of aging, the rate accelerated in most countries of the region (Jakovljevic/Laaser 2015: 4-8). Another statistic shows that the greatest proportion of people aged 65 years or older at the beginning of the period 1970-1999 was observed in Greece, Croa-

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tia, Bulgaria and Slovenia. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and Turkey it was about half of that. Over these three decades in all Balkan countries (except Turkey) there was a significant increase in the proportion of older people with the highest rate of change in Bulgaria (67 percent as compared to 1970), followed by Greece and Romania. However, statistics are sometimes misleading. In Bulgaria, for instance, life expectancy did not increase – just the opposite, the life expectancy in men decreased significantly and it has remained almost the same in women. Thus, the leading factor of aging for the Bulgarian population is the low fertility rates over these three decades (Aleksandrova/Velkova 2003: 5-10). Independently of this specific Bulgarian case, caregiving was increasingly discussed. In the case of Yugoslavia, the socialist state was experienced as paternalistic. While the state extended its control and management of populations to almost all domains of citizen-care, when it came to the care of old people, the state had a strong commitment to avoid creating separate institutions that would solely focus on the elderly. Rather, the system focused on the creation of comprehensive primary care services and health centers associated with homes of people’s health (domovi narodnog zdravlja). In addition, different republics within Yugoslavia showed a varied distribution of centers for the elderly: in 1987, Croatia was leading the way with the highest number (120) of special residencies for the elderly while Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and the former Yugoslavia, had only two such centers. Until recently, elderly Bosnians were physically and emotionally cared for by their children and they were often expected to live with (at least) one of them, usually the youngest son and his family, creating the previously mentioned stem-family constellation. These expectations were based on the cultural notions that stress the communal nature of kinship and symbiotic relationship between generations. The legal system incorporated this cultural expectation as well: for example, Article 150 of the former Yugoslav Constitution defined the care of the elderly as children’s responsibility and Article 190/10 stated: “Members of the family shall have the duty and right to maintain parents […] and to be maintained by them, as an expression of their family solidarity” (Hromadžić 2015: 7-9). The formulation “children’s responsibility” hides the fact that caregivers were usually exclusively women. Thus, they were not only expected to contribute to the household income as wage laborers and to take care of the household but also increasingly to care for elderly whose life expectancy gradually extended.

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INCREASING LIFE EXPECTANCY AND PROBLEMS IN THE THIRD AGE IN THE POST-SOCIALIST ERA After the political and economic transitions, the post-socialist countries witnessed the so-called third transition. In the post-socialist world, this transition constitutes a unique conjunction of rapidly aging and relatively poor populations (Chawla 2007: 1-2). Among others, in this section I will analyze some of the problems related to poverty and caregiving in the Third Age. Today, demographic aging is a global phenomenon resulting from two almost universal trends: declining fertility and increasing life expectancy. In most developed countries fertility is below replacement level, and the majority of countries report increasing life expectancies. As a consequence, most parts of the world will witness demographic aging – defined as a rise in median age of populations and a growing share of people above age 65 – during this century. From a demographic point of view, Europe combines some “extremes”: Many of the 27 EU member states and other parts of Europe, the Balkans among them, experience the lowest fertility worldwide. At the same time, most of the EU member states and all other parts of Western Europe belong to the group of countries with the highest life expectancy worldwide (Muenz 2007: 1). The British historian and demographer Peter Laslett popularized the phrase the “Third Age” for the phenomenon of extended life expectancy. A phrase of French origin from the 1970s when it became a topic of investigation, Laslett summarized the essence of this idea in his book A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age (1991). Accordingly, the First Age is an era of dependence, socialization and education; the Second Age an era of independence, maturity and responsibility; the Third Age an era of personal fulfillment; and the Fourth Age an era of final dependence, decrepitude and death. The emergence of the Third Age as a historical novelty in the first half of the 20th century and its establishment in the social structure of a number of nations in the last quarter of this century can be seen from the demographic development, fairly uniform in the economically advanced areas of the world (Laslett 1991: 3-4, 88-89, 152). In most of the Balkan countries the processes of post-socialist transition and aging influence each other. Not only does the post-socialist transition process reinforce the effects of population aging, the post-socialist transition process itself has become a causal factor contributing to population aging. The link between declining fertility in response to socio-economic uncertainty is well established. Population aging was an unintended effect of the socio-economic insecurity following the economic crises accompanying the transformation of planned economies to market economies. Whereas demographic aging in Western Europe is

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characterized by substantial gains in longevity due to continuously rising life expectancy for both men and women, the Southeast European countries have witnessed only comparatively small gains in life expectancy, except Slovenia, where in 2005 the average life expectancy for women (81) was only one year less than the EU 15 average (Hoff 2011: 2-3). The fastest-aging countries over the next two decades will be those of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. This is not so much because of increasing life expectancy but rather because this region is projected to see its total population shrink by about 23.5 million. (Albania and Turkey, however, will still have growing populations.) At the same time the proportion of elderly (defined as aged 65 and older) is rising. In most of these countries the proportion of elderly was less than 15 percent in 2000. This mark will be exceeded by 2025 in many countries of the region. The largest increases (8 percent and more) are expected to occur in countries that already have older populations, such as Slovenia. Bosnia-Herzegovina will see the fastest increase by doubling the share of elderly (Milić 2005: 262; Chawla 2007: 5-8; Hristov 2011: 181-182; Neményi 2011: 152-153; Toskovic et al. 2015: 52). The aging of Balkan societies will continue for the decades to follow, except in Montenegro and North Macedonia (Lanzieri 2011: 7-8). Apparently, there are some ethno-religious peculiarities. Analysis of percentage of elderly in population at the beginning of the 21st century and 2015 leaves us with the conclusion that there are major differences among countries: at the beginning of the 21st century, the lowest percentage was in Turkey (5.5) and the highest in Greece (17.8). In 2015, Greece (20.4 percent) remained at the top of the list, while Turkey (7.1 percent) still had the lowest percentage of old people. In the group of countries with the lowest percentage of old people, Albania and Turkey stand out due to unusual age structures. All countries in this group have a significant percentage of Muslim population. Higher fertility rates, characteristic of Muslim populations, led to a different age structure (Magdalenić/Galjak 2016: 81-88). Similar differences can be observed, for instance, between MuslimAlbanian and Orthodox-Macedonian regions in North Macedonia. In the period between 1994 and 2002, the “young” Muslim-Albanian region of Polog stood out as an area with high fertility and lower than average mortality. Thus, it covered more than a quarter of the total natural growth of the country. The “old” Orthodox-Macedonian region of Pelagonia, however, was characterized by lower than average fertility and higher than average mortality, compared with the rest of the country. Natural growth rate, in the analyzed period, shows a significant decrease because the total fertility rate does not provide simple reproduction of population (Dimitrieva/Lozanoska 2011: 3-5). It is impossible to claim causation

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between religious affiliation and fertility rates because there are also counterexamples, but based on the evident correlation, we can conclude that religion may have been one of several cultural and historic factors that shaped the current age structure. The impact of population aging in the Balkans will be more severe than in the richer parts of the world, due to the lack of comprehensive social security, health care and long-term care systems, social services and significant private savings (Hoff 2011: 4). Two different pension systems are operated in the region, the liberal, privatized three-pillar system and the pay-as-you-go state pension system. The first one has been established, for instance, in Kosovo and North Macedonia. In these countries, the inherited universal systems of pensions have been partly transformed into selective systems in which the redistributive element that was predominant in the previous regime has been replaced by a contributive principle which no longer guarantees a specific level of income in old age. They are based on a diminished “first pillar” state pension element, the introduction of a “second pillar” fully funded private pension element, and a “third pillar” additional private voluntary fund. In contrast, the pay-as-you-go state pension system has been introduced, for instance, in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the Albanian system, the redistributive elements are also still strong and provide the minimum standards of living for low-income pensioners (Bartlett/Xhumari 2007: 15-26). Pensions are the largest item of social protection expenditure throughout the region due to both demographic change and to the widespread practice of early retirement that has accompanied privatization and enterprise restructuring. The ratio of children to the elderly differs widely, from 3.4 in Albania and 3.0 in Montenegro, to 2.0 in North Macedonia and 0.9 in Serbia. Pension system dependency ratios are also unfavorable ranging from 1.78 contributors for each pensioner in Montenegro to as low as 0.74 in Republika Srpska. Only Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro have demographically youthful populations, although due to the low employment rates and high levels of informality in the economy, the funding of pensions is problematic in those countries as well. The ratio between pensioners and employees is unfavorable in most countries, and is especially low in Republika Srpska, where there are more pensioners than active pension scheme contributors. As a consequence of the limited financing ability of the government-run pension funds, pensions in all the Balkan countries are low in relation to subsistence needs, with minimum pensions around one fifth of average gross wages in each country. The average replacement rate of pensions has decreased over time in most of the countries and ranges from a low of 33 percent in Albania to a high of 61 percent in Serbia. The ratio of the average pension to

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the official or semi-official poverty line is lowest in North Macedonia, where pensioners are least effectively protected from poverty (ibid.: 12-14). A few examples should demonstrate the scarcity of pensions. In Romania, the social role of the older rural population grew again after the land reform of 1991; they became land owners, and their economic power suddenly became important. The rural older population is also the holder of cultural traditions, and they are an important factor in the reproduction of rural culture and values. Their most serious problems include adverse living conditions, problems with food supply, loneliness and isolation, difficult working conditions and low pensions. In 2009, the pension of farmers was 291 RON (70 €) on average – an insufficient sum. These pensioners live in poverty and have to continue to produce food to maintain their livelihood. They are also disadvantaged in terms of access to medical and care facilities. On the other hand, after 1989, 33 percent of Romanian households had one or more family members living abroad – the rate of migrants in the whole population was estimated to be 12 percent. Care and education of children was taken over by grandparents who, in that way, were able to maintain their own households (Neményi 2011: 160-161, 163-165). An important characteristic accompanying the aging of Serbian society is the deprivation of the socio-economic position of the elderly. In contrast to other European countries, aging in Serbia coincides with a drastic impoverishment or at least a sharp drop in economic and living standards and social marginalization. Senior citizens are threatened by poverty almost twice as often than the young (Milić 2005: 262). In 2005, there were 1,239,573 retired persons in Serbia with an average pension of about 150 € per month (a single person’s monthly costs in Belgrade was approximately 400 € without rent). Among them, only 224,437 were farmers (Ševo et al. 2009: 556). Another problem are the low savings rates. The average savings rate for a number of Eastern European countries declined in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The roots lie in socialist times, when earnings were strictly controlled and access to credit meant that any available savings financed the consumption of durables and the purchase of property, where allowed. Additional savings were devalued by hyperinflation in the early years of the transition, while the early 1990s saw real wages drop in most countries. Unemployment increased, and workers older than age 40 had difficulties finding new jobs. These developments meant that the cohort older than 40 in the 1990s and now approaching retirement mostly failed to accumulate significant savings. The most important and often only asset of these cohorts is their owner-occupied real estate (Chawla 2007: 1820).

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The problems increase when the necessity of caretaking for elderly emerges and, in Laslett’s terms, the Fourth Age arrives. Most long-term care in the postsocialist world is provided in hospitals or informally by families of dependents. The availability of institutionalized long-term care is limited (ibid.: 23-33). The situation in Serbia is probably representative of most of the Balkan countries. The number of care-dependent old people who live outside the primary network of the family is almost negligible – only 9,000, mostly bed-ridden old people are in nursing homes. State-run hospitals provide extended hospital care for the elderly with duration of up to 30 days. Almost two-thirds of family households are “burdened” by some kind of care for elderly on a daily basis – a remarkably heavy burden of old age for most families since the state does not provide any financial support. It is the family’s responsible to assume this burden. Care is expected to be given freely, either at no cost, or at the cost the carer is capable and willing to shoulder. Just over half of old people count on and obtain assistance from their closest kin, which is expected because of the high degree of family solidarity and because of the need for reciprocal use of the social capital owned by family networks, by both the older and younger generations. Family support comes almost entirely from the female members. Women not only “sacrifice” as mothers and wives, but substitute the entire missing institutional apparatus of caring for the old. This has contributed to the re-traditionalizing of Serbian family structure. Re-traditionalization is visible as the proportion of vertically extended families (VEFs) grew from only a few percent at the end of the 20th century to over 30 percent in 2008. Referred to as “post-socialist transformation,” extended familial units operate through kinship clusters of self-help mainly out of economic necessity. The VEF resembles the traditional rural stem family but exists now across all social strata, territories and educational achievements. Paradoxically, it is accompanied by the disintegration of the family core, operates as a valuable social resource, but from women’s perspective, also poses a risk to social transformation toward more gender equality (Milić 2005: 263-264, 267-269, 273; Sevo et al. 2015: 225-226, 228).

CONCLUSION We have started our observations with a situation in which elderly on the countryside, where people predominantly lived until the middle of the 20th century, were surrounded by numerous household members. Due to low population density in the rural regions and migration to major urban centers, for instance in Serbia, the number of potential caregivers there is fairly small, even among

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family members. The same is true of the number and the capacity of institutions for the elderly residing in rural areas. Helping the elderly in these parts of Serbia, but not only in Serbia, thus becomes another major challenge for the future (Ševo et al. 2009: 555-556). There are remarkable continuities and discontinuities that can be observed in the previous two centuries. The most remarkable continuities are that caretaking for the elderly hardly exists in institutionalized form and is still almost exclusively considered children’s obligation – and “children’s obligation” means women’s obligation. The probability of spending the last phase of one’s life in a family compound was and still is high. Among the discontinuities is the changing societal background of old age, which can be described as a move from an agrarian to industrial and post-socialist society. Another important discontinuity is that life expectancy has significantly increased – more so for women than for men. Compared to traditional patriarchal society with higher life expectancy for men, women’s life expectancy has become higher, as almost everywhere in the world. Finally, old age in contemporary times in the broad strata of the population is correlated to low pensions that can hardly contribute to the welfare of the younger generations. Originally considered honored seniors, the elderly have become a burden.

REFERENCES Aleksandrova, Silviya/Velkova, Angelika (2003): “Population Ageing in the Balkan Countries”, in: Folia Medica 4, 5-10. Andorka, Rudolf (1995): “Household Systems and the Lives of the Old in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Hungary”, in: Kertzer, David I./Laslett, Peter (eds.): Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age. Berkeley, 129155. Bartlett, Will/Xhumari, Merita (2007): “Social Security Policy and Pension Reforms in the Western Balkans”, in: European Journal of Social Security 9/4, 1-32. Chawla, Mukesh (2007): From Red to Grey: The “Third Transition” of Aging Populations in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. Washington. Dimitrieva, Elka/Lozanoska, Aleksandra (2011): “Regional Demographic Changes in the Republic of Macedonia on the Example of Two Areas”, in: Spatial Demography of the Balkans: Trends and Challenges. IVth International Conference of Balkans Demography, Budva, 13th-15th May 2010. Budva, 1-10.

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Fauve-Chamoux, Antoinette/Ochiai, Emiko (eds.) (2009): The Stem Family in Eurasian Perspective: Revisiting House Societies, 17th-20th Centuries. Bern. Gjonça, Arjan (2001): Communism, Health and Lifestyle: The Paradox of Mortality Transition in Albania, 1950-1990. Westport. Gjonça, Arjan (2004): “The Crossroads of Europe: A First Look at Regional Adult Mortality Differences in the Balkans”, in: Espace, Populations, Sociétés 3, 665-679. Hammel, Eugene A. (1995): “The Elderly in the Bosom of the Family: La Famille Souche and Hardship Reincorporation”, in: Kertzer David I./Laslett, Peter (eds.): Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age. Berkley, 107-128. Hoff, Andreas (2011): “Introduction: The Drivers of Population Ageing in Central and Eastern Europe – Fertility, Mortality and Migration”, in: Hoff, Andreas (ed.): Population Ageing in Central and Eastern Europe: Societal and Policy Implications. Farnham, 1-8. Hristov, Emil (2011): “Population Ageing in Bulgaria – Demographic Dynamics at the Turn of the 21st Century”, in: Hoff, Andreas (ed.): Population Ageing in Central and Eastern Europe: Societal and Policy Implications. Farnham, 169-183. Hromadžić, Azra (2015): “‘Where Were They Until Now?’ Aging, Care and Abandonment in a Bosnian Town”, in: Etnološka tribina 45/38, 3-29. Jakovljevic, Mihajlo/Laaser, Ulrich (2015): “Population Aging from 1950 to 2010 in Seventeen Transitional Countries in the Wider Region of South Eastern Europe”, in: South Eastern European Journal of Public Health 3, 112. DOI: 10.4119/UNIBI/SEEJPH-2015-49 [accessed June 30, 2018]. Kaser, Karl (1995): Familie und Verwandtschaft auf dem Balkan: Analyse einer untergehenden Kultur. Wien/Köln/Weimar. Kaser, Karl (2000): Macht und Erbe: Männerherrschaft, Besitz und Familie im östlichen Europa (1500-1900). Wien/Köln/Weimar. Kaser, Karl (2012): “The Stem Family in Eastern Europe: Cross-Cultural and Trans-Temporal Perspectives”, in: Kaser, Karl (ed.): Household and Family in the Balkans: Two Decades of Historical Family Research at University of Graz. Wien/Berlin, 407-420. Lanzieri, Gianpaolo (2011): “Looking 50 Years Ahead: A Natural Projection of the Populations of the Balkan Countries to 2061”, in: Spatial Demography of the Balkans: Trends and Challenges. IVth International Conference of Balkans Demography, Budva, 13th-15th May 2010. Budva, 1-11. Laslett, Peter (1991): A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age. Cambridge, MA.

Old Age in the Balkans | 49

Magdalenić, Ivana/Galjak, Marko (2016): “Ageing Map of the Balkan Peninsula”, in: Journal of the Geographical Institute Jovan Cvijic 66/1, 75-89. Milić, Andjelka (2005): “Old People and Family Care”, in: Milić, Andjelka (ed.): Transformation & Strategies: Everyday Life in Serbia at the Beginning of the 3rd Millenium. Belgrade, 261-274. Muenz, Rainer (2007): Aging and Demographic Change in European Societies: Main Trends and Alternative Policy Options. Washington. Neményi, Ágnes (2011): “Demographic Ageing in Romania – General and Specific Consequences on the Rural Population and the Relation to International Migration”, in: Hoff, Andreas (ed.): Population Ageing in Central and Eastern Europe: Societal and Policy Implications. Farnham, 151-167. Ševo, Goran/Despotovic, Nebojsa/Erceg, Predrag/Jankelic, Sanja/Milosevic, Dragoslav P./Davidovic, Mladen (2009): “Aging in Serbia”, in: Advancements in Gerontology 22/4, 553-557. Sevo, Goran/Davidovic, Mladen/Erceg, Predrag/Despotovic, Nebojsa/Milosevic, Dragoslav P./Tasic, Marija (2015): “On Aging and Aged Care in Serbia”, in: Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 30/2, 217-231. Simić, Andrei (1977): “Aging in the United States and Yugoslavia: Contrasting Models of Intergenerational Relationships”, in: Anthropological Quarterly 50/2, 53-64. Simić, Andrei (1978): “Winners and Losers: Aging Yugoslavs in a Changing World”, in: Myerhoff, Barbara G./Simić, Andrei (eds.): Life’s Career-Aging: Cultural Variations on Growing Old. Beverly Hills, 77-105. Toskovic, Jelena/Popovic, Slobodan/Jelić, Sreten/Macura, Rajko/Grublješić, Željko (2015): “The Effect of Unequal Distribution of the Standard and Quality of Life in the Countries of the Western Balkans”, in: Annals of “Constantin Brâncuşi”, University of Târgu-Jiu. Economy Series 5, 48-53.

Co-Residence of Elderly Persons with Children and Grandchildren in Eastern and Southeast Europe 18th and 19th Centuries Siegfried Gruber

INTRODUCTION Co-residence of elderly persons with their descendants has often been perceived as the norm in traditional societies, particularly in Eastern and Southeast Europe, historically. Nevertheless, not all elderly persons could count on such living arrangements since some of them never had children, while others lost their children due to the high mortality rate. Census and census-like material from Eastern and Southeast Europe for the 18th and 19th centuries, which has been made available for research by the Mosaic project, can shed light on the proportions of elderly people living with their children and grandchildren in the same household. There are several reasons for researching the co-residence patterns of elderly persons, perhaps the most pertinent of which is that the proportion of elderly people in Europe has been increasing for decades. Furthermore, it was stated in as early as 1995 that Western and Japanese populations “are the oldest human populations that have ever existed and [that] they never will be young again. Indeed, all the other populations in the world will join them in their elderly condition and are beginning to do so already” (Kertzer/Laslett 1995: ix). Household-level measures of family structures are highly sensitive to demographic conditions. In societies with high mortality rates or late marriages, people have only limited possibilities in terms of co-residing with grandparents. Measuring co-residence from the perspective of the elderly minimizes these

52 | Siegfried Gruber

problems. “Even in populations where few households have the potential to include elderly kin, the great majority of elderly persons have the demographic potential to reside with offspring” (Ruggles 2009: 252). Therefore, co-residence patterns have been used to compare living arrangements within Europe and all over the world (Ruggles 2009, 2010). Unfortunately, these analyses are restricted to the data of recent decades and historical data of Northwest Europe and Northern America. Eastern and Southeast European data has only been used in comparative analyses to a significantly smaller degree, primarily for reasons concerning data availability (Gruber/Szołtysek 2012; Szołtysek/Gruber 2014). In historic Eastern and Southeast Europe, elderly persons were seen as the most powerful family members (Kaser 1995: 344-345) and are, therefore, of particular interest. The hierarchy of age was expected to be the prime principle structuring the relationships among household members in patriarchal societies, as being present historically in Eastern and Southeast Europe (Kaser 2008: 33). Therborn has put it this way: “Patriarchy has two basic intrinsic dimensions. The rule of the father and the rule of the husband, in that order” (Therborn 2004: 13).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND DATA Several definitions of an elderly person exist. In this chapter, the age defining the onset of the elderly population is set at 65 years, which represents the most widely used definition. One must be aware that the information concerning ages in historical sources was not always exact, but was to some degree rounded to the closest ages ending in digits 0 and 5 (Szołtysek/Poniat/Gruber 2018). This age heaping effect was greater for women and illiterate people (most of the rural population in our analysis). Therefore, some of the elderly people included in the present analysis might have indeed been a few years younger than reported. The following research questions will be dealt with: • What was the share of the elderly population in historical times? • Did elderly people still head their households or did they step down in favor of

a younger relative? • Which proportion of elderly people co-resided with children? • Which proportion of elderly people co-resided with grandchildren?

Two different kinds of data shall be utilized to answer these questions. Published statistical data will be implemented to analyze the proportion of the elderly population. Historical microdata (data of individual persons from census and census-

Co-Residence of Elderly Persons with Children and Grandchildren | 53

like sources) will be used to evaluate the position of the elderly in their households and their co-residence patterns. Historical microdata has become increasingly available for research, although the most important collection of historical microdata, the NAPP project (available via the portal of IPUMS-International: https://international.ipums.org/international/), is restricted to Northwestern Europe. The Mosaic project (http://www.censusmosaic.org, see also Szołtysek/ Gruber 2016) covers mainly data from Central, Eastern and Southeast Europe and is therefore a portal for comparative data to the long-standing and previously established NAPP data. The Mosaic data used for this analysis contains the information for 17,108 persons of at least 65 years of age. The majority lived in rural areas, but a quarter of them resided in cities. These people have been grouped into 62 regions of analyses, which are either cities or regional groupings of villages. In the following analyses, these 62 regions will be merged into six larger rural areas (Russia, Baltic, Belarus and Ukraine, Romania, South Slavic, and Albania) and two groups of cities (Albanian and non-Albanian). The number of persons in each type of source is listed in Table 1, and their geographical distribution is shown in Map 1. This data encompasses a vast area stretching from the Ural Mountains in the east to the city of Istanbul in the southeast and the surroundings of Dubrovnik in the west. Most of the data was reported in the 18th and 19th centuries, while the oldest data is contained in a List of Souls (Status Animarum) of 1674 for some parishes in the surroundings of Dubrovnik. The most recent data used for this chapter includes the population census of 1918 in Albania and some registers for the Bulgarian Rhodope regions covering the time from 1877 to 1947. The time span between the oldest and the most recent data could pose some problems for analysis, but all societies covered by this data were clearly situated before the onset of the Demographic Transition, which dramatically changed fertility, mortality and the age structure of the society. The data consists of samples of different densities and representativeness (Szołtysek/Gruber 2016: 42-48), partly constructed for a specific research project and, therefore, limited in size. The samples for Istanbul cover, e.g., only 5 percent of the permanent Muslim population of five central districts of Istanbul. Some of the data has been used for publications prior to being donated to the Mosaic project (Halpern 1974; Laslett/Clarke 1974; Czap 1982; Duben/Behar 1991; Brunnbauer 2002; Gruber 2008) while some has been transcribed in the framework of the Mosaic project. Some of the data has been already used for a comparative analysis of living arrangements of the elderly in Poland-Lithuania and Albania (Szołtysek/Gruber 2014).

54 | Siegfried Gruber

Table 1: Microdata used for analyses Census/enumeration

Rural

Urban

Regions

Population

Regions

Population

Albania 1918

8

3,920

6

3,019

Bulgarian Rhodope Mountains 1877-1947

1

439

1

122

Dubrovnik area 1674

1

155

-

-

Kurland 1797

4

1,299

-

-

Lithuania 1847

2

317

-

-

Poland-Lithuania listings 1768-1819

5

2,551

-

-

Wallachia 1838

4

1,140

-

-

Transylvania 1869

2

312

-

-

Moldavia Catholics 1781-1879

2

129

-

-

Russia, Ural area 1710

6

1,186

2

103

Russia, Gagarin villages 1814

1

57

-

-

Russia and Ukraine 1897

3

673

3

544

Belgrade 1733

-

-

1

25

Serbia 1863

1

41

1

18

Serbia 1884

1

124

-

-

Istanbul 1885, 1907

-

-

2

288

Ukraine, Cossack region 1765

4

509

-

-

Co-Residence of Elderly Persons with Children and Grandchildren | 55

Ukraine, Braclav Governorate 1795

1

137

-

-

Overall

46

12,989

16

4,119

Source: Mosaic, see data references.

Map 1: Geographical distribution of Mosaic data used for analysis

Source: Mosaic GIS.

PROPORTION OF ELDERLY PEOPLE Today the countries of Eastern and Southeast Europe can be assorted into four groups according to their proportion of elderly people. The first group contains Greece, Bulgaria, the Baltic republics, Croatia and Serbia with proportions of about 20 percent. The second group consists of Romania and Ukraine with proportions between 16 and 18 percent. The third group encompasses Montenegro, Belarus, North Macedonia, Albania and Russia with shares of about 14 percent. Kosovo has by far the lowest proportion with only 7 percent. At around 1900, Croatia had the highest share of elderly people in this region with about 7 percent. Most countries had shares of 4 to 5 percent, while the proportion was only 3 percent in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. These proportions were much low-

56 | Siegfried Gruber

er than today and the reasons for this rise are firstly, the large increase in life expectancy and secondly, the decrease in fertility since the end of the 19th century. Table 2: Proportion of elderly population in 1900 and 2017 (percentage) Country

1900 Year

2017 Proportion

Proportion

Baltic republics

19.3 – 19.9 13.1a

Russia 1897

4.1

Belarus

14.4b

Ukraine

15.9b

Moldova

1897

6.0

11.2

Romania

1899

5.3

17.8

Bulgaria

1900

5.2

20.7

Greece

1907

4.1

21.5

Albania

n.a.

13.1

Kosovo

n.a.

7.1b

North Macedonia

n.a.

13.3

Montenegro

n.a.

14.4

Serbia

1900

3.1

19.4

Croatia

1900

7.3

19.6

BosniaHerzegovina

1895

2.8c

n.a.

Source: Rothenbacher 2002; Rothenbacher 2013: 79, 884; Eurostat 2018. Notes: a 2014, b 2016, c men only.

Co-Residence of Elderly Persons with Children and Grandchildren | 57

First, whether the proportion of elderly people in the microdata used for our analyses is in alignment with the statistical figures presented in Table 2 will be examined. The area averages correspond well with the statistical figures published for the time period around 1900. There are, nevertheless, some regions which have much lower proportions of elderly people, even below 1 percent. Especially noteworthy are the Serbian sources used for this chapter. In contrast, the highest proportion with more than 8 percent of the population being registered with an age of at least 65 years can be found in the Status Animarum of 1674 for the Dubrovnik area. Table 3: Proportion of elderly people in historical populations (percentage) Area

Mean proportion of elderly people

Russia

4.4

Baltic

3.0

Belarus + Ukraine

2.7

Romania

4.1

South Slavic

4.2

Albania

5.0

Urban Albania

4.7

Urban non-Albania

3.2

Source: Mosaic, see data references.

HOUSEHOLD HEAD STATUS OF ELDERLY PEOPLE We know that in Eastern and Southeast Europe, men generally did not hand over the position of household head to a younger household member during their lifetime (Kaser 1995: 356; Szołtysek/Gruber 2014: 122; Szołtysek 2015: 511). Extremely few households headed by a member of a younger generation were found, historically, in Eastern and Southeast Europe as compared to other European countries (Gruber/Szołtysek 2016: 149). This result can be verified with the

58 | Siegfried Gruber

present analyses. The overwhelming majority of elderly men headed their households, in fact, more than 90 percent in many areas. On the one hand, elderly urban men had the highest proportions (Albanian men) and on the other hand, they also maintained lower proportions than most rural areas (non-Albanians). This was caused by very low proportions of all other household head statuses and, conversely, by a comparatively high proportion of elderly men living as unrelated individuals, e.g., as lodgers, in non-Albanian cities. The most exceptional case is represented by elderly men in the Baltic area, where approximately only 40 percent of elderly men headed their households. Another 35 percent of these men resided in a household headed by a person to whom they were not related. The reason for this was the organization of agriculture in Kurland, while both Lithuanian regions had proportions of about 1 percent residing with an unrelated household head. In Kurland, the peasants were hereditarily serfs cultivating the soil for the nobility, and a large proportion of the rural population was landless, working either as day laborers or farmhands. Children left the parental household to work as servants, while elderly people retired or were removed from the position of household head by the landlord (Plakans 1975: 9-13). Table 4: Household head status of elderly men in historical populations (percentage) Area

Head Spouse

Parent

Parent- Sibling Other Unrelated in-law relative

Russia

90.0

0.4

4.0

0.5

1.7

1.5

2.0

Baltic

39.3

0.0

16.7

3.2

2.0

3.1

35.8

Belarus+ Ukraine

84.1

0.0

6.4

1.3

1.2

1.7

5.2

Romania

89.6

0.0

6.9

0.8

0.3

0.6

1.9

South Slavic

90.2

0.0

6.4

0.4

1.8

0.6

0.5

Albania

82.0

0.1

6.3

0.1

4.6

6.1

0.9

Urban Albania

92.2

0.1

1.7

0.7

2.4

1.0

1.8

Co-Residence of Elderly Persons with Children and Grandchildren | 59

Urban nonAlbania

76.5

0.1

7.6

2.4

0.9

1.9

10.6

Source: Mosaic, see data references.

Other household head constellations were of rather low importance. Some elderly men stepped down from the position of household head, perhaps due to health reasons, and a son took over this position. This was most common in the Baltic area (16 percent). Living in a sibling’s or other relative’s household was highly uncommon, and only approximately 10 percent of those in rural Albania lived in such constellations. These men were most possibly never the head of a household, but lived in households headed consecutively by a father, brother and nephew. The predominance of men as household heads can be seen in the fact that the highest proportion of elderly men whose co-residing wives were household heads was mere 0.4 percent in the Russian area. The predominance of patrilocal residence is also evident in the much lower proportion of elderly men living in the household of a son-in-law as compared to the proportion of elderly men living in the household of a son. Table 5: Household head status of elderly women in historical populations (percentage) Area

Head Spouse Parent Parent- Sibling Other Unrelated in-law relative

Russia

12.5

38.9

39.2

2.7

0.7

2.5

3.4

Baltic

2.2

11.7

34.6

8.4

0.5

4.7

37.9

Belarus + Ukraine

15.5

25.6

37.4

6.4

0.6

2.8

11.8

Romania

22.7

43.4

19.8

4.8

0.5

3.5

5.3

South Slavic

4.0

21.1

63.2

1.9

0.4

8.8

0.6

Albania

3.2

10.6

63.8

2.0

1.9

16.9

1.8

60 | Siegfried Gruber

Urban Albania

10.5

8.7

62.3

5.1

2.2

8.7

2.6

Urban nonAlbania

11.0

16.2

43.0

11.6

0.7

6.2

11.4

Source: Mosaic, see data references.

The position of elderly women in the household was much more diverse. The most common position in the household was as mother of the household head with proportions between 20 percent in Romania and more than 60 percent in rural Albania, the South Slavic area and urban Albania. This was the most common living arrangement for elderly, widowed women. The second most common position was as wife to the household head with shares between about 10 percent (Baltic area and Albania) and more than 40 percent in Romania. Heading a household by themselves was interestingly more common than expected: in five areas, more than 10 percent of elderly women were in such a position. The highest share could be found in Romania with more than 20 percent. Residing in a household headed by a sibling or another relative was quite uncommon. Only in Albania and the South Slavic area did 10 percent or more of elderly women live in such constellations. The patrilocal bias can also be seen in living arrangements of elderly women, similarly to elderly men. It was rather uncommon for elderly women to be unrelated to the household head where they resided, with the exception of the Baltic area (as for elderly men). We have seen that the household position of elderly men and women differed to quite some degree. One of the reasons for these differences was due to different marital statuses of men and women in their old age. Most elderly men were married (two thirds to three quarters of them), while most elderly women were unmarried. Only in Russia and Romania were more than 40 percent of them married; in most other areas, the proportions were between 20 and 30 percent, while in Albania, less than 15 percent of them were married. Most of the unmarried women were widowed, but this information is not always available in the sources. The higher proportion of widows as compared to widowers was caused by the generally higher age of husbands and subsequently higher proportion of husbands dying before their wives. Age differences were especially high in Albania and cities (Gruber 2009: 234) and, therefore, caused much lower proportions of elderly married women. A second explanation for this discrepancy was the higher proportion of widowers remarrying as compared to widows.

Co-Residence of Elderly Persons with Children and Grandchildren | 61

Table 6: Marital status of elderly men and women in historical populations (percentage) Area

Married men

Married women

Russia

62.5

41.1

Baltic

66.7

28.3

Belarus + Ukraine

63.0

27.9

Romania

75.7

44.7

South Slavic

66.5

23.9

Albania

76.4

13.2

Urban Albania

75.0

9.4

Urban non-Albania

67.2

19.1

Source: Mosaic, see data references.

CO-RESIDENCE WITH CHILDREN Children can serve several functions within households, including being potential caregivers of the elderly household members or taking over more difficult tasks from their elderly parents. Younger children are not so well fit for these tasks and thus, only adult children are considered here, defined as being at least 18 years of age. Children co-residing with their parents in the same household are the main providers of help of any kind, while children living nearby provide much less help (Gruber/Heady 2010). The “nuclear hardship” hypothesis, which was developed upon historical English data, postulated that the arrangements of nuclear families brought hardships to elderly people who lacked familial support because their children had to leave the parental household. In case of widowhood or illness, these elderly members had to rely then on extended kin (relatives beyond the household) or the community (friends, neighbors, the village, the church or charitable institutions). In societies with established co-residence patterns with adult children, the elderly population should have been more well taken care of (Laslett 1988).

62 | Siegfried Gruber

Therefore, the availability of co-resident adult children for the elderly population in Eastern and Southeast Europe must be examined. In fact, most of these elderly people had adult children in the same household: in five out of our eight areas, at least 73 percent co-resided with at least one adult child. Urban people had generally lower percentages of co-residence with adult children, only in Albania was the difference negligible. In our group of non-Albanian cities, the proportion was only about 63 percent. In the Baltic area and in Romania, only about half of the elderly population had a co-residing child. The reasons for these lower proportions were the agricultural system in Kurland (see above) and the much lower propensity for forming complex households in Romania (Kaser 1996: 381). Another function of children (and especially sons in a patriarchal society) is to take over the household after the father’s death and to run the inherited farm or shop. The continuation of the patriline is of particular importance in patriarchal societies, ensuring the ancestors will be remembered (Kaser 1995: 382). We consider here a married child in the same household as his parents to be a clear indicator of an established heir-to-be. These proportions were lower than those for co-residence with adult children, because some of these adult children were not yet married. More than 70 percent of elderly people in Russia and the South Slavic area had actually at least one married child co-residing with them. In Belarus and Ukraine, the share was a bit lower at 67 percent. In Albania, between 50 and 60 percent of elderly people had a married child in the household. In the Baltic area and the non-Albanian cities, between 40 and 50 percent of the elderly co-resided with a married child, which proves again the lower propensity of urbanites to form complex households. By far the lowest share was in Romania, with about a fourth of all elderly people co-residing with a married child. These figures also prove that the continuation of the household and of the patriline after the death of the male household head was uncertain for a considerable part of the elderly population. In a society with no population growth, married men had a chance of about 60 percent of having at least one surviving son (Wrigley 2003: 70). Another possibility was to accept a son-in-law in case one had no surviving son; however, we know that this arrangement was very much disliked (Kaser 1995: 346-347). The available microdata proves that most elderly people did not live in such an arrangement. In non-Albanian cities, approximately 80 percent of those elderly people who lived with at least one married child co-resided with their son(s), while only 20 percent lived with at least one married daughter and their son(s)-in-law (the ratio thus being 5:1). This is the highest percentage of elderly people co-residing with married daughters throughout the region. Similar ratios can be calculated for the Baltic area, Bela-

Co-Residence of Elderly Persons with Children and Grandchildren | 63

rus/Ukraine and Romania. The most extreme case was rural Albania with a ratio of almost 50:1, while it was much lower for Albanian cities. Thus, the conclusion can be made that rural areas were more inclined to patrilocal residence after marriage than urban areas and that the most patriarchal areas in this respect were Albania, the South Slavic area and Russia (see also Gruber/Szołtysek 2016: 150). Table 7: Co-residence with children of elderly people in historical populations (percentage) Area

Adult child Married child Married Ratio daughter

Russia

82.9

73.2

3.0

24.4

Baltic

53.7

41.7

6.7

6.2

Belarus + Ukraine

79.0

67.3

10.2

6.6

Romania

48.7

25.7

3.6

7.1

South Slavic

82.3

71.8

2.1

34.2

Albania

75.0

59.1

1.2

49.3

Urban Albania

73.0

51.3

3.5

14.7

Urban non-Albania

62.9

46.4

9.5

4.9

Source: Mosaic, see data references.

CO-RESIDENCE WITH GRANDCHILDREN Elderly people are very often associated with the status of grandparents, and therefore, it will be examined whether they achieved this status in the region under study, as well. Unfortunately, it can only be investigated as to whether these elderly people had grandchildren in their households and not whether they had any grandchildren at all. The prospects for elderly men in the historical sample under study were not favorable: only in three areas did more than half of these elderly men co-reside with grandchildren (in Russia and the South Slavic area the proportion was almost two thirds). In four areas, the proportion was about

64 | Siegfried Gruber

one third of these elderly men, while in Romania, the share was only one sixth. Women had generally higher chances of co-residence with grandchildren, reaching about 80 percent in Russia and the South Slavic area. In another four areas, this share was more then 60 percent, only in the Baltic area was it less than 50 percent, and in Romania, it was 30 percent. Again, here the effect is seen of the much lower propensity to live in complex households in Romania and the impact of the lower age at marriage of women. In the areas with the largest age gap between spouses (Albania and the urban population), the difference in co-residence with grandchildren between men and women was also the greatest. The chance to co-reside with grandchildren increased with age. Therefore, the proportion of co-residence with grandchildren for elderly people of at least 75 years of age must also be analyzed. Such an increase can be observed for all areas and both sexes. The increase was especially pronounced for rural Albanian men, while there was not much increase for urban Albanian men and Romanian men. It can be concluded that a majority of elderly people had the opportunity to co-reside with grandchildren in the same household, assuming they lived long enough. The only exceptions were urban men and elderly people in Romania, i.e., in societies with lower propensities to form complex households. Table 8: Co-residence with grandchildren of elderly men and women in historical populations (percentage) Area

Men 65+ Women 65+ Men 75+ Women 75+

Russia

65.4

77.0

74.4

84.5

Baltic

34.8

46.3

40.5

52.7

Belarus + Ukraine

55.8

65.1

68.0

73.1

Romania

18.6

30.7

20.3

35.6

South Slavic

63.0

81.5

66.5

89.7

Albania

38.3

66.4

54.3

76.0

Urban Albania

31.5

59.6

35.6

76.5

Urban non-Albania

32.3

60.5

45.3

66.6

Source: Mosaic, see data references.

Co-Residence of Elderly Persons with Children and Grandchildren | 65

CONCLUSIONS A typology can be created on the basis of the proportion of elderly people in the population and the proportion of elderly people living with at least one married child of the eight areas and 62 regions that were defined at the beginning of this chapter. Figure 1 shows that there was significant variation within Eastern and Southeast Europe, so that one cannot speak of the Eastern half of Europe as being one homogenous territory concerning the proportion of elderly people and co-residence patterns. Figure 1: Proportion of elderly population and proportion of elderly people living with at least one married child

Source: Mosaic, see data references.

These eight areas were not clearly separated from each other. In fact, some areas were composed of very similar regions concerning these two characteristics, while others were more diversified. The Russian area consisted of quite similar regions with mostly average proportions of elderly people and high proportions of co-residence with married children. Conversely, the non-Albanian urban area

66 | Siegfried Gruber

consisted of highly diversified regions. The Belarus/Ukraine area was characterized by high proportions of co-residence with married children, similar to the Russian area, but had lower proportions of elderly people. The Romanian regions were characterized by the lowest proportions of co-residence with married children within Eastern and Southeast Europe. The Albanian rural and urban regions were characterized by medium to high proportions of elderly people and medium to high proportions of co-residence with married children. The Baltic area was composed of highly diverse regions, while the South Slavic area consisted of regions with high proportions of co-residence with married children, but varying proportions of elderly people. Overall, it can be concluded that the available microdata for Eastern and Southeast Europe can help to shed light on some aspects of the living arrangements of elderly people in historical times. Most men held the position of household head until their death, except men in Kurland. Elderly women, on the other hand, were typically the wives of the household head or the mothers of the new household head after the death of their husbands. This discrepancy was also connected to their different marital statuses: elderly men were generally married, while a majority of elderly women were widowed. Most elderly people coresided with a married child. However, in Romania and among urban people, a majority of elderly people did not live in such constellations. A considerable minority of elderly people had no surviving son who could continue the farm or shop and the patriline. Furthermore, most elderly people did not accept a son-inlaw as a substitute for a son. Most elderly people were able to co-reside with grandchildren, as well. The major exception was again Romania and to a lesser degree the urban male population and men in the Baltic area. Future research should aim at filling the blank space of the countries missing.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Research for this chapter has been supported by funds of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Oesterreichische Nationalbank, Anniversary Fund, project number: 17494).

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REFERENCES Brunnbauer, Ulf (2002): “Families and Mountains in the Balkans: Christian and Muslim Household Structures in the Rhodopes, 19th-20th century”, in: The History of the Family 7/3, 327-350. Czap, Peter (1982): “The Perennial Multiple Family Household, Mishino, Russia 1782-1858”, in: Journal of Family History 7, 5-26. Duben, Alan/Behar, Cem (1991): Istanbul Households: Marriage, Family and Fertility, 1880-1940. Cambridge. Gruber, Siegfried (2008): “Household Structures in Urban Albania in 1918”, in: Kera, Gentiana/Kessler, Gijs (eds.): Urban Household and Family in Twentieth-Century East and South-East Europe (= The History of the Family 13/2, Special Issue), 138-151. Gruber, Siegfried (2009): “Household Formation and Marriage: Different Patterns in Serbia and Albania?”, in: Fauve-Chamoux, Antoinette/Bolovan, Ioan (eds.): Families in Europe between the 19th and 21st Centuries: From the Traditional Model to the Contemporary PACS. Cluj-Napoca, 229-247 (= Romanian Journal of Population Studies Supplement). Gruber, Siegfried/Heady, Patrick (2010): “Domestic Help”, in: Heady, Patrick/Kohli, Martin (eds): Perspectives on Theory and Policy. Frankfurt/New York, 83-125 (= Family, Kinship and State in Contemporary Europe 3). Gruber, Siegfried/Szołtysek, Mikołaj (2012): “Stem Families, Joint Families, and the European Pattern: What Kind of a Reconsideration Do We Need?”, in: Journal of Family History 37/1, 105-125. Gruber, Siegfried/Szołtysek, Mikołaj (2016): “The Patriarchy Index: A Comparative Study of Power Relations across Historical Europe”, in: The History of the Family 21/2, 133-174. Halpern, Joel M. (1974): “Town and Countryside in Serbia in the NineteenthCentury Social and Household Structure as Reflected in the Census of 1863”, in: Laslett, Peter/Wall, Richard (eds.): Household and Family in Past Time. Cambridge, 401-427. Kaser, Karl (1995): Familie und Verwandtschaft auf dem Balkan. Analyse einer untergehenden Kultur. Wien/Köln/Weimar. Kaser, Karl (1996): “Introduction: Household and Family Contexts in the Balkans”, in: The History of the Family 1/4, 375-386. Kaser, Karl (2008): Patriarchy after Patriarchy: Gender Relations in Turkey and in the Balkans, 1500-2000. Wien/Berlin (= Studies on South East Europe 7). Kertzer, David I./Laslett, Peter (eds.) (1995): Aging in the Past: Demography, Society, and Old Age. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London.

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Laslett, Peter/Clarke, Marilyn (1974): “Houseful and Household in an Eighteenth-Century Balkan City: A Tabular Analysis of the Listing of the Serbian Sector of Belgrade in 1733-4”, in: Laslett, Peter/Wall, Richard (eds.): Household and Family in Past Time. Cambridge, 375-400. Laslett, Peter (1988) “Family, Kinship and Collectivity as Systems of Support in Pre-Industrial Europe: A Consideration of the ‘Nuclear-Hardship’ Hypothesis”, in: Continuity and Change 3/2, 153-175. Plakans, Andrejs (1975) “Peasant Farmsteads and Households in the Baltic Littoral, 1797”, in: Comparative Studies in Society and History 17/1, 2-35. Rothenbacher, Franz (2002): The European Population 1850-1945. CD-Rom. Houndmills, Basingstoke. Rothenbacher, Franz (2013): The Central and East European Population since 1850. Houndmills, Basingstoke/New York (= The Societies of Europe 5). Ruggles, Steven (2009): “Reconsidering the Northwest European Family System: Living Arrangements of the Aged in Comparative Historical Perspective”, in: Population and Development Review 35/2, 249-273. Ruggles, Steven (2010): “Stem Families and Joint Families in Comparative Historical Perspective”, in: Population and Development Review 36/3, 563-577. Szołtysek, Mikołaj (2015): Rethinking East-Central Europe: Family Systems and Co-Residence in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Contexts and Analyses. Bern (= Population, Family, Society 21/1). Szołtysek, Mikołaj/Gruber, Siegfried (2014): “Living Arrangements of the Elderly in Two Eastern European Joint-Family Societies: Poland-Lithuania around 1900 and Albania in 1918”, in: Hungarian Historical Review 3/1, 101-140. Szołtysek, Mikołaj/Gruber, Siegfried (2016): “Mosaic: Recovering Surviving Census Records and Reconstructing the Familial History of Europe”, in: The History of the Family 21/1, 38-60. Szołtysek, Mikołaj/Poniat, Radosław/Gruber, Siegfried (2018): “Age Heaping Patterns in Mosaic Data”, in: Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 51/1, 13-38. Therborn, Göran (2004): Between Sex and Power: Family in the World, 19002000. London/New York. Wrigley, E. Anthony (2003): “Intrinsic Growth Rates and Inheritance Strategies: A Perspective from Historical Demography”, in: Grandits, Hannes/Heady, Patrick (eds.): Distinct Inheritances: Property, Family and Community in a Changing Europe. Münster, 69-95.

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DATA REFERENCES Brunnbauer, Ulf (2014): Household Registers of Rhodope Region, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org. Duben, Alan (2014a): 1885 Census of Istanbul, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org. Duben, Alan (2014b): 1907 Census of Istanbul, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org. Eurostat (2018): Table demo_pjanbroad. http://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu. Gruber, Siegfried (2018): 1733/34 Orthodox Status Animarum of Belgrade, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org. Halpern, Joel M./Gruber, Siegfried (2012a): 1863 Census of Jasenički srez, Serbia, Version 1.1 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org. Halpern, Joel M./Gruber, Siegfried (2012b): 1884 Census of Jasenički srez, Serbia, Version 1.1 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org. Jankowski, Tomasz (2017): 1897 Russian Empire Census, Berdychiv region, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org. Kaser, Karl/Gruber, Siegfried/Kera, Gentiana/Pandelejmoni, Enriketa (2011): 1918 Census of Albania, Version 0.1 [SPSS file]. Graz. Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2014a): 1795 Braclav Region Revision Lists, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www. censusmosaic.org. Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2014b): 1814 Russian List of inhabitants, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www. censusmosaic.org. Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2014c): 1838 Census of Wallachia, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic. org. Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2014d): 1869 Census of Hungary, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic. org. Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2014e): 1897 Russian Census, Moscow Region, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www. censusmosaic.org. Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2015a): 1674 Status Animarum for Lisac and Pridvorje, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org.

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Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2015b): 1781-1879 Status Animarum in Moldavia, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org. Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2015c): 1847 Lithuanian Estate Household Listings, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org. Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2017a): 1710 Russian Enumeration of Ural Region, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www. censusmosaic.org. Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2017b): 1765 Rumyantsev Census of Hetmanate Region, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www.censusmosaic.org. Laboratory of Historical Demography [MPIDR] (2017c): 1797 Revision Lists of Courland, Version 1.0 [Mosaic Historical Microdata File]. www. censusmosaic.org. Szołtysek, Mikołaj (2012): CEURFAMFORM database, Version 23 [SPSS file]. Rostock.

“University Elders,” “Young Professors” and Students A Generational Approach to the History of Higher Education in Russia in the Late 19th Century Tatiana Saburova

INTRODUCTION We are all familiar in our daily life with the notions of generations and generational change, and we use these terms to understand the world about us, both near and distant. In recent decades, too, the concept “generation” has been subject to scholarly inquiry and prompted much theoretical discussion as well as empirical research. Broadly speaking, two approaches have prevailed: the sociological, pursuing “generation” as a demographic concept; and the discursive, viewing the term as describing an “imagined community.” In this essay, after a brief introductory foray into the scholarship of recent decades on generational history, we turn to a study of the “generational approach” as it has been applied to late Imperial Russia, in terms both of how it served as a trope of societal discourse at the time and how scholars since then have deployed the term to make sense of the era. In particular, its application to higher education will be considered at a time when universities were both expanding and in turmoil, playing an outsized role in the country’s political and cultural life. Specifically, I will address the question: What was the relationship, or tension, between the two notions of generation with regard to students and professors – self-identification as “older” and “younger generation” as compared with demographic realities, especially in the context of Russia’s venerated cultural dichotomy of “fathers and sons.”

72 | Tatiana Saburova

UNDERSTANDING “GENERATION” AND “GENERATIONAL IDENTITY” Among those who have examined “generation” as a scholarly concept, the work of Karl Mannheim more than half a century ago remains indispensable. His 1928s article “The Problem of Generations” (Das Problem der Generationen) was foundational and has since been much studied.1 According to Mannheim (1952), a distinction must be made between generations understood as societal communities linked by a common historical experience – and retention of this experience – and, on the other hand, a demographic age cohort sharing only a common date of birth. The two understandings are closely linked but distinct; within the framework of one societal community it is possible to find members of different age cohorts, while within a distinct age cohort one can of course find societal groupings forming their own various symbols of generational identity and displaying their distinct forms of expressing generational solidarity. Mannheim sought to demonstrate the role played by generations in societal transformations while at the same time acknowledging that various generational units could exist. Aside from Mannheim, noteworthy work on generational studies was carried out by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (1956) and – within the framework of intellectual history – by Randall Collins (1998). Since then, work has proliferated, and it is now possible to speak of a formidable body of research – one too ample to describe here – of the establishment of a “generational approach” and even an entire field of study: “generational studies.” The concept of generation is applied by sociologists, anthropologists, specialists in literature, political science and history; the latter, given the inherent limitations to the sources available, the methods that can be utilized in working with them, and in spite of the considerable doubts entertained about the applicability of the generational approach to the past. At the same time, sociologists, while acknowledging the importance of the concept of generations and especially its value for making sense of cultural transformation, have pointed out that the concept has not significantly advanced sociological theory, especially in comparison with the notions of class, race and gender. For that very reason, however, it can be argued that generation could potentially be utilized in tandem with the ongoing move away from the formerly dominant class study approach, and might yield important results in understanding political and cultural change. For example, in applying the concept of generation, the task arises of understanding intergenerational dynamics – continuity and gaps, “ties that bind” and conflicts.

1

See, e.g., Corsten 1999, Kertzer 1983, Longhurst 1989 and Pilcher 1994.

“University Elders,” “Young Professors” and Students | 73

Despite the abundant research that has accumulated in a variety of disciplines, much potential for exploration remains given the plasticity of the concept of generation and given that scholars remain attracted to the task. For the purpose of this essay, especially noteworthy has been the direction of research in the “sociology of age” in connection with generational studies.2 In particular, the sociology of age treats generations as horizontal layers within the demographic structure of society. Accordingly, aging can be understood both as an individual process within one’s age cohort or as the transformation of the population structure of a society as a whole, and the connection between these two processes is treated as the subject for sociological research (Riley/Foner/ Waring 1988; Ryder 1964, 1965). The concept of generation can cast light on societal stratification, on population aging processes and intergenerational relations as well as reveal how the “age” of a population can have an impact on economic, political and societal processes. Often, generation is deployed as a contributor to social change, linked with the calls for redistribution of resources and heightened tensions between the young and the old. In contemporary society, demographic processes are seen as a key to the definition of economic and social policies, for understanding future economic potential and changes in the labor market, the nature of consumption, and issues of societal accountability as well as social justice, and even for assessing the likelihood of political change. The concept of generation is also often applied in historical research from the perspective of a specific age cohort undergoing the experience of transformational and epochal events which become decisive to the maturation process, decisive in shaping modes of behavior, coping strategies and adaptation in general. In turn, these overall responses to events determine the impact this generation has upon the shape of the future. World War I and World War II have been highlighted for their impact upon generations, and especially in terms of trauma – itself a central concept in the study of recent decades (Wohl 1979; Mayer 1988). But “trauma” has also been deployed to understand the generational impact of economic catastrophes – for example the Great Depression (Elder 1974). Of course, generational identity is also formed by other experiences, including the expansion of prosperity and opportunity; a prominent case study is that of the “baby boomers” or the post-war generation in the USA, about whom so much ink has been spilled (Bloom 1987; Wattenberg 1986). In short, a wealth of stud-

2

See a special volume of Daedalus on generations (Vol. 107, No. 4, 1978) and the articles “Aging, Social Change, and the Power of Ideas” by Matilda White Riley and “Generational Difference: The History of an Idea” by Annie Kriegel and Elisabeth Hirsch.

74 | Tatiana Saburova

ies have produced collective portraits of specific generations with distinct demographic, political, economic and cultural features and arguing for the impact of that given generation upon a country or region’s society and the historical path taken.3 How does one go about identifying and describing generations? Important to this task are both objective criteria – date of birth, period of socialization and, in general, common life experiences within a given historical period – and subjective criteria – self-identification, the conscious recognition of belonging to a common symbolic and societal grouping resulting from subscription to a shared communicative space, shared values and ideas, the articulation of which comprises the image of that generation. As Pierre Nora has shown, generational consciousness arose in the era of the French Revolution as a reaction to the rapidity of change, the acute conflict between the new and the old, and as a reflection of the new temporality (Nora 1998). Indeed, it was his linking of generational consciousness with temporality that is perhaps Nora’s most significant contribution to the topic. “Generations” can be articulated in the demographic sense as objectively existing groupings, but also actively constructed, brought into being as, loosely speaking, “imagined communities,” in this case however – in contrast with Benedict Anderson’s notion – marked by intentionality, with the deliberate goal of establishing and consolidating political solidarity, notably again in periods of rapid change. In the process, they become means of identification or selfidentification and then, in Nora’s terminology, “sites of memory.” Such sites come into being through commemoration – through rituals, holidays and a host of other means of representing a common past. The topic of generations and memory has also been carefully examined by Maurice Halbwachs, utilizing the somewhat controversial concept of collective memory, formed via “social frames” providing the foundation for generational identity (Halbwachs 1992). Despite the continuing influence of the work of Mannheim and Halbwachs, now enshrined as “classics” in the field, as well as the large volume of works in a variety of disciplines on the themes related to generations and generational studies and covering a broad chronological and geographical sweep, those engaged in generational studies are today in search of new ways to renew and expand the possibilities for applying the approach (Becker/Hermkens 1993). The reader interested in such new directions of research can find representative

3

Another example of generational studies, summarizing the theoretical approaches and applying Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to generation, is Eyerman/Turner 1998. A generation of 1820 in France as a social network became a subject in Spitzer 1987.

“University Elders,” “Young Professors” and Students | 75

works in a collection published at the turn of the millennium (Edmunds/Turner 2002). After perusing such works, most readers will conclude that scholars have elaborated upon and problematized the earlier foundational work of Mannheim and Halbwachs, but left the dual focus upon sociological age cohorts and subjective (discursive) constructs untouched. Below we will also examine the interplay of these two approaches as it concerns the history of late Imperial Russia, and specifically the history of universities and the academic community. Students played a key role in the Russian revolutionary movement from the 1860s until the collapse of the regime in 1917, and were especially prominent in the events leading up to the 1905 Revolution. As historian David Wartenweiler has argued, there was a “distinct generational pattern” in the evolution of liberal political thought at the time, and despite the small number of universities (9) and professors (roughly 2,000), “the Russian academic community played a pivotal role” – as historian Aleksandr A. Kizevetter said of his time – in events leading to “the loss of the common certitude of the outer indestructibility and inner strength of the old order” (Wartenweiler 1999: 2, 8). Yet, the commonly applied “generational” component of this community awaits more rigorous scholarly study.

GENERATIONS AND RUSSIAN SOCIETY: SOLIDARITY AND GENERATIONAL SYMBOLISM Historians have often underscored the importance of generational identity and generational rhetoric for Russian society of the 19th and 20th centuries. Two collections of essays, both published in Russian in 2005, stand out in particular: Fathers and Sons: A Generational Analysis of Contemporary Russia (Otcy i deti: pokolenčeskij analiz sovremennoj Rossii; Levada/Šanin 2005) and Generations in the Socio-Cultural Context of the 20th Century (Pokolenija v sociokul’turnom kontekste XX veka; Chrenov 2005).4 The British historian Stephen Lovell, who in a seminal article identified the distinctive features of generational consciousness in 19th-century Russia and showed how generational identity changed in Russian society from the “vertical” sense to the “horizontal,” concluded that [T]oward the middle of the 19th century, generation became an important way that Russian intellectuals thought about their own history and society. Although Lermontov, Belinskii, and Herzen were contemporaries at Moscow University in the early 1830s, they were very different in background and cast of mind. Yet they all found in the generational con-

4

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Russian are the author’s [T.S.].

76 | Tatiana Saburova

cept a powerful source of self-definition – more powerful than class, culture, or nationality. (Lovell 2008: 590)

Subsequently, Rodigina and Saburova (2011, 2012) have described how generation served as a primary source of identity in Russian society as well as a prism through which historical events were seen and interpreted. In particular, they sought to reveal the meanings of the concept of a “clash of generations” which was so central to attempts to understand and interpret Russian culture and society at the time, concluding that affiliation with a specific generation there signified not so much an age category as a distinct world view. In his own analysis of the term “generation,” the Russian sociologist Boris Dubin reviewed the main theoretical approaches and described its problematic meaning in contemporary Russian society. He concluded that in its most concise articulation, “generation” serves to identify tears in the social and cultural fabric as well as directions and mechanisms of mediation and transition between “what came before” and “what is new” (Dubin 2005: 70). Likewise, the prominent public opinion monitor and sociologist Jurij Levada opined that while public protests often manifested themselves as a form of generational conflict, in reality “the issue was not a clash of generations but a summons to distinct groups in a vertically organized and hidebound society” (Levada 2005: 238). Returning to the topic of distinct generations in the history of Russia, several examples can be provided: In her work on generations, Natalija Rodigina has frequently returned to the construction of the image of “the people of the sixties” (šestidesjatniki) in Imperial Russia, utilizing as her sources the so-called “thick journals” (tolstye žurnaly) as well as memoirs and correspondence from the second half of the 19th century (Rodigina 2017; Rodigina/Chudjakov 2008, 2009, 2016). The 1870s generation of populist revolutionaries was the subject of a book written by Eklof and Saburova (2017) in which the generational approach, memory studies and the biographical approach were used in combination to provide a portrait of a provincial revolutionary, Nikolaj Čarušin, his family, friends and social networks over the course of a long lifetime, demonstrating how values, behavior and a coherent mental framework as well as a strong sense of generational identity established early in life remained intact for this group until their deaths in the Stalinist era. Saburova (2012) has also attempted to create a portrait of a much less well-known generation, that of the 1880s; working on the publications and correspondence of the journalist and author Aleksandr Amfite-

“University Elders,” “Young Professors” and Students | 77

atrov, focusing upon the process of self-identification by which this elusive generation sought to establish itself.5

5

Another vivid example of the application of the generational approach can be found in the work of Viktor Voronkov about the “people of the sixties” (this time of the 20th century), a protest movement of the Khrushchev [Chruščev] era in the USSR. Notably, while seeking to pinpoint the temporal and spatial boundaries of a sociologically defined generation, Voronkov at the same time includes in this generation only those who both lived through the events of 1956 (Chruščev’s Secret Speech, etc.) and who subjectively envisioned the possibilities of change, a new direction for the country. Thus, the term šestidesjatniki should refer by no means to an entire age cohort, but only to those in the cohort whose lives and views were fundamentally altered by the experiences they were subjected to and in a distinct trajectory (Voronkov 2005: 176177). Other works by Donald J. Raleigh (2012), Alexei Yurchak (2006) and, more recently, a collectively authored book by Vladimir Gel’man, Otar Marganiya and Dmitry Travin (2014) have applied the generational approach in search of understanding the cultural, societal, political and economic views of both the sixties and seventies generations in the USSR, their mental framework, their degree of preparation for the events of the perestroika era leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond, their adaptation to new circumstances and their interpretation of the events they had lived through. Raleigh’s lively oral interviews with Russia’s “sixties generation,” unlike that of Voronkov, includes in his purview primarily people from the provinces who took little part in the tumultuous events of the times, and the author is not preoccupied with theorizing concerning generational studies. Yurchak’s celebrated study of the seventies generation turns to semiotics to explain how young people – and he emphasizes that the vast majority were neither dissidents nor “true believers” – were anticipating neither the events of perestroika nor the collapse of the Soviet Union, but were nevertheless mentally prepared and adapted quickly to their new surroundings. Using rather crude notions of generation, the study by Gel’man, Marganiya and Travin contrasts activists of the sixties and seventies, and argues that the šestidesjatniki utterly lacked the tools needed to understand the virtues of a market economy and were preoccupied with political visions out of step with the times. In contrast, the following seventies generation came from big cities, were more privileged, more in tune with the outside world, and both more pragmatic and cynical – better adjusted to the environment of the 1990s. These three works demonstrate both the fruitfulness and the difficulties of deploying the tools of generational studies to periods of rapid societal and political change.

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THE UNIVERSITY IN LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA AS A SITE FOR MIXING OF GENERATIONS, TRANSFER OF EXPERIENCE AND IDENTITY FORMATION The history of Russian universities in the second half of the 19th century is often presented in generational terms, with generational change being a part of intelligentsia discourse, frequently veering into political rhetoric, and later as social memory. In memoirs, one commonly finds the author’s time as a student and relations with professors presented in a strictly generational sense, treated not only as age cohorts but again as “imagined communities” – literally, “people of the eighties, the sixties, the forties.” Moreover, one can also observe frequent resort to descriptions of the academic community using generational identification tags – of the “young” and “old” professors, of “fathers and sons,” of the continuity of generations, or of the conflict between old and new generations. At the same time, the terms “young” and “old” might or might not pertain to age cohort, and more often they were semantic value designations – one indicating fresh and energetic, the other worn out and outmoded, antiquated. In terms of generational conceptualization, “youth” occupies a special place as an age category. As Irina Kaspė has demonstrated, “young” can designate “contemporary,” something existing in the “here and now,” or, conversely, something inexperienced, naïve, superficial and acutely in need of adult supervision – that is, age is here intermingled with status (Kaspė 2005: 87-88). In Amfiteatrov’s novel People of the Eighties (Vos’midesjatniki, 1907) and similarly in his memoirs, first-year students at Moscow University are enraptured by the lectures of the economist Aleksandr Čuprov (who happened to be the author’s uncle) about the tasks that the younger generation was facing. Here the main message is that of generational continuity, youth’s mission to pick up the torch from their elders and carry it forth: I believe, I want to believe and will believe that the glorious, heroic period has not retreated irrevocably into the past! Its vibrant spirit infuses us all, the path forward is not overgrown, but awaits continuation and advancement of its basic principles from this new generation stepping forth to replace previous activists and warriors. The old get older while the younger come of age. Youth is our future. (Я верю, я хочу верить и буду верить, что славный героический период не отбыл бессрочно в прошлое! Живой дух его веет над нами, тропа его не глохнет – он ждет продолжения и развития своих начал от новых поколений, идущих на смену былым

“University Elders,” “Young Professors” and Students | 79

бойцам и деятелям. Старое старится, молодое растет. За юностью – будущее. [Amfiteatrov 1907: 104])

As Rodigina and Chudjakov (2008) have convincingly demonstrated, the generational discourse of the 1860s closely linked the notions of youth, renewal and progress; in the case of Amfiteatrov’s narration, the rhetoric of the sixties is reproduced by one of its participants – Čuprov. It is noteworthy that Čuprov himself belonged to the so-called circle of “young professors,” but like many others was identified as a šestidesjatnik – here designating someone dedicated to carrying forth the mission set forth by the Great Reforms of the 1860s, not someone who had just come of age at that time (Aleksandr Čuprov was born in 1842 and belonged to the generation of the sixties in both senses, as an imagined community and as an age cohort). But in contrast to that time, the speech accentuates the idea of continuity rather than conflict between generations; the latter being more characteristic of the realm of education. We can see the same idea of the generational continuity in the memoirs of professor Sergej Radсig, who was a student of Moscow University in 1900-1904: We heard from our oldest professors about the great testaments of their predecessors […] who, in the years of moral darkness, could ignite the torch of science and raise the authority of a scholar. […] And now, being the successors of the best Russian scholars, we see our sacral obligation to pass this bright torch of science to the young generation […]. (От старейших наших профессоров мы услышали о великих заветах их предшественников […], которые в годы нравственной тьмы умели зажечь яркий светоч науки и высоко поднять авторитет ученого. […] И теперь, будучи преемниками лучших русских ученых, мы считаем своим священным долгом передать яркий светоч науки новому молодому поколению […]. [Radсig 1989: 598])

Amfiteatrov himself, who was more than instrumental in fostering the image of an “eighties generation” (vos’midesjatniki), strongly identified with that cohort. In his mind, the sixties generation was marked by “powerful civic idealism”; the era was one of “high hopes and public ferment,” a time of “valiant deeds and devotion to the future” of “valorous citizens,” “luminous personalities” (“мощный гражданский идеализм,” “эпоха надежд и общественного подъема,” “славные дела и дни работы для потомства,” “доблестные граждане,” “светлые личности”) (Amfiteatrov 1903: 47, 49). In contrast to the 1860s generation, the 1880s generation represented a period of “civic despondency,” “inaction and slough”; it was a “pitiful generation” (“упадочная эпоха общественного уны-

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ния,” “безделие и безмыслие,” “жалкое поколение”) (ibid.). He accused the “children” of lacking ideals or refined sensibilities, even of the capacity to think clearly, having nothing to pass on to future generations. However, Amfiteatrov acknowledges that generational conflict is inherent in the passage of time: “[N]o generation looks upon the next one with any great delight; nor does any generation display lots of respect for its predecessor” (“ни одно поколение к последующему за ним восторга не испытывает, ни одно поколение к предшествующему большого уважения не питает”) (ibid.: 51). Note that while carrying forth the notion of generational conflict, Amfiteatrov alters the conventional structure of generational discourse in which “fathers” address “sons” and presents himself as a spokesperson for his eighties generation, casting blame upon the “fathers” for the emergence of a subsequent “lost generation.” At first glance such an address to the paternal šestidesjatniki, who did so much to reform their country but were unable to pass along the traditions of their own time and suitably prepare a worthy generation of successors, seems like an unexpected way of treating the “Great Reforms” epoch of the 1860s. Yet such an address to one’s predecessors and negative assessment of their achievements was something those of the sixties did to their own “fathers” – the men of the 1840s who, they argued, were to blame for the country’s backwardness. In so doing, they positioned themselves, in contrast, as a new type of persons capable of transforming Russia. The generational rupture between the sixties and the eighties, in Amfiteatrov’s telling, took place in the 1870s, at a time when his generational mindset was taking shape; it was not the “fathers” who played a decisive role in this but rather the classical gymnasium, serving as an instrument of the state. The gymnasium, often labelled “Tolstoyan” after the unpopular Minister of Education at that time, Dmitrij Tolstoj, rightly or wrongly was widely seen, both in the press of the time and in memoirs, as a symbol of the reactionary politics of the autocracy at that time.6 As a result, the two generations came to speak a different language. Amfiteatrov himself studied in one such classical gymnasium and in his memoirs left behind a vivid picture of teachers and life there in general. He confessed that “if in my youth I hated something with all my heart, it was precisely that cursed Tolstoj gymnasium where I had the misfortune to receive an uninspired education and no moral direction” (“если я что-либо ненавидел от всей моей юношеской души, так это классическую гимназию окаянного ‘толстовского’ периода, в которой имел несчастие получать бездушное образование и никакого воспитания”) (Amfiteatrov 2004: 84) and that he was, as he melodramatically depicted himself, “an obdurate and indolent

6

For a more favorable picture see a pioneering work by Allen Sinel (1973).

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prisoner in the hard labor prison of the Tolstoj classical education” (“строптивым и ленивым узником в каторжной тюрьме толстовского классицизма”) (ibid.: 318). He added that his mother, Elizaveta Ivanovna (nee Čuprova), who had an exceptionally mild temperament, minced no words when it came to Tolstoj’s educational reforms, and considered him her personal enemy, someone she could never forgive for his deeds. Amfiteatrov wrote: […] in her heart, that woman harbored hatred for one person alone – a true, passionate, irreconcilable hatred allowing no mitigating circumstances, animosity to a person she had never personally met – Count D. A. Tolstoj. In her presence it was better not to mention his name, or else she would instantaneously break out in tears, lamenting that Tolstoj had ruined an entire generation. ([…] в душе такой-то женщины жила все-таки одна ненависть – настоящая, страстная, непримиримая, не желающая слушать никаких оправданий, ненависть к человеку, которого она никогда не видела, – к графу Д. А. Толстому. При ней лучше было не называть его имени, потому что она мгновенно расстраивалась до горьких слез, проклиная Толстого как погубителя юного поколения… [ibid.])

The image of the “sixties generation” as representing “new (and different) people” in Russia served as a powerful tool for building societal ties and continued to serve as a significant identity construct for subsequent generations of the Russian intelligentsia. For example, the renowned historian Aleksandr Kizevetter tried to alter the established perception of his own eighties generation, putting forth as his main argument the confluence of the ideals of that generation with those of the šestidesjatniki: self-abnegation and the willingness to actively take public stands on issues: Russian youth of the eighties are often all painted with the same brush, as a generation which had completely turned away from a preoccupation with public affairs, and whose minds were completely engaged with matters of petty self-interest. I myself am a representative of that generation […] and can provide irrefutable testimony to the fact that any such rampant condemnation of students of the eighties is far from the truth. (Русская молодежь 80-х годов нередко изображается одной краской, как поколение, якобы совершенно отпрянувшее от увлечения общественными идеалами, и с головой ушедшее в мелкие личные интересы. Я сам принадлежу к этому именно поколению […] и могу дать точное свидетельское показание о том, что такое огульное

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суждение о студентах-восьмидесятниках далеко не отвечает действительности. [Kizevetter 1926: 234])

From the testimony of Amfiteatrov and Kizevetter, we can see just how central generational tags were – whether it be as belonging to the sixties or the eighties, or for identifying others as well as self – even if at times, as we have shown, a member of one age cohort could be situated in two generations at the same time. Likewise, we see just how generational identity shaped historical accounts of university life. Since those times, historians have also attempted to describe the academic community in late Imperial Russia using generational categories. In his depiction of the Russian professoriate, historian James C. McClelland notes that despite all the changes which the body of professors underwent “from generation to generation”7 over the course of a half century, their world view and mindset remained throughout that period strongly influenced by the values and conceptions that had been formed in the 1860s: above all that the autocracy should and would be transformed over time in a more liberal direction; and that science could serve progress and the needs of society as well as the individual (McClelland 1979: 60). McClelland devotes considerable attention to the generation which entered the universities after the Crimean War (1853-1856), and designates them a “young” generation in every way: The expansion of enrollments and educational facilities after the Crimean war produced an increasing stream of Russian youth anxious for an academic career. This post-Crimean generation8 was quick to take its place on the undermanned teaching staff of Russian universities. By 1875 50% of all professors and docents were under forty years of age and 83% had received their first degrees from Russian universities. (ibid.: 61)

Tat’jana Kostina and Aleksej Kuprijanov set out to survey the changing dynamics of the age profile of the corpus of faculty at Kazan University in comparison with those in Moscow, Dorpat [Tartu] and St. Petersburg up to 1884, using available biographical information and applying methods of digital humanities, creating and analyzing a biographical database. The authors uncovered periods of gradual aging interrupted by sudden and rapid moments of “rejuvenation,” prompted, as a rule, by intervention on the part of the regional superintendent (popečitel’) or Minister of Education (Kostina/Kuprijanov 2017; Kostina 2007).

7

Italics added [T.S.].

8

Italics added [T.S.].

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Moreover, they found that developments in Kazan diverged from those elsewhere at roughly the same time. For example, in the second half of the 1850s, for a combination of reasons, a sharp rejuvenation took place in Kazan among its professoriate: “[T]he outflow of researchers trained in Kazan resulted in their places being filled by much younger candidates” (Kostina/Kuprijanov 2017: 934). New arrivals had been born in the 1820s; by 1856-1858 the median age was 33 (ranging from 28 to 39). Kostina and Kuprijanov state that these radical changes in Kazan came about through administrative measures resulting in the dismissal of senior professors and replacement by junior scholars, as well as by changes in the rules regulating overseas study and dissertation defenses. In the 1880s, by contrast, a decline in the median age [of faculty] was brought about by a demographic crisis following up a lengthy period of gradually increasing age parameters. Abrupt changes in the number of professors as a whole did not take place at the time, which in our opinion, points to the absence of outside interference. (ibid.: 936)

Speaking of the age descriptions in the memoirs about university life in the second half of the 19th century, we can often see how former students depicting their professor used the age characteristics such as “an elder,” “a geezer” or “an old professor” (“старик,” “старец,” “старый профессор”). Ivan Janžul, who studied in Moscow University in the mid-1860s and later became a professor there, portrayed, for example, professor Ivan Beljaev as one of the most influential lecturers because of his passion for Russian history and a great personality. Janžul called him “a kindest and nicest elder” (“добрейший и милейший старец”), contrasting his compassionate heart and engaging teaching with his unattractive physical appearance – he was a plain man, slight of build, with a seemingly broken body, limping: [О]бладая крайне невзрачной наружностью и как бы изломанным телом, он не ходил, а ковылял из стороны в сторону, размахивая руками (“побывал под двумя жерновами”, острили студенты). Иван Дмитриевич обладал такой теплой душой и искренней любовью к своей науке, что невольно, несмотря ни на что, привлекал симпатии почти всех слушателей… (Janžul 1989: 461)

Beljaev (1810-1873) was in his late fifties at that time and in Janžul’s description of him as an elder we can see some religious references (starec as a monastic spiritual mentor) combined with his perceived age. Description of professors as elders (starcy) emphasized their mentoring role, comparing universities with

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temples, which was very common in the literature of that time (universities as temples of science). However, the word starec could be used with a slightly negative or ironic connotation as we see in Janžul’s recollections of another Moscow professor – Nikita Krylov (1807-1879). Janžul described him as a gifted but depraved old man (“[…] причины большой популярности этого даровитого, несомненно, старца для Московского университета. Нельзя также не сказать правду, что Н[икита] И[ванович] был с давних пор морально грязноват”) (ibid.: 463). Sergej Baršev (1808-1882) and Vasilij Leškov (1810-1881) were Krylov’s peers and colleagues in Moscow University and Janžul described them as elders (starcy), old professors (starye professora), geezers (stariki), emphasizing the difference between the age groups of faculty (ibid.: 465-469). Janžul himself (1845-1914), the above-mentioned Čuprov (1842-1908) and Sergej Muromcev (1850-1910) were depicted as “young professors” in the memoirs of the 1870s-1880s (see Kovalevskij 1989: 485). Maksim Kovalevskij, picturing the university life of that time, remembered this circle of young professors in Moscow University but, defining them as “young professors” by their age, he also applied all the typical characteristics of the young generation of the sixties: […] their willingness to use their knowledge and energy to serve not abstract science but demands of life. They were in the center of that intellectual and social movement which aimed to get close to the people [narod], to learn about their daily life and satisfy their needs as much as possible, and meanwhile to educate the elite to be aware of their debt to the peasants and workers. ([…] их готовность послужить своим знанием и своей энергией не отвлеченной науке, а запросам жизни. Они стояли в самом центре того умственного и общественного движения, которое ставило своей задачей сближение с народом, тесное знакомство с его бытом, посильное удовлетворение его нужд и, одновременно, воспитание руководящих кругов в сознании их долга перед крестьянской и рабочей средой. [ibid.])

Samuel D. Kassow’s well-received history of university life at the turn of the 20th century describes a conflict building between “younger” and “older” generations of professors resulting from a rapid growth (162 percent) in the number of students in the period 1900-1914 unmatched by the increase in the number of professors (22 percent) (Kassow 1989: 35). Since budget stringencies prevented the hiring of more professors, the burden fell disproportionately upon junior faculty, who were compelled to teach more courses and handle more students.

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Young professors rapidly soured on the situation and expressed their discontent with their status and lack of voice in university governance or financial decisions: The road to an associate professorship was long and grueling. An aspiring academic had to be recommended by his university, undergo a risky and feudal relationship with an academic advisor, write and publicly defend two dissertations, secure the approval of the curator of the educational district, and then put in long years as an underpaid privat-dozent until a position became available. (ibid.: 35-36)

Kassow showed that of 95 adjunct professors at St. Petersburg University in 1895 only eleven received an annual salary of more than 600 rubles and 60 earned fewer than 300 – less than many primary school teachers. 18 were teaching without compensation. In 1908 an adjunct professor teaching two courses could count on only 80 rubles a year – one sixth the salary of a skilled worker. But bad as this was, the main grievance young professors had was the absence of any professional rights or guarantees. They were not allowed near any university councils and could participate in departmental meetings only by invitation (ibid.: 36). This situation led not only to a conflict of young adjunct professors with the Ministry of Education but also to a conflict with the senior faculty. Both Kassow and the subsequent and excellent study by Wartenweiler – whose work is mentioned briefly above – cover in great detail the dynamics of the academic community, both internally and in its relationship with the outside world: society and state, in the final decades of the tsarist regime. From these works, as well as all the studies concerning Russia mentioned above, it is clear that “generation” was both a shared mental model and a significant reality in university life as well as in society at large.

CONCLUSIONS It seems clear that generational identity remained a prominent feature of Russian university life in late 19th-century Russia, since both professors and students considered themselves affiliated with a specific generation, be it “real” (an age cohort) or symbolic (discursive). The following points may be made along these lines: 1)

A look at the history of higher education in the 1880s demonstrates the persistence of generational concepts identifying both “people of the six-

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2)

3)

4)

5)

ties” and “people of the eighties” (šestidesjatniki and vos’midesjatniki) applied both to self and to others (and sometimes both) and signifying values, convictions and representations, as well as views on science, public activism, and the role in society played both by scholars and by education in general. The notion of a “younger generation” applied both to students and to professors. In this context, “young professor” was connected with the young and values of the 1860s, to ideas of progress and innovation, and signified strong ties with and sympathy for students, even as a “single family” (Amfiteatrov), in which they played the role of tutors and authorities. Youth is conceptualized in terms both of age and of status, but also in a loosely expansive and even sometimes contradictory way (hopes, novelty, progress, but also inexperience and dislocation). Generational discourse frames the interrelations of young and elder professors, underscores a cultural continuity in the history of the university while at the same time identifying conflict between age cohorts – all of which calls for a close and critical reading of the documentation of university affairs for a better understanding of the generational dynamics of higher education. Generational rhetoric concerning university life must be understood as part of a large societal discourse and as reflecting the political mood in post-reform Russia. At the same time, it also registered real changes that were taking place in the demographic composition (age, social status) of the professoriate as well as internal changes within the university itself, the politics of the Ministry of Education and the political situation in the country as a whole. Generational rhetoric and identity were further complicated by constantly changing relations between students and professors, changes which created a dynamic and shifting cultural landscape in which terms such as generation, youth and age were multivalent and unstable. All the above considerations call for a combination of analyses: sociological analysis of the age dynamics of the entire academic community; an analysis of the distinctive features of universities in different regions of the Russian Empire; and an analysis of the semantic significance of terms defining generational identity within Russian society at the time. “Real” generational transitions (registered by shifts in median ages) might sometimes not correspond with the generational rhetoric deployed at the time, and generational solidarity might be derivative more of social and political, rather than demographic changes.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This publication was prepared within the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and supported within the framework of a subsidy by the Russian Academic Excellence Project “5-100.” I thank Ben Eklof (Indiana University) for his helpful comments on an early draft of this article.

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Changes in Soviet Academia’s Age-Related Personnel Policies during the Cold War Kirill Levinson

INTRODUCTION This article1 is devoted to a hitherto underresearched aspect of the history of the post-World War II Soviet academia – the evolution of age-related guidelines for personnel policies of the USSR Academy of Sciences research institutes and the Moscow State University. Considering these institutions together seems justified: firstly, because many scholars worked full or part-time both at the Academy and at the Moscow State University, and, secondly, because there were differences and similarities between them that are important for our study.2 A caveat needs to be made as regards terms and concepts (not) used in the article. Nowadays, the belief that workers’ age is a criterion to a priori predict their performance and justify unequal treatment may be regarded as an ageist attitude and therefore condemned. The concept of ageism is not neutral. It was coined on the model of racism and sexism to negatively signify a “form of bigotry” (Butler 1969) and eventually to fight it. The aim of the present paper, how-

1

The article was prepared within the framework of the HSE University Basic Research Program and funded by the Russian Academic Excellence Project “5-100.” It is a revised and abridged version of Levinson 2017.

2

Due to peculiar rules for archiving and storing Moscow State University’s documents, only those documents that had been deposited in the Central State Archives of the City of Moscow (CGAM) were available for this research. They cover the period until the early 1960s. For the USSR Academy of Sciences, the study draws on documents from the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ARAN).

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ever, is not to judge or fight but to explore. Therefore, this concept is not used in the study. Documents concerning personnel departments’ decisions on hiring and firing individual employees, their appointments to specific positions, pay, incentives and penalties were not available out of personal data protection reasons. Nor could any policy papers be found containing explicit age-related benchmarks for human resources management. The present study, therefore, draws on documents that reflect the principal guidelines for personnel policy and their discussion in general terms. They include talks and speeches by high-ranking functionaries such as Moscow State University’s rector, by heads of departments and research institutes, or by the president of the USSR Academy of Sciences, as well as resolutions and meeting transcripts of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences. All of these sources are kept in Moscow archives such as the Central Municipal Archives of the City of Moscow and the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences. To the best of my knowledge, none of the documents used have ever been published before. The reasons why the period between 1945 and 1991 was singled out for research have to do with radical changes that mark its beginning and end. After the mass demobilization following the end of World War II, more human resources became available while, on the other hand, an almost immediate campaign was launched against what was stigmatized as “rootless cosmopolitanism,” “bourgeois objectivism,” “Mendelism and Morganism” etc. leading to massive personnel changes in research and education institutions. The Moscow State University’s Rector, Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Aleksandr Nesmejanov, proudly reported to the board of the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR that in 1948 alone the university had fired: […] eight professors of the Biological faculty who had been actively struggling against the Mičurin theory3 (Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Šmal’gauzen [born in 1884 – K.L.], Prof. Zavadovskij [born in 1891– K.L.], Associate Professor Alichanjan [born in 1906 – K.L.] and others), seven lecturers of the said faculty who held anti-Mičurin positions of Mendelism-Morganism, ten professors of humanities faculties who had advocated

3

Ivan Vladimirovič Mičurin (1855-1935), usually spelled Michurin in English, was a famous Russian horticulturalist who developed more than 300 new, more productive and robust types of fruit trees and berries using a selection of seedlings and hybridization of geographically distant plants. Trofim Lysenko, who insisted on the inheritance of acquired characteristics, claimed to be a follower of Mičurin, but what he called the “Mičurin theory” was actually his own invention.

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cosmopolitan views in their teaching and research (Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Minc [born in 1896 – K.L.], Prof. Rubinštejn [born 1897 – K.L.], Prof. Zubok [born in 1894 – K.L.] and others). (Doklad rektora: 8)

These people’s age as such was not a topic, their dismissals had to do with ideological and often (if not always) anti-Semitic motives. In many cases, however, the “struggle between the new, the nascent and the old, the moribund in science” (“Борьба между новым нарождающимся в науке и старым отживающим”)4 meant that middle-aged and older scientists and teachers, i.e., those who had been socialized before the 1917 revolution, were attacked, as the birth dates above also show. Their persecutors, who were often younger, had them removed from office or dismissed and on a number of occasions took over their posts or their informal leadership positions. In some cases, older academics, though spared dismissal, were barred from academic advising, which led to the disintegration of entire schools of thought. The stagnation that this ousting and marginalizing of older scholars meant, e.g., for the History faculty of the Moscow State University and for the Academy of Sciences’ Institute of History, is well described by the medievalist Aron Gurevič in a book chapter with the telling title “Ruining Academia” (“Разгром науки”) (in The Historian’s History [Istorija istorika], Gurevič 2004). At that, many of the activists who came to hold key positions in the 1940s as a result of these purges were in fact not innovation-friendly. They remained in office until retirement without initiating or even facilitating the development of new research fields that might provide new jobs for scholars. The upper chronological limit of the period under study is explained by the fact that the early 1990s saw a collapse of the Soviet system of financing science and higher education, including employee compensation and retirement plans. This drastic change made the old personnel policy largely unworkable: low salaries, outdated equipment and lack of funds to finance research meant that recruiting, or even keeping scholars at all, became difficult. As institutions required a certain number of employees to keep research work and teaching running, the management avoided dismissing even very old employees, especially since the sharply reduced purchasing power of their pension money doomed pensioners to poverty and starvation. The personnel policy was reoriented to preserve the old cadres. This contrasted sharply with the principles of the late 1980s (discussed below), marking the end of an era.

4

The title of a talk given by the member of the USSR Academy of Sciences Ol’ga Lepešinskaja in a meeting at the USSR Ministry of Health during the campaign against genetics (Lepešinskaja 1949).

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RELYING ON EXPERIENCED WORKERS AND BRINGING UP THE YOUTH Not only was age barely referred to in the purges of the mid- and late 1940s, but employees’ age does not seem to have played a role at all in personnel policy (inasmuch as we can judge from the sources available now). Summary tables and other Moscow University documents, for example, contain statistics on the newly hired faculty which include such parameters as CPSU and Komsomol membership, academic degrees and titles, sometimes government awards and prizes, and being an “alumnus of the Moscow State University” or, conversely, none. For postgraduate students, their ethnic and gender composition is also summarized. Age is never indicated anywhere. Although students (except for the few who worked as departmental or laboratory assistants) were not subject to the university’s personnel policy in terms of hiring and dismissing, their age did matter in a number of ways. There was an age limit for enrollment: one had to be younger than 36. The vast majority of freshmen (except for war veterans) were between 16 and 20. The rigidly structured education process at Soviet universities meant that by the time of graduation most students were between 22 and 25. Since postgraduate students were obliged to do a certain amount of lectures and seminar classes, part of the teaching staff were in their twenties, i.e., not much older than the students. The gap between students and instructors was essentially one of status, but in part it was also a division into “junior” and “senior” groups: students (often referred to as “the learning youth” [“учащаяся молодежь”]) were subject not only to training but also to upbringing by the faculty (often referred to as “the elder comrades” [“старшие товарищи”]), which included “ideological upbringing,” i.e., communist indoctrination and thought control, and “moral upbringing” that consisted mainly in punishing overt drunkenness and suppressing sexual life of unmarried students in dormitories. The university’s teaching staff was also obliged to do research work, while students were mostly supposed to study, but some were engaged in (unpaid) research work via the Scientific Student Society (Научное студенческое общесвтво), various students’ conferences and readings. The best papers were supposed to be published and prizes were supposed to be awarded to the authors. In the 1940s, however, the scientific student societies at Moscow University’s faculties did not work well, publications and awards were extremely irregular, and students complained about this to the rector without much effect (see Materialy po dejatel’nosti). Judging by the data available, the harnessing of students’ intellectual potential did not play a significant role in the scientific output by the

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Moscow State University in the post-war decade. Later on, more attention was paid to it: in 1958, Rector Ivan Petrovskij demanded that all department heads send him information about what was being done to attract students to research work, what scholarly events with the participation of students took place and how many students participated in them. Given that the notes submitted might contain exaggerated and whitewashed data, while the papers themselves are no longer available, there is no way for us to tell how significant a contribution each reported students’ project represented. What we know for sure is that every year dozens of students participated in fundamental and applied research on an unpaid and non-career basis. There were kinds of non-staff (but usually paid) work for the university involving much larger numbers of students. First, every summer all students had to intern. For them, this was on-the-job training, while for some of the enterprises they worked for (e.g., archaeological expeditions) they were an indispensable cheap workforce. Second, there were the “voluntarily compulsory” annual agricultural works (выезды “на картошку,” “на овощебазу,” “на хлопок”) to which students were sent throughout the post-war time until 1991, peaking in the Virgin Lands Campaign (Освоение целинных и залежных земель, “Целина”) of the late 1950s and early 1960s. The mobilization for these works was administered by the university, even though it ran against its interests as an educational institution, since the students missed one to two months’ worth of classes. This duty had an age-related aspect, because it was usually the first-, second- and third-year students who were sent out to collective farms, while for the senior ones it was considered more important to concentrate on studying: with every year spent at university, a person was taken more and more seriously in intellectual terms and was assigned less and less low-skilled labor. Individual postgraduate students and young lecturers accompanied the students during the agricultural works so as to supervise them (in terms of conduct rather than performance), while associate and full professors did not have to participate in these agricultural works in any way. The same was true of research institutions, whose young rank-and-file employees were used as labor force for grading potatoes, whereas older and (therefore) higher-ranking researchers were not. Here, again, it was not the individual’s chronological age that mattered, but rather their belonging to the “junior” or the “senior” age/status group. Shortly before their final examinations, graduates of the university were placed into jobs by the university’s Appointments Board, in response to requests coming from employers all over the country. The graduates were termed “young specialists” (“молодые специалисты”). In this case, the term “young” meant that, despite being of age, their power of discretion was not full yet, for they

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were appointed to positions often without even being asked where they would like to go, and were obliged to work there for three years before they were free to choose whether to stay or to seek an employment of their liking. The term “specialists” meant that they had received a specific vocational training and not necessarily that their skills were high. This was not always the case, for, as the rector admitted, the Moscow State University had “insufficient and bad equipment,” and its library lacked up-to-date literature, which was partly due to the war and to the purges. On many occasions, MSU graduates and even postgraduate students were found incapable of doing research work at Academy of Sciences institutes. In early 1947, for example, when the Gorky Institute of World Literature presented a report on its research activities and staff training in 1946, at a meeting of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and its performance was severely criticized, the head Vladimir Šišmarev responded to criticism as follows: Many of the shortcomings of our work are explained by the state of our workforce. It should be noted that the Institute’s members who belong to the older, more experienced generation frequently take sick leave. During the war, death has removed from our midst a number of comrades whose cooperation and assistance we expected. We had to recommission articles and to look for new authors, which is a very difficult matter, especially when it comes to more or less experienced specialists. (Многие недостатки наших работ объясняются состоянием наших рабочих кадров. В этом отношении нельзя не отметить довольно частых заболеваний научных сотрудников Института, принадлежащих к старшему, более опытному поколению. В годы войны смерть вырвала из нашей среды ряд товарищей, на сотрудничество и помощь которых мы рассчитывали. Приходилось перезаказывать статьи и искать новых авторов, что является делом весьма нелегким, особенно когда речь идет о более или менее опытных специалистах. [Stenogramma zasedanij 1947 g.: 15])

The postgraduate students who worked at the institute lacked the necessary skills: according to the deputy head of the institute, Valerij Kirpotin, there was “a group of highly-trained young people, very strong, no doubt, but lacking literary thinking and methodologically very poorly trained. […] Besides, there is a group of persons who know neither the facts nor the theory”5 (“[…] есть группа

5

“The theory” stood for the “Marxist-Leninist theory of socio-economic development” that explained all social phenomena including literature and arts history in terms of class struggle and conflict between productive forces and production relationships. In

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сильно подготовленной молодежи, очень сильной. Это факт. Но она не имеет мышления литературного, методологически очень плохо подготовлена. […] Кроме того есть группа таких лиц, которые не знают ни фактов, ни теории”) (ibid.: 70-71). In the conditions of planned economy, research institutes were subject to penalties for failing to fulfill their annual plans. When the elderly employees on whom they relied got sick or died, it posed a problem that had no simple solution. It was considered impossible to entrust the writing of serious scholarly books to young people, who were regarded as immature even if well educated: they were just “scholarly youth” (“научная молодежь”) and had yet to be “brought up” before they would be able to work on an equal footing with their elders and eventually replace them. Šišmarev emphasized that the Gorky Institute of World Literature took care of the “next shift” (“смена”) and “helped other research institutions of the [Soviet] Union as to the upbringing of cadres” (“Кроме того Институт помогает в деле воспитания кадров другим научно-исследовательским учреждениям [Советского] Союза”) (ibid.: 1519).

HARNESSING YOUNG WORKERS’ POTENTIAL OUTSIDE STAFF HIERARCHIES Relying on the “older, more experienced generation” of scholars prevailed during the subsequent three decades, but not everywhere. There were branches of science in which an older generation simply did not exist because the branches were new. For example, the dean of the Moscow State University’s Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics Aleksandr Kuroš wrote: “The need to respond to ever new demands of physics and technology has made mathematics […] a very rapidly developing science. In mathematics […] whole new disciplines keep emerging” (“[…] необходимость откликаться на все новые и новые запросы физики и техники сделала математику […] очень бурно развивающейся наукой. В математике все время […] оформляются целые новые математические науки”) (Kuroš 1952: 7). New researchers were required for these new sciences. Emphasizing that mathematics and mechanics were widely used in engineering and in other industries, the algebraist Kuroš tried to prove the necessity of “a constant influx of new creative forces into them” (“постоянного притока

the USSR, this theory was declared to be “the only scientific and the only true” one and was obligatory for all kinds of scholarly research, especially in the humanities and social sciences.

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в них новых творческих сил”) (ibid.: 11). In rapidly developing sciences that were of paramount economic and military importance in the time of the Cold War, especially in physics and related sciences, “scholarly youth” was regarded not just as the “next shift” or additional workforce but also as the better workers. Young people were believed to possess advantages that now mattered more than experience: the ability to quickly adapt to changes in science, the ability to think outside the box, to generate bold ideas, and to easily abandon the views once authoritative but obsolete in the light of new discoveries. The Academy of Sciences and the University were too rigid to quickly change their personnel policy so as to meet these new demands. Therefore, in the early 1960s, the young physicist Jurij Žuravlev and the founding father of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences Michail Lavrent’ev came up with the idea of establishing what they called “Councils of Young Scientists and Specialists” (Советы молодых ученых и специалистов, СМУиС). These were think tanks where the intellectual potential of young scientists could be harnessed beyond the staffing plans and the obdurate hierarchical structures that made it impossible for young researchers to run their own labs, to publish under their own names and to have their own ideas implemented. More and more such councils were founded in cities in the provinces, and after they gave a good account of themselves, the authorities in Moscow approved the new initiative. In 1966, the All-Union Council of Young Scientists was founded under the auspices of the Central Committee of the Komsomol. Councils existing in individual institutes quickly merged into regional and national networks. In 1967, a joint resolution of the Central Committee of the Komsomol, the State Committee for Science and Technology, the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Higher Education of the USSR “On Working with Scholarly Youth” (“О работе с научной молодежью”) was adopted, officially recognizing “the high creative potential of youth” (“высокий творческий потенциал молодежи”) and providing a solid legal basis for the councils. In 1968, Moscow University joined in, founding a Council of Young Scientists of its own, whose task was to “ensure the professional growth of young scholars” (“обеспечение профессионального роста молодых ученых”) (echoing the legacy idea of “upbringing the cadres”) and “to promote research on topical issues and innovation” (“содействие разработкам актуальных научных проблем и развитие новаторской деятельности”). The national Regulations on the Councils of Young Scientists and Specialists, published in 1973, still mentioned the “upbringing” of young scholars, but also envisaged the harnessing of their intellectual and creative potential, recognizing that their young age was a particularly valuable asset.

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Young scholars competitions were another way to obtain high-quality intellectual output from young people without admitting them to higher ranks of personnel hierarchies. Such competitions were sponsored in the 1970s and especially in the 1980s by universities as well as by the Academy of Sciences. This was largely due to efforts by Evgenij Velichov, a physicist who became full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences at 39 and its vice-president when he was as young as 43. Velichov, who headed the national Council of Young Scientists and Specialists under the Central Committee of the Komsomol, made a point of expanding the list of disciplines in which the competitions were held and increasing the number of prizes awarded. He succeeded in persuading the USSR Council of Ministers to extend the list from three nominations to nine. From 1980 on, it included physics, nuclear physics, energy engineering, astronomy, mathematics and computer technology, mechanics and management processes, biology and scientific instrument making, clearly showing that the needs of the military industrial complex were given top priority. Social science, philosophy and history were added later on. By the mid-1980s it became obvious to many scholars and managers that despite the official campaigns aimed at “improving the youth outreach” (“улучшение работы с молодежью”), the old personnel policy model had exhausted itself, as did the gerontocratic model of the party and state management in general. A change became possible after Michail Gorbačev came to power, personifying “youthfulness” against the backdrop of the Politburo’s elderly majority. At the 27th Congress of the CPSU, it was declared that talented young people should be involved more extensively in party work and that a rejuvenation of party and government cadres was necessary. This agenda was confirmed at the January 1987 Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, and at the 28th Congress of the CPSU in 1990. After the highest authority in the country had introduced the concept of “rejuvenation of cadres” (“омоложение кадров”) into public discourse, the path opened for changing the age-related personnel policy guidelines in all other spheres, academia included. In 1986, Gurij Marčuk was elected president of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Gorbačev’s perestroika allowed him to initiate a reform of the Academy, designed, among other things, to ensure a regular influx of a significant number of young scholars into research institutes. To achieve this goal, Marčuk and his cohort proposed establishing “creative youth groups” (“творческие молодежные коллективы”) as structural divisions of research institutes. In the resolution concerning this initiative, the upper age limit of “youth” was indicated: members of the groups were supposed to be under the age of 33, the leaders “as a rule, aged up to 33-40 years” (“как правило, в воз-

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расте до 33-40 лет”) (Vremennoe položenie: 26). Thus, even people who had long become adults and received all conceivable types of education were to be managed by someone older than them, for they were defined not as scholars but as “youth,” i.e., not fully autonomous persons. This resolution also contained tangible sanctions: institutes that “worked with the youth poorly” (“в которых слабо ведется работа с молодежью”) were to be identified based on competition results, and their staff size and wage fund were to be “cut by no less than 1 percent […] to create reserves for organizing several dozen creative youth groups in the Academy of Sciences of the USSR” (“штатная численность и фонд заработной платы уменьшаются не менее чем на 1%, [для] создания резервов для организации нескольких десятков ТМК в Академии наук СССР”) (ibid.: 32).

GETTING YOUNG WORKERS IN AND OLD ONES OUT A more radical reform initiated by Marčuk was about changing the rules so as to make sure that younger employees would systematically supersede older ones in all positions across the board. In a number of meetings of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1986 and 1987, a new model statute for research institutes and a number of other acts were discussed, which, on the one hand, increased the autonomy of institutions, including personnel issues, and on the other hand, prescribed a roadmap for the required “rejuvenation of cadres.” The discussions over this sensitive issue took place partly behind closed doors. Based on the transcripts of the meetings, it is possible to reconstruct the reasoning of the new cadre policy’s champions and skeptics. At a Presidium meeting on December 3, 1986, the statute paragraph on the rejuvenation of the cadres provoked a heated debate. The reformers had changed and finalized it several times, including on the very day of the meeting, long after draft copies had been circulated to participants. In particular, they altered paragraph 6.3 of the draft statute, which envisaged that institutes should “take care of constant recruitment of promising scholars and young workers” (“заботиться о постоянном пополнении штатного состава перспективными учеными и молодыми научными кадрами”) (Protokol № 54: 59). According to the revised wording, institutes were obliged to “make provisions” (“принимать соответствующие действия”) to this end. Marčuk and Velichov were younger than the rest of the Presidium, but they were not the only champions of the reform. The speaker, Vice-President of the

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USSR Academy of Sciences Vladimir Kotel’nikov (specialist in radiophysics, radio engineering, electronics, computer science, radio astronomy, and cryptography, head of the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics, pushing on 80 years of age), presented the touchy paragraph to the audience and provided reasons in favor of it. “[…] You and I have already established that the personnel of the institutes was aging” (“[…] мы с вами уже констатировали, что состав институтов стареет”), he noted (ibid.: 62). This inclusive turn of speech implied that meeting participants had established the fact together and therefore the statement could not provoke any objections. And if so, then there should be no objections to what was presented as a logical consequence of this statement: it was proposed to include in every institute’s statute an obligation to annually recruit young specialists in the number equal to 5 percent of its research staff. If the institute did not have enough openings for this, it had to fire some employees “to make room” for the newcomers. The staff would thus be completely renewed within 20 years. A researcher’s life in an institute would be generally limited to 20 years until he or she would be among the oldest and therefore subject to dismissal. Given that “young specialists” were 23 to 30 years old on average, they would have to quit at the age of 43 to 50. Presidium members would likely view this as an unreasonably low age limit, so Kotel’nikov hastened to make a reservation: “Of course, some comrades, the more promising ones, will work longer than 20 years. The less promising ones will leave the institute sooner” (“Конечно, некоторые товарищи будут работать больше 20 лет – более перспективные. Менее перспективные будут уходить из института быстрее”) (ibid.). Kotel’nikov admitted that the reform project’s legitimacy and legality were quite shaky at the time of discussion, because dismissal for reasons of age would be illegal under the Labor Code. He emphasized that they intended to seek lawyers’ help in formulating this provision “in compliance with all laws” (“с соблюдением всех законов”) (ibid.). As far as age-related guidelines of the personnel policy are concerned, two points are of interest. One such point is the postulation that the very aging of researchers is bad and it should be combated by regularly hiring young workers and firing the oldest ones just because they are old. Their experience or former merits did not matter any longer, nor did the importance of the projects they were working on. On the other hand, and this is the second point that partially balanced the first one, the concept of “promising scholars” (“перспективные ученые”) was introduced. One was regarded as “promising” irrespective of age if one’s performance was considered to be good at that moment and likely to be as good or even better in the future.

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The acting director of the General Physics Institute, Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Prochorov objected to this, pointing out that, according to the general opinion of the Academy’s Department of Physics and Mathematics, the main criterion by which an institute’s performance should be assessed was “not how many people it replaces every year […] but what it accomplishes” (“не сколько он меняет в год людей, [...] а какую продукцию он дает”) (ibid.: 72). Furthermore, Prochorov made a short remark pointing to a great potential risk associated with the innovation proposed: “Comrades, this is so important! […] This is so dangerous!” (“Товарищи, это настолько важно! […] Это настолько опасно!”) (ibid.: 73). To what danger did he refer? Prochorov, himself about 70 at that time, realized that for many scholars of his age, a forced retirement would mean a painful ejection from the main sphere of their selfactualization, and not every old person could survive it even if welfare would not be an issue. Dramatic and even tragic stories of people who could not cope with the stress of forced retirement were widely familiar. Shortly before the events described here, Julij Rajzman’s film Private Life (Častnaja žizn’, 1982) depicting such a story was released. This gives some grounds to assume that this is the danger the senior scientist might have meant. But how could it be avoided? Prochorov, noticing the vulnerability of the reform project in terms of legality and legitimacy, tried to use this and appeal to the law and to his colleagues’ opinion: “The rights and duties of institutes should be based on the current national legislation and this statute only. That is, there should be no ‘30 percent this, 5 percent that.’ This is not necessary. I think everyone will agree” (“Права и обязанности института должны быть основаны только на действующем общесоюзном законодательстве и данном Уставе. То есть 30% – то-то, 5% – то-то – вот это не нужно. По-моему, все будут согласны”) (Protokol № 54: 74). Objecting to this, Marčuk identified scholars’ aging with the obsolescence of their institutes and dismissed other views on the problem. A heated debate followed, during which he, perhaps as a tactical gesture of courtesy to his opponent, admitted that Prochorov’s own institute and a couple of others, “the most prominent ones that have distinguished scholars and authority” (“нескольких других, самых выдающихся, где крупные ученые, есть авторитет”), were not the issue, but demanded in exchange that Prochorov admit that other institutes “obsolesced a good deal” (“сильно устарели”). Prochorov agreed, but kept insisting that a fixed quota was not a good solution (ibid.: 77-79). Seeing that the resistance was not yielding, the president of the Academy adduced a number of further arguments: he pointed out that without a quota enshrined in the statute, an “ordinary head of an institute” (“Если директор института не академик-секретарь, человек, которого все уважают, […], а

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обычный директор”) (that is, one that was not head of a department of the Academy of Sciences at the same time) would not be able to regularly dismiss employees according to his plan; they would resist, resorting to the trade union, the party committee, the court, use connections, etc. The next argument was somewhat at odds with this one: according to Marčuk, there was statistical evidence that “if nothing is done, 5 [percent] go to other institutes or retire etc., anyway,” and therefore “nobody needs to be fired, all that has to be done is hire young people for these openings” (“Если ничего не делать, то пять [процентов] – уходят в другие институты, на пенсию и т.д. Увольнять никого не надо, а нужно принимать на эти освободившиеся вакансии молодежь”). And, finally, the last argument Marčuk adduced sounded like blackmail: “If we fail to come up with something now, the government will think up and hand down something that will make us feel sorry we did not [carry out the reform] ourselves in time” (“Если мы сейчас что-либо не придумаем, то из государственных учреждений нам придумают сверху такое, что потом мы будем сожалеть о том, что не сделали превентивно”) (ibid.). Marčuk’s opponent, it turned out, was only concerned with protecting the employees of his own institute, who in his view were quite young: Our institute shows an average age of 38-39 years. Some of the other institutes have a much higher one. And that’s why you need not apply one yardstick for all. […] I even should say it is necessary to hire young scholars rather than old ones, but […] different approaches are needed for different institutes. And maybe institutes should draw up a time-table about how they are going to rejuvenate their [staff]. (Наш институт имеет средний возраст 38-39 лет. У некоторых институтов он гораздо выше. И поэтому под одну мерку не надо. […] Я даже скажу, что надо принимать в институты молодых ученых, а не великовозрастных ученых. Но поскольку институты имеют разный средний возраст, то и по-разному надо подходить. И, может быть, институтам надо составить график, как они будут омолаживать институт. [ibid.: 79])

Marčuk eased off, saying: “This would be a lever of sorts. We must think about it” (“Это уже какой-то рычаг. Надо еще подумать”) (ibid.). The introduction of the percentage quota under discussion was enthusiastically advocated by vice-presidents Evgenij Velichov and Konstantin Frolov who pointed out, in particular, that the introduction of a certain numerical indicator would allow the institutes to timely “order” the required number of students to be educated for them.

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At the same time, Velichov continued his efforts to design and implement solutions that would allow “to make fuller use of the creative potential of scholarly youth and increase its contribution to accelerating scientific and technological progress” (“более полного использования творческого потенциала научной молодежи, повышения ее вклада в ускорение научно-технического прогресса”), not forgetting, however, to mention “high-skilled senior and middle generation scholars” (“и квалифицированных специалистов старшего и среднего поколения”) as well (Postanovlenija № 1471-488: 21-22). He proposed that winners of young scholars competitions be sent on “scholarly trips” (“научные поездки”) to foreign socialist and capitalist countries, which at that time was a fantastic incentive, because traveling abroad, especially to the West, was restricted. Discussions on personnel issues continued at a meeting of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences on February 3, 1987 (Postanovlenija № 56-67: 8-9). The speaker was the philosopher Petr Fedoseev (born in 1908), vice-president of the USSR Academy of Sciences in charge of the humanities. He pointed out that following the CPSU Central Committee plenum’s resolution concerning the “need to increase the inflow of young cadres” (“надо усилить приток молодых кадров”), a memorandum was filed (apparently by the Presidium of the Academy), with the CPSU Central Committee proposing that for managerial positions there should be an age limit of 65 years for scholars and 70 years for full members of the Academy “in view of their extraordinary expertise and experience” (“ввиду их особых знаний и опыта”), both without any exceptions. Furthermore, the memorandum proposed to establish an age limit of 75 years for membership in the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. At the age of 70, members of the Presidium should be granted the right to change their status to “councilors” (“советники”). Heads of research institutes and Presidium members leaving their posts for age reasons should be guaranteed “retention of maintenance and welfare” (“сохраняется материально-бытовое обеспечение”), i.e., keep their corporate apartments and country homes, subsidized food supplies, free holiday home vouchers, corporate medical services and other fringe benefits (ibid.: 40-41). This measure was designed to mitigate the drop in living standard accompanying retirement: even though academy members’ pensions were relatively high, there were many things in the shortage economy of the USSR that money could not buy, at least not legally. The memorandum, Fedoseev further informed, also contained provisions that concerned the recruitment of graduates, postgraduate students and trainees. In contrast to what Marčuk’s reformer team originally proposed, no uniform quota was mentioned anymore: 5 percent was described as an “approximate” figure

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and an “Academy’s average” (“в среднем по Академии […] примерно”). For each institute, the department to which it belonged would be required to establish a specific limit, “depending on the circumstances” (“в зависимости от условий”) (ibid.: 41). The objections put forward at the December meeting were taken into account: the memorandum, according to Fedoseev, recognized that “we have young institutes where, of course, this measure would be difficult to implement. And then we have long established institutes where there may be too many people who have reached a high age and where more youth should be promoted” (“Есть у нас молодые институты, где, конечно, трудно осуществить это мероприятие. Есть институты давно сложившиеся, где может быть и слишком много людей большого возраста, где надо больше молодежи продвигать”) (ibid.). As we can see, the reform project was moderated: the memorandum did not explicitly equate aging with obsolescence. Age limits were set much higher and only for leadership positions, abandoning the idea of obligatory mass dismissals to make room for the annually recruited youth. The quota issue remained, though, even if in a mitigated form, and provoked objections to this project as well. The head of the Physics Institute (FIAN), Nobel Prize laureate Nikolaj Basov, pointed out that under the new rules his institute alone would be obliged to recruit about 100 young specialists every year, but the Moscow State University, the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology taken together simply did not have so many students studying relevant disciplines. To this, Fedoseev replied that the draft resolution contained an instruction to the State Planning Committee and the Ministry of Higher Education to give the Academy of Sciences a priority right to pick graduates (ibid.: 42-43). It remains unclear if large institutes would be able to recruit a sufficient number of young physicists even in such privileged conditions. The sources available at the time of research did not mention plans to increase the enrollment in higher education institutions in connection with this reform. Apart from the number of graduates, their skills were also a problem at times. Vladimir Tučkevič (born in 1904), head of a group at the Ioffe PhysicoTechnical Institute (Fiztech), insisted that a compulsory appointment of many young specialists would ruin research institutes “for the simple reason that the young specialists graduating nowadays are generally very bad specialists, their skills are so poor that as a rule they cannot work for such institutes as FIAN, Fiztech, etc.” (“[…] по той простой причине, что те молодые специалисты, которые сейчас заканчивают вузы, являются весьма плохими специалистами в общем, с низкой квалификацией, которые, как правило, в институтах та-

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кого типа, как ФИАН, Физтех и др. работать не могут”) (ibid.: 49-50). None of those present contradicted him. This scathing criticism showed that the idea of boosting Soviet science by annually recruiting a certain number of “young specialists” whose sole advantage was their young age failed to convince the leading scientists, at least in physics, with its large institutes and high requirements. Nevertheless, the reform initiated by Gurij Marčuk did not stop. Its implementation continued and took several years. The Regulation “On Rejuvenating the Staff at the Institutes of the Department of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR” (“Об омоложении кадрового состава в учреждениях Отделения истории АН СССР”), for example, was published as late as September 13, 1989. By that time, the perestroika and glasnost had reached a point at which, as far as historical studies were concerned, recruiting young professionals “to address new and topical issues” (Ob omoloženii: 60) seemed to make sense just like it did for the sciences decades earlier: after a long stagnation period in which the research field of history in the USSR was ideologically determined and barely changing, in the late 1980s Soviet historians – at least some of them – began to tackle new issues that were topical for them as well as for society at large and wanted to discard the Marxist-Leninist frame of reference. For the discipline to renew, a paradigm shift seemed necessary, and this required a generation change, as was known since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in Russian in 1977. Historians – in fact, representatives of the humanities altogether, except for the Marxist philosopher Fedoseev – did not take part in the debate over the Academy’s personnel policy, but this reform affected them, too, threatening to end the careers of many older researchers. However, due to the rapidly and radically changing economic conditions of the early 1990s its implementation was soft-pedaled. As a result, ironically, the most notable innovations at the Institute of Universal History, for example, were initiated and carried out by researchers who already exceeded the age limit set under the reform, like Aron Gurevič and Jurij Bessmertnyj. Did the new age-related policy solve the obsolescence problem that the reformers believed the Soviet academia was facing? This question is difficult to answer since the early 1990s saw a severe general crisis caused by the breakdown of the entire political and economic system of the ex-USSR, making it impossible for the academia to reap the fruits of the reform.

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CONCLUSION Summarizing all of the above, the incomplete source data available shows that the age-related personnel policy of the Soviet academia changed significantly over the four post-World War II decades. At the beginning of this period, we find no evidence of articulated age benchmarks, but clear preferences can be traced in practices privileging senior groups of students, faculty and researchers, respectively. Particular importance was attached to scholars’ “experience,” and it was associated with older age, while “youth” was not trusted. Belonging to groups that were placed lower on the age/status ladder meant being subjected to “upbringing” which included training and young people’s manpower being regularly used for non-scholarly work such as grading potatoes. Later on, the needs of the rapidly developing and expanding sciences, especially military-related ones, led to initiatives aimed at harnessing primarily the intellectual potential of “young scholars.” Solutions were found that allowed young people to engage in active research work beyond the payroll structures. Then, in the late 1980s, a reform was launched to combat “staff aging” (a synonym for “obsolescence”) and “rejuvenate the institutes.” The transcripts of disputes over this new personnel policy contain no evidence of reflection on how exactly the professional merits and demerits of scholars were causally related to their age: this link was apparently implied as obvious, objective and universal. This makes it possible to raise the question of the extent to which scientists who represented evidence-based science could be biased in matters outside the scope of their own research and expertise. Further research will have to show the extent to which our conclusions based on a limited source material can be generalized for the Soviet academia of the post-war decades as a whole.

REFERENCES Butler, Robert N. (1969): “Age-Ism: Another form of Bigotry”, in: The Gerontologist 9/4, 243-246. Doklad rektora Moskovskogo Ordena Lenina gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni M.V. Lomonosova akademika A.N. Nesmejanova na kollegii Ministerstva vysšego obrazovanija SSSR 26 oktjabrja 1949 g. o sostojanii naučnoissledovatel’skoj raboty v Moskovskom universitete. CGAM. F. Р-1609. Op. 2. D. 277. Gurevič, Aron (2004): Istorija istorika. Moskva.

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Kuroš, Aleksandr G. (1952): O podgotovke matematičeskich kadrov v Moskovskom universitete. 11 ijunja 1952 g. Materialy k dejatel’nosti komissii po izučeniju voprosa o podgotovke matematičeskich kadrov v MGU. CGAM. F. Р-1609. Op. 2. D. 355. L. 7-11. Lepešinskaja Ol’ga B. (1949): “Bor’ba meždu novym, naroždajuščimsja v nauke i starym, otživajuščim”. Doklad na aktive Ministerstva zdravoochranenija SSSR. ARAN. F. 1588. Op. 1. D. 73. Levinson, Kirill A. (2017): “Opyt ili molodost’: smena vozrastnych orientirov v kadrovoj politike sovetskoj nauki”, in: Novoe prošloe / The New Past 4, 150169. Materialy po dejatel’nosti (otčet, postanovlenie, spravka, spisok rabot, položenie) Naučnogo studenčeskogo obščestva pri MGU za 1948 g. CGAM. F. Р1609. Op. 2. D. 279. Ob omoloženii kadrovogo sostava v učreždenijach Otdelenija istorii AN SSSR. 13 sentjabrja 1989 g. ARAN. F. 457. Op. 1. D. 794. Protokol № 54 (postanovlenija № 1443-1455) zasedanija Prezidiuma AN SSSR so stenogrammoj. Podlinnik. 3 dek. 1986 g. ARAN. F. 2. Op. 1. D. 1222. Postanovlenija № 1471-1488, Protokol i stenogramma zasedanija Prezidiuma AN SSSR ot 24 dekabrja 1986 g. Podlinnik. ARAN. F. 2. Op. 1. D. 1226. Т. 57. L. 21-24. Postanovlenija № 56-67, Protokol i stenogramma zasedanija Prezidiuma AN SSSR ot 3 fevralja 1987 g. Podlinnik. ARAN. F. 2. Op. 1. D. 1297. Т. 5. Stenogramma zasedanij Prezidiuma AN SSSR. 1947 g. ARAN. F. 1. Op. 3а. D. 84. Vremennoe položenie o tvorčeskich molodežnych kollektivach v naučnych učreždenijach AN SSSR. ARAN. F. 2. Op. 1. D. 1226. Т. 57. L. 25-30.

Qualitative and Quantitative Inquiries

No Country for Old People Ethnography of Traditional and Contemporary Conceptualizations of Old Age in Rural North Macedonia Ana Aštalkovska Gajtanoska & Ilina Jakimovska

INTRODUCTION: OLD BIRDS AND YOUNG SWALLOWS “To revere an old person means to revere God” (“Стар чоек да честиш, Бога да го честиш”), says a Macedonian proverb that educates the young in the spirit of appreciating old age, an obligation equal to the one towards God. The same goes for “Do not mock an old man, since, in time, you will become old, too” (“Не биј шега со старец, оти и ти ќе остариш”).1 Such proverbs do not only promote the positive attitude towards old age and towards old people, but they additionally support it, taking the experience and knowledge of the elders as a basis for the encouraged esteem, as in “Young swallows learn from older swallows how to fly and catch flies” (“Малите ластавички се учат од старите да летаат, и муи да фаќаат”). In spite of numerous arguments in favor of old age, it is still not considered beautiful. “Old age – ugly age” (“Старост-грдост”), as a Macedonian saying goes, similar to those heard in distant cultures: the Nambikwara from Brazil, for example, that according to Lévi-Strauss have one and the same word for “young and beautiful,” and one and the same for “old and ugly” (De Bovoar 1987: 10). At the same time, the community does not expect the elders to be socially proactive. On the contrary, it prevents such ideas, through the authoritative (and normative) “The century belongs to the young, while the place near the fire belongs to the old” (“За младите е веков, а за старите катот”).

1

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the authors’ [A.A.G., I.J.].

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Proverbs such as the ones above are useful tools in detecting the tensions and potential gaps between what is promoted as the ideal cultural model and the underlying ambiguities, conflicts and contradictions surrounding certain phenomena. Old age is certainly one of those cultural concepts, reflecting the ambivalent attitude towards something that is simultaneously considered useful, good, even sacred, and redundant, threatening, or even dangerous. Based upon ethnographic materials related to old age in the Balkans and interviews with elderly people, mostly women, collected during the last 15 years in villages with Macedonian Orthodox Christian population, as well as villages with mixed Macedonian and Torbesh population (Muslims that speak Macedonian as their mother tongue) throughout the Republic of North Macedonia, this paper will investigate these two seemingly contradictory discourses that reflect the treatment of old age, both in traditional culture and in contemporary settings.2 Under “traditional culture” we consider those norms and regulations that existed during the second part of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, dominating in rural areas, and which are present today in a more or less altered form, both in rural and in urban social contexts (Đorđević 2001: 16-17).

HOW OLD IS (TOO) “OLD”? Old age in North Macedonian ethnological inquiries has not been given the attention it deserves. This is a paradox, especially if one takes into account the reverence that ethnologists demonstrate for the field data gathered from elderly interviewees, whose statements are considered primary sources, especially when it comes to customs and beliefs that are disappearing or that have already died out. Usually, the questions posed to these interviewees relate to their memories, i.e., their youth, and not to their current life and status – in old age – which remains at the margins of the researchers’ interest. What is lost in the process is the fact that these people do not only lead different lives in comparison to the time when they were young, but that they also have a strikingly different old age in relation to their predecessors. An essential question in this sense is: where is the threshold between these two periods, the labor-intensive, physically capable and socially active life of an

2

Unless noted otherwise, all quoted interviews and field notes are deposited in the Archive of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University St. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia. Initials are used in order to protect interviewees’ privacy.

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average adult, and the imagined meditative “near-the-fireplace” life of the family’s elders? When does old age begin in the life of the individual and what are the collective notions about its span? What are the potential gender differences thereof? Elderly informants speak with apparent nostalgia about the past when “there was order,” i.e., times when generational hierarchy was respected and when old people seemingly had much more authority and social power in comparison to the present. Ethnographic materials and studies dating from the beginning and the middle of the 20th century that contain information on the position of the elderly in the Balkans (Hadži-Vasiljević 1909; Pavlović 1928; Filipović 1939; Rusić 1956) create the impression that this power was so essential that one can even speak of gerontocracy – the rule of the elderly – at the level of the family but also at the level of a wider community. However, they presuppose an understanding of the meaning of “old” in a given context, a direct historical and cultural translation of a concept which is not clearly defined and far from universal. A close reading of these materials shows that from today’s point of view, it is not apparent what the exact age is of the persons considered sufficiently “old” to participate in the regulation of the social and economic life of the village, that is, sufficiently “old” to participate in the practical application of customary law that itself bestowed authority upon these persons. It seems that old age is not something that can be expressed in purely quantitative form or attained by default when reaching a certain age, but that it is more a combination of different elements that include physical and intellectual ability, leadership skills as well as vaguer traits such as wisdom, charisma and personal charm. The head of the family – starešina or stariot, both terms etymologically containing the word star (“old”) – was usually its eldest male member. Still, this does not mean that he was chronologically advanced in age, however. In the materials related to Bulgarian customary law, for example, dedo-starec (“grandfather-old man”) is used more in the sense of a function (head of the wider family) than as a realistic indicator of the age of this person that is not clearly defined. What is defined, however, is that this position could be filled by the grandfather, the father, the uncle or another male member of the family. A woman (the mother, the aunt or the grandmother) could become the head of the family solely as an exception, when a family consisted only of under-aged male children, who were still not able to manage the property, but only until one of them “gains strength,” i.e., becomes sufficiently mature to manage the complex daily business of running the household and represent it in the frames of the community (Marinov 1995: 51). Thus, the right of conducting important social functions is attained and accumulated with age, but the moment of the potential application of this

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right, its apex, still depends upon factors that often do not have a direct relation to chronological age, but are more a sum of different circumstances, such as the age, health and skill of the individual to present himself (seldom, herself) as dominant. The adjective star (“old”) contained in starešina thus has a more symbolic than literal meaning of “old person” and refers to the most authoritative and wisest one. These qualities – wisdom, authority – are thus primarily associated with old age, that is, with life experience. Age, but also gender and individual characteristics, are relevant criteria when it comes to selecting the members of institutions that once governed the economic and social life of the village. In Gorna Reka (western North Macedonia, close to the Albanian border), up to the middle of the 20th century there was an institution called selski odbor (“village council”) that together with the kmet (the head of the village) made important decisions concerning village life. The village council consisted of maximum seven members, sufficiently mature (45-65 years of age) and reasonable men (Mirčevska 2003: 146). The so-called miroven sovet (“conflict-resolution committee”), on the other hand, was responsible for mediating all village conflicts. It consisted of three elderly male persons, between 65-70 years of age, who were known for their fairness and honesty. The role of the elderly was enhanced by the fact that younger males were often temporarily absent, due to economic migration, and were not a part of daily life. Old people were relevant social actors in other parts of North Macedonia as well. According to Branislav Rusić, the demarcation of borders between two neighboring villages at the time of the Ottoman rule but also later on, until 1918, in the region of Kičevo (central North Macedonia) was done on Sundays or on religious holidays. The event was attended by heads of the villages, the members of the councils, a priest, a number of elderly and authoritative persons from both sides, and a few children (Rusić 1956: 2). The massive stone that was set as a mark was called starec (“old man”), the name most probably relating to its inviolable nature as well as its good “memory” of the location of the border. Still, in order to secure this recollection for future generations, the children present at the event would undergo an unusual procedure: When the stone or other border markings were set, the priest sanctified each location. Then a member of the village governing bodies turned the children’s attention to the border and its markings and gave them a pretty tough smack in the face, so strong that some of them would start crying. (ibid.: 2)

This is a peculiar case of intergenerational exchange of knowledge, carried out not in some metaphorical way, but literally embodied, through physical pain. For

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these children it would initiate a certain Pavlov reflex: every time they would be near these locations, they associated them to events and information essential for the survival of the community. These data on the high status of the elderly is nevertheless in stark contrast to other ethnographic materials that include negligence towards old people, such that it could even be interpreted as silent murder. The Serbian ethnographer Milenko Filipović, who worked on the territory of North Macedonia during the 1920s, quotes his own field notes as well as newspaper articles from the 1950s that speak about old people being isolated in hen houses and in basements, sent there by their own sons and fed only a slice of bread a day. This practice, according to him, is related to the very old practice of euthanasia, an act of “mercy” on the side of the community and the family, who want to alleviate the suffering of the old. We live in a society where civil principles prevail, according to which such assistance [assisted dying] is not only forbidden, but is considered a major sin and criminal act against life and community. But our people have different notions, that such a person should be assisted to die […]. In earlier times, they took an affirmative stance on this issue and even found different means to perpetuate it. (Filipović 1991: 207)

The mentioned “means,” according to Filipović, consist of magical procedures of accelerating the imminent death of the sick and the old who “are dying in pain,” such as the ritual acts of forgiving and being forgiven and confessing in front of a priest (ibid.: 208). Still, he admits that besides magical means there were others, much more concrete methods of accelerating death of the – seemingly – already useless members of the family, such as the radical negligence and starving of the elderly, which from today’s ethical and legal aspect are not considered euthanasia but a subtle murder. The explanation of the gap between these two discourses – the one giving the old high social status and the other leading to treating them as redundant – lies in a very important distinction, the contrast between people who are considered “old” (stari) but still able to actively participate in social life, and “too old” (prestareni, literally “overaged”), who can no longer work or take care of themselves and thus become a burden. A cautious approach towards this issue is paramount when making overall judgments on the attitude of entire cultures, including the North Macedonian one, towards its elderly. Such acts of negligence should be put into the specific historical context of potential wars, scarcity of food and general poverty, but also into an ideological context of communities that considered the cyclical generational change as proof of their continuity and thus priori-

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tized the care towards their young, sometimes (in cases of limited resources) at the expense of their oldest. The basic assumption – found in today’s phrases uttered at funerals or after hearing news that the oldest person in a family has died – is that death is natural and thus expected and normal if it goes according to the chronological family order. “Let it be according to the order” (“По редот нека е”) should serve as comfort for the younger members of the family when the oldest ones are on their death bed and is not considered scandalous even if uttered by the older ones.

OLD AT 50? – THE FEMALE PERSPECTIVE While the definition of old age for men rests heavily upon their social status, that is, their ability to occupy a place in the active male hierarchy, the female side of the story seems to depend on their biological cycle. One of our interviewees states the following: If a woman marries at 17-18, gives birth to a daughter, and then marries off the daughter, she is still young, she is not even 50. It is inappropriate to call her “grandmother.” While if she gets married at 26, after her children get married she would be sufficiently old to be called a mother-in-law and a grandmother.”3

The age of 50 seems to be an important milestone for defining women’s maturity and the beginning of her old age, repeatedly mentioned in field materials. In an interview recorded in 2003, a woman aged 52 says: “I am embarrassed to talk to you since I’m too old. At 50 I’m a living old bag of bones.”4 In the villages of Struški Drimkol (in the south-west of North Macedonia), women often stay at home with their in-laws while their husbands work abroad. They meet only a few times a year for important events and holidays. When one of them complains that she has not seen her husband for a year, another one comforts her: You are young, there is still plenty of time to see him. What about me? I’m 50. I’m old, but still willing. We are nearing the end. But who knows, maybe he will show interest. Maybe he will be willing, too [laughing].5

3

Archive of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (AIEA), DEM_123, D.A., female born 1934, Poreče region, recorded in 2002.

4

AIEA, DEM_229, B.S., female, 52 years old, Golo Brdo region, recorded in 2003.

5

AIEA, DEM_593, K., female, 50 years old, Struški Drimkol, recorded in 2006.

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The sheer number of years does not seem, however, to be the most important element in defining an old woman – it is more a matter of the individual feeling of being socially appreciated as a source of knowledge, a bearer of tradition, an authority vis-à-vis younger women in the family, or on the contrary, the feeling of being marginalized, physically incapable of heavy work and lonely. The first discourse is found in the narratives of the informants who relate to the real or imagined position of their elders (the past). The second is related to their own sense of wellbeing or lack thereof (their present). Being an old woman in the past was not stereotypically related to suffering, and there are good reasons for this. Being old came with certain privileges, possibilities to bend the rules valid for others. “In the past, no woman could smoke [pie tutun, literally: ‘drink tobacco’]. They couldn’t have done it, no way. Only old people, old women. They were allowed,”6 says an informant commenting on the difference between social norms in the past and today. The same was valid for other “forbidden” activities for younger women, such as drinking alcohol. Grandmothers could, as an exception, also occupy important social positions that were otherwise reserved for men. In case there was a child to be baptized and its godfather was not around, his role would be filled by a random old woman in the village or the child’s very grandmother. “Our godparents were far away, so my mother-in-law baptized my children. Only my oldest son was baptized by his godfather.”7 This is valid both for Christians and the Torbesh from the region of Veles, who also attach a high status to the grandmother or the oldest woman, who can also have the honor of naming the newborn in the family. Old women had a special position regarding ritual practices, promotion and maintenance of taboos that played an extremely important role in the regulation of social life. “I was prohibited to go out by older women in the house until the baby was six weeks old. All your plates, all your ceramic water vessels will break to pieces, they said,”8 remembers one of our interviewees. A sanction followed for the ones who did not respect their mothers, mothers-in-law and older people in general. “If a woman wanted to do things her way [if she was samovlasna, literally: ‘self-empowered’], if she did not listen to the elders, she could later on lose her milk.”9 Girls and younger women were closely scrutinized for their behavior and their whereabouts. A particular mechanism of social control

6

AIEA, DEM_118, S.J., female born 1926, Poreče region, recorded in 2001.

7

AIEA, DEM_120, R.S., female born 1930, Poreče region, recorded in 2001.

8

AIEA, DEM_118, S.J., female born 1926, Poreče region, recorded in 2001.

9

Non-archived field material, L.K., female born 1930, Struški Drimkol, recorded in 2000.

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was gossiping – when a rumor would spread about an alleged immoral act of a certain woman, it was compared to losing an eye. “Old people would say, don’t let anyone utter a bad word about you – such a word is worth an eye. Once it spreads, you cannot take that back.”10 A special relation of subordination in this sense was set between a young bride and her mother-in-law. “See this phone? If I’d say it’s a phone, and she’d say it’s an ashtray – it would be an ashtray. One would not contradict! When the mother-in-law entered the house, you would run to her, take her coat, you would wash her feet,”11 a woman aged 63 from Struški Drimkol remembers. Wives were forbidden to pronounce their husband’s name, even at home, using instead terms such as stopanot (“my master”), domaḱinot (“head of the household”) оr čovekot (“my man”). The norm presupposed a sanction in case of disrespect: “Our elders said, and we followed, that if you mention your husband’s name, a tree in the forest would dry out. And indeed, you see how arid these woods got now.”12 The authority of older women was such that it provoked respect when it came to the ones who were skilled in healing (white magic), but also caused fear of the ones practicing sorcery (black magic). Józef Obrębski, the Polish anthropologist who conducted research in the region of Poreče in North Macedonia in the 1930s, writes the following: “Healing magic in Poreče is efficient only when it is made by an old woman that cannot bear children anymore […]. My informants were quite confident that the only experts for making ‘melems’ [healing creams and potions] are old women” (Obrembski 2001: 55). On the other hand, he describes these female sorcerers as “egoistic, evil and jealous” (especially towards younger and beautiful women). Old age is one of the major attributes related to the notions of the witch in the folklore of many Slavic and European nations – in it, the old and ugly vešterka is a personification of evil, an area in which she is vešta, or skillful.13

10 Non-archived field material, N.R., female born 1935, Struški Drimkol, recorded in 2005. 11 AIEA, DEM_591, S.R., female born 1943, Struški Drimkol, recorded in 2006. 12 AIEA, DEM_126, B.D., female born 1927, Poreče region, recorded in 2002. 13 According to the etymological dictionary of Petar Skok (1971), the primary meaning of the word vešt is “the one who knows.” Thus, veštak is a “master” and veštakinja (or in Macedonian: vešterka) a woman who is skilled at her work.

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“OLD PEOPLE ARE NOW CONSIDERED A WASTE” “What is a grandmother? It is like me now – alienated, lonely and toothless. When I was young we danced like crazy. Oh, oh… Now I’m wearing a black scarf,”14 says a woman aged 75, recorded in the Poreče region in 2002. The adjectives she uses to describe her current situation as an old person are similar to the ones in most of the other interviews. “We got old, devastated”; “No one respects old people anymore”; “Our children have left us to die like dogs”; “These are difficult times for old folks,” are just some of the phrases used in this sense by different interviewees. A specific form of self-deprecation is reflected in the perception of their own physical bodies, which become a mirror for the society’s view of old people as ugly and repugnant. Some of the interviewees describe their homes as being in a “miserable” state and avoid inviting the interviewer inside because of the mess and the unhygienic conditions in which they live and which make them “dirty” and “smelly.” They are worried that they would leave a bad impression on a young person, who might even spread the word about it. Others make a distinction between exceptionally “clean” old people and the “others,” equally old but “grimy,” irresponsible towards their hygiene and a dignified look. This is a specific gossip topic between old women, who might feel sorry for their own bodily state, but be quite judgmental when it comes to describing someone else’s situation. There are women who don’t take a bath. I cannot bear not to be washed more than a week, two weeks. I took a bath two days ago. There are women here, you can plant a plum tree on them. Filthy, they stink. I have a bad tooth, and it smells badly, it makes me despise myself. But that’s all – others are filthy all over. She goes to bed unclean, she wakes up like that. Even if I am old, I don’t like unclean things. I have everything in order.”15

The control over one’s body and adherence to at least the minimal standards of cleanliness and “decent” looks, which refer not only to one’s body but the immediate surroundings (the house, the property), seems to be of vital importance for the dignity of these women. In absence of such control, in cases of ill health and decline of one’s life energy, death is considered to be salvation for these old people, left to their own devices in isolated villages. The obligations that they have fulfilled as sons,

14 AIEA, DEM_126, B.D., female born 1927, Poreče region, recorded in 2002. 15 AIEA, DEM_57, Z.D., female born 1928, Veles region, recorded in 1999.

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daughters and daughters-in-law towards their elders are not applicable to the new generations. “I was in labor from Christmas to Epiphany [13 days], and now my son does not even want to buy me a pair of glasses,” says one of the grandmothers, while remembering what kind of heavy work she had to do for her parents when they got older. Her daughter-in-law was also obliged to take care of her parents-in-law when they got old and sick and of the whole household once her husband was not able to do the “man’s work.” But this does not apply to the new generation: To carry two loads of hay on my back while it rained. Me, running, carrying the load. When Genadij [her husband] fell ill, I reaped the whole property by myself with a scythe. Then someone said to my son – aren’t you ashamed that your 60-year-old mother is doing all this work? It seems he got the message, and now he brings an electric trimmer from Brod [a town where he lives, near the village]. But he sold a couple of my goats. And now even my donkey. Since I cannot take care of them anymore. Again, it’s me who is to blame.”16

Having children, thus, is not a guarantee of a peaceful and secure old age. Most of the interviewees point out the fact that their fate seems similar to the ones of childless neighbors or relatives, since young people leave the villages in search of a better life, and are usually not interested in taking care of their parents, except in cases when they (the parents) own a desirable piece of property. Some of them choose to move their old parents to the cities, to live with them, provided that the elders have a relatively high pension that could thus become part of the family budget. The solidarity between old people left in the isolated villages might be a way to survive, and this peer assistance goes beyond ethnic and religious affiliations. In a mixed Christian-Muslim village in the region of Struga, for example, three Muslim women took care of a Christian grandmother on her death bed. Her children were in Skopje and in Ohrid. There was no one, and even if there had been a grandson or a granddaughter present they could not have been left to face the situation by themselves. We gathered in the house and sat there for two, three nights until she died. Who does that nowadays in Labuništa and Podgorci [other ethnically mixed villages in the region]? No one. These are selfish people. We live nicely with each other, ain’t that so?17

16 AIEA, DEM_127, B.D., female born 1927, Poreče region, recorded in 2002. 17 Non-archived field material, G. female around 80 years of age, Struški Drimkol, recorded in 2005.

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The interpretations of the root of the current state of affairs given by the elderly themselves differ, but there are few common elements: the migration from the villages to the cities, the opportunity for women to work outside the house and communism – a blanket term for the previous political system, established after World War II, which interrupted the existing social order and established another one. In it, young people could achieve economic independence as the basis for their general emancipation from their parents and older relatives. Simultaneously, the market value of the very property that had made them dependent until that moment (house, livestock, land) started to drop – huge pieces of arable land would be exchanged for small apartments in the city. However, an important distinction has to be made in terms of the way that rural-urban migration in socialist times affected the Orthodox population on one hand, and the Muslim one on the other. As noted by Anna Hausmaninger, due to their higher educational standard and their mother tongue skills, Macedonians were able to meet the job requirements of public administration much easier. Another important element, according to her, was the post-World War II process of nation building: in order to strengthen the national consciousness of the Macedonian population in frames of Yugoslavia, and consequently to ensure their loyalty to the new state, many key positions within state administration and public industry were offered to Macedonians. As a result, many Muslims claim that they were discriminated against during the times of socialism, marginalized in the frames of the newly built modern industrial society and somehow “pushed” to become a part of the transnational processes of urbanization (Hausmaninger 2011: 3-4). In terms of family structure, Muslim families were thus less affected by village-to-city migrations than the Orthodox Macedonian ones.18 A good illustration of the previously mentioned transnational processes of urbanization as substitutes for the lack of inclusion in the processes at home are the mixed Macedonian-Torbesh villages in Struški Drimkol. In times of socialism, but also today, they are large and densely populated, especially during the summer, when Torbesh men – economic migrants or pečalbari who work mostly in Western Europe – come back home. According to family tradition, women, that is, the daughters-in-law, remain at home with the children and their in-laws, while their husbands live and work alone abroad. This decades-old practice is,

18 Although here “Muslims” is used as a general term, there are potential differences in the effect of rural-urban migrations in socialist times among the Muslim communities (Albanian, Turkish and Torbesh) in North Macedonia. They deserve special attention and are beyond the scope of this paper, which reflects upon the situation of the elderly solely in Orthodox Macedonian and mixed Orthodox Macedonian-Torbesh villages.

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however, prone to change, as more and more entire families migrate together (husbands taking their wives and children along), leaving the elderly behind. Older people from these villages find that this constitutes a break from the obligatory responsibility towards the parents and for understandable reasons do not support this practice, even in cases where they receive financial assistance from their relatives abroad. However, in both cases – when only men are the ones that leave and when they leave together with their families – the family property is usually not completely abandoned and is visited and physically maintained by the younger generation at least during the summer months. On the other hand, a major part of the Orthodox Christian village inhabitants that moved to the cities have sold their original property. One of the reasons in times of socialism was to attain a so-called detski dodatok (“children’s allowance”) – a state-granted financial assistance to low-income families with children, which exists even today. However, the conditions for obtaining this allowance were (1) that the family does not own arable land or other property that might generate income and (2) that the children are integrated into the official educational system. According to Aneta Svetieva, the combination of these two elements was crucial for a number of families’ decision to both move to the cities and sell their property at home (Crvenkovska-Risteska 2002: 24). Village property was also sold when it became redundant. The initiative usually came from the sons in the family being aware that they, and their parents, will never return to the village; this became a way for them to get rid of the responsibility related to its maintenance, including paying taxes (ibid.: 30). For the majority of the population in North Macedonia, this process of modernization moved so fast that it took only one generation for a radical change in the established order. Suddenly, the elders were the ones who were supposed to be silent in front of the younger ones and suppress their thoughts and needs. “This is how they are, the current ones [the younger], you cannot compete with them. This is why I say that we have to shut our mouths. We don’t have a say. It is how they want it to be!” This is valid not only in relation to one’s own children, but even when it comes to grandchildren. “They want their own company. My words are not interesting,” says an interviewee, only to be supported by another woman. “Be quiet and just sit still. Let them do their talking. We should be the ones who give way”; “Nobody has to tell me to leave the room. I am doing it myself. I’m very sensitive… If they want to show us respect, then fine, if they don’t want to, fine too.”19 Numerous excuses are being given by some of the old people con-

19 AIEA, DEM_579, M., female born 1928, U., female born 1927, Struški Drimkol, recorded in 2006.

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cerning the negligence they suffer from their own family. “They have their own things to do”; “He has to take care of his family”; “They have a summer house to rent, she has to be there for the holidays,” are some of those statements that serve as a ready-made narrative that should prevent any further discussion on the real state of affairs – the children’s lack of respect of and interest in their old parents. Even the relatively recent practice of putting old people in homes for the elderly – some of which are private and quite expensive for the average employee – are being justified, since “an old man is worse than a child – if a child goes on your nerves, you can smack them, you can let them cry. But you cannot do the same with your parents.”20 The needs and wishes of old people in some of the isolated rural areas, where villages are almost empty and old people are left behind, are pretty modest; they would like to have a doctor in the village, to have a regular postal delivery (that includes bringing them their pensions), good radio and TV reception – especially in remote mountain villages the signal is quite weak – and to be able to use public transport to the nearest city. Even those simple wishes are not granted, which causes explicit anger towards politicians but also towards their peers, old people from the cities: In one city there might be 200. If they can use 200 there, why can’t we have at least one? The Government is boosting with this and that, maybe they have done some good elsewhere, but not here. In Skopje retired people are entitled to twelve days of free bus rides a month, while we cannot go to the city even once a month, even if we are willing to pay for it. The villages are devastated, while they are still using everything there is to use from nature – the forests, the mines, everything that there is to steal and take.21

Although, as it has already been mentioned, communism and Yugoslav times are pointed to as a starting point of the changes in the relation between the young and the old, although that system is still considered better and much more interested in solving the problems of the village population than the more recent ones: In the past, in the times of Yugoslavia, a delegate [from the governing bodies] would visit the village, the whole community would gather and he would ask about our problems. Now, no one is ever coming, not even from the political parties. We learn from TV that

20 Non-archived field material, J., female born 1945, Mariovo region, recorded in 2014. 21 Non-archived field material, C., male born 1929, Mariovo region, recorded in 2014.

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they have made a decision. How can they decide on anything when they don’t know what the problem is?22

Home care is usually provided by families who either expect to inherit a property from the old person or have signed a legal binding document for care until death (za dogleduvanje). Such a certificate can be signed between parents and their children, between close relatives, but also between people that have no relation whatsoever. Advertisements in local newspapers and websites by people who are looking for someone old to take care of until death in exchange for inheritance are becoming so frequent that they are considered a legitimate and normal type of social exchange – a situation far removed from the reverence that according to the proverb from the beginning of this text each old person deserves.

CONCLUSION This paper examined the ambivalent attitude towards the elderly, comparing the traditional model versus the contemporary one, trying to detect contradictions between the formally promoted attitudes and the realistic state of affairs. There is an apparent need for translation of past modes of thought regarding old age into the contemporary, linear and Western-shaped model of old age that is mostly based upon the administrative passage from an active agent of the labor force to retirement and not upon a previous understanding of an old person occupying the top of the social ladder, implying wisdom and life experience. This rapid discourse shift according to the interviewees coincides with the period after World War II, when after the establishment of a new, socialist system, the previous one was interrupted: young people moved from the villages and in most cases left their parents and grandparents behind. Although there is a considerable difference in the way of life between the elderly in the cities and the ones living alone in isolated villages, with no health care and infrastructure available, in general they all agree that in the past, the hierarchical order based upon age was much more respected and that the elderly dominated social and family life. It is, however, important to note that this paper was based solely upon the views and comments of the elderly and not the ones of the younger generation, whose perspective might be valuable for constructing the macro picture of old age that might be less void of empathy than the presented material suggests.

22 Non-archived field material, C., male born 1929, Mariovo region, recorded in 2014.

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The micro-social structure present in those villages with few elderly people left is one of destitution and hardship, but also one of peer solidarity that stems from sharing the same destiny. They are far from being active social agents as their parents or grandparents might have been, their expectations are modest and their hopes are low. When the last of them is gone, the memory of the good old times when “there was order” and the young swallows learned from the old might only exist in didactic folk stories and maxims, whose messages do not always apply in reality.

REFERENCES Crvenkovska-Risteska, Ines (2002): Starčeski domaḱinstva vo porečkite sela: sovremena sostojba. Diploma work defended at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, University St. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje, North Macedonia. Unpublished manuscript. De Bovoar, Simon [De Beauvoir, Simone] (1987): Starost. Vol. 1. Beograd. Đorđević, Jadranka (2001): Srodnički odnosi u Vranju. Beograd. Filipović, Milenko (1939): “Običaji i verovanja u Skopskoj kotlini”, in: Srpski etnografski zbornik 1/54, 424-455. Filipović, Milenko (1991): Čovek među ljudima. Beograd. Hadži-Vasiljević, Jovan (1909): Južna stara Srbija: istorijska, etnografska i politička istraživanja 1: Kumanovska oblast. Beograd. Hausmaninger, Anna: “The Construction of Identities in a Trans-Local Context: Inter-Ethnic Relations in a Macedonian Village During Socialism and Transition.” www.sant.ox.ac.uk/esc/esc-lectures/hausmaninger.pdf [accessed December 20, 2011]. Marinov, Dimităr (1995): Bălgarsko običajno pravo. Sofija. Mirčevska, Mirjana (2003): “Selata vo Gorna Reka kako opštestveno-ekonomski zaednici”, in: EtnoAntropoZum 3, 136-163. Obrembski, Jozef [Obrębski, Józef] (2001): Makedonski etnosociološki studii. Skopje. Pavlović, Jeremija (1928): Maleševo i Maleševci. Beograd. Rusić, Branislav (1956): “Stariji običaji oko određivanja zemljišnih međa i oko poljskih radova u Kičeviji”, in: Glasnik etnografskog muzeja u Beogradu 11/11, 1-26. Skok, Petar (1971): Etimološki rječnik hrvatskoga ili sprskoga jezika. Zagreb.

Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia A Gender Perspective Natalija Perišić & Nadežda Satarić

INTRODUCTION Living in a post-transition, post-conflict, rapidly aging society which is constantly, but unproductively, attempting to join the European Union, has been very challenging for Serbia’s population, from multiple perspectives. Over the last three decades, all of its inhabitants have been affected – both children and the elderly, but also those belonging to the working age cohort – by tremendous societal reforms governed by neoliberal principles and values. The reforms have been directed towards the introduction of mixed economy in welfare sectors, along with predominantly promoted principles of individual responsibility and consequent cuts of public transfers for the welfare of the population. The older citizens, among other groups, have been pressured to an extremely high degree, while the public policies directed towards their care and support have had at least ambiguous implications.1 In Serbia, older citizens have been dominantly reliant on public policies, especially the pension policy (Perišić 2016: 113-132). As a result of a declarative socialist orientation towards full employment, currently around 84 percent of older citizens are eligible for pension benefits (Perišić 2018: 81), with approximately 30 percent entitled to pensions of an amount very

1

Such a welfare system of benefits and services, providing a low level of security to the elderly (or even creating formal insecurity), requires a strong informal sector, i.e., family support, which has consistently been an important pillar of the national welfare state for decades.

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close to or even lower than the relative poverty line (RFPIO 2016: 7).2 Consequently, they have been confronting hardships in numerous domains of their lives. Older women seem to be in an even more difficult situation compared to older men. Firstly, socialist employment policy did not change the traditional gender roles: women represent 85 percent of those elderly not entitled to pensions (Perišić 2018: 81). Secondly, their pensions are lower than those of their male counterparts: an average old-age and disability pension for women amounts to 80 and 86 percent, respectively, of an average old-age and disability pension for men (data for survivors’ pensions are not segregated by gender, but it could be reasonably supposed that the majority of beneficiaries are women, while these pensions are comparatively the lowest ones [RZS 2016a: 80]). Thirdly, women in Serbia live longer, which is a universal phenomenon: their average life expectancy is 78 years (compared to 73 years for men) and their healthy years of life 67.5 (compared to 65.5 years for men) (RZS 2017: 30). However, female beneficiaries of old-age pensions live shorter than the male ones: “The average years of life for female and male old-age pensioners are 76 and 78, respectively”3 (ibid.: 88). This difference is not observed in disability pensioners; both female and male disability pensioners live 72 years on average (ibid.), but this can be taken as a paradox, too. Fourthly, in Serbia, as a rule, even in their old age, women are informal caregivers of their older male household members. Due to the generally greater longevity as compared to men, women frequently live in single households, with a rather limited availability of social support services. The theoretical background of this paper is inspired by feminist perspectives on aging, arguing in favor of gender-shaped differences in old age. One of the main assumptions thereof is that older women face heightened inequalities, i.e., the life of women in their old age magnifies the inequalities experienced at the earlier stages of their lives (Abbott/Wallace/Tyler 2005: 139). As shown in the chapter on the methodology used, our research combined qualitative and quantitative approaches, with a focus on older people living in New Belgrade (Novi Beograd), Serbia. However, the objective of this paper is to focus on older women and to describe their old age from different angles; to analyze the meaning of getting old for women in an urban area in Serbia, with an emphasis on its societal construction and impact upon older women; to compare and contrast the life situations of older women and older men and to find out to what extent gender is an important variable. The main findings are presented, contextualized and fol-

2

29.5 percent of the pensioners are entitled to pensions amounting up to RSD 15,000 (RFPIO 2016), while the relative poverty line is set to RSD 14,920 (RZS 2016a).

3

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Serbian are the authors’ [N.P., N.S.].

Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia | 129

lowed by a discussion. The concluding part provides an interpretation of the results in line with the objectives as defined above.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: GETTING OLD FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE Gerontology, the scientific study of aging, has been significantly evolving over the last 50 years. Its development and expansion certainly come, among other things, as a result of demographic changes: the increase in the number and the share of older people within populations, “which attracted attention to the status, needs and problems of this group of citizens” (Milosavljević/Sumrak 2018: 177). The scope of gerontology is extremely wide; it is oriented towards “those factors that go to make up the totality of understanding of what old age is and how it impacts on a specific group of people” (Lynch 2014: 131). With its versatile approaches to the topic, supported by interdisciplinary theories and research, gerontology has been making a revolutionary contribution to the general understanding of and general attitudes towards older people. However, in order to offer knowledge which is both scientific and applicable, gerontology constructed the subject of its scrutiny as objective, i.e., neutral. This actually resulted in its underlying focus on older men, and not on all older people, and specifically not on older women. Its implicit assumption was that aging affects both men and women in a similar way. This is surprising to a certain extent. Older women outnumber older men, with the discrepancy increasing with advancing age: “[A]t ages 70-74 there are roughly four women for every three men; at 80-84 there are two women for every man, and by 95 the ratio becomes three to one” (Abbott/Wallace/Tyler 2005: 137).4 Based on that, important changes in societies resulting from an increased number of frail older women could be expected. In Serbia, the implications thereof seem not to be taken into account or at least not fully: social services for older people have been constantly underdeveloped, without any focus on single older women living alone in their households. On the other hand, this is hardly surprising; the neglect of women’s perspectives seems to be the rule in the social sciences and humanities, as feminist scholars have put it. The reasons for this are twofold at least. Firstly, these are ever existing patriarchal and paternalistic envi-

4

In Serbia, at ages 70 to 74 the proportion of women to men is the same as the abovementioned. At ages 75 to 85, there are three women for every two men, and at age 85+ the ratio is two to one (authors’ calculations based on the data of RZS 2016b).

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ronments which have been successfully transforming their own views about older women into “universal” norms. Secondly, it is structural oppression in societies, where “those wider forces within society of social divisions, class and the power inherent within these systems mitigate against any specific group” (Lynch 2014: 27) and which is even more powerful against older women than older men. Namely, in almost all societies more status and power are attributed to older men than older women. Feminist perspectives have offered important insights into the life experiences, transitions and viewpoints of older women (Lister 2017: 63-64). One of the most striking hypothesis of feminist authors is that “later life compounds many of the forms of oppression experienced by women throughout the life course” (Abbott/Wallace/Tyler 2005: 141). Unequal positions women have in education, the labor market and the family, compared with men, increase their vulnerability to poverty, to abuse, to social marginalization and deprivation in old age. Not only feminists, but also researchers from various backgrounds, have well documented education paths typical for girls that lead to their employment in lowerpaid occupations on the labor market.5 National surveys from all over Europe show aspects of inequality inside the family: time consumption in household chores by women contrary to men, etc., stemming, among other things, from the division of caring responsibilities. One of the key feminist debates, that of caring,6 which revealed that “care is work and often very demanding work” (Lister 2017: 71), refers to older women to a large extent. In general, i.e., in all their ages of life, women are more, and sometimes even exclusively, expected to take on caring roles for family members, despite the financial and emotional cost. This expectation becomes women’s reality, even in their old age, even if they are not capable of caring due to their own frailty: “This is at a time when they may have expected to withdraw more from the stresses of life” (Lynch 2014: 27). Caregivers’ roles have extremely important implications in numerous dimensions of female lives, especially in their old age, as will be shown below. Poverty has started to be so strongly connected to women, that it led Diana Pearce to coin the term of the “feminization of poverty” (Lister 2013: 56). As shown by research evidence, older women are especially vulnerable to poverty: they live longer than men and they live long enough to reach the category of the oldest-old, who are poorer in general. Being the oldest-old is frequently com-

5

For Serbia, see Perišić/Tanasijević 2018.

6

Clare Ungerson made a distinction between caring for and caring about, in terms of the absence and presence of the professional nature of the care work involved (Ungerson 1999).

Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia | 131

bined with disability, which carries another risk of poverty, but also with living alone and having low or no income. Caring responsibilities during the life course sometimes prevent women from the participation in the labor market, disabling them from effectuating the right to an old-age pension and making them eligible for a survivor’s pension at best. Alternatively, in case of interrupted careers, women end up with lower pensions. Rory Lynch similarly claims “that poverty itself may be the price of fertility” (Lynch 2014: 35). Retirement, as argued by feminists, does not have the same meaning for women and men either: “[W]omen do not ‘retire’ in the same way as men, and when a male partner retires, a woman’s workload may actually be increased” (Abbott/Wallace/Tyler 2005: 141). Discriminatory practices in societies, denoted by the term of ageism, seem to work harder against older women than older men. It is often thought that women are “too old” at a younger age than men, while the ideal of being young effectively reduces their presence in the mass media and in the public arena. Their sexuality is taken from them, denied and ignored. Finally, older women seem to be disadvantaged and discriminated when it comes to human rights in general. Despite that, mainstream research and statistics “seem to systematically ignore and minimize the situation of older women on a global, regional and national scale” (Somers 2018: 46).

METHODOLOGY Our overall research was conducted with a view to establishing and understanding the needs of older people, in order to be able to reliably present their life situations and advocate their human rights to decision-makers. The data were gathered on the territory of New Belgrade, in the period March-June 2017.7 The research design consisted of three phases, the first of which was the desk analysis of the demographic trends of New Belgrade in the post-war period (from 1945 to 2011), the network of healthcare and social support services available to older people and public policies affecting their position. The second phase included the surveying of 605 older people living in New Belgrade, in elderly households. The latter were taken to mean the community of

7

The research was funded by the non-governmental organization Amity from Belgrade, Serbia. The presentation of the overall results was funded by the United Nations Population Fund, Office Belgrade, Serbia.

132 | Natalija Perišić & Nadežda Satarić

persons aged 65 years and above, living together and sharing living costs. The stratified survey deployed three strata: • Units of the first stratum were the local communities of New Belgrade – all 19

of them. • Units of the second stratum were elderly households in selected local commu-

nities of New Belgrade. Information on elderly households were obtained either from presidents of tenants’ councils (Predsednici kućnog saveta) or tenants in the building, i.e., neighbors. • Units of the third stratum were persons in selected households: an older person was surveyed in cases of single elderly households, and in cases of households consisting of more than one person aged 65 years and older, the oldest person in the household was surveyed. The total number of visited elderly households amounted to 1,351 to get 605 older persons surveyed, with a response rate of 46 percent. The data were gathered from 408 older women and 197 older men. The majority of respondents, 134 of them, were aged 65 to 69; and the minority, 111 of them, were aged over 85. Finally, 62 percent of the respondents were living alone. More detailed data are presented in Table 1. Table 1: Sample description N Total

Sex

Age

Sig.

605

Male*

Female*

32.6

67.4

Male

197

Female

408

65-69

134

32.1

67.9

70-74

124

38.7

61.3

75-79

119

31.9

68.1

80-84

117

28.2

71.8

85+

111

31.5

68.5

0.00

0.52

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Relationship to persons in non-single households

Marital status

Alone

377 0.00

20.4

79.6

55.6

44.4

Husband/wife, partner

205

Other

23

26.1

73.9

Single, separated

48

20.8

79.2

Married, cohabitating

202

55.0

45.0

Divorced, widowed, etc.

355

21.4

78.6

0.00

* Percentage.

Respondents were interviewed face-to-face in their households, by means of a structured questionnaire. It consisted of 71 questions,8 some of which with multiple answers, divided into six groups, following the selection questions. The questions related to the following domains: (1) demographic characteristics, (2) social and economic status, (3) health, including capability of independent daily functioning, (4) social services, (5) support networks in everyday life and (6) experiences of discrimination and violence against older people in general and by themselves. In the third phase, the data from six focus groups of additional 61 older people living in New Belgrade, in elderly households, were gathered. They comprised in total 39 older women and 22 older men, of an average age of 71 years

8

Considerations of potential shortcomings in the methodological design should start from the rather long list of questions in the survey. The respondents were actually not informed that they were to respond to 71 questions, but that the interview would last for approximately 45 minutes. The pool of respondents consisted only of those that stated to be willing to respond. Sometimes the respondents were so eager to respond that researchers found it difficult to end an interview. In cases of limited cognitive or bodily abilities, the researchers asked the respondents for another visit, when some of his/her relatives would be present, if there were no objections to it. On top of this, some of the questions from the introductory part were not even posed, since the answers were obvious (such as whether there is an elevator in a building, etc.).

134 | Natalija Perišić & Nadežda Satarić

of life (the range of their age was from 65 to 91), with 43 of them living alone. Focus groups were organized on the premises of local communities, the NGO Amity and clubs for the elderly. Older people from twelve out of 19 local communities of New Belgrade participated in the focus groups. The in-depth group interviews conducted in five of the focus groups were concentrated around the topics of everyday functioning in old age in the big city and its main challenges, as well as opportunities for the improvement of the participants’ lives. The remaining focus group brought together older people taking care of their disabled descendants, regardless of the latter’s age. The main topics of concern and considerations in these in-depth group interviews were the specific challenges they have been confronting. The combination of methods presented seemed to researchers a fertile way of coming to sound conclusions and making policy recommendations.9 Surveys enabled us to grasp the “quantitative” dimension of the topics under scrutiny and their challenges, but not to understand the respondents’ views and experiences of life in old-age households and their community. Focus groups offered us qualitative descriptions of the everyday life of elderly. We got to comprehensively understand the way others – society, community, family, the young – treat them, from their own perspectives.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION As already outlined in the introductory part, the focus of this paper is on older women. Therefore, in the following text, the authors extrapolated those data from the research10 that are important for the understanding of female perspectives in old age. However, the authors are of the opinion that documenting female perspectives does not preclude them from also taking into account data obtained from male respondents. On the contrary, considering them could add valuable insight into older women’s conceptions of life, based on similarities and/or differences established in the research. A potentially even more important precaution must be taken here: the research was concentrated around the dimensions described in the methodology part. This is not to be taken as our claim that there are no other dimensions of life that are important to older people. On the contra-

9

Focus groups did not include the respondents that were surveyed.

10 For a detailed presentation of results and their discussion, see Satarić/Perišić 2017.

Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia | 135

ry, there are multiple dimensions that could be of interest, but our research will point to findings in the dimensions that were mentioned. This chapter follows the phases of the research design. Therefore, it first describes the context (I phase), then it explores the life situations and needs of older women (II phase) and thirdly, it brings under our scrutiny their perspectives and attitudes. Context New Belgrade is a municipality of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, one with the lowest poverty rate in the country (RZS/SB 2016). It saw a significant increase in the number of its inhabitants in the post-war period (from 9,195 in 1948 to 214,506 in 2011 [RZS 2014]), in combination with an extreme increase in the number of elderly population, that of 60 times in the last 50 years. In 1961, the number of those aged 65 and above amounted to 639, presenting thus a percentage as low as 1.9 percent of the overall population in the municipality. This is hardly surprising; the period of socialist rule with its intensive economic development brought many young families in search of jobs to New Belgrade. However, in 2011, with 38,094 older inhabitants, representing 17.8 percent of its population, New Belgrade has on average a slightly higher share of older people than the rest of the country. In all of the cohorts, older women outnumber older men. Many older people live alone – women clearly dominating in that respect, with a share three times higher as compared to single men (RZS 2016b: 34-35). Traditionally and comparatively, New Belgrade has a developed network of social and healthcare services, aimed at the welfare of all of its inhabitants, and some of them specifically offered to older people by the state sector. Social support services, both general and specific ones, can be accessed through the Center for Social Work (Gradski centar za socijalni rad). The social support consists of benefits and different kinds of services. Older people are eligible (based on means testing) for the social welfare benefits (aimed at the poor in general, but of an amount below the relative poverty line) and cash benefits for support (in case they are in need of support from another person, for any reason whatsoever). The Clubs for the Elderly (Klubovi za stare), five of them, counting 360 members on the territory of New Belgrade, offer combined services.11 The Gerontological Center of Belgrade (Gerontološki centar Beograd) provides services of in-house support (engaging the so-called “geronto-housewives” [gerontodo-

11 Clubs for the Elderly organize cultural, entertaining, sport, recreational and educational events, as well as services of laundry, meals, counseling, etc.

136 | Natalija Perišić & Nadežda Satarić

maćice]), which are delivered three to five working days per week, for the duration of two hours per day, to 300 inhabitants of New Belgrade. This Center also offers information and advice from various domains of interest to older people – social and healthcare, pensions, culture, banking, etc. There is no state-run residential home for older people on the territory of New Belgrade, but there is one in its vicinity. Based on legal stipulations, there are no obstacles to the accommodation of older people from any of the municipalities in any of the residential settings. However, the availability is very limited, not only in Belgrade, but throughout the country. When it comes to healthcare, there are primary level services, but not secondary and tertiary ones, which are, however, stipulated in the regulations both on the city and the state level. The latter also applies to the Emergency Medical Aid Service (Gradski zavod za hitnu medicinsku pomoć). The City Institute of Gerontology and Palliative Care (Gradski zavod za gerontologiju i palijativno zbrinjavanje) organizes in-house medical treatments, care and palliative protection for 320-330 older people of New Belgrade (Satarić/Perišić 2017: 34-36). Be it social or healthcare, the capacities of the state sector have been clearly lagging behind the demand. Therefore, private sector providers have been finding their ways towards older people, who are increasingly becoming important consumers for them. It is not clear whether older people are in the position to pay for the services from the private sector without any subsidy from the state. The situation of older women could be even more precarious compared to that of older men, for the reasons presented within the next section of this paper. One of the services most demanded by older people is that of in-house support, which is provided by three agencies in New Belgrade and around 20 others in the whole of Belgrade. Private homes for residential care of older people have been proliferating; their numbers are not definite, either because they have not been registered as such, or because they frequently close due to the evasion of regulations and then subsequently re-open. There are private healthcare providers at the primary level and one provider at the secondary level. As for pharmacies, they are generally easily available and numerous (ibid.: 35-36). Everyday Life of Older Women: Perspectives and Needs Demographic Characteristics, Social and Economic Status The respondents of the conducted survey were predominantly older women, who represented 67.4 percent of the sample. As many as 79.6 percent of single households were female.

Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia | 137

Their education levels were on average lower than those of men, with repercussions on their income in old age. The exclusive source of income for almost all respondents (584 of them, i.e., 97 percent of the sample) were pension benefits; 79 percent of that share represented respondents entitled to old-age and disability pensions and 19 percent of that share were entitled to survivors’ pensions. Older women were almost exclusively present in the latter; 99.1 percent of those receiving survivors’ pensions were women and only 0.9 percent men. Only 3 percent of the sample, i.e., 15 respondents, were older people not eligible for pensions; 85.7 percent of them were women (Table 2). Table 2: Sources of income in old age Total

N

605

Sex Male

Female

197

408

Sig.

0.00

Old-age pension*

64.6

79.2

57.6

Survivors’ pension*

19.3

0.5

28.4

Disability pension*

7.6

9.6

6.6

Old-age pension + additional income*

6.1

9.6

4.4

Other*

2.3

1.0

2.9

* Percentage.

Consequently, the economic situation of female respondents was lagging far behind their male counterparts. They accounted for 92.9 percent of those with income below the poverty line and 79.7 percent of those with income between the poverty line and average old-age pension (Table 3). The self-assessment of their living standard was worse when compared to older men (Table 4).

138 | Natalija Perišić & Nadežda Satarić

Table 3: Income in old age Total

N

605

Sex Male

Female

197

408

Sig.

0.00

Without income in the previous month*

2.0

0.5

2.7

Below RSD 14,920*

2.6

1.0

3.4

RSD 14,921 – RSD 23,453*

16.4

11.2

18.9

RSD 23,454 – RSD 40,000*

51.4

46.7

53.7

RSD 40,001 – RSD 60,000*

16.9

23.9

13.5

RSD 60,001 – RSD 80,000*

3.8

6.6

2.5

Above RSD 80,001*

0.7

0.5

0.7

No answer*

6.3

9.6

4.7

* Percentage.

Table 4: Self-assessment of living standard Total

Sex Male

Female

N

605

197

408

Low*

9.6

6.6

11.0

Very low*

21.5

21.8

21.3

Total –*

31.1

28.4

32.4

Average*

47.8

46.7

48.3

Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia | 139

High*

17.5

22.3

15.2

Very high*

2.6

2.5

2.7

Total +*

20.2

24.9

17.9

No assessment*

1.0

-

1.5

* Percentage.

The majority of respondents, 46 percent of them, reported not financially supporting their family members. 7 percent were of the opinion that the relatives did not need that support and 6 percent were themselves supported by relatives. However, 39 percent of the sample claimed to financially support their adult children, grandchildren and close relatives, either on a temporary or permanent basis. The difference between male and female respondents was huge, with older men supporting more frequently and more generously their family members, compared to older women. The established difference was largely a reflection of lower incomes for female respondents. Health Situation The self-assessment of health showed great variations between female and male respondents, with older women consistently, i.e., in all age cohorts, assessing their health worse than older men: 36.8 percent of the female sample assessed their health as worse compared to those of the same age, in contrast to 29.4 percent of the male sample. Consistent with that, only 18.6 percent of the female respondents, and 27.9 percent of the male respondents, assessed their health as better compared to those of the same age. These findings were in perfect correlation with comparative data: women generally assess their health with lower scores than men. Another striking correlation was confirmed in the research, namely that between the self-assessment of health and the income of the household: the lower the income, the worse the self-assessment of health. This also applied to women: they were overrepresented in those with low incomes. Finally, an important factor proved to be that of the living situation in the household: those living with their husband/wife or partner were the least unsatisfied with their health, while those who were divorced and widowed were the most unsatisfied. Once again, women were on the spot: they were living alone more frequently, often due to their greater longevity. Similar to findings about the self-assessment of health, research into experiences with the public healthcare services showed that older women are above average unsatisfied with them, contrary to older men

140 | Natalija Perišić & Nadežda Satarić

who are above average satisfied. This was in correlation with other studies from different sources. The presence of chronic diseases was found in 83 percent of the sample, with 85 and 79 percent of older women and older men, respectively. Interestingly, neurological disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, which frequently require huge support by other people, be they professionals or not, were present in the same share in older women and older men in the survey. This could again be connected with the greater longevity of female respondents. Two thirds of the sample reported hardships and disturbances in everyday life due to their health conditions, with women prevailing in this respect. Chronic diseases reported by them are partially explained by the higher numerical share of women, as well as by their longer life expectancy. On top of this, many daily activities that were in the focus of the research (e.g., preparing meals) are traditionally considered to be a female domain, thus making older women objectively more burdened. The majority of respondents, 65 percent of them, reported relying on family members when in need of help and support in everyday life. However, women reported relying on family members to a below-average extent, and men above the average. Women rely above average on neighbors and engage professionals. The reasons could be the absence of any supporting immediate family. Conversely, it could also be the self-sacrificing role of women in transition periods, as depicted in the literature. Social Support Data concerning the significance older people contribute to various social support services in place showed almost negligible differences between older women and older men. Four services valued the highest by all older people in the sample were in-house support, residential care, cash benefits for support and inhouse medical support. Female respondents considered slightly more important the daily centers for people with dementia and tele-assistance, compared to their male counterparts. However, a percentage as high as 86 percent of the sample did not use any of the support services, neither from the social nor from the healthcare sector. The reason in 62 percent of the cases was the lack of need, as stated in the survey. Still, every ninth respondent claimed not to know how to apply for a service they needed; every tenth respondent did not have information on the service that would meet their needs; every twelfth claimed not to be eligible; every 33rd applied but was refused, did not trust an organization providing a service and/or thought the administrative procedure was too complicated. Older women prevailed in the group of those who did not know how to apply. Needless to say, all of the categories of those who did not know how to apply – over 85

Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia | 141

years of age, with primary school education, receiving survivors’ pensions, living below the poverty line and assessing their household standard as very low – were dominated by women. The most frequently used service, the one in use by one third of respondents using any of the services, was a set of programs offered by the local community of New Belgrade. This was followed by the Clubs for the Elderly (used by one fifth of the respondents); cash benefits for support (one fifth of the respondents); in-house medical support (18 percent); in-house support (10 percent); social welfare benefits (4 percent) and meals from the kitchen for the poor (narodna kuhinja) (1 percent). Differences between older women and older men were observed (Table 5). Older women represented 38.9 percent of those using programs in the local community, compared to 14.3 percent of older men; 20.4 percent of those using in-house medical support, compared to 14.3 percent of older men; 13 percent of those using in-house support, compared to 3.6 percent of older men. On the other hand, older men represented 32.1 percent of those using services of Clubs for the Elderly and exercising the right to cash benefits for support respectively, compared to 13 percent of older women. Table 5: Support services used by respondents Total

Sex Male

Female

82

28

54

Programs for elder people organized by the local community of New Belgrade*

30.5

14.3

38.9

Clubs for elder people*

19.5

32.1

13.0

Cash benefits for support*

19.5

32.1

13.0

In-house health support*

18.3

14.3

20.4

In-house support*

9.8

3.6

13.0

Social welfare benefits*

3.7

-

5.6

Kitchen for the poor*

1.2

3.6

-

N

142 | Natalija Perišić & Nadežda Satarić

No reply*

4.9

3.6

5.6

* Percentage.

The majority of respondents, those who did not take up any of the services from the so-called formal sector, be it the state or private one, relied to a different extent on their families and relatives when in need of support, but also on friends and neighbors. Female respondents reported a higher demand for such informal support compared to male respondents. Experiences of Discrimination and Violence Against Older People The respondents of the survey claimed that older people in general are subjected to discrimination – 73 percent of them (older women prevailing among these), while 7 percent claimed the opposite. However, the personal experience of discrimination in the year prior to the research was reported by 16.2 percent of them: 15.2 percent of older men and 16.7 percent of older women. The factor of income, which was connected with the gender in the research, as already mentioned, was significant here: those below the poverty line reported to be discriminated the most (43 percent). The discrimination was most frequently experienced by the older people from the sample in the healthcare sector and public administration. Similarly to the claims of discrimination, respondents of the survey stated that older people in general are subjected to different forms of violence – 84 percent of them (older women prevailing among these, too), while 5.8 percent claimed the opposite. 11 percent of the respondents reported personal experience of violence in the year prior to the research – 9.6 percent of older men and 11.8 percent of older women, with 3.9 percent of older women who did not want to give any statement. Most frequently, older people were victims of criminals and persons unknown to them. However, male respondents reported more frequently to be the victims of violence by family members and relatives, as compared to female respondents. Findings from Focus Groups The older people who participated in the focus groups had two shared characteristics. One was that almost all of them (except for two out of 61) were owners of their living space and of the opinion that it is of a decent quality; at the beginning of the 1990s all of them bought from the state the apartments in which they had been living in New Belgrade since the 1960s and 1970s. Unsurprisingly,

Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia | 143

men outnumbered women regarding the ownership over living space. The other shared characteristic was that they were dissatisfied with their pension incomes, and especially with the Government’s rule on the freezing of pensions within the austerity measures. However, they were all satisfied with the regularity of the pension disbursements, claiming the awareness of a bad situation in the society for everyone, “and especially for the young people,” as they were reporting, reaffirming their solidarity. All other aspects of their lives were so diverse that the answers could not be generalized to any extent, persuading the authors of the paper once again that older people are such a heterogeneous group that any general claim about them can be made as much as it can be made for any social group. Older people are as diverse as young people or middle-aged people, etc. Some of the answers of female respondents about their everyday life were as follows: I do not think about old age. My life is so full that I do not have time to think about that. I live like any other person in the city. I wait for my pension to pay the bills. Then, I count how much money I have until the next pension disbursement and buy the things that I really need. I try to save something for my grand-grandchildren, even though the children do not expect it from me. Every day I go to my son and daughter-in-law, I tidy their house, wash the clothes and prepare a meal for them. When I finish, I get back to my house, to do the housework there. Even though I am 82, I still work. I sell ice cream from May to the end of September, in the street. I work from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. I save money to buy fuel for the winter. I am taking care of my husband who has Alzheimer’s. It is very hard for me. I do not have any resources – I do not have a pension, I am a refugee. That’s why I married him in the first place even though I was rather old then. He has two daughters, who both drink. They do not help me a thing. When I was young, I thought someone is old and disabled when they were 45 or 50. Today, I think it is someone over 75. There is little difference between my life today, when I am 72, and a woman who is 62. Unlike my whole life, my life is the best today – no deadlines and nothing that has to be done.

144 | Natalija Perišić & Nadežda Satarić

A potentially third joint characteristic of the respondents was then finally identified. Despite the objectively huge contribution of older people to the development of the country and New Belgrade especially, and despite their working histories, the joint impression of the respondents was that they “feel like […] a burden on the society.” Stigma was one of the concerns raised by many from the focus groups, especially in answers to questions related to the treatment of older women by young people, public services and society in general. The main challenges they were confronting were those referring to: (1) the limited availability of healthcare services and in-house support services as well as the feeling of being lonely; (2) the limited physical accessibility of many public and private buildings; and (3) the widespread poverty in the country and the emigration of young people – many of the respondents’ children had moved abroad. However, older people caring for their adult children who are persons with disabilities seemed to face the most serious and the most persistent challenges. Firstly, all caregivers were older women. Secondly, their children were aged 45 to 50, and even above. There were two challenges identified by the caregivers as the most striking: • continuous financial hardships, disabling them from providing sometimes even

the necessary medicine for the family member with disability and for themselves; • difficult availability of healthcare services and public services in general. Caring for a family member with disability in most cases has lasted for decades. Often, the disability was acquired in early childhood, preventing a womancaregiver from working altogether or from working full time, resulting in a low pension. Almost all disabled persons from the research exercised their right to support benefits, but still the family income was inadequate to their needs. Caregivers frequently had the feeling of being “disconnected from the outer world.” Because of the needs of the disabled family member, they had problems meeting even their basic needs. As they grew older, the situation only got worse.

CONCLUSION The transition brought tremendous transformations into the lives of women in Serbia. Many of the changes were nothing but negative: the economic collapse and widespread poverty of the 1990s, albeit with certain improvements later on,

Meanings of Getting Old in Post-Transition Serbia | 145

brought women back into the private sphere. The contract between the state and women, if any, was reconstructed to result in their extremely underprivileged position, be they mothers or not, be they young or old. The traditionalization and patriarchalization processes revived, they resulted in stripping women of the rights they had been entitled to 50 years ago. The so-called female duties in households are never-ending, caring goes on especially beyond their own retirement. However, as mentioned elsewhere in the literature, but also in this paper and on the basis of the research conducted, there is no unique or single female perspective on getting old. In order to point to the multiple dimensions of female experiences in and of their old age, the authors have been consistently using the term of female perspectives. However, if we are to summarize the survey data on female perspectives in old age, the following would be among the most important: • Older women outnumber older men, they live longer on average and more fre-

quently they live alone. The latter two facts bring important risks into their lives, increased risks of being of ill health and of having lower incomes. • The correlation between low income and female gender in old age is absolute in the research. • Older women reported numerous hardships in their everyday life due to their health situation. At the same time, they reported their confidence and readiness to live in their households as long as possible. • Absent or inadequate support by the state in that respect seems to be highly unfair towards older women. Public policies in general do not take into account the situation of aging in the society. There are no specific preventive healthcare programs aimed at older women. The development of long-term care programs and palliative care programs has been delayed. The changes in the pension system have been gradually aggravating their income position. In the light of data on the shorter longevity of female beneficiaries of old-age pensions, it does not seem reasonable to effectuate the envisaged 65 years of life for their retirement, but to keep it at 62 (as it is at the moment) and make it further flexible. A further aggravation in the income situation of older women can be expected: their employment rates are very low and they would receive even lower pensions in the future, if any. Currently, the social welfare benefits are coupled with extremely strict criteria and their coverage is very low. Their expansion would not seem to be the right solution, since they are connected with a social stigma.

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The findings from the research are rather consistent with similar research worldwide and would lead us to conclude on the higher risk of vulnerability of older women. Yet, the survey did not fully take into account the resilience and coping strategies older women deploy to overcome risks. The ones we observed were mainly those in terms of relying on their own and family capacities (i.e., primary groups) to the highest extent possible and on the resources in the community to a limited extent. In this sense, focus groups enabled us to learn much more about the meanings women attribute to aging and about female experiences of life in old age.

REFERENCES Abbott, Pamela/Wallace, Claire/Tyler, Melissa (2005): An Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspectives. London/New York. Lister, Ruth (2013): Poverty. Cambridge/Malden. Lister, Ruth (2017): Understanding Theories and Concepts in Social Policy. Bristol. Lynch, Rory (2014): Social Work Practice with Older People: A Positive Person-Centered Approach. Los Angeles et al. Milosavljević, Milosav/Sumrak, Dejan (2018): “Is Gerontology Fashionable?”, in: Dinić, Dragana (ed.): Ageing and Human Rights. Beograd, 176-190. Perišić, Natalija (2016): Socijalna sigurnost: pojmovi i programi. Beograd. Perišić, Natalija (2018): “Položaj žena u sistemu penzijskog i invalidskog osiguranja u Srbiji”, in: Vuković, Duško/Tešić, Živomir (eds.): Reforma sistema penzijskog i invalidskog osiguranja. Beograd, 78-83. Perišić, Natalija/Tanasijević, Jelena (2018): “Female Labor Market Participation in Serbia”, in: Zamfira, Andreea/De Montlibert, Christian/Radu, Daniela (eds.): Gender in Focus: Identities, Codes, Stereotypes and Politics. Opladen/Berlin/Toronto, 314-331. RFPIO [Republički fond za penzijsko i invalidsko osiguranje] (2016): Statistički mesečni bilten XII/2015. Beograd. http://pio.rs/images/dokumenta/statistike/ 2015/MESECNI%20BILTEN%20-%20DECEMBAR%202015-lat.pdf [accessed October 14, 2016]. RZS [Republički zavod za statistiku] (2014): Uporedni pregled broja stanovnika: 1948-2011. Beograd. RZS (2016a): Stanovništvo. Beograd. http://webrzs.stat.gov.rs/WebSite/Public/ PageView.aspx?pKey=162 [accessed October 13, 2016]. RZS (2016b): Opštine i regioni u Republici Srbiji. Beograd.

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RZS (2017): Žene i muškarci. Beograd. RZS [Republički zavod za statistiku]/SB [Svetska banka] (2016): Mape siromaštva u Srbiji. Beograd. Satarić, Nadežda/Perišić, Natalija (2017): Prigušena svetla grada: studija o položaju i potrebama staračkih domaćinstava Novog Beograda. Beograd. Somers, Susan (2018): “Human Rights for Older Women and Women of All Ages: Barriers and Opportunities at the National Level”, in: Dinić, Dragana (ed.): Ageing and Human Rights. Beograd, 46. Ungerson, Clare (1999): “The Informal Sector”, in: Alcock, Pete/Erskine, Angus/May, Margaret (eds.): The Student’s Companion to Social Policy. Oxford/Malden, 169-174.

On Nearness and Distance Seniors’ Lives in Urban Areas in Slovakia Ľubica Voľanská, Marcela Káčerová & Juraj Majo

All distances in time and space are shrinking. […] Yet the frantic abolition of all distances brings no nearness; for nearness does not consist in shortness of distance… Martin Heidegger: Poetry, Language, Thought1

INTRODUCTION Population aging in European cities is an ongoing complex process, which is in research usually expressed in numbers resulting from quantitative data that can be compared, at least to some extent. In general, the demographic development in European countries related to aging societies is showing similarities associated with historical events and phenomena such as immigration, economic crises and world wars. Differences are pronounced foremost in the timing of particular demographic processes (Voľanská 2016). However, long-term family structure patterns (Hajnal 1983; Hank 2007), friendship and peer support patterns also play an important role in the quality of life of the aging inhabitants: they structure the intergenerational relationships, living arrangements and social networks of older people in different geographic areas in Europe. In present-day public discourse in Slovakia, for example, a strong moral norm is present, expecting foremost the family members to bear responsibility for the senior family members’ well-being as well as for taking care of their older relatives in need, based on the traditional distribution of caretaking roles in this region (Botiková/Jakubíková/Švecová 1997; Le Bras 1995).

1

Heidegger 1971: 163.

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Notwithstanding, in societies of transitive economic systems like Slovakia, independent living especially, but also economic independence and freedom in financial decisions are highly valued by all generations, including retired individuals. The so-called Three Coins Contract2 is being challenged on all societal levels. This contradiction was mirrored in the commercial that brought us to the idea of a project focusing on the social networks of seniors intertwined with their well-being.3 A few years ago, a commercial insurance campaign for complementary pension insurance appeared in various media in Slovakia, running with the slogan “You no longer have to be anyone’s burden” (“Už nemusíte nikomu zostať na krku”). The commercial, of course, focused on the younger age cohort instead of retirees, showing seniors sitting on the shoulders of their younger relatives or, in general, younger people in various situations. The common feature was depicting older adults as a burden to the younger generation. Although the Council for Advertising then received many complaints from private individuals,4 it assessed that the commercial was not in contradiction

2

The system of the intergenerational contract that evolved in Europe in the past centuries could be likened to the “model of three groshes/coins.” In the Slovak folk fairy tale Three Groshes (AaTh 921 A; Gašparíková 1991: 42), the smith Focus from the Gesta Romanorum of the 14th century is replaced by a digger working by the road and meeting the king. However, the principle according to which the middle generation in a family lives from one coin, lends the second coin to the next generation and gives the third one to the older generation in return, was transferred to the whole society based on the principles of the welfare state.

3

This work was supported by the Research and Development Assistance Agency of the Slovak Republic No. APVV-15-0184: Intergenerational Social Networks in an Aging City – Continuity and Innovation.

4

“Complainants designate advertising as non-aesthetic, non-cultural, antisocial, generationally offensive. They think that as old people sit on the shoulders of young people, they clearly let citizens know that the old generation – retirees – are displayed as a burden and strangle, economically speaking, to the young and middle generation. The complainants add that retirees have not invented this way of retirement, they have been paying the pension insurance for several decades, have the right to a pension and not to remain a burden to us. They are fully dependent on their pension, for which they created a reserve during the time of paid employment. The complainants perceive such methods of promoting the pension insurance in an insurance company to be the result of irresponsible, tortuous and uncultivated advertising activity, positing the old and the young generation against each other. This ad is incompatible with the fairness

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with the Ethical Principles of Advertising Practice in the Slovak Republic, the main idea being: “Even if your loved ones can take care of you in the future with pleasure, you do not have to be a burden to anybody.” The advertising company claimed: “Such an open and honest naming of the issue is an acceptable way of communicating it to their target group, precisely because economic selfsufficiency is a very serious and urgent problem of all generations.” The target group was the middle generation, that is, people who were still working and were not yet retired: the ad showed their perspective, their possible future. The ad campaign creators apparently did not think that the impact on older people outside their target group might not be positive and activating. In any case, the commercial was challenging the local tradition of intergenerational solidarity and the moral obligation to take care of older adults in need on many levels of society: a moral norm that does not presuppose economic autonomy, autonomy of residence or, therefore, the risk of possible loneliness of older adults. At first sight, it is often economic independence and residential independence that indicate solitude. This is the stage of life where feelings of loneliness are more expressed and connected to the “verticalization” of family,5 children leaving their original homes (empty-nest-phase) as well as the departure of spouses. It is necessary to consider the declining birth rate and the number of people without children as well as the growing divorce rate. However, when doing research on this topic, there is the necessity to take into account not only the individuality of a person but also the surrounding social environment. In our contribution, we attempt to approach households with individuals aged over 65. We are aware that the border may seem arbitrary at first glance, after

and social responsibility of the company that has chosen this particular type of advertisement, and it is a proof of the low culture of this organization. Complainants argued that older people sitting on someone’s shoulder in a literal way means provocation, though of a rather unclear nature. They themselves felt provoked to reject the advertisement. The complainants have claimed predictive advertising is humiliating and incompatible with good morals that advertisements should meet, and believe it should be withdrawn and the company should apologize on public television as well as in the press.” (Advertising Standards Council 2005) Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the authors’ [L.V., M.K., J.M.]. 5

“Verticalization” means the “generational height” of family, which can commonly consist of up to four generations (Grundy/Henretta 2006). Michael Mitterauer (1997) uses the term “bean-stem family” (“Bohnenstangenfamilie”) in which several generations live in one household during a certain period, with a minimum number of persons from each generation.

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all, the beginning of old age has been addressed by many writers and scholars over the centuries (Covey 1992; Štěpánková et al. 2015; Vidovićová 2008; Voľanská 2016). Even demographic research does not apply a fixed age at which a person is exactly considered a senior (60+, 65+), however, in most cases, the age 65+ is used. According to the WHO, “the age of 60 or 65, roughly equivalent to retirement ages in most developed countries, is said to be the beginning of old age” (Gorman 1999). Although in the Slovak environment, the retirement age is not yet 65+, in international comparative research, age 65+ is used. Our aim is to analyze the position of seemingly economically independent individual seniors in urban landscapes with specific forms of housing and social characteristics. Research on life stages of aging individuals, just like aging communities or society as a whole, delivers new challenges that require innovative approaches. Increased attention has been paid to the phenomenon of lonely older adults in urban environments – paradoxically, in a space with high population density, a variation of lifestyles, attitudes and interests. We have chosen to take a closer look at the urban environment, because this is where we usually expect a higher likelihood for innovative ways of grasping and working with the practical implications of loneliness, either in the form of informal links between neighbors and acquaintances or accidental meetings in a busy public space. We expected the city to show great potential for reducing loneliness in the daily lives of the elderly. On the other hand, societies in transformation function better for those who are flexible and have enough opportunities for adaptation. Cities are generally perceived as spaces for those who are successful, dynamic and flexible. Sometimes these characteristics are not applicable to the whole urban society in the transformation process. If transformation itself reflects the aged as losers in this process or even as a threat to society, then the process was not accomplished successfully or is headed in an obscure direction. In this contribution, we would like to provide a deeper insight into the partial results of such transformation from the perspective of Eastern/Central European experience – in Slovakia, Bratislava. Quantitative demographic research identifies significant changes in the urban environment of present-day Slovakia. The growth of the senior urban population is a fact that has recently resonated in professional research in European and world populations. This quantitative evidence leads to a search for broader research links. Demography “only” knows who constitutes this population, where people live and with whom. However, the results of demographic research cannot respond to the questions: What are the needs of this part of the population, respectively, what is its life quality?

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Using mixed methods, we combine statistical data from censuses with individual experience shared in qualitative biographical narrative interviews as well as semi-structured focused interviews. The interdisciplinary cooperation of researchers with backgrounds in social and cultural anthropology, demography and human geography enables a detailed insight into the problem of solitude related to housing and social networks and intergenerational relationships of seniors in urban environments.

RESEARCH OUTLINE Based on the interdisciplinary background of the research team, we decided to use the mixed methods approach. The term refers to the emerging methodology mixing quantitative and qualitative data with a focus on one subject of investigation. The research design is inspired by one of the possible ways of using the mixed methods: deepening the understanding of quantitative data through qualitative interpretation. By analyzing the testimonies of the interviewed persons using open-end questions, explanations were sought by the seniors themselves, pointing to the reasons for the differences found. The quantitative research was based on individual data of seniors living in separate households, the source of which were two censuses (2001, 2011). Census data from 2001 and 2011 are an outstanding source of primary information on households. We have processed the data on the households of economically independent individuals over 65 who live in urban areas. The data set includes not only seniors living alone, but all those who are independent in their economic decisions and plans. They can also be people sharing the same housing space with another household (usually relatives, such as children). These data were analyzed in the context of their age, marital status, number of children in case of women, their education level and past professional position during the employment stage of their lives. Data on housing were analyzed in the context of the size of their apartment and its quality category. Although these data are anonymous and very rough in terms of their content and information quality, they provided an important quantitative contextualization of the seniors living in Slovak cities. The respondents in the qualitative interviews were known to us from previous research, especially on the topic of old age and aging in Bratislava in general. We specifically decided to ask them for interviews repeatedly, because the topic of family relationships is not easy in terms of interfering with the private sphere of our interview partners. There were more female interview partners pre-

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sent in the research sample than male, since it had not been a topic male interviewees had much elaborated on in the interviews. Although not explicitly expressed by our interviewees, maintaining relationships among relatives, friends or neighbors as well as care for people in need in general is considered a part of female competences (Hochschild 2012; Powell 1999). In our research, we had to deal with a dilemma, which Czech sociologist Ivo Možný mentions in his work dedicated to modern family: There is no other place for a human being more private than the delicate nature of relationships in his own family. What we have between ourselves behind the closed door of our household, what is happening in the privacy of our bedrooms, how we treat our children, wives, mothers-in-law, husbands, grandchildren, and our old parents, is nobody’s business, if perhaps we ourselves do not ask for advice. (Možný 1990: 9)

For this reason, the names, situations and realities of our interview partners had to be changed and anonymized, but we tried to describe the situation in a similar way so that the meaning is preserved. Analyzing the material, we were inspired by the work of Gabriele Rosenthal (2004, 2015). Unfortunately, there is no space in this contribution to deal more broadly with the challenges of interdisciplinary research. Just to name a few: they began with the mere definition of some terms – loneliness, solitude, seclusion, singleness or separateness. Demography and human geography define solitude related to housing without the negative connotation of loneliness: as solitary households. An ethnographer or anthropologist seeking for meaning and explanation has to ask the question: What does it mean – a senior living in a solitary household? Is he or she really lonely? Economically self-sufficient? Independent? Content? We also had discussions about defining the age line of 65 years mentioned above – whom should we include in our research? For demographers, the border of old age is clearly defined, whereas for ethnologists, this line is not so obvious. Another challenge was the style and even the way of writing, where the style of production of ethnographic/anthropological works is prevailingly based on narrative principles; also, again, as a part of the nature of qualitative studies, the ethnographic/anthropological research focuses on situated meaning-making, rather than merely on the description of the status quo. On the other hand, the human or social geography and demography deal more with hard or big data, often with a wide area coverage, and use a descriptive style.

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AGING CITIES IN SLOVAKIA Over half the population of Slovakia lives permanently in an urban environment. At present, the urban share of the population is decreasing slightly and has stabilized at around 56 percent in the last five years. One would think that the countryside with its more peaceful environment provides a familiar, suitable and “better” life for retired people, especially when the cities are not always agefriendly spaces, when the revitalization and dynamization of the urban space can be a priori ageist and holds a class-conflict context (Vidovićová/Gregorová 2010: 89). The reality of the last 20 years has been marked by an enormous growth in seniors’ presence in towns. Between 1996 and 2016, the percentage of seniors living permanently in Slovak towns increased by ten percentage points. This rise is, apparently, partly the result of the trend of working-age people migrating to areas adjacent to towns. On the other hand, it is also a sign of declining mortality rates, as people are living to a more advanced age. Meanwhile, rural areas are experiencing a population decrease. In the long term, since 1950, there has been a clear decline in the percentage of the population living in settlements with less than 5,000 inhabitants and an increase in the share of the population living in urban settings. The number of inhabitants in villages with less than 1,000 inhabitants and towns with over 50,000 inhabitants has decreased and there is a steady increase in people living in settlements with 1,000 to 50,000 residents. The current trends in the sociodemographic development of the rural population reflect the change in migration flows since the 1990s related to accelerated suburbanization and a strong influence of state-supported mass housing construction in the 1960s and 1970s, which was concentrated in medium-sized towns and no longer exists (Buchta 2017). Aging characteristics indicate that the rural population has been less affected by population aging. It has the lowest representation of people aged 65 and over, although the difference in other evaluated categories is not pronounced. A specific indicator such as the coefficient of exchange confirms the level of aging. The rural population remained progressive, with a high prevalence of 10- to 14year-olds over 60- to 64-year-olds, until 2011.

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Figure 1: The share of population aged 65+ in Slovakia (1996-2016)

Source: Štatistický úrad SR (1997-2017).

Figure 2: The coefficient of exchange in Slovakia (1996-2016)

Source: Štatistický úrad SR (1997-2017).

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Although we were toying with the notion of city as a space designated for younger populations, which is dynamic in its working opportunities and living conditions, the Slovakian experience seems to head in a different direction. Since 2013, the population of 65+ has been anchored in cities more than the whole population. The urbanization of the aged is linked to the concentration of the generations of baby boomers, who settled in cities in times of the massive industrialization of the country in the 1950-1990 period. It should not be interpreted as rural areas being rejuvenated; the concentration of seniors is just higher in the cities due to aging processes and the emigration of the youth into suburban areas, which also contributes to the aging process in cities being substantially faster than in rural areas (Buček/Bleha 2013: 7). Population prognoses also proved that, by 2035, four regions out of ten with the highest average age will cover the urban areas of Bratislava and Košice (Bleha et al. 2014: 40).

DEMOGRAPHIC AND ECONOMIC AUTONOMY/ SELF-SUFFICIENCY? The households of retired individuals represent a specific area of research on the aging population. At this stage of life, solitariness is very common and this state, along with the risk of impaired living conditions, can have a negative impact on individuals’ physical and mental health and aggravate other problems. It is difficult to make a clear demographic measurement of solitariness. We measured the solitariness of seniors based on their housing situation. This is not an exhaustive picture of solitariness, as it is based only on seniors dwelling and keeping house in a one-person household, so methods of qualitative research and interviews are necessary to obtain a complex perspective. Table 1: Indicators of senior households in Slovakia Size category

Share of seniors (%)

Household of individual (%)

Seniors’ households of individuals (%)

100,000 and more

13.82

34.24

32.88

99,999 – 50,000

12.62

27.08

36.93

49,999 – 20,000

11.65

26.32

36.43

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19,999 – 10,000

11.24

25.53

36.35

9,999 – 5,000

11.55

23.33

40.04

4,999 – 2,000

12.02

20.62

45.30

1,999 – 1,000

12.99

20.73

46.17

999 – 500

13.62

21.67

46.61

499 – 200

14.10

22.62

46.53

199 and less

18.99

30.82

51.18

Urban

12.29

28.05

35.79

Rural

13.09

21.35

46.32

Slovakia

12.65

25.33

39.39

Source: Census 2011 (own calculation).

Statistics on households from the last two censuses show that the proportion of one-person households is relatively stable at around 30 percent (2001) or 25 percent (2011). This reflects changes in family life in the population over a period of nearly 30 years. The EU average for this type of household is somewhat higher, at around 33.6 percent (2017). The split between the urban and rural environment in Slovakia can be observed in this area as well, and the hypothesis of greater “solitariness” in towns (in household dwelling) was confirmed. The 2011 census shows a higher proportion of one-person households in urban communities compared to rural ones (28 versus 21 percent). The smaller the municipality, the lower the proportion of solitary seniors. The phenomenon of solitary seniors in the sense of those keeping their own household is an urban phenomenon. A relationship between the number of seniors and the number of seniors living in one-person households was confirmed, especially in the category of urban settlements with over 50,000 inhabitants. In exclusively rural villages with less than 2,000 inhabitants, the representation of seniors living alone increases again. This phenomenon reflects the large number of small, disappearing villages, where it is very common to find seniors living alone.

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Figure 3: Relationship between the number of inhabitants over 65 and the number of households of seniors in cities with over 50,000 inhabitants

Source: Census 2011 (own calculation).

Living in solitary households was found only in cities with over 100,000 inhabitants (Bratislava and Košice). The situation in Slovakia’s two largest cities is indicated by the representation in the last census: Bratislava 35 percent, Košice 32 percent. This is to be expected because the character of urban life usually favors individualism in all its forms. In terms of the sex, more women than men live in single-person households (in 2011, 21.28 percent of men vs. 42.98 percent of women in Bratislava) and the proportion of seniors living alone increases with age. These results also mirror the current and past ethnographic research on the preference of female seniors to stay in their own households. After the introduction of old-age pensions in former Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, seniors had several options related to their dwelling and social networks. According to the tradition of family economy of the previous era, the entire income of each member of the family belonged to the common budget; in case the old parents preferred to keep their income, their adult children began to question the obligation of looking after them. Living separately from the younger generation was and, in some cases, as our qualitative research suggests, still is an unwelcomed option. They have to cook for themselves, do the shopping, washing, cleaning, etc. Men, compared to women, who are used to taking care of the household and of themselves, usually miss care more. Nowadays, the situation seems to be changing,

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but we must keep in mind that the generation of today’s elderly people is still characterized by a rather gendered division of work in the household. The female interview partners in our research, on the other hand, stressed their independence and self-sufficiency. One of our interviewees, Hanka K. (80 years old, Bratislava), for example, stated: I’ve never thought about going to a retirement home. I wouldn’t go there for aesthetic reasons; I don’t like it when there are so many old and older people in one place, that’s not attractive. I’ve always been like this. And why should I? I can care for myself, I can go shopping, do cleaning, ironing. I haven’t thought about it because I don’t know where I could leave my son. I’d be happy if he found someone. But I can’t explain that. So we help each other, we go shopping together, sometimes he goes alone. But if it was necessary, if there was no other solution, I’d go. I can adapt myself, it’s not that I would refuse everything.

Hanka K. emphasizes her self-support, the fact that she can care for herself and that she does not need to be reliant on others – even though she is one of the older seniors, she is still active and does not need help. The idea is related to the ongoing management of domestic spaces as a sense of self-determination, selfesteem and continuity, which is usually symbolic of the independence of older women (Sixsmith et al. 2014: 4), as mentioned previously. Hanka K. used to live alone as a widow, her son recently got divorced and returned to his mother. One of the thematic fields of her whole autobiographical text is of her son, a “lame duck” (describing her son’s depression from dissatisfaction at work, which is due to his failures in relationships with women; he is an artist, a painter, misused by women, etc.). Divorce is an issue raised by Hanka K. in connection with intergenerational relationships and social networks: on one hand, it means a disruption of horizontal family ties; on the other hand, it also affects vertical family relationships (no access to the granddaughter). Hanka K., however, speaks about a different ending: divorces can also strengthen intergenerational relationships in a family following the disruption and the weakening of the lateral relationships of the spouses. After divorce or break-up, many people return to their parents to support each other. The moment of cooperation in this sequence can relate to being influenced by an expert discourse. Such discourse seeks to find an answer to what the basis is of a relationship between generations: on one hand, there is the opinion that it is about altruistic norms of solidarity between generations; on the other hand,

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there is the concept of reciprocity and calculation of investment and profit (Bien 2000: 203). We think it is not possible to give a definitive answer to this question, and a combination of the two concepts is also possible. As the situation of changing a single household of Hanka K. to a parent-child household is very recent, there are several questions remaining open. As she said, she does not “know where to leave her son”; would her son be able to care for his powerless mother in the future? What would his possibilities be? Hanka K. leaves this question open also when thinking about her own adaptability. Her wish to stay in her own household corresponds to the notion of aging in place, enabling the senior generation to maintain their home as a “locus of control and order, aspects that are considered to influence health […],” and is important for “the maintenance of personal identity, control and, ultimately, wellbeing” (Kearns/Andrews 2005: 16-17).

AGING IN PLACE: A CHANGE IN TRADITION? The general notions describing healthy aging are usually connected with the pattern of aging in place. This encompasses policies where aging residents remain in their community, reducing the reliance on governmental services and expenditures, as many needs are provided for by networks of family members or friends (Han/Kim 2017: 256-257). Aging in place is sometimes represented as a (neoliberal) shift in health and welfare policies from state-dependency models of provision to the personal and family level (Milligan 2009: 1). The community can be defined more by social than physical boundaries and encompasses those with whom we share interests, identity and/or interactions (Robert 2002: 579). Aging in place – usually at home – is, thus, important as it is tied to life stories, and home plays a role in enabling or limiting life course continuity (Sixsmith et al. 2014: 7). It was necessary to take a look at the housing situation for aging-in-place seniors in one-person households which, as we realized, is changing. The first indicator, the number of rooms per dwelling, is growing on average in Slovakia. The proportion of one-room flats inhabited by seniors decreased by nearly 3 percent between the censuses (14 to 11 percent) and there was a sharp increase in the representation of three- and four-room flats which make up more than half of all seniors’ dwellings. There is a specific situation in respect of Bratislava seniors (and in Slovakia’s second largest city, Košice, as well) where the largest share is of three-room flats, at 41 percent. The representation of smaller flats declined in both of Slovakia’s largest cities. Seniors aged over 65 living alone, not

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just in Bratislava, live in flats with a larger number of rooms. The developments in dwelling categories or housing quality cannot be described with absolute precision because of the addition of the category “unspecified.” Overall, the proportion of “worse” categories of dwelling has decreased in Bratislava, as it has in Slovakia in general. In view of seniors’ average dwelling size, the last two censuses logically show a more favorable situation. In the spatial units that we compared, the largest is the growth in the size of dwellings inhabited by seniors in one-person households in Bratislava, which increased by nearly 9m2. All dwelling categories in Bratislava (and all other studied spatial units) saw an increase in m2 from census to census. It is probably the result of house price differences in Slovakia: the average dwelling size of category I seniors’ dwellings6 in Bratislava is the smallest among the studied spatial units (66 m2 compared to 78 m2 for Slovakia as a whole). As already observed in the example of Hanka K., the results of the qualitative research point to the idea that seniors prefer to stay in their own household even if they inhabit a bigger flat, the maintenance of which might be more difficult and costlier. This situation, again, corresponds with the traditional form of senior dwelling up until the first half of the 20th century (Botiková/Jakubíková/ Švecová 1997: 90). According to their explanations, seniors also prefer to stay in their own households for other reasons. The home, at all stages of life, represents more than a token of quality of life (Perez et al. 2001: 174). During the life cycle, from “a spot in a universe, with a gathering of physical stuff there” (Gieryn 2000: 465), it becomes a “place” – it ensconces “history or utopia, danger or security, identity or memory” (ibid.). Places are interpreted, narrated, perceived, felt, understood and imagined (Soja 1996). With the words of Mary Douglas, home is not only a space, it also has some structure in time; and because it belongs to people who are living in that time and space, it has aesthetic and moral dimensions (Douglas 1991: 289). At the same time, individuals perceive and interpret the space and it becomes a part of their identity. Place attachments (or refusals) relate to biographical experience; hence, the longer people lived in a particular

6

Category I: dwelling with central, remote or single-storey heating and complete basic amenities; category II: dwellings with above-mentioned heating, without own basic amenities, or dwellings with own amenities without above-mentioned heating; category III: dwellings without above-mentioned heating, with either a bathroom or a flush toilet; category IV: dwellings without above-mentioned heating, without basic amenities or with insufficient basic amenities.

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place, the more emotions matter. Place attachment plays an important role in feeling rooted, secure and, last but not least, powerful. Namely, the meaning of “home” does not always have to be positive and, according to the seniors in our research, it is important to maintain control over private space as a crucial indicator of selfhood (Peace et al. 2005: 203). Performing control over one’s own space, household or home is part of the struggle to maintain control over their own situation in general, as shown in the next example. Eva (70 years old, Bratislava) expressed her relationship to her dwelling and family members stressing her decisions, her rules, her being the deciding person with power with respect to younger generations: I love when our children and their children come for lunch or visit me during a celebration. But it is still at my place, I invite them, we eat what I cook, of course, I cook meals I know they like, but it is my decision. And when there are grandchildren playing and playing wild, it’s all OK, we have prepared a playroom where they can play, but my rules apply. They are allowed to eat in front of the TV, to have breaks whenever they want, they can also spend a lot of time sitting at the computer. But I love them most when I say goodbye to them standing outside of my door in front of the lift.

Mária X. (67 years old, Bratislava) offers a similar example of maintaining her own place. Moreover, she prefers to stay in the city, which seems to offer more possibilities and excitement: I only have a daughter and two small grandchildren. They don’t live in the city, they live in a village, and so we do not meet too often. Sometimes I’m invited to babysit. My grandchildren are six and ten years old. We love each other, but there is not much time to be together. My daughter invited me to move to their house in the village. But I’m used to the hustle and bustle of the city; the village seems very silent and boring to me. I would feel alone there, especially after my daughter and her husband leave for work and their children for school. Moreover, I know that I’d turn into a home robot. I know my daughter. I prefer staying in my flat, with my books, traveling and working in the garden – during the season. Naturally, I also devote some time to staying with my close ones.

The relationship of Mária X. to younger generations is influenced by her unpleasant experience and by her relationship to her old mother. The aging process in relation to the place must be understood in the context of her previous life stages; space must be studied from a life cycle perspective. The geographical distance mentioned at the beginning of the last quotation is a kind of a symbol of distant relationships between generations. Mária X. prefers

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geographical distance and independence (a kind of a justification for sporadic meetings) over geographical closeness and loneliness or work in her daughter’s household. Staying in a familiar environment corresponds to the traditional dwelling arrangements in the already mentioned Slovak setting in the past. However, the model of staying in a solitary household with no children or even children’s children in the same place developed only in the second half of the 20th century. Moreover, the notion of “home” must be perceived in a broader context and dynamics. Home can transform from a happy family home of middle adulthood to a place of loneliness and despair in older age as a result of negotiation and renegotiation in this period of life (Sixsmith et al. 2014: 2), or a formerly safe and peaceful community, or at least the feeling of safety, can change with growing age. The fear of crime or other dangers, either real or imagined, can become a major barrier in participating in the wider social world (Victor et al. 2009: 110). The broader sense of “home” can be outlined within immediate contexts such as neighborhood and community (Sixsmith et al. 2014: 2) and the availability of social networks rather than the narrow confines of the built dwelling (Victor et al. 2009: 110).

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND SOLITUDE Social networks and their maintenance and cultivation are an important aspect of aged individuals. This topic has universal approaches in seeing solitude as the least acceptable situation with a specific connection to quality of life. Considering the Eastern European context, an analysis of urban and rural differences in Serbia’s aging population can be found in the work of Jadranka Urošević and colleagues (Urošević et al. 2015), and the specific position of rural Eastern European countries with certain implications for urban society is explored by Kulcsár/Brădăţan (2014). The comparison of the Eastern European experiences in coping with aging and lonely people living at home with the Western European experience is also a helpful approach to understanding this issue in broader cultural contexts (see Sixsmith et al. 2014; Lykes/Kemmelmeier 2013; Fokkema et al. 2012). The urban space in terms of a friendly and liveable space for seniors with practical aspects is an important issue in providing seniors with an opportunity for healthy interactions with other people and removing the barriers to accessibility of facilities and services (Fitzgerald/Caro 2014; Beard/Petitot 2010; Buffel et al. 2012), with an accent on aging in place (e.g., Perez et al. 2001). Research into changing social ties in the lives of individuals is discussed in longitu-

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dinal studies that show changes in the perception of loneliness, and their preconditions are explored in the works by Dykstra et al. (2005), Dahlberg et al. (2016), Suanet et al. (2017) and Holwerda et al. (2016). Nowadays, a certain price is being paid for extending the hope of a longer life; this price is the possible separateness or loneliness. When a person reached old age during the former demographic regime, she or he might not have had a life partner anymore, but was surrounded by two, three or four living children, their partners and children, and the family also included nephews and nieces and other relatives on the partner’s side. Westwards from the Hajnal line dividing the area of Europe by different family systems, it could also have been many nonrelated persons (Hajnal 1965, 1983).7 The children of today’s seniors are probably alive, together with their partners and children; they probably have siblings, and their partners too. However, the mobility of family members, much more intensive than ever before, extends distances and enlarges the meshes of the family network (Livi Bacci 2003: 228230). Thus, the density of the network of family relationships would be smaller:

7

The demographer and statistician John Hajnal highlighted the characteristics of the “European model” of family: advanced age of couples at the time of their first marriage and a large number of people who had not concluded marriage throughout their lives. He established its Eastern border: an imaginary connecting line between St. Petersburg and Trieste. Families who were located East of the connecting line would have been characterized by low marriage age and the fact that almost everybody got married in their life. In regions where people married young, it was assumed that after marriage the couple became, for a longer or shorter time, part of their parents’ family (mostly of the groom). The family also functioned as a working unit, and labor force from outside the family was rarely hired. The moment when a couple established a separate household could have been variously motivated: usually the family separated after the death of parents. Sometimes the situation arose that the couple separated during the family cycle. The parents then generally remained with the family of one of the sons (the youngest or oldest) who cared for them until the end of their life. In contrast, different family structures in some parts of Western Europe were also linked to the different care of the elderly: the institution called “Ausgedinge,” in which an old peasant couple at a certain point in their life transferred their property to a successor – usually, the next generation in the family or others outside the family circle. Their successor undertook to take care of the retiring couple from the sources of the inheritance. Relations between generations in the family regarding the inheritance of assets were sometimes resolved through a contract.

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“As a consequence of neolocality which leads to certain isolation of individual generations, older people will later live almost exclusively with the members of their own age group” (Mitterauer 1978: 146), including mainly spouses. Mária K. (70 years old, Bratislava) talks about her experience with the wider family network: I raised three children, I allowed all of them to study and complete college. My daughters left our house, their children were born, they have their own families, their own duties. The fact that they are far away is very difficult to live with, but I have to manage somehow. I did not experience the births of my grandchildren because we did not live in a common household. Even though they live outside of my city, they visit me (weekly, quarterly), we have a very good relationship with each other.

Maria K. explains her struggle with her daughters living far away. On the other hand, as the ethics of good family relationships is widespread in Slovak society (and based on the traditional settings), she finished this part of her narrative with an assurance about the “very good relationship” with her children and grandchildren. She went on by describing the situation after her children left the common household: I was lonely, I didn’t know what to do with myself, I missed the people, company, things that are hard to forget. After a while, I focused on working in the house, working in the garden, I’ve been reading a lot, I’ve done needlework. And later I started to visit the pensioners’ club regularly. I meet familiar faces there, we drink coffee together, talk about complaints, give each other advice, sometimes we help each other. In the seniors’ club, we find something else to think about and forget that we are old and useless.

The presence and stability of social networks seem to be key factors for not suffering under the feeling of loneliness (Zebhauser et al. 2015). Considering that social networks in older age are relatively age homogeneous, the problem emerges because the social ties in older age disintegrate faster, which is an important impetus for the feeling of social and personal loneliness (Dannefer/Shura 2009: 752). Social networks in older age are generally of two types (Suanet et al. 2017): (1) family-focused networks, which is more intimate and less structured and diverse; (2) friend-focused networks (wider community-focused networks) with higher interactions with non-kin, community engagement, but lower interaction

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with family. A third type is represented by individuals with restricted networks in both spheres. Aging individuals are stereotypically associated with solitude. The feeling of loneliness is one of the most important indicators of the quality of life of the aged (Vidovićová et al. 2013). It represents a discrepancy between the size and quality of an individual’s social network and the quality of the desired social networks (Lykes/Kemmelmeier 2013: 2). A study conducted in several countries proved that in societies where family is more valued, more contact with family meant less feeling of loneliness. In these types of societies, the feeling of loneliness was strongly related to the need of assistance (failure of personal independence) (ibid.: 13), or, conversely, the presence of the spouse and contact with children and grandchildren are associated with greater life satisfaction (Litwin/Stoeckel 2013). One of our interview partners, Mária X. (67 years old, Bratislava), expressed her doubts about family networks: Care and family? I don’t rely on my daughter. But I think that a person can live and die decently even at home, if they are cared for by an unknown, well-paid person. This is my opinion. Maybe it’s not correct.

Mária X. is thinking about her future; maybe because she does not rely on her daughter due to conflicts concerning inheritance, as well as her daughter’s bad relationship to her own mother when the latter grew old, etc. She expressed her disappointment with the non-functioning relationship with her daughter several times during the interview: And then, the inheritance problems began. As the world goes, they are never all satisfied. So I decided to sell everything and divide the money among my children. However, the reconciliation did not occur, and disagreements persist until day. I still carry in my heart and mind the ingratitude of my children and feeling of loneliness.

However, she mentions her daughter as the first person to maintain a relationship with; does she expect her daughter to take care of her in the future? The mentioning of care by an unknown person who is not a member of her family evokes uncertainty, doubts, since it is not a common model in Slovakia, as one of the countries with increased focus on developed family social networks and their maintaining. Mária’s solitude and feeling of loneliness, just like the intensity of social contacts, is not necessarily the matter of a sudden change in the life of an indi-

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vidual. In most cases, it reflects the past, the life path of a person and gradually emerging processes, such as changing neighborhood, children moving away, or retirement itself (Victor et al. 2009: 143-144). On one side, it can be the reflection of a miserable childhood experience (for example, loss of parents during the war, child abuse, remarriage of one of the parents, etc.) (Tiilikainen/Sepänen 2017) or, more recently, there is a higher chance of social interaction and engagement if it was present, for example, in the last 20 years, but the hypothesis of the same longitudinal effect of loneliness was confirmed only partially (Dahlberg et al. 2016: 5).8 Our research suggests that changes during the life path bring various arrangements in the relationship between generations in a family. In the first phase, parents represent support for the families of their children – either financial (as we could see, a part of them even extends their economic activities just to be able to financially contribute to their already adult children), or through taking over some “services” (e.g., care for small children, help in the household, etc.), or by “holding the fort” for their children. This relationship gradually changes. Parents lose strength, their health deteriorates until they themselves need support. In the end, it is usually the children who at the beginning limit their help to their old parents to material support and are later often bewildered by the situation in which care for their old parents requires regular visits or accepting them into their own household. The arrangements made by Barbora’s family and siblings represent another example (of several similar cases in our research) of how to maintain the social network of the older adult. They decided to take care of their old mother, who refused to move in with some of her children, exactly with the concept of aging in place in mind. Barbora (65 years old, Bratislava): My dear mum, when she was 60 years old, she started to suffer from a terribly severe neurological disorder similar to multiple sclerosis. Within two and a half years, she was completely paralyzed. At the same time, she had an absolutely intact mind. It was a very special time, because when they told me the truth – that she would die in four months –, we said we wanted to have her die in our home. I really don’t know how I managed. I do not know how I did it, and I even managed to succeed in an important medical exam. But it was not possible to have her all the time at

8

Specific examples could be individuals who can be classified as existentially lonely, where being lonely and fear of being lonely completely takes over the individual’s life (Victor et al. 2009: 144-145).

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our place, so we agreed that we would take her home to her house and that we would divide the time taking care of her there. We had a brilliant idea: we were six people, and everyone was willing to contribute, so we agreed that everybody had to work for two months. I came, for example, on Sunday evening and stayed until Friday, and then another family member came on the weekend. When I was there for a week from Sunday to Friday, I was with her from morning until evening and someone else came in the evening to change. On Friday evening, the one who had the weekend came so I could spend the weekend with my family. Well, it took two years, but it was an amazing experience for us siblings, it brought us together. Finally, the same was true about me and my husband, he went instead of me many times. It was challenging, but because we were six people, it was possible, and our mom did not have to end up in an institution.

Most of our interviewees do expect some kind of social contacts and care from their children. However, the care and visits do not necessarily have the form of a complicated schedule, as described in the example above. It can take the form of everyday cooperation: e.g., help with heavy shopping bags and bottles. We could see a possible connection to problems with driving, which can cause some concerns in old age as well, but is inevitable in the case of larger shopping trips to supermarkets. Peter Salner faced a similar situation during his research in the north-western part of Slovakia: “The forms of assistance and collaboration are not limited to crisis or key situations (diseases, seasonal domestic or field works), but are of a continuous nature” (Salner 1982: 394). In connection with rural areas, Salner calls such family a dispersed family. Other terms include, for example, a “multilocal” family or the concept of a “modified expanded family,” representing a group of relatives who have relatively close and permanent relationships without sharing the same address, economic, cultural and social activities. These terms are, in fact, another name for the well-known older concept of “intimacy at a distance” by Leopold and Hilde Rosenmayr (Rosenmayr/Rosenmayr 1978). In principle, it opposes the idea of neglecting older relatives in the past and today, stating that despite the greater or lesser distance of housing and main activities of family members, the relationships between them are well-maintained. It is interesting that our interview partners did not mention the period of real socialism during which generations were interconnected in networks of families and relatives. On the one hand, this related to the recession of many people into seclusion and, on the other hand, to the economy of scarcity and the hunt for missing commodities, “which could explain the function of the ‘modified ex-

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tended family’ as an emergency alliance in the real socialism period” (Sieder 1998: 238). Besides the insufficient social sciences analysis of this period in Slovakia and the missing need or reason to talk about this period, a possible explanation is that the authors did not link the generational relationships and the social networks built on the basis of family relationships during the period of real socialism to their current situation.

CONCLUSION In this paper, we approached and analyzed individual households with seniors over 65 years of age in the Slovak urban environment. The aim was to investigate the position, social networks and family relationships of seemingly economically independent individual seniors in an urban landscape, with a specific focus on their life cycle influencing their current circumstances. We used a combination of quantitative data with anthropologically informed gerontology, characterized by abandoning the approach to aging as a universal process of biological and psychological decline. We focused on aging as an interactive, socially established process adapted to the specific cultural context. The interdisciplinary cooperation of researchers with backgrounds in social and cultural anthropology, demography and human geography enabled a deepened insight into the problem of solitude related to housing and social networks as well as intergenerational relationships of seniors in an urban environment. Different methodologies exist also because they are different, and there is one significant reason for this difference to be a benefit: the object of research and the studied reality are integrated and holistic. Recognizing the holistic quality of life with two different methodological optics can be more effective for uncovering the essence of the phenomenon. Europe is historically very diverse in family forms and approaches to social networks and care for older adults: different prevailing household types in the past indicated the position of seniors in a family – e.g., there were multigenerational families present in some areas of Eastern Europe and prevailing nuclear households even with seniors living alone present in most parts of Western Europe (westwards from the Hajnal line). Slovakia and Central Europe are situated somewhere between these models, and the social networks of older adults as well as arrangements related to care were thus mostly within the responsibility of the closest family with no aid from institutions. Nowadays, the spatial and structural aspects of family life transformation have made this situation more compli-

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cated. Currently, Slovakia is between two different worlds – one expecting family to take care of the elderly, and the other based on the individual’s strategy, with assistance from facilities and social networks. This transformation challenges current family relationships, many times forcing family members to migrate to new settings, mostly leaving the oldest members on their own, either in the rural or urban world. Large urban estates form a crucial platform for the social networks of older adults if family networks do not function well. Many participants in our research live alone; a notable portion, especially women, are widowed, some for a longer time. Their children might live in the same city but could also have left the town or even the country. Relying on social networks consisting of friends, people with similar hobbies and neighbors represents a strong and essential setting for assurance in times of need. We assume that the loneliness of seniors is complex in nature, it can acquire various specific forms and levels associated with a variation of mutually overlapping conditioning factors that affect social roles in both the private and public life of a person. That is why the possibilities of prevention and intervention can be seen both at the level of the family and of the community, in parallel and in a complementary relationship. Barry Wellman and Stephanie Potter once compared personal community networks to the solar system, where the person is the sun and network members are planets. There are bonds of attraction and repulsion, just like forces from outside (Wellmann/Potter 1999: 73). Concerning aging in cities, the formation or existence of such a system is very specific. It is the community that helps maintain social contacts outside the family and, in many cases, it works as a substitute for family ties in case the children or closest relatives live elsewhere or there is no functional relationship existent. A broader definition of community encompasses the concept of age-friendly city or community which creates both environmental and social living spaces and enables older inhabitants to continue living and participating in the community (Fitzgerald/Caro 2014: 3). An important issue is, for example, accessibility – if the elderly wish to remain engaged with the local community and maintain their social networks, the streets of the city must be well designed, there must be good access to public transportation and accessibility to diverse retail outlets; poor neighborhood socioeconomic status indicated, for example, higher rates of health deprivation (Beard/Petitot 2010: 429, 439-440). On the other hand, even in the areas of intense economic deprivation, older people identify themselves with their neighborhood and experience high levels of social support (Buffel 2012: 603). The consequences of the spatial separation of generations within a family entail two moments. On one hand, they can represent a basis for the improvement

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of relationships and mitigation of the tensions between generations; on the other hand, they can lead to the isolation of elderly people. Nowadays, on the territory of Slovakia, social networks as well as family obligations and functions that used to be active until old age usually do not take the form of caring for a family living in the same household. They are rather based on the fact that older retired persons dedicate much of their time and money to help their children in establishing their own life. They “work” on the same amount of tasks for their children, relatives and friends as on those for themselves. According to the sociological research by Walter Bien (2000), assistance provided by the older generation to the younger one within a family (although not living in the same place) exists more than vice versa. Our research has shown a shift from emphasis on family social networks to the use of networks of members of one and the same generation. On the other hand, it was possible to uncover functional family networks that are, for example, related to telephone chats or personal visits as well as different forms of help, ranging from simple daily routines like shopping, gardening, etc., to elaborated schedules providing services and care for older adults in need. An apparently economically independent senior living in a solitary household is, thus, in many cases part of an extended modified family, as it was proposed by the concept of “intimacy at a distance.” However, other cases from our research do not suggest such a positive picture. As already mentioned, the realm of family and social networks of older adults pertains to a very sensitive area of research. Our results lead us to conclude this article with the question related to the social networks of older adults and their loneliness as an inspiration for further research: Where is the core emphasis – on intimacy or on distance? The question to be answered is to what extent we embellish the relationships between generations within a family, using scientific concepts among other things, and to what extent the concept of “intimacy at a distance” provides a comfortable excuse, the appeasement of conscience, as we have been able to identify the condition of the relationships in society to meet the expectations of what is considered right and wrong.

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The Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Family Communication Dialogues with Grandmothers from Romania Loredana Ivan

INTRODUCTION Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are increasingly prevalent across the life course. The uptake of ICTs, however, varies considerably across countries and across different age groups. Studies regarding grandparents’ use of web-based services to communicate with family members (see for example Ivan/Hebblethwaite 2016) show that grandmothers are more engaged in communicating actions, although they often are less technologically skilled when compared to grandfathers. In the current study, grandmothers’ use of ICTs in family communication is approached from a relational perspective. The paper focuses on grandmothers, as previous research (Burke/Adamic/Marciniak 2013) has indicated that they play a central role in communication actions and family bonding. Using a focus group methodology, I engaged grandmothers from Bucharest, Romania (aged 65 and older) in conversations about their everyday uses and the role of ICTs in family communication. The aim is to investigate what media they engage with; what media they do not engage with; how they engage with these media in family interactions, particularly when communicating with children and grandchildren. This work will contribute to the current literature on how older adults use (or do not use) ICTs in their everyday lives by focusing on a range of media, including social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), online communities, blogs and other communication platforms such as Skype or WhatsApp. In addition, the chapter will shed light on family practices in the use of ICTs in Eastern European countries, which face an accelerating aging process.

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ICT USE AMONG ROMANIAN OLDER ADULTS Data provided by the National Institute of Statistics (INS 2017a) show that two out of three households in Romania have a computer and Internet access at home (68 percent). The percentage is significantly lower when compared with the average Internet coverage in EU28 households, which is estimated at 88 percent for the same year. Also, other countries in the region – Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland – have a smaller percentage of Internet users than the EU28 (EU 2017). The percentage of Internet users is higher in urban areas: approximately 65 percent of the households with computers and Internet access are from the urban setting. Generally speaking, the urban areas are 20 percent ahead rural areas in terms of Internet access and ICT use. The differences in ICT use across the life span are also larger when compared to other, more developed countries in the EU: Internet use (of the main provider in the household) is 68 percent in the 5564 age group in Romania, but it decreases as we go for the older segments of population (EU 2017): only 41 percent for the 65-74 years age group and 21 percent for those aged 75 and above. It actually means that when we talk about the oldest-old Romanians, there is a 20 percent digital gap when compared to the general adult population (at least for Internet use). Although such a gap exists in all the other countries of the EU, it is much smaller, about 10 percent (EU average). When we take into account the fact that over 65 percent of the total older population in Romania live in rural areas, we can notice two factors: being 65 and above (particularly being 75 and above) and living in rural settings shapes the Romanian context of the digital gap across the life span and cannot be ignored in the analysis. In my previous works (Ivan 2017, 2018) I underlined the fact that we lack data on ICT use by people 75 and above at the national level and on the “invisibility” in the statistics of the oldest-old (75 and above) also at the EU level. The absence of large segments of the population from the official statistics regarding ICT use and the over-homogenization of data is difficult to comprehend when demographic predictions are considered; for example, the Romanian National Institute of Statistics (INS 2017b) provides data for the 5574 age group, regardless of the differences in access and use within this age group, and there is a lack of data on the oldest-old population (above 74 years of age). These aspects are particularly important in countries in which the percentage of older people is increasing and this trend is accelerating. New demographic projections show an eastward shift of the aging process; estimates for Romania suggest it will reach after 2040 the highest median age among European countries (UN 2017). Figure 1 shows not only an accelerating trend of the aging pop-

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ulation in Romania over the past fifteen years, but also the fact that this trend is particularly ascendant in the case of the oldest-old (80 years and above). When taking into account the life expectancy in Romania and gender differences (Ivan/Frunzaru 2017), the conclusion can be made that women have prevailed in the oldest-old group for the past 15 years and will probably continue to do so in the future. Figure 1: Population aging in Romania over the last 15 years

Source: INS (2017a).

Also, the number of people (16 to 74 years of age) using the Internet has continuously increased over the past ten years in Romania. The growth is exponential and follows the same pattern as in other EU countries: the level of Internet use almost doubled for the 25-54 years of age group; and it has almost tripled for the older population (55-74 years) in the past 15 years (Eurostat data provide comparisons between 2004-2018). In Romania in particular, for the past three years a rapid increase in Internet use among retirees can be observed (INS 2017b), in comparison with other categories of the population (5 percent increase in three years). Nevertheless, we face the largest increase in Internet use among the older population (also in Romania), as an effect of saturation in the other age groups. Still, the exponential increase of Internet use in this age group is important to be captured in the data.

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Moreover, there are larger percentages of men using the Internet in Romania than women and the gap (of approximately 5 percent) has been consistent over the past ten years. For example, in 2017, 72.2 percent of men and 67.2 percent of women (16 to 74 years of age) declared that they had been using the Internet. The gender gap regarding Internet use is highly interrelated with the level of education and also with the type of employment people have/had – people having more technical jobs or jobs requiring Internet use are more digitally skilled compared to those with jobs in which Internet use was not required or common.1 Despite the exponential increase in Internet access and use among all categories of population in Romania for the past ten years, a low percentage of typical Internet behavior is still being registered, in comparison with the EU28 average level (e.g., Internet banking, reading news online). Particularly in the case of older people, the diversity of digital-related behavior is rather low and the digital gap (often called the second level of digital divide – see Van Dijk/Hacker 2003) is more pronounced when compared to other age categories (adults 30 to 50 years of age). Also, there is evidence that older people are, generally speaking, less ICT-skilled compared to the youngest ones, which previous studies in Romania also confirm, though some variables, as for example working in a technically-related domain, moderated the effect of age on Internet skills (FernándezArdèvol/Ivan 2013, 2015). In conclusion, the use of ICTs by older people in Romania is characterized by an increase in access (the first level of digital divide has tended to diminish in the past three years), little diversity and modest skills (see Loos/Nimrod/ Fernández-Ardèvol 2018) in digital-related behavior (second and third levels of digital divide – the digital skills gap). In addition, when analyzing Internet use among older adults in Romania, some contextual factors need to be considered: an increase in the population over 65 and even more over 80 years of age, and the fact that they are mostly women,2 still having less access to the Internet and less skills and variety in digital-related behavior than men. In this context, the current paper explores the voices of grandmothers from Romania to understand the role of ICTs in family communication practices, also including the voices of people over 65 years of age.

1

See Fernández-Ardèvol/Ivan 2015 for a review on how socio-demographic variables interact in explanatory models on ICT use later in life.

2

The life expectancy for women is seven years higher than for men.

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GRANDMOTHERS’ USE OF ICTS IN FAMILY COMMUNICATION Transnational migration adds pressure to the relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, as older people are often left behind (Sigad/Eisikovits 2013). Although one might think that the immediate effect of increased national and transnational migration might be the fact that grandparents start to play a diminishing role in the raising of grandchildren, several authors (Harper 2014; Hasmanová Marhánková 2015) suggest that grandparents continue to play an important role because: (1) increased life expectancy maintains the opportunity for long-term grandparent-grandchild relationships (Harper 2014); (2) the changes in the structure of modern families (as for example the increased rate of divorce, single-parent families and work mobility for both parents) create new spaces for redefining the role of grandparenting in maintaining family stability and intergenerational support (Szinovacz 1998); (3) discourses of aging are changing what it means to age and are redefining aging by putting more pressure on the individual to stay young and be active; they influence the way grandparents themselves construct their involvement with their grandchildren. Consequently, the active aging rhetoric has changed the perspective on grandparenting from an obligatory mission within family bonding (as it was, for example, in the East European countries, especially in the socialist period) to a – more or less – voluntary activity and a perpetual negotiation over the level of involvement in children’s and grandchildren’s everyday lives (see Phillipson 2013). Nevertheless, grandparenting still plays an important and enduring role in child care globally. In Europe, for example, approximately half of the grandparents are involved in some type of grandchildren care (Glaser/Di Gessa/Tinker 2014). The SHARE project data3 (2004-2017) show no change in the number of grandparents involved in child care over the past years but a slightly increased effect over time.

3

The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) includes data from eleven countries in Europe: Denmark, Sweden, Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Greece, collected every two years on national representative samples. The project focused on grandparenthood and grandparent characteristics, with a longitudinal approach. Although the former communist countries are not included, estimations regarding those countries are presented: Romania is described as being close to the Mediterranean countries, with grandparents still playing an important role in grandchildren care.

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The percentage of grandparents and the intensity of child care involvement vary by country, with 50 to 60 percent of grandparents offering “some kind of care” to their grandchildren in Sweden, Denmark, France and the Netherlands. In the Mediterranean countries (Spain, Portugal) the percentage is smaller (40 percent), but there are still more than 20 percent of grandparents offering “daily care” in these countries, while in Sweden, Denmark, France and the Netherlands less than 5 percent of the grandparents are providing “daily care” for their grandchildren. The estimations for Romania, Hungary and Poland are similar to the ones found in the Mediterranean countries, as former communist countries have the lowest usage of formal child care in Europe (Börsch-Supan et al. 2013). More grandmothers are involved in grandchildren care than grandfathers (Glaser/Di Gessa/Tinker 2014) and women spend a greater proportion of their lives being grandparents when compared to men (Hasmanová Marhánková 2015) due to women’s longer life expectancies. Also, grandmothers are more likely to be expected to perform the role of “grannies” (Sorensen/Cooper 2010; Tarrant 2010). When using ICTs in family communication, grandmothers are more involved in bonding, empathic and supportive communication acts with their children and grandchildren when compared to grandfathers, who focus on micro-coordination and factual communication topics (Burke/Adamic/Marciniak 2013). Grandmothers play a more important role in family communication not only because they are expected to do so, but also because “being a grandmother” offers them a positive identity in old age (Reitzes/Mutran 2004; Tarrant 2010). Studies regarding grandparents’ use of web-based services to communicate with their children and grandchildren show some gender differences that seem to be a reflection of the common communication roles within families. Grandmothers are more engaged in communicating actions than grandfathers, although they tend to be less technologically skilled (Quadrello et al. 2005). Furthermore, there are also content differences, with grandfathers placing more emphasis on facts and grandmothers on interpersonal relations, empathy, family bonding and support (Burke/Adamic/Marciniak 2013). As recipients of web-based content, women (daughters and granddaughters) enjoy more emotional support and disclosure than men (sons and grandsons), who are more encouraged to be independent. A common topic is food and recipes and an important incentive for grandparents to go online are photos and news from children and grandchildren, especially grandbabies (Tee/Brush/Inkpen 2009). Communication with grandchildren changes as they grow up, so grandparents would look for: advice, complimenting, keeping in touch, plans about getting together and aspects related to health and healing. Grandparents’ agency to communicate with their grandchil-

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dren is generally mediated by distance and by the type of gratification offered to them (Quadrello et al. 2005). When grandchildren live relatively close, using mobile phones or landlines and hearing grandchildren’s voices is most appreciated, whereas for far-away grandchildren, Skype, Facebook and WhatsApp meet four aspects that older people value most in media of communication: (1) allowing personalization; (2) offering focus and time of reflection; (3) ease of making contact; (4) a design that supports reciprocity (see Lindley/Harper/Sellen 2009). Depending on the quality of the relationship with their children and grandchildren, grandparents are willing to engage in learning how to use different ICTs, especially when their loved ones live far away (Santana et al. 2005). There is evidence (González/Jomhari/Kurniawan 2012; Fernández-Ardèvol/Ivan 2013) that older people are often pushed to go online by their children and grandchildren who might also set up the device for them (e.g., computer at their houses with Internet facilities) or pay for the costs of communication. In previous studies (Ivan/Fernández-Ardèvol 2017a; Ivan/Hebblethwaite 2016), we used semi-structured interviews with people aged 60 and above in different parts of the world (Barcelona, Bucharest, Toronto, Los Angeles, Montevideo, Lima), showing that communicating with children and grandchildren, when families get separated, is an important motivator that “pushes” older people to learn more about the use of ICTs. We also emphasized the fact that once motivation is lost (i.e., family members are back at home), the interest in using a particular technology to communicate is diminished, and older people might therefore stop using it. In one particular study (Ivan/Hebblethwaite 2016), we focused on grandmothers living in Romania and Canada and we explored the way they use Facebook to facilitate family communication. Findings suggest that family relationships play a central role in grandmothers’ motivations and behaviors surrounding Facebook use. We interviewed Romanian women having a Facebook account and relevant family members (children or grandchildren) far from home. The main findings indicated a tendency to switch between different devices to maintain family relations using Facebook; relative passive use of Facebook, with a focus on photos and quotations as content that triggers emotions; and Facebook usage influenced by social norms around decency and privacy – grandmothers’ concerns that Facebook presents indecent content and allows indecent exposure. In the current study, I engaged grandmothers from Bucharest, Romania (aged 65 and older) in conversations about their everyday uses and the role of ICTs in family communication. The aim was to investigate how they engage with different media in family interactions, particularly when communicating with children and grandchildren. I departed from the previous studies in several aspects: (1) by using a focus group methodology, whereas in the previous studies individual in-

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terviews were conducted. Such an approach would allow participants to be exposed to others’ opinions and show their reactions, they might face criticism and encouragement for their evaluations and behavior patterns from their peers, as they would in real life; (2) by trying to reach people aged 65 and above represented to a lesser extent in the statistics; (3) by focusing not only on Facebook, but on a wider range of media, including other social media (Twitter, Instagram), online communities, blogs and other communication platforms such as Skype and WhatsApp.

METHODOLOGY Three focus groups were conducted in Bucharest over a period of one month (March 1-31, 2017). I selected grandmothers aged 65 years and above who regularly use the Internet, having at least one device which allows Internet access (mobile phone, computer and/or tablet). These group conversations were videorecorded (with the participants’ consent). Interviews lasted between 60-90 minutes. Interviews were translated from Romanian to English for analysis purposes. The interviews included a discussion of general technology use to determine what types of ICTs the grandmothers use and how they engage with these ICTs. Specifically, they discussed what media they engage with; what media they do not engage with; how they engage with these media in family interactions, especially when communicating with children and grandchildren. They were also asked to reflect on their use of social network sites (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.). These interviews were audio-recorded, with participants’ consent, and then transcribed verbatim. Participation in the study was strictly confidential and any identifying information has been removed to ensure that confidentiality is maintained. Qualitative data analysis of the interpretive interviews employed the constant comparative method (Glaser/Strauss 1967) as a means of processing the data. This facilitated coding and comparison of data both of and between participants. Data were stored and organized using the QSR NVIVO software package to facilitate the development of categories and comparison of codes applicable to each category. Analysis began with open coding, followed by axial coding and then selective coding (Strauss/Corbin 1997). The interviews were coded inductively based on the broad questions outlined in the interview guide.

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Participants Participants were selected using the snowballing technique and some were approached at a fair of anti-aging products, organized in Bucharest around the time of the data collection. I recruited participants who declared that they were grandmothers, that they were 65 years of age or more and that they used Internet on their own devices. I tried to balance for their level of education and income by including grandmothers with different socio-economic backgrounds. Still, this sample mostly reflects grandmothers with medium-to-high education, as this is the group with better Internet skills and with a higher probability of using the Internet regularly. The final sample included grandmothers from 65 to 75 years of age, who signed an informative consent to participate in this study. Details about participants’ demographics and devices they regularly use are presented in the Annex. It is noteworthy that there were no grandmothers with only primary education in the sample. This is due to the fact that the percentage of Internet use for low-educated groups of older women (65 to 75) is estimated to be below 5 percent of the population in Bucharest (based on data provided in 2017 by INS). Findings The findings presented here reflect the common themes in the grandmothers’ stories about using different ICTs in family communication. These themes illustrate: (1) the interplay between grandparenting and the use of ICTs in the relations with grandchildren; (2) the use of Internet-based applications in connection with interests and hobbies; (3) risks and opportunities in the use of social network sites; (4) the general popularity of photos. In order to present the findings, we will use participants’ codes as shown in the Annex.

GRANDPARENTING AND THE USE OF ICTS Participants’ concerns are related to aspects of privacy and decency. Grandmothers admitted that they posted photos with their grandchildren (on Facebook) even though they know one is supposed to be more precautious with this and aware of risks associated with the loss of privacy. Similarly to previous studies in which grandmothers’ use of Facebook was investigated, concerns about social norms and decency were also expressed in the current sample: grandmothers disagree with sharing private aspects online, talking to strangers or showing intimate behavior. Instead, they will use social network sites to communicate with family

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and friends. Preserving a positive identity, especially in front of their children and grandchildren, constitutes a main inhibitory aspect when they talk about content they would like to share about themselves online: intimate details, socially undesirable or criticizable content is intentionally avoided and limited, as their main audience remain the loved ones (family and friends) who “could always judge us” (verbatim from focus group 1). The use of ICTs to communicate with grandchildren is marked by worries about how technology use or overuse might influence them. These particular findings are consistent with the results from other qualitative studies conducted with older people in Romania (Ivan/Fernández-Ardèvol 2017b) that showed that older people perceived some risks related to the overexposure to technology, not in their case, but in the case of children and grandchildren. Similarly, in the current study, grandmothers express awareness and concerns about risks related to technology-dependency in the case of (grand)children: P1.1: I told you, I had some problems with my eyes and I only started using my tablet now but what I see on television and I read in the newspapers about children committing suicide… Other participant: The blue whale. P1.3: Terrible love let-downs at 12-13 years of age, situations when a 17-year-old jumps out of a window because his girlfriend has left him. Moderator: You think there is too much violence. P1.1: Parents are losing control over their children. Moderator: Is this connected to the Internet? P1.1: It has to do with the Internet because children imitate each other. P1.4: There is no control. Parents can’t control absolutely everything. You see, there have been films about such situations. Moderator: Have you experienced this in relation to your own grandchildren? P1.4: Mine are too young. P1.1: My granddaughter is older, my grandson is nine, but his parents have him under supervision. His teacher also recommended that the parents don’t buy the children tablets or very hi-tech telephones. I give my great-grandson my phone to play with, but that’s all. P1.3: Yes, but the games are also… P1.1: Yes, but not those computer games where you have fights. P1.3: Oh, the games where you catch fly and balls.

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P1.1: They encourage him to move, he’s got roller skates, a skateboard, tennis rackets, and it’s better because my daughter and I buy him books, so he can learn to read.4

The data reveals a self-serving error when perceiving the negative influence of technology overuse and violent games on (grand)children: participants refer merely to “others” and not to their own families, thinking that parents have lost control over the way children are using the new media. In the case of “their” grandchildren, the situation is presented as being “under control.” They admit themselves having “given up” to grandchildren’s request of using mobile phones for playing games and the type of dissonance they experience when they are supposed to adjust grandparenting with the continued desire of grandchildren to use different applications on mobile phones or tablets. In addition, grandparents expressed concerns for the fact that young people (referring to the generation of their grandchildren) have little interest in reading, as a consequence of a life dominated by technology. It is noteworthy that such views were expressed particularly by grandmothers who have/had jobs in the area connected to education and teaching. P2.2: A negative side to Internet is that young people have grown distant from reading. You see how they do their homework now, they take essays off the Internet, they copypaste it and it is ready. P2.3: I am very much in touch with the teaching world and I have noticed from those who work with children that they have started to read. This has been happening for 2-3 years. They read and are up to speed with what is new.

When interacting with younger family members, particularly adult children, grandmothers would often feel unease and have difficulties asking them about aspects regarding the use of different applications, fearing “the patronizing” attitude and lack of patience from their side. This is only expressed in relation to their children, while grandchildren are found easier to interact with. That “very school-like attitude” (verbatim from focus group 3) creates a psychological barrier for intergenerational learning, especially when we talk about ICT and family communication. Moderator: For example, how did you learn to use Facebook? P3.2: You navigate, you memorize and you understand it and you continue.

4

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Romanian are the author’s [L.I.].

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P3.1: My son came and I asked him to show me and he said to bring a notebook to write it down. I write it down and then toss it aside. And now if I tell him [name], why isn’t it working, I can’t figure it out, he says “The notebook, mother! Look in the notebook! Did I tell you this? Then I won’t tell you again!”… Oh, my, I feel like crying [when this happens]. He had a very school-like attitude… Moderator: And can you find the information you need in the notebook, when you have such a situation? P3.1: Yes, I find it! But I cannot find the notebook! P 3.3: This is how we learn.

USING INTERNET-BASED APPLICATIONS IN CONNECTION WITH INTERESTS AND HOBBIES Internet-based applications are particularly valued not only for their role in family communication, but also in connection with individuals’ hobbies and interests. Although none of the grandmothers mentioned using Pinterest or other dedicated online platforms, those platforms could probably become more popular in the future, taking into account the need of older people to develop their hobbies and spare-time activities with the help of Internet-based applications. P1.2: I started using the computer years back as a way to communicate on literary websites. I looked for friends, I saw what you can do with a computer, I used to look at it and wonder if it would break. Little by little, I used it, saw it didn’t break and I got in touch with several literary websites. They were nice collaborations; I also won an award from one of the websites. But after that it was enough. These circles started grouping based on affinities, those who weren’t part of their gang weren’t there, so I tried not to get in their way. But I found a lot of open people on Facebook. Everyone curses Facebook, but everyone’s on it. It’s a good way to get information, not to mention that you can have a good time. There are plenty of people there, who find time to post a joke, and the information presents pros and cons and it keeps you close to social life. There are varied opinions, everyone has their own, there are groups based on affinities, but if you read everything you can form a general opinion and then you are an informed individual, I think Facebook is a great new source. Not to mention that there are groups like the previous lady was saying, about interests, stitching, painting, you can find whatever you can think of. I don’t even know how many literary or painting groups are on Facebook. So it’s complete, it’s like a complete “diary” (to record your everyday life). Now we have to use the Internet too,

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“we” are a small group at the moment, to launch the online literary magazine Seniorum, I am part of the editorial staff.

Trips and other recreational activities (e.g., online games) are mentioned as the main incentives of going online and learn how to use different ICTs. Particularly, pilgrimages are mentioned as attractive activities and also similar trips targeting seniors (special offers from the tourist agencies). Moderator: I was wondering if you don’t do anything else online, like look for trips to book. P2.2: Yes, we do! Yes, pilgrimages. [Several participants speak at the same time, general agreement for the use of the Internet to organize trips.] P2.3: We have our own group, very big, about 1,500 people, it’s called “Forever Young” and we organize trips, all the meetings, all the parties. Moderator: And this is a Facebook group, “Forever Young”? P2.2: Yes, with Ilinca [name], because there are many others. Moderator: I am sorry, I don’t know who Ilinca [name] is. P2.3: The organizer. That’s her name, she started it, now there are many groups who took the same name but this is the one she started. Moderator: And other people have made groups with this name? P2.3: Others have made, yes, but for ours it is written, and now we have about 1,500 people. P2.1: And that is where the trips are announced? P2.3: All the trips are posted there, weekly; we have been to Saint Paraschiva, Saint Arsenie and now there are trips all around Transylvania. P2.1: And didn’t you ever get ripped off? P2.3: No such thing! We are friends! Moderator: Why, did this ever happen to you? P2.3: But I visit http://amfostacolo.ro/ [literal translation: “I have been there”], if I want to go on a trip, I read the reviews. P2.1: Ours is just a group, she does not have a company. P2.1: So they probably collaborate with an agency. P2.3: No, no, she organizes, as a person… P2.1: Yes? P2.3: …she makes the itinerary, posts the route, the hours.

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Trusting different online groups or agencies for touristic purposes and trusting online shopping in general is a recurrent theme, and the grandmothers are reluctant to pay online or trust offers without direct personal or intermediate contacts (through family or acquaintances). We believe that such findings extend to older people in Romania in general; as our previous studies (e.g., Ivan/FernándezArdèvol 2017b) show, they are exposed to media content in which issues regarding ICT use, fraud and deceit are prominent and present with older people as the typical victims. Other online leisure activities, such as searching for food and recipes, are enjoyed by grandmothers from different parts of the world (see Ivan/Hebblethwaite 2016). Cooking or food blogging have become important for the Romanian grandmothers, and YouTube is a communication medium with an increased popularity. Moderator: Do you use the Internet for other activities? I don’t know – professional/leisure? P1.1: For baking. Moderator: Do you bake? P1.1: No, I don’t bake. P1.4: I don’t look up cakes, I look at pickles. Moderator: And do you usually look up such information? P1.4: Anything. I go to Google. Absolutely anything I want. He’s my friend. P1.1: My husband experiments with food, but it almost never comes out good, he always says “Well, I did what it said, but I don’t think it’s the same.” P1.2: It never comes out the same. P1.1: I don’t know, maybe they don’t tell you everything… But he is always very careful and does [what the recipe says]. P1.4: I look at Jamilla [popular Romanian food blogger].

RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES IN THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORK SITES Grandmothers mentioned using mainly Facebook and WhatsApp, mainly instant messengers. They also expressed their discontent regarding the language used on Facebook, whereas WhatsApp seemed to be more appreciated for the privacy of sharing content in private groups and the role in micro-coordination. Using social network sites is perceived as a sign of emancipation, but not using them with

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selectivity is seen as a sign of immaturity. Some grandmothers would quit using Facebook due to content that transgresses social norms and expectations regarding decency and politeness. Moderator: Is there anyone here who does not have a Facebook profile? P2.3: We all do, we are emancipated. P2.5: I do not have a personal profile, but my family all do, they all do, Google and everything.

Particularly social network sites such as Facebook and YouTube are blamed for the overuse by and bad influence on their grandchildren. Some of the content is perceived as being inappropriate for children exposure and some other content simply as “a waste of time.” P1.1: I looked with my granddaughter, I know what Facebook is; we also look at the club [Seniors Club], we say, come look what so-and-so wrote. Moderator: And what is it that you don’t like? P1.3: The aggressive language, very aggressive. And one more thing, these things, not necessarily the telephone, but they really take up the children’s time, they don’t read books anymore. From this point of view, in my opinion, these things are a curse. Moderator: So that is why you do not want to get an account, because people have stopped reading? P1.3: I still read, if I go to a resort and I get assigned a room-mate that wants to watch a certain show on the television that I do not like, I open my book, I manage to concentrate because of course they don’t turn it up that loudly, and she watches her show – so I prefer reading to the stupid things they write on Facebook. Moderator: And you, why do you not have one? P1.1: I just haven’t set it up yet. But I am thinking about getting one. I mostly use WhatsApp, YouTube, Google, what else do I use… P1.2: Messages too, photos… P1.6: I have two Facebook accounts! Moderator: All right, let’s see the other side of the story now! [Laughing] P1.6: I have one for friends and family, and one I have for colleagues, former colleagues, and former students that I still communicate with, and there is information that I do not want to… I have certain interests with one group and others with another. Moderator: And you have decided it is best this way.

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P1.6: Yes. I don’t mix things up. P1.1: I also don’t, I never post photos, or… P1.6: I post pictures sometimes for my friends Moderator: So, you mostly… P1.6: You mostly look to see what other people post but do not post that often? Moderator: Yes, sometimes I “like” something that I am interested in. P1.1: People share too many private things on Facebook [Romanian idiom, literally: “to divulge information from one’s home”]. P1.6: Well, only people who want to do that, if you want to share something, you don’t. P1.1: Yes, but people are vulnerable and can do it without realizing and then they regret it.

THE GENERAL POPULARITY OF PHOTOS Generally speaking, studies about older people and Internet behavior reveal the attractiveness of visual content and their desire to take and share photos or video materials. We also found such results with older people we interviewed in Romania, including the current study. Though Instagram is sometimes not familiar or little used, Facebook and WhatsApp (the most used platforms by people aged 65 years and above in Romania – see Loos/Nimrod/Fernández-Ardèvol 2018) are largely appreciated for the possibility to share visual content (i.e., pictures). P2.3: With family and with everyone else you communicate on WhatsApp, you send pictures. I don’t know what to do with that Instigram [ad litteram], I don’t know how to use it. Other participants: Insta-gram. P2.3: If it’s not in Romanian, I don’t know how to use it, it doesn’t exist. P2.1: Insta… come on, you have it too, and I saw you there. Moderator: So you have Instagram, but you didn’t use it. P2.1: But she uses it! I’m telling on her! P2.3: I find that the Internet is very useful; I also think that it can be dangerous. Moderator: I see. Why? P2.3: Well, it’s up to each person, it’s like eating something really tasty, but you mustn’t eat it in excess. You need to know what to select, because the information that is distributed on the Internet is all mixed up. There is a lot of violence, a lot of pornography. You can have a security system, but even with the security system, if I am at home with my grandchild and I want to watch an online movie, first I have information about the film, then

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there is a messy video and then the film starts. Well, how can I watch a film with [granddaughter name] without her asking me “Grandma, but what are they doing there?” So I avoid it, I can’t have that. Someone should clean up the information because it is transmitted exactly as though you would tip a shopping bag onto a table and everyone picked up whatever they liked.

The attractiveness of pictures and video materials is accompanied with worries about inappropriate visual content on social network sites (mainly Facebook): pornography or content with explicit sexual or violent meaning is criticized and the grandmothers’ role in stopping the exposure of grandchildren to such potentially harmful content is underlined as well. Other content (not necessarily visual) is discussed for its potential to harm people: like fake medicine or treatments that people could try just by uncritically taking advice from social network sites. Nevertheless, grandmothers praise the informative potential of Internet (e.g., Google) and the opportunity to find relevant information faster. Moderator: And do you usually look up such information? P3.4: Anything. I go to Google. Absolutely anything I want. He’s my friend. P3.6: Google! I ask anything on Google and it answers me, it’s a good guy. I get along that way. P3.2: I took an English course and I had to do my homework and I had to translate and I asked, I wrote the sentence and asked it to translate and it translated one, two, and then it would not translate anymore and I asked why it won’t do it anymore and it replied “You need to learn!” Moderator: The computer said this? Can you tell us what program you were using? P3.2: No, it was Google! I wrote “You idiot!” and it replied: “You are an idiot because you don’t know the answers!” And I asked my question and he said: “Nobody is forcing you to ask these questions!” Moderator: Right. So you use Google, you use the search engine. P3.2: For those of us who are less erudite with the computer.

Some Google features, such as Google Voice and Google Translate, were mentioned by participants and they referred to “Google search” as “our friend.” Here the potential to find false or unreliable information is not admitted and the level of trustworthiness is higher when compared to social network sites. Google is credited with reliable information for cure treatment and medicines, music, movies, cultural-recreational events and other relevant information for their lives.

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The fact that you do not necessarily have to tap the question but can use your voice instead was highly appreciated. “Mr. Google,” as one participant calls it, is the impersonated representation of all the advantages of Internet-based technologies and incorporates features that allow older people to feel updated on issues they would normally have difficulties to keep up with (e.g., events in the city or later treatments for particular illnesses).

DISCUSSION In the current study, I investigated grandmothers engaging with new media and the role of ICTs in family communication. I aimed to reveal aspects of the role of new media in older people’s lives, focusing on family interactions. The use of the focus group approach allowed for the hearing of voices of Romanian grandmothers “in interaction.” Data presented in the current study shows that using group discussion opens possibilities of reflection and nuances in the way older people react to topics of discussion about ICT appropriation and use. It might encourage the less reflective participants to share their experience or be more critical in the discussion. It is noteworthy that participants enjoyed the group discussion more compared to individual face-to-face interviews that had been conducted in previous studies (Ivan/Fernández-Ardèvol 2017a; Ivan/Hebblethwaite 2016; Fernández-Ardèvol/Ivan 2013). Some of the findings in the current research are supported by data from other studies on older adults in Romania. For example, older people’s preoccupation with aspects regarding decency and privacy are found in other interviews conducted with older adults in Romania (see Ivan/Hebblethwaite 2016) and they might be specific to the way this age group reacts to the new media. Also, the fact that older people are more concerned with others’ (younger family members’) over-exposure to the new media and not with themselves was found in previous studies. Interestingly enough, in other localities in which interviews with older people were conducted (Barcelona, Montreal, Lima, Montevideo), this aspect did not appear (see Ivan/Fernández-Ardèvol 2017a). In this study, the data shows interplay between grandparenting and the use of ICTs in the relations with grandchildren for the women we interviewed, with concerns expressed by all participants regarding (grand)children’s exposure to media content and the risks of overuse. We believe that such concerns are deeply expressed by grandmothers, as they are more involved in grandparenting than grandfathers by spending more hours taking care of grandchildren. Moreover, while grandmothers reported difficulties of reaching their adult children for aspects concerning

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ICT use due to the latter’s patronizing attitude and lack of patience, they described more positive experiences with similar situations in which grandchildren were involved. This is a particularly important finding, as it might not be specific to grandmothers in Romania and describes the role of grandparenting in understanding intergenerational learning when using ICTs. Consistently with previous studies (Ivan/Fernández-Ardèvol 2017a; Ivan/Hebblethwaite 2016), the conclusion is that when important family members move far away (as in the case of transnational families), grandmothers’ motivation to start using different ICTs and particularly social network applications such as Facebook and WhatsApp increases. Actually, having children and grandchildren living abroad has already been proved to be one of the main motivation factors for older people to go online (see Baldassar/Merla 2014). The fact that older people use Internet-based applications in connection with their hobbies and interests and for recreational purposes has been documented in the pertinent literature (Hebblethwaite/Norris 2011). In fact, one of the main motives for older people to go online is “to have fun” (Nimrod 2009) and they probably have this in common with children and adolescents. Food-related information, cooking and recipes are also aspects that older people value and share as content on the new media platforms (Facebooks, Youtube). What is specific to the Romanian grandmothers are the attractiveness of pilgrimages and the role of social network platforms to organize these kinds of trips with religious connotations. One explanation for the success of pilgrimages lays in the data from public opinion surveys (see Şandor/Popescu 2008), with more than 60 percent of older people (particularly women) attending church with some regularity (at least once per month). Social network sites are popular among older adults all over Europe including the Romanian elderly population. Facebook and WhatsApp are the most used social platforms, with WhatsApp catching up fast among the older users of Internet in Romania. In the current research, the fact has been revealed that Facebook is associated only with risks of exposing yourself or others (i.e., grandchildren) to pornography, violent or inadequate content and, generally speaking, to content that can “waste your time.” In contrast, WhatsApp seems to have a more positive representation among grandmothers. This is probably also due to the fact that the grandmothers interviewed in this study reported a very selective use and exposure when they interact on social network sites. Some even decided to close their Facebook accounts or remain passive users when they thought that the language on this platform departed from decency and politeness. Finally, the general popularity of pictures and of visual content in general, also documented in previous studies on older women (Ivan/Hebblethwaite

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2016), could not be considered a particularity of Romanian grandmothers. In other socio-cultural settings, older people show a preference for visual content and willingness to learn to create such content and to share it online. What is peculiar to our sample are probably the grandmothers’ concerns regarding the overexposure of the grandchildren to unwanted visual content (like explicit sexual messages or commercials). This aspect needs to be further explored by revealing the role of grandmothers in the type of online behavior grandchildren approach. Our data additionally offers some indication of self-serving biases when grandmothers discuss these aspects: they believe that adults in general “have lost control over their children” and the type of online exposure of children, but that in the case of their own grandchildren, “things are under control.”

REFERENCES Baldassar, Loretta/Merla, Laura (eds.) (2014): Transnational Families, Migration and the Circulation of Care: Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life. London. Börsch-Supan, Axel/Brandt, Martina/Hunkler, Christian/Kneip, Thorsten/Korbmacher, Julie/Malter, Frederic/Schaan, Barbara/Stuck, Stephanie/Zuber, Sabrina (2013): “Data Resource Profile: The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE)”, in: International Journal of Epidemiology 42/4, 992-1001. Burke, Moira/Adamic, Lada A./Marciniak, Karyn (2013): “Families on Facebook”, in: Proceedings of the7th International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, July 8-11, Cambridge, MA. Palo Alto, CA, 41-50. EU (2017): Europe’s Digital Progress Report. April 27, 2017. https://ec.europa. eu/digital-single-market/en/news/europes-digital-progress-report-2017 [accessed April 16, 2020]. Fernández-Ardèvol, Mireia/Ivan, Loredana (2013): “Older People and Mobile Communication in Two European Contexts”, in: Romanian Journal of Communication & Public Relations 15/3, 83-98. Fernández-Ardèvol, Mireia/Ivan, Loredana (2015): “Why Age is Not That Important? An Aging Perspective on Computer Anxiety”, in: Zhou, Zia/ Salvendy, Gavriel (eds.): Human Aspects of IT for the Aged Population: Design for Aging. First International Conference. Berlin, 189-200. Glaser, Barney/Strauss, Anselm (1967): The Discovery of Grounded Theory. London.

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Glaser, Karen/Di Gessa, Giorgio/Tinker, Anthea (2014): Grandparenting in Europe: The Health and Wellbeing of Grandparents Caring for Grandchildren. The Role of Cumulative Advantage/Disadvantage. London. González, Victor M./Jomhari, Nazean/Kurniawan, Sri H. (2012): “Photo-Based Narratives as Communication Mediators Between Grandparents and Their Children and Grandchildren Living Abroad”, in: Universal Access in the Information Society 11/1, 67-84. Harper, Sarah (2014): Ageing Societies. London. Hasmanová Marhánková, Jaroslava (2015): “The Changing Practices and Meanings of Grandparenthood: Reflections on the Demographical Trends and Changing Representations of Ageing”, in: Sociology Compass 9/4, 309-319. Hebblethwaite, Shannon/Norris, Joan (2011): “Expressions of Generativity Through Family Leisure: Experiences of Grandparents and Adult Grandchildren”, in: Family Relations 60/1, 121-133. INS [Romanian National Institute of Statistics] (2017a): Comunicat Nr. 301. 4 decembrie 2017. Nivelul de trai al populației. www.insse.ro/cms/sites/ default/files/com_presa/com_pdf/tic_r2017.pdf [accessed April 16, 2020]. INS [Romanian National Institute of Statistics] 2017b). Accesul populaţiei la tehnologia informaţiei şi comunicaţiilor – România 2017. http://www. insse.ro/ [accessed April 16, 2020]. Ivan, Loredana (2017): “The Adequacy of Official National Statistics for Public Policy on Ageing.” Paper presented at ECREA. Digital Culture and Communication Section Conference, University of Brighton, UK, November 6-7. Unpublished manuscript. Ivan, Loredana (2018): “The Adequacy of Official Statistics for Studying Older People.” Paper presented at the 15th Annual ICA Mobile Pre-Conference, 2018, ICA (International Communication Association), Prague, Czech Republic, May 22-24. Unpublished manuscript. Ivan, Loredana/Fernández-Ardèvol, Mireia (2017a): “Older people and the Use of ICTs to Communicate with Children and Grandchildren”, in: Transnational Social Review 7/1, 41-55. Ivan, Loredana/Fernández-Ardèvol, Mireia (2017b): “Older People, Mobile Communication and Risks”, in: Societies 7/2, 7. doi:10.3390/soc7020007 [accessed April 16, 2020]. Ivan, Loredana/Frunzaru, Valeriu (2017): “Healthy Life Years in Romania and in the EU Countries: A Comparative Analysis.” Paper presented at Measuring Development in Turbulent Time. International Conference, Bucharest, Romania, SNSPA & Romanian Government, November 28-29. Unpublished manuscript.

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Ivan, Loredana/Hebblethwaite, Shannon (2016): “Grannies on the Net: Grandmothers’ Experiences of Facebook in Family Communication”, in: Romanian Journal of Communication and Public Relations 18/37, 11-25. Lindley, Siân E./Harper, Richard/Sellen, Abigail (2009): “Desiring to Be in Touch in a Changing Communication Landscape: Attitudes of Older Adults”, in: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Boston, MA, April 4-9. New York, 1693-1702. Loos, Eugène/Nimrod, Galit/Fernández-Ardèvol, Mireia (2018): Older Audiences in the Digital Media Environment: A Cross-National Longitudinal Study. Project Report. ACT Project, Montreal. https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/ 983866/ [accessed April 16, 2020]. Nimrod, Galit (2009): “The Internet as a Resource in Older Adult Leisure”, in: International Journal on Disability and Human Development 8/3, 207-214. Phillipson, Chris (2013): Ageing. Cambridge. Quadrello, Tatiana/Hurme, Helena/Menzinger, Johann/Smith, Peter K./Veisson, Marika/Vidal, Sandra/Westerback, Susanne (2005): “Grandparents’ Use of New Communication Technologies in a European Perspective”, in: European Journal of Ageing 2/3, 200-207. Reitzes, Donald C./Mutran, Elisabeth J. (2004): “Grandparent Identity, Intergenerational Family Identity, and Well-Being”, in: The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 59/4, 213-219. Şandor, Dan S./Popescu, Marciana (2008): “Religiosity and Values in Romania”, in: Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences 4/22, 171-180. Santana, Pedro C./Rodríguez, Marcela D./González, Victor M./Castro, Luis A./Andrade, Angel G./Favela, Jesus (2005): “A Web-Based System to Facilitate Elder’s Communication with Their Families Living Abroad”, in: Sixth Mexican International Conference on Computer Science (ENC 2005), September 26-30, 2005, Puebla, Mexico. Puebla,18-25. Sigad, Laura I./Eisikovits, Rivka A. (2013): “Grandparenting Across Borders: American Grandparents and Their Israeli Grandchildren in a Transnational Reality”, in: Journal of Aging Studies 27/4, 308-316. Sorensen, Penny/Cooper, Neil J. (2010): “Reshaping the Family Man: A Grounded Theory Study of the Meaning of Grandfatherhood”, in: The Journal of Men’s Studies 18/2, 117-136. Strauss, Anselm/Corbin, Juliet M. (1997): Grounded Theory in Practice. London. Szinovacz, Maximiliane E. (1998): “Research on Grandparenting: Needed Refinements in Concepts, Theories, and Methods”, in: Szinovacz, Maximiliane E. (ed.): Handbook on Grandparenthood. Westport, CT, 257-288.

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Tarrant, Anna (2010): “Constructing a Social Geography of Grandparenthood: A New Focus for Intergenerationality”, in: Area 42/2, 190-197. Tee, Kimperly/Brush, Alice J. B./Inkpen, Kori M. (2009): “Exploring Communication and Sharing Between Extended Families”, in: International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 67/2, 128-138. UN (2017): “Population Division”, in: World Population Prospects 2017. https:// esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/ [accessed April 16, 2020]. Van Dijk, Jan/Hacker, Kenneth (2003): “The Digital Divide as a Complex and Dynamic Phenomenon”, in: The Information Society 19, 315-326.

1 High

school

2 College

3 Self-employed

6 Below

average

67 65 65

P1.4

P1.5

P1.6

Widowed

Married

Divorced

Widowed

Married

Divorced

part-time

7 Above

4 Volunteering

average 73 68

P2.5

P2.6

67

P2.3 74

70

P2.2

P2.4

73

P2.1

5 Part-time

Single

Married

Widowed

Widowed

Widowed

Widowed

13.05.2017, 11 a.m., 6 participants

66

P1.3

72 65

Group 2

Family status

05.05.2017, 11 a.m., 6 participants

Age

P1.2

P1.1

Group 1

Code

College

High school

High school

Some Coll.2

College

High school

Some HS1

Master

High school

College

College

High school

Highest education

Semi-retired5

Retiree

Retiree

Retiree4

Retiree4

Retiree

Retiree

Retiree

Retiree

Retiree

Semi-retired3

Retiree

Current work status

Average

AA

BA

BA

BA

AA

BA

AA

BA

AA

AA7

BA6

Income

202 | Loredana Ivan

ANNEX

work

5 Part-time

work

Family status

8 Technical

high school 75 68 73

P3.7

P3.8

65

P3.5

P3.6

65

81

P3.3

P3.4

75

67

Widowed

Widowed

Widowed

Married

Widowed

Widowed

Single

Married

20.05.2017, 11 a.m., 8 participants

Age

P3.2

P3.1

Group 3

Code

Less than HS

Less than HS

Undergrad.

High school

High school

Undergrad.9

Techn. HS8

High school

Highest education

Semi-retired5

Retiree

Retiree

Full-time

Full-time

Retiree

Retiree

Retiree

Current work status

BA

BA

Average

AA

AA

BA

BA

AA

Income

The Use of ICTs in Family Communication | 203

9 Undergraduate

Daily

Mobile

Smartphone

Daily

Weekly

P2.5

P2.6

Daily

Daily

P2.3

P2.4

Daily

Weekly

P2.2

P2.1

Group 2

Daily

Daily

Daily

Daily

Daily

Daily

P1.5

P1.6

Daily

P1.4 Daily

Daily

P1.3

Daily

Tablet

P1.2

Daily

Laptop

Daily

Daily

Desktop

Frequency of use

P1.1

Group 1

Code

204 | Loredana Ivan

Weekly

Daily

Daily

Daily

Daily

Smartphone

Daily

Weekly

P3.6

Daily

Daily

Daily

Mobile

P3.8

Daily

P3.5

Daily

Daily

Tablet

Daily

Daily

P3.4

Weekly

Laptop

P3.7

Weekly

Monthly

Desktop

Frequency of use

P3.3

P3.2

P3.1

Group 3

Code

The Use of ICTs in Family Communication | 205

The Elderly in Russia A Socio-Psychological Approach Olga Krasnova

INTRODUCTION There is in various countries a growing interest in the subject of aging and related topics including those of an academic, social, economic, medical and moral nature. This has been determined by the tendency for the (absolute and relative) number of elderly people in many economically developed countries to increase. An uninterrupted growth in the number of the old and the elderly within the population can also be observed in Russia. According to the Federal State Statistical Service’s medium-range forecast, the proportion of citizens in the Russian Federation who are past working age will increase between 2016 and 2025 from 24.6 to 27 percent and will total 39.9 million people. There is still a gender imbalance among the population of Russia who are beyond working age: at the beginning of 2015, for every 1,000 men aged 60 and above there were 1,854 women.1 In Russia today, there are thus around 40 million elderly people (i.e., who are above pension age). Of these, almost two thirds are women.

1

These figures are taken from “An Action Strategy for Supporting Senior Citizens in the Russian Federation until 2025,” which was developed in line with the list of tasks of the President of the Russian Federation drawn up on the basis of the 5 August 2014 meeting of the Presidium of the State Council of the Russian Federation “Developing a Social Security System for Elderly Citizens,” that is, before the pension reform in accordance with which from 2019 the pension age is being raised from 55 to 60 for women and from 60 to 65 for men (see the law on raising the pension age in Russia of 03/10/2018 No. 350-F3) (Pravitel’stvo RF 2016; Federal’nyj zakon 2018).

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At the end of the 20th century, an interest emerged in both public and academic circles in the characteristics and requirements of elderly people and, for instance, their mode of living, in the possibilities for extending their professional activity and in their social roles. At present, many academics are working on a conceptual definition of old and advanced age and on an understanding of and explanation for elderly people’s personalities, behavior and the like. Below we will consider various aspects of aging, starting with the history of the study of this topic and then following the question of how senior age groups have changed in the light of the social changes that took place in Russia between the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. Historically speaking, in Russia it was the medics, biologists and geriatricians who were the first to study the older generation. These were later joined by sociologists, philosophers and demographers and later still by psychologists and specialists in social work and social policy. Each group of academics and practitioners focused their attention on one particular aspect of the topic. Making no claims to interdisciplinary research, as this is not permitted by the format of the article, the focus of the discussion will be shifted here to social changes and transformations that impact large population groups. One of the largest in terms of its age-related demographical characteristics is the age group that is composed of elderly people. Russian science, and specifically social psychology, has already investigated the nature of the influence on elderly people of the particular large groups to which they belong and that are distinguished in terms of age, gender, culture, nationality (ethnicity) and social class (Krasnova 2008, 2010). Membership of such groups is one of the factors responsible for a great diversity among elderly people as it demonstrates a systematicity for their activity and permits them to participate in a system of social relationships (or exclude themselves from it). The socio-psychological research conducted by elderly age group psychology focuses on age identification, age-determined roles and age stereotypes.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCIENCE OF AGING IN RUSSIA A major role in the development of gerontology in Russia was that played by doctor, hygienist, demographer and academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences Zacharij G. Frenkel’ (1869-1970). He was the author of the book The Prolonging of Life and Active Old Age (Udlinenie žizni i aktivnaja starost’, 1945), in which he formulated both the theoretical foundations and the applied aspects of gerontology. It is worthy of note that in 1945, elderly people account-

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ed for no more than 5 percent of the population of the USSR. Frenkel’ headed the research that was conducted by geriatricians in Leningrad. In the 1950s, hygienists, doctors and geriatrists in Moscow embarked on a systematic scientific study of aging. This was followed by research aimed at formulating and solving the social issues that it caused, which was carried out at the Kiev Institute of Gerontology that had been founded in 1958.2 These were basically limited to elderly people’s level of busyness, free time and retirement. In the 1960s, gerontology was only represented in medical education as the theoretical basis of geriatrics, where it was traditional to view the aging process as a matter of deficiency and involution. During this same period, however, psychological research into the nature and typical features of an adult’s development was initiated under the leadership of Boris G. Anan’ev at Leningrad State University. On the basis of the results of this research, Anan’ev offered a completely new appraisal of views on maturity and aging in his book Man as an Object of Knowledge (Čelovek kak predmet poznanija, 1968), written from the point of view of genetic psychology and gerontology (Anan’ev 1968). One of the most important conclusions was the discovery of an imbalance in the processes and a heterochronism in the change in an individual’s condition expressing the internal tensions of development. Further research into these problems in psychology was conducted by Marija D. Aleksandrova, who carried out an experimental investigation into the psychological aspects of aging at a time when no such research was yet being performed in the USSR. Her name is associated with the initiation of a new direction in Soviet psychological research that was named “social and psychological gerontology” and that was distinguished by the study of the patterns and factors in a person’s development in late ontogeny. Aleksandrova actively opposed the understanding of aging as a destructive process. Her basic methodological approaches to aging are summarized in her monograph Problems of Social and Psychological Gerontology (Problemy social’noj i psichologičeskoj gerontologii, 1974). She studied age-related limitations on a person’s ability to work, subjective and objective factors determining the continuation of a person’s working life (employment) and the connections between an old person’s personality and their employment. Aleksandrova’s conclusions about maturity and personality growth in the late period of life were progressive for their time: a holistic approach to investigating

2

In 1991, as a result of the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia found itself without an Institute of Gerontology. A new one was only set up in Moscow as part of the War and Labor Veterans’ Hospital (Gospital’ veteranov vojny i truda) in 1998.

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the individual development of an elderly person as a subject engaged in various kinds of activity and displaying different types of individuality was implemented for the first time in Soviet psychology, and the existence of a wide variety of aging types and the progressive role of creative potential in personality development in the late period of life was demonstrated. As these authors finished their work, the study of the psychological aspects of aging came to an end for several decades. A number of questions concerning the psychology of advanced age arose from the study of the biological, physiological and geriatric aspects of aging (see Frol’kis 1991; Šachmatov 1996). As one author astutely observed, for many years old age and aging were a kind of “Cinderella” of psychological science (Balašova 2014). For some decades, agespecific psychology basically focused on children and teenagers. It was only at the beginning of the 1990s that the psychological aspects of old age and aging started to attract the attention of scientists, including psychologists, because along with its social, economic and medical aspects, the question of old age and aging is inevitably becoming one of fundamental importance for the human sciences – first and foremost psychology – as well (Krasnova/Liders 2002). However, the study of the late period of human life is not without its problems. Thus, not only is there no consensus in the delineation of the object of study, but there are hardly any investigations conducted within the framework of genetic psychology that relate to the study of aging in particular. On one hand, there is the conceptual idea of old age as an important stage in the life of the human personality that is characterized by certain tensions and standard challenges and possesses its own meaning and value. On the other hand, there are a significant number of publications in which old age is principally viewed as a period of decline, loss and regression, while the reasons and mechanisms determining the psychological characteristics of elderly and old people are reduced to biological and/or social changes. The contemporary literature on the elderly frequently still describes depression, loneliness and chronic illness as the “intrinsic attributes” of the late period of life. Specialist texts list illnesses such as senile dementia, progressive paralysis and atherosclerotic phenomena that have “migrated” from geriatrics to social, psychological and other branches of gerontology. The view that all changes linked with age are negative or harmful has up to now been widespread in society. There are, thus, considerable tensions in the understanding of old age as a universal period of human life. Studies of elderly people have thus far most frequently been conducted through the use of surveys, questionnaires and interviews. In Russia, not a single longitudinal investigation has been conducted that would allow us to examine how elderly people cope with the developmental challenges of the late period of

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life. However, quantitative methods have recently been joined by qualitative ones such as life storytelling and the narrative method (Frolov/Zamošč 2016; Manuchina 2006; Krasnova 2014). However, authors voice opinions about the low quality of Russian research in this area, “which complicates the development of both a theory of old age and psychological-pedagogical, psychologicalsocial and even regulatory-legal practices for helping such people” (AstenTimofeeva/Prjažnikov 2015: 62). In spite of the growth in the number of publications devoted to the elderly, Russian psychology does not rely on a clear and widely accepted concept of old age. Age-specific psychology does not place clearly delineated temporal limits on many of the periods of human life, as these periods in many respects depend on a given society’s (or culture’s) general level of development (Liders 2004; Asten-Timofeeva/Prjažnikov 2015). The temporal limits of childhood and adolescence, for example, are constantly changing. Thus, in times of crisis and war children and adolescents grow up quickly, while during untroubled periods the length of the early stages of life noticeably increases. In precisely the same way the limits of advanced and old age shift, and not only as a result of changes in society. It is usual to consider that old age starts at retirement. Since 1932, this had begun in our country at 55 for women and 60 for men. Today’s pension reform, about the need for which people have long been speaking, raises these limits to 65 for men and 60 for women.3 The progressive increase in the proportion of elderly and old people within the population poses an urgent question about the need for fundamental research into the mechanisms that determine the specifics of different cognitive and behavioral aspects of advanced age. But this research cannot just be conducted at the intersection of age-specific, social and clinical psychology but in conjunction with other human sciences such as philosophy, sociology, politology, social work and even economics, which possess their own methodological and conceptual apparatus. This in turn will keep giving rise to major difficulties in understanding and integrating the empirical and experimental data that has been accumulated over the last few decades, which was obtained from research into various mental functions, social phenomena and behavior during the aging process with the help of the most varied methodical techniques and methodological dis-

3

It seems more accurate to speak not of advanced or old age, since it is difficult to delineate the commencement of these periods without referring to the legally established starting points of 55-60 or 60-65, but rather of “maturity” (zrelost’) and “late maturity” (pozdnjaja zrelost’) (Krasnova 2010). This article will discuss elderly people who previously retired at 55-60 as all research has focused on this specific elderly group.

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tinctions. The research data is therefore frequently inconsistent and heterogeneous. As of the present time, dozens of biological and sociological theories of aging have been proposed (Krasnova/Liders 2002). Psychological theories are relatively few in number, and on closer acquaintance they appear to be more of a phenomenological description of different stages and degrees of change in cognitive functions than an elucidation of the primary psychological mechanisms of aging (Balašova 2014). This is due to the lack of clear definitions of the terms “elderly person” and “old person,” the imprecision of the psychological criteria of aging, the complex correspondence between biological and psychological age and the enormous range of individual differences (caused in particular by a person’s professional and life experience), which impede the construction of a general picture of the changes that an aging psyche undergoes (Krasnova/Liders 2002). Authors even conclude that the creation of a basic psychological theory of aging is impossible at the current stage in the development of our knowledge. Relatively recently, the academic – and in particular the science educational – lexicon of Russian psychologists saw the appearance of the term “social agespecific psychology” (social’naja vozrastnaja psichologija; Kondrat’ev 2010), which established in the developing research theory and practice this area of academic interest that pursues its unchanging object with consistent methods. In other words, no interpretation of observed age-related trends and dependencies can be productively realized without a social or age-related psychological analysis, while the researcher’s tool set (consisting of methods and methodologies) facilitates the achievement of an empiricism that can be adequately interpreted and holistically discussed from the position of age-specific psychology. In this way, although the social psychology of aging “is not yet sufficiently well developed in Russian social psychology, with just the first studies of this area appearing” (Andreeva 2003: 167), its groundwork is now in place and a series of investigations have been conducted in this methodical and methodological context (Krasnova 2004, 2008, 2009). This has permitted us to examine how an elderly (mature) person’s membership of large age, gender, ethnic and class groups will have an impact on his or her activity and social relations (Krasnova 2010). The question of an elderly person’s small group membership involves family, friends, peers and immediate circle as well as the social networks – the interpersonal relations with which the concept of identity is closely linked. Social psychology in Russia today devotes much attention to changes taking place in our country’s society:

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A particular point of interest is the attitude of a rank-and-file person to the changes that are taking place. In many respects it depends, on the one hand, on a tradition that has arisen in public opinion among certain social groups and, on the other, on the generation that finds itself at the epicenter of the reforms. (Andreeva 2009: 50-51)

If the young generation finds it difficult to draw a comparison between life before and after the reforms, the older generation can make such a comparison and contrasts the “stable” life of the Soviet period with the situation that has come about in the present day (Krasnova 2009). But besides transformations in social life, changes also take place in everyone’s personal lives, and because of their age, for elderly people these are exacerbated through various kinds of loss: financial loss, the loss of health, of well-being, or of the people close to them.

SOCIAL CHANGES IN RUSSIA Throughout the 1970s and 1980s (before the breakup of the Soviet Union), a large population group – that is, the elderly – were experiencing relative psychological well-being and social stability. Retirement was underpinned by a guaranteed pension and free medical care, which gave rise to the appearance of a stable social structure and created a feeling of security among the older generation for whom, in the words of a well-known Soviet song, “there will always be respect” (“всегда у нас почет”). What was really happening in each elderly’s personal life? We have no clear answer to this question as there are very few studies, and consequently publications, on the subject. During those years, gerontological research was being taken in a number of directions. The first was the study of elderly people’s adaptation to care homes, the aim of which was to develop methodical recommendations that focused on organizational and clinical questions concerning the situation of elderly people who were living as in-patients. Secondly, as indicated above, during the Soviet period factors determining the employment of the older working population and the motives that led to their decision to retire formed an object of study (Moskalec 1982; Panina 1982; Steženskaja 1982). The main conclusion that arose from the research was that the absence of work after retirement could cause an elderly person to experience a sense of alienation that was manifested in a sharp deterioration of mental or physical health caused by a sudden change in the person’s social status and a loss of previous social roles, of authority, leadership and the like.

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The subject of leisure was also considered. Thus, one investigation that was conducted in 1978 produced the insight that although the amount of free time increased significantly after retirement, which enhanced the possibilities of nonworking pensioners better organizing their recreation and leisure and looking after their health, only 20 percent of elderly people made sensible use of it (sufficient hours of sleep, a carefully planned, regular diet, physical exercise, regular walks in the fresh air, pursuit of favorite activities, no television, and attending cultural events) (Moskalec 1978). It turned out that the question of free time depended on pensioners’ social environment and position, their personal interests, level of education, type of occupation and position in society prior to retirement. It was discovered that the content of non-working pensioners’ leisure time was considerably more impoverished across all social groups than that of those who worked. A certain amount of interest in the study of the social and psychological problems of elderly people in Russia appeared in the 1990s. By this time, the phenomenon of the “aging population” was becoming apparent in Russian society, with the elderly making up around 20 percent of the population at the time. The 1990s were known as a “transitional period” in Russia. This was most likely not only the transition of Soviet society with its paternalistic views to market conditions. Global changes were taking place in social, political, economic and other areas and the socio-economic situation in the country was worsening (with a loss of jobs, a lowering of living standards, an inadequate medical provision for the elderly, the displacement of this category of people onto the “sidelines of life” and so on). An investigation conducted in 1998 and 1999 (Šapovalenko 1999), in which a survey was carried out of the views of people aged between 60 and 75 (residents of Moscow who had children and lived either with them or separately but within the same city), it was discovered that 74.5 percent of respondents characterized the position of the elderly (i.e., their own position) as “the lowest level, the bottom.” More than half of them considered that the situation at that time did not match their conception of life after retirement. The overall sense of elderly people’s responses from 20 years ago about their position in society is that they had not found the place they needed and saw this in pessimistic terms (“the bottom of society,” “garbage,” “depleted material”), and they detected no interest from anyone in their future fate. The gulf between these elderly people’s social expectations and their actual social position at the time gave no positive points of reference or perspectives but on the contrary had a depressing effect. Furthermore, their situation had a similar influence on

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younger people, who saw nothing positive for themselves in the experiences of the older generation. At the same time, the country’s scientists – gerontologists, sociologists and psychologists – started to display an academic interest in the elderly for the first time in many years. So at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century, the question was first raised in Russia about the right of a social psychology of aging (social’naja psichologija starenija) to exist as an independent scientific discipline (Krasnova 1999a; Krasnova/Liders 2002), and the discussion took place about the specific place of this discipline in the system of scientific knowledge, the status of socio-psychological research in the late stage of human life and the challenges that could be solved by this field of knowledge. At that time, the topic of advanced age was being treated as a question of adaptation by the elderly population group. Social adaptation was understood as the way in which elderly people, who had taken on new characteristics thanks to their age, adjust to society as a result of various somatic and mental alterations in their personality and also because of changes in family life and the conditions with which it was surrounded, as well as how society accommodates the elderly. The question of the social adaptation of the elderly to the contemporary social situation and how it was manifested in unstable conditions was actively studied during the 1990s, and attempts were made to describe the new nature of the interaction between elderly people and their social environment and in particular that between people experiencing change in a changing world (Krasnova 1997; Krasnova/Marcinkovskaja 1998). In particular it had been concluded that the social adaptation of elderly people to the social situation of the day4 could not be determined to be successful or unsuccessful: it came about at the expense of changes in the structure of the personality. Thus, on one hand it was discovered that elderly people possessed a high degree of positivity in their social and personal identity and a positive conception of themselves and their group, which permitted them to feel confident and at ease. On the other hand, a lack of definition in their role did not permit elderly people to sense their importance and value to a changing society. The surveys conducted at that time by the scientists, sociologists and officials responsible for working with the elderly showed that elderly people considered the most important issues raised by improving the standard of their lives included state of health, economic problems, loneliness, the disruption of a habitual way of life and a lack of attention from society and those closest to them.

4

The 1990s [author’s note].

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Another area of investigation was that of intergenerational relations. Articles dedicated to the generation gap began to appear, maintaining that elderly people’s experience was not up to date and even not of interest to the younger generations in the new social context. Strained relations between the generations were attributed to a difference in values, the new socio-economic conditions, the age difference, different approaches to the perception or consumption of material or cultural benefits and a different orientation in self-esteem, self-knowledge and self-improvement. But based on the data from a small number of investigations from that time, for the most part sociological, it is impossible to draw conclusions about intergenerational estrangement or solidarity or about the lack of mutual dependence because family relations and traditions have proved to be the linchpin of the modern Russian family to the present day. Furthermore, in Russian society up to now traditional attitudes to old age have not yet had their day: “Society’s consciousness retains traces of the idea that old people are bearers of some special knowledge that they have to pass on to the youngest” (Levinson 2011: 106).

THE CHANGING PERSON IN A CHANGING COUNTRY At the age of around 60, everybody tries to make sense of the years they have lived through and searches for their individuality and the meaning of their life. This evaluation involves a retrospective appraisal of their self and their existence. The search for the meaning of life, and in particular the conclusion that it has been lived wrong or for nothing, must be acknowledged by each person as a fact with which it is often difficult to come to terms. This makes this stage of life such a significant turning point for the years that follow and gives the person an emotional intensity and/or a sense of despair. For elderly people in Russia in the 1990s this natural process of undergoing an age-related crisis was intensified by the fact of simultaneously living through a social crisis that made the search for the meaning of life even more complex and difficult. People who found themselves at this turning point could not understand which society they should be identifying with. The society in which elderly people had lived most of their lives and with which they identified, even if they did not accept many of its positions, rules and values, no longer existed. The fact was that they found themselves in another society, with different norms, rules and values, which they frequently did not know or understand and with which they felt they had nothing in common. In other words, the criteria for measuring the value and significance of life had changed, and new ways of evaluating its

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level of success had come into existence. This proved to be too painful for a large number of people who had sacrificed much including their aspirations, interests and sometimes the people closest to them, receiving in return a social recognition that to their minds proved the correctness of the choice they had made as well as its significance for society. During Soviet times, their lives seemed to them worthy of respect and characterized by an integrality and a high social status. The acceptance of new values and new norms was impossible for them because this would have rendered their lives and all the sacrifices they had made meaningless. And people of that age may no longer possess the strength to re-evaluate their lives, let alone to build them afresh (Krasnova/Marcinkovskaja 1998). At the same time, the impossibility of accepting new values and ideals, as well as elderly people’s unwillingness to do so, did not mean that they were unable to adjust to the new reality. Many of them modified their behavior and their external form of activity while preserving their internal, spiritual world, their world of ideals. It was now common for multiple new behavior stereotypes to have developed among the elderly without any identification on the conscious or emotional level – in the form of a rational acceptance or an emotional experiencing of the new norms and rules as their own – having taken place. It was for this reason that it was possible to observe fairly frequently how elderly people, who had become economically adjusted to the new situation and had accepted new game rules and new roles, did not recognize the changes that had taken place. People who had spent a large part of their lives in the Soviet state had got used to a double standard – the internal (freedom of self-expression for oneself and one’s nearest and dearest) and the external (on the level of the state, society and work). The old social life, as a rule, had presupposed an external conformity and an adaptive behavior. For example, many elderly people started to take on the role of the “invalid” or the “lonely pensioner” in the hope of receiving some benefits from the state while concealing the fact that they lived with one of their relatives. It was furthermore not only considered to be not dishonorable but even praiseworthy for someone to receive benefits to which he or she was not entitled. Besides material gains, attempts to deceive the state gave them the illusion of receiving compensation and reduced their level of hostility towards it. In this way, during those years an elderly Russian would come up against problems involving the loss of identity and the wholeness of the personality and the society or social group with which he or she could identify and whose values and aspirations he or she shared and accepted emotionally. Even if we consider the fact that the elderly group is always heterogeneous in terms of its social

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composition, life experience, stereotypes and evaluative templates, elderly people have by and large remained socially infantile in that they expect help from the state, but at the same time they do not rely on it. Elderly people who had grown up in the social conditions of the USSR occupied a passive and paternalistic position, blaming others more than themselves. The state presented itself to them in the form of an ill-defined, anonymous structure that managed benefits and other good things and was capable by an act of will of raising the pensions “that they had earned,” but did not do so as “it didn’t think about people.” In this way, most people at that time encountered two problems. The first was a change in personal circumstances such as the transition into the elderly group, retirement, a change in family and social roles. The second was a change in the social, political and economic situation and the breakup of the Soviet Union, in which people had been born, grown up and become old. Sociologists also made the point that for most old people the events of the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s […] meant the loss of all social achievements that had been built up during a person’s lifetime regardless of the form they took: money, academic, professional and domestic experience or the right to authority, respect and self-respect. (Levinson 2011: 117)

This means that the challenges of development during the late stage of life had to be solved by each person in a changing country in which the old “Soviet” mechanisms of social regulation or the usual norms of behavior no longer existed.

SENIOR AGE GROUPS While on the subject of what happened to elderly people in the 1990s it should be pointed out that hardly a single investigation has considered separate senior age groups, such as annual cohorts of elderly people, the focus tending to be on “elderly people” or the “older generation” in general. However, elderly people do not constitute a single homogenous mass and can be categorized into the most diverse groups on the basis of age, gender and ethnicity. Elderly people can be distinguished by place of residence (large cities, medium and small-sized towns, small communities and villages), level of education (higher, secondary or elementary education), family status (married, widowed, single) and degree of retention of cognitive domain and abilities. Each of these factors both separately and taken together exerts an influence on how a person who has already completed a significant part of their life journey turns in-

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to an “elderly person,” how their aging comes about and how they perceive themselves as an individual and a member of society. These same factors also affect how a person is viewed by society. The huge variety of people who have reached a certain age and joined the “elderly group” cannot be forced into the limitations of a single category or stratum, although, as has been stated above, it is normally those who have retired who are termed “elderly.” Let us examine what elderly age groups it is currently possible to distinguish. In doing this we will bear in mind that a person’s career or biography “includes the story of how the personality is formed and develops in a particular society as that of a contemporary of a particular era and a member of a certain generation” (Anan’ev 1968: 104-105). Today’s octogenarians are the people who were born at the end of the 1930s. The 1930-1950s were the time of Stalin’s repressions, a time not only of suffering for the “enemies of the people,” who were sent to the GULAG or liquidated, but of the destruction of their families. The normal practice was to exile the wives to one place and the children to others. Moreover, if there were several children in the family, they were placed in different children’s homes in different cities. In addition, family archives, documents and photographs – in other words, every piece of information about the family – were destroyed. The aim of this state policy was to create a “new type” of person who would be free of any family “prejudices.” At that time, people frequently concealed the identity of their family, the wives of exiled or executed “enemies” were unable to work and the children could not enter institutions of higher education or even be accepted into secondary school (Krasnova 2001). The childhood of those born in the 1930s coincided with the Great Patriotic War (1941-45), which had a detrimental effect on their physical and mental health. Many people’s health was weakened as a result of hunger, malnutrition, cold and the everyday problems of living. No special investigations into the effects of the consequences of the war on different population groups including children were ever conducted in the Soviet Union. There is therefore no scientific data about the impact that the war had on how the representatives of this group received their education, on how their careers developed, on their family life and on the entire cycle of their lives. The social conflicts of this time produced many problems, one of which was the orphans created when children lost their parents as a result of the Stalinist repressions or the war. These orphans became elderly and old during our time. On one hand, being an orphan was seen by them as a problem that had existed during their childhood but had ceased to have any significance after they embarked

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on their own independent lives. On the other hand, an orphan’s formation as an adult cannot be taken to its logical conclusion. The state of being an orphan places a seal on a person’s fate and tells upon the entire process of their socialization. The psychological problems caused by being orphaned become more acute in old age (Radina/Pavlyčeva 2005). Another very significant problem relates to women, many of whom became widows and lost their relatives during the war. At that time, these women’s future presented itself to them as one without men as they assumed that they would never marry or have children. Elderly people – both those who were between 60 and 70 at the beginning of the 21st century and those who are older – possess the “experience of equally difficult times,” which can be characterized as “experience of life during a time of total lack (not only of everyday goods, but also of choice, freedom and democracy)” (Krasnova 2001: 16). The women of this age group reached retirement age at the beginning of the 1990s and the men in the middle or at the end of the same decade, i.e., during the “transitional period” that was mentioned above. At that time, hardly any of them had the opportunity to become part of the so-called market economy or even to stay on as “working” pensioners, i.e., to remain professionally active (Krasnova/Kozlova 2007). Besides that, many of them lost their savings during the hyperinflation of the first half of the 1990s or as a result of the 1998 default and the financial reforms that had preceded it.5 A sociological research conducted in 1999 with the aim of studying the selffulfillment of elderly people involved respondents who were born before or during the Great Patriotic War – the “war generation” (Kozlova 2007). These people’s pre-retirement work came to an end in the 1990s, when many enterprises were being closed and workers were fired or made redundant before they reached pension age, with a consequent impact on their health (“appearance of stress and incurable diseases”) and personal lives (“collapse of career”) (ibid.: 78). Half of the respondents explained their unsuccessful lives in terms of objec-

5

For example, at the beginning of the 1990s I gave a consultation for an elderly woman who did not know how to get back in contact with her grown-up son. She had worked all her life as a cleaner in a jewelry workshop, putting part of her pay aside “for her pension” so that she would be able to “live properly on her pension and give her grand-daughter presents.” Her son asked her to use all the money she had saved to buy diamonds from the workshop, but she refused. As a result of the money reform in 1991 she lost her savings like most of the population. Because of this her son ceased all contact with her.

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tive factors – such as the consequences of the war, a dysfunctional parental home, illnesses or the reforms of the 1990s – the other half attributing them to their own personal qualities such as disorganization, bad habits, lack of willpower and so on. At the present time, of all elderly age groups it is this one that is the most vulnerable. This is particularly the case since above the age of 75-80, elderly people move to the “advanced old age” (starye požilye) group, their health declines, their mobility decreases, and their daily activities become more limited. These elderly people were born and grew up in a state where atheism flourished and most churches were closed. Because of this they have been deprived of the important support that the church offers to people who as a result of their long lives have been unable to find the answers to a large number of questions.6 Today’s septuagenarians belong to the post-war generation. Daily life was still very difficult after the war, but there was no longer the level of hunger that has a negative effect on a child’s organism in the time of war. As a rule, they were born into complete families. In the 1960s, many of them entered higher education institutions and received a tertiary education that would in due course permit them to become “white collar workers.” By the start of perestroika, i.e., by 1986, they had not yet turned 40, which permitted many of them to cope with the challenges and crisis of middle age and the changes taking place in society. They possessed certain resources and mechanisms for handling the situation, such as the higher education that they had received and a more robust health as compared to the previous group. An investigation into the capacity of elderly people for making choices that was conducted in 2011 (Krasnova 2012) has allowed to construct and evaluate a regression model that explains choice (as an endogenous variable) in terms of the following exogenous variables: quality of life, health, living conditions and control. This investigation has permitted to present a statistical portrait of the av-

6

By way of another example, an elderly woman – a resident of an old people’s home – had been born into a noble family, her parents had been shot and she had been adopted by another couple who were also repressed. She consequently ended up in a children’s home where she only received an elementary education – four years. She became a cook. She had an unsuccessful marriage: her husband drank himself to death. Her son also drank and disappeared without a trace. She asked me why she had lived. She could only find an acceptable answer in the church. The church and belief gave her life a meaning once more by taking up a large portion of her thoughts, feelings, actions and time.

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erage elderly Muscovite.7 This would be a 70-year-old with one child, secondary professional special or higher education, satisfactory standard of living and levels of health and income, sometimes experiencing feelings of loneliness but all the same with a strong sense of security. He or she has no need of social services and enjoys the normal range of possibilities and abilities for exercising choice and being in control of his or her daily life. Today’s 60-year-olds were born at the end of the 1950s. Their early childhood coincided with the time of the “thaw,” when in society it suddenly became possible to speak freely, or to think that it was possible to do so. Social life changed, the Soviet state flourished and new films appeared in which questions were asked that had been unthinkable during the time of Stalin. An interest in fashion emerged and higher education became more widely available. By the start of perestroika, they had not yet turned 30. In other words, in the 2020s for the first time in Russia a totally new class of elderly people has appeared, which is completely at home in contemporary society, understands computers and digital technology, cannot imagine themselves without a mobile phone, travels widely not only in their own country but also around the world and enjoys total security from an economic point of view. Many of them are receiving a second higher education and have completed various courses such as professional retraining. Many remain professionally active and have even started their own business (Krasnova 2013, 2014). Their contemporary education has permitted them to exploit and/or acquire modern technologies and work for foreign firms. This elderly group, unlike all the preceding age groups, is in good health because its members have never known hunger or malnutrition and as a result of the development of healthcare. There are grounds for supposing that they have formed a liking for independence and social responsibility. At the present time, it is the representatives of this age group who are retiring – “the representatives of the most educated and socially active generation of Russians, who were born after the Great Patriotic War” (Varlamova/Sinjavskaja 2015). Research bears witness to the activeness of this age group. Thus, the study of sociocultural identity8 involved examining women’s experience of retirement; it was based on the concept of the continuity of a person’s life journey and made use of a narrative approach (Krasnova 2013). Older women born in the years

7

609 respondents living in Moscow and aged between 54 and 92 participated in this research. This number included 467 women (76.7 percent) and 142 men (23.3 percent).

8

Research into sociocultural identity generally reveals its link with personal identity and with processes of personal development and socialization (Krasnova/Poleva 2016).

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1950-58 actively construct their personal identity by denying their “old age” and age categories in general (“I’m not old, of course I’m not young, I understand that, but I’m not old”). The idea of being “not old” is used to explain their group membership, status and identity and to explain “who I am” and “who I am not.” At the same time, this idea of being “not old” allows a person to consider the pension age and their self-image to be the most active and useful for themselves and others, although the realities of their age, which are revealed in worsening health, loss of spouse, work and professional status, and change in body and appearance, represent a threat to their personal well-being and their membership of the “not old” group. In their narratives, respondents exhibited efficiency, optimism and different skills and abilities as they continued to bear heavy responsibilities at work and in the home. They are taking on new roles during the period of their retirement and are acquiring new skills and contacts. Not one of the women describes reaching retirement as the conclusion of life, or its end: it is just another of life’s stages. Furthermore, they view it as a positive experience. Each woman spoke of new challenges or of receiving new skills and knowledge. Therefore, reaching retirement signifies the start of a period of new choices, of the freedom to choose a new activity for themselves. Elderly people between the ages of 55 and 75 who are in possession of higher education see the future of their working lives and the advantages of retraining with the highest degree of realism: “They are ready for a lively discussion about their preferred form of activity and their range of options for achieving it (including an interest in psychodiagnostics for this purpose)” (Podol’skij/Idobaeva 2015: 49). People with higher education who are aged between 76 and 90 – the pre-war and war-time generations – may be in favor of professional selfdetermination, but they understand it is not a realistic proposition for them. Elderly people within this age range who possess secondary and elementary education do not reveal any high motivation or drive to be either professionally active or indeed active in any other areas of life (ibid.). A recent investigation has shown that at the present time, elderly Russians are not only objects of support who are in need of help but are also ready to offer it to others (Korneeva/Minnigaleeva 2015). Thus, this research has revealed a much higher level of involvement in charitable activities on the part of elderly Russians than has normally been thought: more than half of Russians (53 percent) above the age of 60 have made financial donations in the last year or have

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given money to strangers in need including beggars,9 and almost one third (30 percent) have been involved in voluntary work of both a formal and informal nature.

ELDERLY PEOPLE IN THE FAMILY The social instability and the fundamental changes that took place in Russian society during the 1990s led to one positive result: many elderly people began to look to the family for protection and assistance. In these new circumstances, the family took on a special significance – it became for the elderly a “factor of insurance” and of emotional and social support (Saralieva/Balobanov 1999; Krasnova 1999b). Through the family and through interaction with their children and grandchildren elderly people did not simply begin to try to find a new place in life. Their families provided them with a firm anchoring. The small number of investigations from that time reveal that most elderly people enjoyed satisfactory relations with their offspring. Their children’s and grandchildren’s lives, fates and problems became a matter of concern for the older generation. Thus, according to these sociological investigations, “over these ten years (1989-99) elderly people retained a family identity” (Kozlova 2007: 71), with the family, its safety and the wellbeing of those closest to them occupying the most important position among Russians in 1999 (Janovskij 1999). As stated above, the “generation conflict” is not on-going in Russian society, although now, after several decades, changes have occurred in intergenerational relations within the family. On the one hand, family ties are growing weaker as a result of the busyness and high levels of frustration experienced by young family members, who are too preoccupied to re-establish emotional contact with their older relatives and to help them through a difficult period of their lives. Most young and middle-aged people do not fully appreciate the problems and the specific psychological traits of people of a more advanced age. On the other hand, many elderly people perceive their families’ expectations in quite specific terms, as a desire for economic and domestic support and help around the home; they do not consider that their life experience and personal qualities are being taken full advantage of by their families (Krasnova 1999b). A recent study of elderly people’s identity (Krasnova 2014) reveals that the family possesses only a modest significance for people of pension age (particu-

9

Women and people with a high level of education and income who remain professionally active after retirement donate money in old age more frequently than others.

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larly for working pensioners), which contradicts the established view of society that life for pensioners is shaped by the interests of the family. For example, elderly people attach importance to a social milieu composed of their peer groups – neighbors and friends with whom they enjoy good relations and mutual understanding. For people of pension age it is not so much identification with the family – many of them have started to live alone following the loss of a partner or after grown-up children move away – that has assumed a significance, as identification with a wider context (a city or country and the positive feelings that they engender, reflected in a search for positively and emotionally charged epithets – “a strong, beautiful, interesting country,” “a remarkable city,” etc.). These feelings of patriotism are fairly intense since elderly respondents experience them constantly, in all situations. It is in this age that a large role in the formation of identity is obviously played by the broad territorial context and specifically by a city or country that is evaluated positively, the negative social circumstances being ignored.

SOCIAL WORK Before 1991, there were in the Soviet Union (and consequently in Russia) no professional social services, professional teaching of social work in higher education institutions or academic and methodical underpinning for it (Panov 2016). From April 1991, a social work service started to be created for the first time in the Russian Federation. Its emergence in a professional form occurred simultaneously with the appearance of market conditions, at a time when a sharp drop in the living standards of most of the population had taken place and the country was experiencing hyperinflation, mass unemployment, delays in the payment of pensions and wages and other social catastrophes. In the first half of the 1990s, social work was aimed at solving serious social problems by offering practical and material help to the poorest and most underprivileged – both of which groups included elderly people. Later, alongside the development of in-patient and home social services for seniors, in some regions of Russia programs designed to encourage active lifestyles among the elderly and aimed at increasing their quality of life began to be rolled out. In 2011-2013, 848.4 billion rubles10 from regional budgets alone was committed to these programs (Cholostova/Klimantova 2016: 15). Such programs, however, are narrow

10 Around 30 billion USD [author’s note].

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in nature, e.g., “schools of health,” “schools of safety,” “schools of computer literacy,” clubs for different interests (drawing, decorative applied art, music, etc.) and are based at social service centers. This means that in such cases elderly people assume the role of “pupils.” The designers of such programs base themselves on a thoroughly outdated theory of activity according to which successful aging takes place when an elderly person is included in various types of activity. This kind of “activity” is still taken by social services to mean different types of club and school for elderly people, in terms of the concepts and images of the 1990s. The social assistance that was aimed at certain social groups 20-30 years ago is no longer up to date and is, furthermore, not suitable for the new generations of seniors. It is clear that a very small proportion of elderly people from the cohorts in their 60s and 70s – i.e., the post-war generation (or, as stated above, people of “late maturity”) – will enroll in these centers to be “educated.” On the other hand, lonely octogenarians with limited capabilities – for example, limited mobility, poor health, significant dependence and so on – require long-term care and home-based assistance in obtaining medication, buying food and other products, filling in documents and looking after themselves. Programs aimed at the elderly should therefore be reviewed today starting with the highest level, the state level, and then working down through the regional level and ending with specific social security institutions. These programs should be designed to solve problems of support for the elderly (possibly even including education) in order to enable them to meet the challenges that old age presents them with in an independent and responsible manner. All people have to take responsibility for their lives and for their aging, and in order to assist them the state has to develop a social and community policy that will include the creation of an environment for living and conducting daily activities so that the needs of the elderly are catered for. This policy should be aimed at developing transport, healthcare, social services, education, trading services, financial sector, information and communication technologies and the infrastructure for meeting elderly people’s needs. As a number of researchers have observed, […] we are only beginning to appreciate the scale of the problem […] of an aging population. The triple formula of adequate pensions, quality healthcare provision and long-term care is not as yet completely formed. (Mkrtumova/Šeljag 2015: 31-32)

What are needed are scientifically-based and methodically justifiable approaches to developing ways of providing professional help to elderly people and to those

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who work and interact with them. These approaches must be grounded in evidence-based knowledge. There is reason to hope that the implementation of the “Plan of Actions in the Interests of Citizens of the Older Generation,”11 which is to be developed by the Russian government for the period to 2025 and in which the aims, principles, challenges and most important directions of travel for state social policy concerning citizens of the older generation are defined, will help solve many issues pertaining to the lives of the elderly. For example, the oldest senior groups will be able to lead independent and active lives and be useful members of society. It is likely that this will help us to reach a new understanding of the role of the elderly in society and to view them as a useful resource rather than a vulnerable section of the population.

CONCLUSION The increase in the proportion of elderly people within the population and their transformation into one of the most sizeable age groups calls for a deeper understanding of many of the issues that have been raised in this review, including the significance of old age in Russian society and the importance of the elderly for society. Almost 20 years ago, the opinion was expressed that “our ideas about the elderly as needy, unproductive and unhappy people need to be re-evaluated” (Krasnova 2001: 110). The elderly people of today, whom I have assigned to the “mature” group, are qualitatively different from the same age groups of 30 years ago. Advanced age is no longer a time of passivity, alienation and social degradation. Yes, elderly people expect assistance, but this assistance should not reinforce their dependence but should help them to be or to become autonomous and self-reliant. The analysis of the older age groups that has been conducted demonstrates the following: Firstly, today’s elderly groups differ from those of the 1990s in terms of their “level of education, degree of ambition and standard of living” (Krasnova 2011: 152). Secondly, “elderly people” issues can only be solved in an interdisciplinary manner. If we distinguish various groups of seniors according to a range of parameters and not just by “age” we will discover that there are many positions in social policy and the social services that need to be rethought. By way of argu-

11 See Pravitel’stvo RF 2016.

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ments I will refer my readers back to the results of the investigation mentioned above (Krasnova 2012), which studied choice and evaluation of social care on the part of the elderly: a 70-year-old Muscovite “does not require social services” (ibid.: 97), therefore such assistance should only be offered to those who need it. Thirdly, the timeliness and necessity of pension reform in Russia – changing the pension age – appears in the light of this analysis, although scholars warned that […] if we are to speak […] about raising the pension age then it must be done with great care and with the process grounded in and conducted on an academic basis. The world around us is changing and this must be understood and people must be made aware of it. It is essential to change the structure of the economy, develop academic research linked to the process of aging – gerontology and gerontopsychology –, improve people’s quality of life and develop a program of retraining for the elderly. (Podol’skij/Idobaeva 2015: 36-37)

Fourthly, many unsolved problems remain for interdisciplinary research. Of particular importance is the question of empirical studies in this area and of the methodical toolkit. The solutions to many issues linked to advanced age can only be found after a whole series of empirical investigations have been carried out, as will be the topic of further research. Social, psychological and medical assistance to the elderly and the relevance of their professional and social experience must only be grounded in these results. In conclusion I will be so bold as to suggest that if we conduct a content analysis of the research into the problems of the elderly in the 1990s and the last decade we will discover a completely different image of the older generation, different semantic descriptions of the elderly and even an eloquence about this group on the part of academics. Translated from Russian by Mark Shuttleworth

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Asten-Timofeeva, Larisa V./Prjažnikov, Nikolaj S. (2015): “Modeli udovletvorennosti žizn’ju v požilom vozraste”, in: Psichologija zrelosti i starenija 4, 60-84. Balašova, Elena Ju. (2014): “Metodologija kliniko-psichologičeskogo issledovanija reprezentacij prostranstva i vremeni pri starenii: vozmožnosti i ograničenija”, in: Psichologičeskie issledovanija 7/36, 11. http://psystudy.ru [accessed December 5, 2018]. Cholostova, Evdokija I./Klimantova, Galina I. (eds.) (2016): Ėnciklopedija social’nych praktik podderžki požilych ljudej v Rossijskoj Federacii. Moskva. Federal’nyj zakon (2018): Federal’nyj zakon ot 03.10.2018 g. No. 350-FZ “O vnesenii izmenenij v otdel’nye zakonodatel’nye akty Rossijskoj Federacii po voprosam naznačenija i vyplaty pensij.” http://www.kremlin.ru/acts/bank/ 43614 [accessed July 30, 2020]. Frol’kis, Vladimir V. (ed.) (1991): Starenie mozga. Leningrad. Frolov, Jurij I./Zamošč Alisa A. (2016): “Rasskazy požilych ljudej o svoej žizni kak uslovie rešenija zadač razvitija požilogo vozrasta”, in: Psichologija zrelosti i starenija 1, 28-45. Janovskij, Rudol’f G. (1999): Global’nye izmenenija i social’naja bezopasnost’. Moskva. Kondrat’ev, Jurij M. (ed.) (2010): Antologija social’noj psichologii vozrasta: učebnoe posobie dlja vuzov. Moskva. Korneeva, Irina E./Minnigaleeva, Gul’nara A. (2015): “Požilye rossijane i blagotvoritel’nost’: opredeljajuščie faktory i masštaby”, in: Psichologija zrelosti i starenija 3, 22-36. Kozlova, Tat’jana Z. (2007): “Sociologičeskie issledovanija staršego vozrasta”, in: Krasnova, Ol’ga V./Kozlova, Tat’jana Z.: Staršee pokolenie: gendernyj aspekt. Moskva, 8-107. Krasnova, Ol’ga V. (1997): “Issledovanie identifikacii požilych ljudej s pomošč’ju metodiki M. Kuna ‘Kto Ja?’”, in: Psichologija zrelosti i starenija 1, 68-84. Krasnova, Ol’ga V. (1999a): “Social’naja psichologija starenija kak osnovnaja sostavljajuščaja social’noj gerontologii”, in: Mir psichologii 2/18, 96-106. Krasnova, Ol’ga V. (1999b): “Požilye ženščiny v uslovijach bol’šogo goroda”, in: Psichologija zrelosti i starenija 3/7-8, 41-69. Krasnova, Ol’ga V. (2001): Praktikum po rabote s požilymi ljud’mi: opyt Rossii i Velikobritanii. Moskva. Krasnova, Ol’ga V. (2004): Steretotipy i attitjudy k požilym ljudjam. Moskva.

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Varlamova, Marija A./Sinjavskaja, Oksana V. (2015): “Portret požilogo naselenija Rossii”, in: Demoskop Weekly 627-628. http://www.demoscope.ru/ weekly/2015/0627/index.php [accessed December 12, 2018].

Literary Representations

Aging in Soviet Utopian and Dystopian Literature Rafaela Božić

…where nature is not an evil stepmother, but a submissive slave…1 (…где природа не злая мачеха, а покорная раба…) V. Nikol’skij: Čerez tysjaču let (1927)

INTRODUCTION Utopian literature shows us the ideal society, dystopian literature – quite the opposite. In this paper we will use this definition in order to try to determine the position of aging and old age in these two (at the first glance) opposite genres. Special focus will be given to the Soviet era (more concretely from the October revolution to the end of World War II) to determine how the post-revolution period is reflected in literature. Also, we will see that a different conception of aging can help us define the borders between the utopian and dystopian subgenres. Vjačeslav Šestakov (2012: 6; see Božić 2017a: 7), Darko Suvin (2010: 353371) and other literary scholars point out that Russian utopianism was almost completely ignored by western literary scholars although there are more than 50 Russian utopian texts written from the 18th to the middle of the 20th century. The situation with dystopian Russian fiction is a little better since these texts include some of the greatest novels of Russian literature. In this article I will not

1

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Russian are the author’s [R.B.].

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be dealing with the many problems of the definition of these two genres.2 Similarly, their origins in Russian literature (which can be found in folk literature and western influences; see Tarakanova 2008: 197; Božić 2017a: 7) will not be discussed. As the most “banal” definition of these two genres will be used in this paper (see above), I will also not dwell on the differences between anti-utopian and dystopian fiction. The main focus of the article is on the issue of aging as it is shown in these two (sub)genres. According to Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl, limited research on old age and aging has been done in the field of Russian literature, although there is “an exceptionally rich literature on ageing, especially in 20th-century women’s prose” (Gramshammer-Hohl 2016: 23-24). Indeed, she points out that this is true only for more recent literary works (ibid.: 24), whereas in the literature of the beginning of the 20th century representations of old age or elderly characters still have mostly an allegorical meaning, or “[…] fulfil a specific function within the structure of the literary text when it tends to oppose two contrasting poles” (ibid.). This paper examines the model that can be identified in the Russian utopian and dystopian fiction of 1920-1940. This era is particularly relevant because, although this is a period when utopias are dominant,3 some very important dystopian literary texts were written (if not published) at that time.

IN THE “ZONE” Both genres, utopia and dystopia, are “realized” in the zone4 (zone of utopia or zone of dystopia). In utopian/dystopian fiction, this counterpart world can be reached by various means. In Vadim Nikol’skij’s novel In a Thousand Years (Čerez tysjaču let, 1927), the zone of utopia is in the future – we can get there by time travel, which can be executed with a time machine (so the travel can go both ways). In Aleksandr Beljaev’s novel Battle in the Ether (Bor’ba v ėfire, 1928), it is not explained how the main character found himself in the future and

2

Different approaches can be seen: Šestakov, for example, points out that the two can be regarded as one and the same genre; Suvin, on the other hand, that they are both subgenres of science fiction – and I find both approaches quite reasonable.

3

Although one can have doubts about certain classifications; Aelita, for example (more about this further in the text).

4

The term the “zone” I understand as the area (both in place and time) where literary utopian/dystopian society is realized in a particular novel. The reason for using this term is the isolated character of these societies.

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in the end it is not clear whether he was there at all or whether everything was just a result of a fever. In Vivian Itin’s novel The Land Gonguri (Strana Gonguri, 1922), the zone of utopia is on an alternative temporal axis which the main character reaches with the help of hypnosis. Much more scientific is Ėmmanuil Zelikovič’s novel The Next World (Sledujuščij mir, 1930), in which his characters pass into a parallel universe through some kind of a gate. Jan Larri’s novel The Land of the Happy (Strana sčastlivych, 1931) takes place in the future and with no connection to our time. All these utopias are on Earth, so it is normal that the zone of utopia is in a different time line (in the beginning of the 20th century it is impossible to find on Earth unknown territories with an ideal society, which was one of the most popular principles of the older utopias, like Thomas More’s Utopia from 1516, which gave the genre its name, or The City of the Sun [La città del Sole] by Tommaso Campanella from 1602), while novels that want to locate the zone of utopia closer to our time must dislocate it in space (quite literally), as in the novel Aelita (Aėlita, 1923) by Aleksej Tolstoj where the zone of another society (more dystopian than utopian) is situated on Mars. All these ways of getting to the zone of utopia are neutral from the point of view of aging, but that is not the case with the first Soviet utopia (utopian trilogy) by Jakov Okunev The World to Come: 1923-2123 (Grjaduščij mir: 19232123, 1923). The ideal utopian society is realized after a planetary revolution in the future, whereby “travelers” from our time get there by means of some kind of hibernation, i.e., suspended animation, understood as the slowing or stopping of life processes, and which is basically manipulation of the process of aging. Two characters from the “now,” after a 200-year-long sleep, wake up in the utopian future. While a time machine enables traveling both ways, suspended animation enables only one way “travel.” Dystopian novels that are analyzed in the paper are We (My, 1920) by Evgenij Zamjatin and Chevengur (Čevengur, 1929) and The Foundation Pit (Kotlovan, 1929) by Andrej Platonov. The first is set in the future, but, as in Jan Larri’s novel, there is no connection between the “present time” and the future. Platonov’s novels are the only novels placed in the “here (Earth) and now.” Defining the zone of utopia/dystopia is important because it is reflected in the existence of several types of characters who all age differently.

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AGING IN “UTOPIA” Anything connected with the body of characters in utopian and dystopian fiction is of immense ideological importance, because the body in these novels is an ideological sign. Consequently, aging is also an ideological sign. Utopian novels can be divided into two groups: those where characters get into the zone of utopia through some kind of travel from “our” zone, i.e., from “our” time and space (Nikol’skij’s In a Thousand Years, Okunev’s The World to Come, Beljaev’s Battle in the Ether, Itin’s The Land Gonguri, Zelikovič’s The Next World, Tolstoj’s Aelita) and those where the plot does not include “our” time line (Larri’s The Land of the Happy). This means that novels of the second group need only “utopian” characters, while novels of the first group need three groups of characters: those from “our” non-utopian society, characters from “utopian” society and characters who connect these two societies, i.e., those who enable the knowledge about the utopian “future” or “alternative time” to get to us. Since “the travel” is made from “our” time/space line, and not the other way around, the travelers are the representatives of our non-utopian zone but they are different from all the other representatives of our zone because they are ready to travel to the unknown and they are ready to sacrifice their lives for the sake of knowledge and science. The “travelers,” usually two of them, are realized through the characters of scientist/professor and his helper5 (in the novel Battle in the Ether, the travel is not explained scientifically, and so the role of the first traveler is not activated). The first traveler (professor/scientist/engineer) is the one who “figures out” the way to travel. In Aelita it is a young engineer, but in other novels the first traveler is an older man (Prof. Moran from The World to Come, Prof. Farbenmejster from In a Thousand Years, Prof. James Brooks in Zelikovič’s The Next World), which shows that for the required knowledge and the realization of such a project one needs time (i.e., needs “to age”). The physical appearance of the first travelers is not perfect as they are from the non-utopian world, but it shows that they are more concerned with science than with the world of pleasure as they are usually very slim. For example, James Brooks is a “tall, shaven and very slim man of about fifty” (“высокий, бритый и очень стройный мужчина лет пятидесяти”) (Zelikovič 1930). On the other hand, Prof. Moran is round (“катышек”) (Okunev 1923), but just because he is very short, not because he overindulges in eating. He is a father trying to save his daughter; so, his round-

5

So far, I have found only male characters in both roles.

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ness may be a symbol of his paternal/maternal role. All of these first travelers are very focused on science and their work, which makes them full of life; for example, Prof. Moran is cheerful and Prof. Farbenmejster shows great enthusiasm when he talks of his work and scientific topics. This type of character, i.e., the concept of scholar/professor who appears as one of the main characters of these novels, is so common that it is parodied by Valentin Kataev in his novel Erendorf Island (Ostrov Ėrendorf, 1924):6 After reading from the first lines about the elderly professor who makes some very complicated calculations, […] the reader, of course, has every right to treat my novel skeptically and stop reading it from the very first page. It is difficult to object to this. Of course, the reader already knows beforehand that the professor is making a brilliant discovery. (Прочитавши с первых строк о престарелом профессоре, который производит какието очень сложные вычисления, […] читатель, конечно, имеет полное право отнестись к моему роману скептически и бросить его читать с первой же страницы. Возражать против этого трудно. Разумеется, читатель уже наперёд знает, что профессор делает гениальное открытие. [Kataev 1924])

The second traveler is the professor’s assistant. His role asks for physical strength, such as Vikent’ev from The World to Come, or Andrej Osorgin from In a Thousand Years, and it may be this is the reason why this character is a person younger than the professor: “[…] his lean, long fingers. The screws tightly succumbed to the professor’s weak hands, and I had to come to his aid” (“[…] его сухощавых длинных пальцев. Винты туго поддавались слабым рукам профессора, и я вынужден был придти ему на подмогу”) (Nikol’skij 1927). This means that for such an endeavor the elderly professor and younger sidekick (the old and the young) have to work together. The characters of non-utopian society can be divided into two groups. In the first group there are normal everyday citizens who suffer from the society, and in the second group there are the rulers (the capitalists) that represent everything that is negative. Capitalists are psychically and physically deformed. In Okunev’s novel we have the example of several magnates who are all either fat or have some other physical deformity. However, we do not see the time line of their aging, so that for this analysis they are irrelevant. Utopian characters live in the zone of utopia and the travelers come to this new society and meet them. One of the first characteristics that we notice when

6

I did not include this novel in the analysis of aging because it is a parody of the genre.

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we see new people is their age (if age is in the context that we can recognize: color of hair, wrinkles, etc.), so that, in the novels, we can sometimes find that new or unknown characters are “named” by their age (because the narrator doesn’t know their names) and it is immediately noticeable that in the future utopian society most people are, apparently – young and beautiful: […] a slim figure of a woman. […] Through the soft folds of the translucent golden cloak thrown over one shoulder, the impeccably beautiful forms of her young body loomed. This vision of the XXX century was so inexplicably beautiful that I closed my eyes for a moment.

([…] стройная женская фигура. […] Сквозь мягкие складки полупрозрачного золотистого плаща, наброшенного на одно плечо, вырисовывались безупречные красивые формы ее молодого тела. Это видение XXX века было так неизъяснимо прекрасно, что я на мгновение зажмурил глаза. [ibid.])

The people of utopia, of course, are advanced in comparison to people of nonutopia. This advancement is not only social, but is reflected in each individual, and can be seen on both intellectual and physical levels. In the novel In a Thousand Years we can see the difference between the old (non-utopian) and the new (utopian) people: Imagine harmoniously merged together, strength and beauty, intelligence and grace, and you will get a pale formula for the appearance of the new humanity. It was a completely new race. In my time, there were individuals in whom some of these basic traits received outstanding development. There were beautiful and even most beautiful women. Beautiful men were incomparably fewer. […] From a beautiful woman or from a handsome man, the mind was almost never expected. (Представьте себе гармонично слитые вместе, силу и красоту, ум и изящество, и вы получите бледную формулу внешности нового человечества. Это была совершенно новая раса. В мое время встречались отдельные личности, в которых какая-нибудь из этих основных черт получала выдающееся развитие. Были красивые и даже прекрасные женщины. Красивых мужчин было несравненно меньше. […] От прекрасной женщины или от красивого мужчины ума почти никогда и не ждали. [ibid.]) Each bend, each line of their body breathed strength, health and grace. Confident gestures of men and soft, but at the same time determined movements of the girls created the impression of strict rhythm and strength.

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(Каждый изгиб, каждая линия их тела дышали силой, здоровьем и грацией. Уверенные жесты мужчин и мягкие, но вместе с тем решительные движения девушек создавали впечатление строгого ритма и силы. [ibid.])

Of course, the life itself is prolonged: in the novel The Next World, the people of Iyo (Ийо) live about 120 years; in the quite naïve novel Battle in the Ether, half of the world lives in utopian communism and lives much longer than the other half that lives on the capitalist side of the world; and in In a Thousand Years, utopians live 500 years. The prolongation of life is a result of scientific advancement, which is always a result of the just communist society. Okunev and Nikol’skij explain these processes in a much more elaborated way than other writers, but basically the utopian people learn how to clean the body of all the toxins, viruses and bacteria that are guilty of making each and every cell of the body ill and which in the end lead to the illness and aging of the whole body. For such purposes they use cleaning baths and (in Okunev’s novel) even radioactive showers. The food is also much healthier (usually vegetarian food with lots of fruits and vitamin pills or liquids). These procedures from the utopian future can help the travelers from our time as well. In In a Thousand Years, the old professor takes this bath and afterwards he looks and feels 30 years younger. He has lost his wrinkles, his hands have stopped shaking, and his movements have become energetic. In In a Thousand Years, we find an interesting sentence: “[T]he most precious thing that we have is time” (“[C]амое дорогое, что у нас есть, это время”) (Nikol’skij 1927). It is not said only in the sense of duration of life, but in the sense of everything we do in life. For example, the scientific advancement in utopian societies of the future is achieved as a “result of many experiments” (“в результате многочисленных экспериментов”) (ibid.). It is the understanding that to achieve something you need time – you can get nothing here and now and without effort. Although life is longer, people still die and grow older. However, aging is different. Aging does not mean illness and helplessness. Aging means becoming knowledgeable and wise. Old people are beautiful: “The features of his shaved dark olive face resembled a statue of some Roman emperor” (“Черты его бритого темно-оливкового лица напоминали собою изваяние какого-то римского императора”) (ibid.); old people learn all their life and they are in a way first among equals – they lead the young into the better future. Old people are active, and this is the reason why they do not need to retire – of course, if even young people work only several hours a week (and usually on-

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ly controlling machines), it is not such a problem. So, old people are not a burden on the society, as they are sometimes perceived in non-utopian reality. Advancement of science is therefore not the only reason why people live longer in utopian societies. Another is taking care of one’s body and not abusing it (by overworking, overeating or overdrinking). Consequently, a very important “source of life” is this internal attitude of constant learning and growing. However, even in utopia people do die. Although in many ways naïve, these novels are in that respect to some extent realistic; in utopian novels, though, there is usually no showing of how people die: “I noticed that the word died here is never pronounced” (“[Я] заметил, что слово умер здесь никогда не произносится”) (ibid.). It is, however, implicitly given that they die content with their long and fulfilled life and with the role they have played in society (their usefulness). Death seems to come quickly when a person is ready to “leave,” and it is painless: “My father passed away fifty-five decades later, […] tired and satisfied with the work that he continued after the death of his teacher…” (“Мой отец ушел из жизни пятидесяти пяти декад от роду, […] утомленный и удовлетворенный работой, которую он продолжал после гибели своего учителя…”) (ibid.). Still, love in utopian novels is reserved only for the young. However, it brings mostly only problems to the characters that are involved in the “love story,” and so we can assume that nothing good and useful comes from love (love represents the same concept of unpredictability and chaos as in Zamjatin’s We). Thus, as in Zamjatin’s We, in Nikol’skij’s novel there is a procedure which helps you forget your love (in the case of unhappy love). This “restriction of love” is no doubt a reflection of the concept of the utopian waiver of sex, which is a wellknown notion (Günther 2012). It cannot be said, therefore, that in this respect old people are discriminated; they are more likely liberated from the unnecessary and more or less useless emotions and urges. We can conclude that the character of the professor/scientist (the first traveler) can be seen as a prototype of a man of the utopian society. Although it is still not the true man of the utopian society, the fact that it is an older person, but willing to learn and contribute, definitively places this character as a role model for the wo/man of the utopian future.

AGING IN “DYSTOPIA” One of the first dystopian (anti-utopian) tones in literature belongs, of course, to Zamjatin’s novel We (1920). His poetics of minimalism (as elaborated in Božić

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2017b) is reflected also in the topic and motif of aging. In his novel he shows the (anti-)utopian society of the One State (Edinoe Gosudarstvo), but he spends no time reflecting on the topic of age. We meet only young and healthy people, and the only really old person is an old woman in the Ancient House (Drevnij Dom): […] old woman all wrinkles, especially her mouth, which was all made up of folds and pleats. Her lips had disappeared, having folded inward; her mouth seemed grown together. It seemed incredible that she should be able to talk, and yet she did. […] Her wrinkles shone, that is, her wrinkles diverged like rays, which created the impression of shining. (Zamiatin 1952: 25)7 ([…] старуха, вся сморщенная, и особенно рот: одни складки, сборки, губы уже ушли внутрь, рот как-то зарос – и было совсем невероятно, чтобы она заговорила. И все же заговорила. […] И морщины засияли [т. е., вероятно, сложились лучеобразно, что и создало впечатление “засияли”]. [Zamjatin 1920])

Aging is not elaborated in the novel, but I read it here as a symbol of freedom. Contrary to aging as something that we would like to avoid, in the regulated society of One State being old is something that is personal, almost an act of rebellion, a picture of wisdom and time, a special kind of beauty, and this is the reason why the protagonist I-330 likes both the old woman and the Ancient House. This is particularly interesting because, as Hans Günther points out, revolutionaries have only contempt for the past (Günther 2011: 67). Zamjatin has a very special philosophy: he accepts the temporality of life just as he accepts that there cannot be the last revolution. Aging and dying is the fate of any revolution or idea (or a wo/man) – we are all just parts of ever forward-moving existence – and we should accept such fate with grace. Sexuality, however, is viewed a little more traditionally – it is left to the young (D, I, O and R). D-503 describes Ju (Ю) as “an older woman” (“пожилая женщина”), and she is not sexually attractive to him. But on the symbolic level she represents the totalitarian destructive force – old that refuses to allow the change to happen, i.e., she refuses to age gracefully and accept age. So, aging is not in itself something negative, but it should be met with dignity and it should not impose itself on the “new.” A similar principle can be found in Jan Larri’s novel The Land of the Happy, a novel which is rather difficult to categorize (but for the purpose of this analysis I categorize it as a Soviet fantasia). On the one hand, he follows the utopian

7

Translations of We, Chevengur and The Foundation Pit according to the cited editions in “References.”

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principle whereby old means wise – like 80-year-old scientist Bojko from The Land of the Happy, who during his life was a composer (when he was 30), engineer (when he was 50), student at the medical university (when he was 60), and in his 80s a great doctor. To be like him is the goal of all the young people. On the other hand, however, there is a group of older political activists who oppose the development of the society (but in the end young and progressive forces win). The poetics of Andrej Platonov is completely opposite to that of Zamjatin. Zamjatin’s poetics can be termed minimalistic because he expects readers “to fill in the blanks” (Zamjatin 2002: 317). On the other hand, Platonov extensively uses words of the semantic field that is important to him (Božić 2017b). If we count in Chevengur only the lexemes of the semantic field “death,” these number more than 300 words, which means that there is at least one word of this semantic field per page. As we have seen in utopian novels, the time of life is used to increase knowledge, to learn and to teach others about the world, to serve the world, to make discoveries. Therefore, the time spent on Earth is time well spent, it is useful both to the individual and to the society, and the human body is kept as a vessel or tool so that this valuable task can be performed as long as possible. But in Platonov’s novels Chevengur and The Foundation Pit, the situation is very different. Among the characters we find no scientists or professors (most characters can hardly read) and all characters “use” their time on Earth just to live the sorrows. While the inhabitants of literary utopias are convinced of the social utility of each individual, this is not the case in these two of Platonov’s novels. In The Foundation Pit, Voščev, for example, “did not know whether he was useful in the world or whether everything could do quite well without him” (Platonov 1978b: 5) (“[П]олезен ли он в мире или все без него благополучно обойдется?” [Platonov 1929]). People live just because they were born, just like animals: “It’s boring for the dog. He lives only because he was born, just like me!” (Platonov 1978b: 5) (“Скучно собаке, она живет благодаря одному рождению, как и я” [Platonov 1929]). People and animals, nature and ideas – they are all the same, i.e., they are all in the same situation and of the same “quality.” A dead, fallen leaf Voščev stored in the hidden compartment of his handbag, in which he was saving the objects of “unhappiness and obscurity” (“несчастья и безвестности”), has, in the opinion of Voščev, “no meaning in life” (“не имел смысла жизни”), and Voščev wants to find out why the leaf “lived and perished” (“жил и погиб”) (Platonov 1978b: 8; Platonov 1929).

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Even ideas, which in Platonov’s work often have characteristics of humans (or God),8 sometimes do not need people: “Socialism can get along without you…” (Platonov 1978b: 23) (“Социализм обойдется и без вас…” [Platonov 1929]). Voščev believes that everything that lives and suffers in the world learns nothing and knows nothing about the world: “All live and suffer in the world without being conscious of anything…” (Platonov 1978b: 8) (“Все живет и терпит на свете, ничего не сознавая…” [Platonov 1929]). It is the same with many of Platonov’s characters. For example, Chevengur’s Zachar Pavlovič, when he was young, also thought that when he grew up he would become smarter, but later realizes that he was wrong. Aging is therefore useless. In the scene in The Foundation Pit where a mother and father argue in front of a child, the child is the only person who understands everything: “[…] the supervisor was quarrelling loudly with his wife, […] the child himself silently pulled at the flounces of his shirt, understanding, but saying nothing” (Platonov 1978b: 7) (“[…] надзиратель громко ссорился с женой, […] сам же ребенок молча щипал оборку своей рубашки, понимая, но ничего не говоря” [Platonov 1929]). The importance of childhood is also underlined by the fact that many of Platonov’s characters mentally go back to childhood (Günther 2012: 113). In the rare cases when somebody feels the sense of his life and has belief in the future, it is always a young person, but as the person grows older, he/she can expect only suffering, as in the case of engineer Pruševskij: Engineer Prushevsky as early as the age of twenty [sic] had felt the constraint of his consciousness and an end to the further understanding of life, just as if a dark wall stood there point blank in front of his perceiving mind. (Platonov 1978b: 21) (Инженер Прушевский уже с двадцати пяти лет почувствовал стеснение своего сознания и конец дальнейшему понятию жизни, будто темная стена предстала в упор перед его ощущающим умом. [Platonov 1929])

While utopian characters, who are convinced of the importance of their lives, are young, healthy and beautiful, Platonov’s dystopian characters are often born already old and tired. Voščev is only 30 years old, but “got completely exhausted very quickly, whenever his soul recollected that it had ceased to know the truth” (Platonov 1978b: 8) (“…изнемогал же Вощев скоро, как только его душа вспоминала, что истину она перестала знать” [Platonov 1929]).

8

See the works of Günther or Božić.

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The investment in knowledge does not mean that a person will later have it, because a person can forget everything, as in The Foundation Pit when Čiklin advises an old man: “You have lived a long time; you can work with your memory” (Platonov 1978b: 47) (“Ты жил долго: можешь одной памятью работать” [Platonov, 1929]). The old man replies: “But I’ve forgotten everything – I’d have to live it all over again from the start” (Platonov 1978b: 47) (“А я все уж позабыл, хоть сызнова живи” [Platonov 1929]). As already stated, utopias are full of knowledgeable and sure characters, while in dystopias characters are very often very unsure and know nothing. Knowledge, which is a kind of truth, in utopias is beneficial for the body, and the opposite of this idea can be seen in The Foundation Pit, where Voščev’s body “without truth […] grows weak” (Platonov 1978b: 13) (“без истины тело слабнет” [Platonov 1929]). In utopias, as we have seen, life and death are divided with a clear line. Death is pushed into a distant future, and usually people do not die but “leave life.” After life, there is remembrance and thankfulness of those who remain because their life is enriched by the actions of people who lived before them. But in Platonov’s dystopias, death and life are almost one and the same: “But the sleeper lay there like dead…” (Platonov 1978b: 12) (“Но спящий лежал замертво…” [Platonov, 1929]). Similarly, he writes: “All of the sleepers were as thin as if they were dead people” (Platonov 1978b: 12) (“Все спящие были худы, как умершие” [Platonov 1929]). The problem of death in Platonov’s novel is, of course, very complex and within the limitations of this paper I may run the risk of oversimplification.9 Nevertheless, Sergej Nikol’skij deals with the issue precisely and succinctly when he states: We cannot say which of Platonov’s heroes is alive (while alive), and who is already dead we cannot. They all exist in the stage of transition from life to death, and the difference between them is only that some are at the beginning of dying, others are on the threshold of the grave, and others are already dead. (Сказать, кто из героев Платонова жив [пока жив], а кто уже мертв, нельзя. Все существуют в стадии перехода от жизни к смерти, и разница между ними лишь в том, что одни находятся в начале умирания, другие на пороге могилы, а третьи уже мертвы. [Nikol’skij 2014])

9

There is, however, quite an extensive literature on the subject.

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Many characters are aware that waiting for them in the future is only suffering. Actually, suffering is for them a permanent “now.” This is a reason why many characters want to die immediately, like Nastja’s mother in The Foundation Pit: “I have become bored, I have become dead tired…” (Platonov 1978b: 16) (“Мне стало скучно, я уморилась…” [Platonov 1929]). Between birth and death, characters do not feel that they are useful to anybody, as for example Pruševskij, who “could not see who needed him so much that he should unquestionably support himself till his distant death” (“Прушевский не видел, кому бы он настолько требовался, чтоб непременно поддерживать себя до еще далекой смерти”), and “[i]nstead of hope there was left to him only patience” (“[в]место надежды ему осталось лишь терпение”) (Platonov 1978b: 12; Platonov 1929), and so he also chooses to die. But if/when a character can find some kind of meaning in life then the will to live is restored. Hence, it is not old age that brings death and illnesses – death and illness can come at any time. It is not reserved only for the old, but is something for the young as well. Indeed, old age is not reserved only for the old – a person can be old anytime, even as a child. Aging is, in contrast to utopias, faster in Platonov’s dystopias: Pogankin greeted Dvanov gruffly. He was miserable with poverty. His children had aged after a year of hunger and, like adults, they thought only of how to get bread. The two girls already resembled grown women. (Platonov 1978a: 66) (Поганкин встретил Дванова неласково – он скучал от бедности. Дети его за годы голода постарели и, как большие, думали только о добыче хлеба. Две девочки походили уже на баб… [Platonov 2006]) The foundling stood there too, looking at the incomprehensible with a twisted, aged face. (Platonov 1978a: 16) (Приемыш стоял тут же и глядел на непонятное с искаженным постаревшим лицом. [Platonov 2006])

But old age is somehow still magical and old people “are truly amazing people, for their mothers have all died, and yet they live on and they don’t cry” (Platonov 1978a: 167) (“загадочные люди, потому что у них умерли матери, а они живут и не плачут” [Platonov 2006]).

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The fact that the distinction between the young and the old is not so simple is proven in yet another moment when, in Chevengur, Saša Dvanov sees the blood of an old engineer: “Sasha was astounded that the blood was so young and red, while the foreman engineer was so old and gray, as though inside he were still a baby” (Platonov 1978a: 39) (“Сашу удивило, что кровь была такая красная и молодая, а сам машинист-наставник такой седой и старый: будто внутри он был еще ребенком” [Platonov 2006]). Čiklin recognizes the woman that kissed him in his youth by kissing her “[…] by the dry taste of her lips and an insignificant remnant of tenderness in their caked wrinkles” (Platonov 1978b: 43) (“[…] он узнал по сухому вкусу губ и ничтожному остатку нежности в их спекшихся трещинах” [Platonov 1929]). The woman, although middle-aged and dying, is still the same girl that once kissed him. Hence, blood (the same young blood – the inside) can be way of maintaining the unity of the self. We see that there is a complex relationship between life and death in these two of Platonov’s novels. Sergej Nikol’skij (2014) argues that this relationship shows Platonov’s idea that the USSR was a kingdom of death. Igor’ Čubarov (2011) follows the same idea and argues that Platonov tried to test with his characters Nikolaj Fedorov’s idea of the resurrection, but showed that the kingdom of death is everywhere and there will be no second coming. Eternity and eternal life are not one and the same: “The woman remained to lie there in that eternal age at which she had died […]” (Platonov 1978b: 68) (“Женщина осталась лежать в том вечном возрасте, в котором умерла […]” [Platonov 1929]). It is interesting, however, that from the point of view of aging, age and death are not in the same correlation as in all the other utopian and dystopian novels analyzed in this paper. You do not have to age to die, nor do you have to age to be old. In Platonov’s work, even ideas (like revolution) have characteristics of living people (Božić 2017a). The same is with aging: we can see that non-living things also age, and sometimes aging even makes them alive – like an old shoe through which plants start to grow, making it alive. In this respect, almost surprisingly, Platonov and Zamjatin are alike.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, aging is a very important issue in both utopian and dystopian novels since it is an ideological question. There are many aspects of aging, and a more thorough investigation of the issue in the context of these novels would require an analysis with a broader range of relevant texts. However, the varied representations of aging in these novels can also be linked to their classification:

Aging in Soviet Utopian and Dystopian Literature | 249

utopian and dystopian genres can be subdivided into many subgenres – and in each of them, aging is viewed differently. Table 1: Different representations of aging in utopian and dystopian literature Utopias Soviet

Utopian thriller

canonical

Dystopias Soviet

Anti-utopia

Canonical

fantasia10

dystopia

utopias Show: ideal

Show: Soviet

Show: ideal

Show: seem-

Show: far from

society (ideal

socialism is

Soviet society

ingly ideal

ideal society.

socialism).

exported to

meets problems

society meets

other countries

and solves

problems.

or worlds.

them.

People age

People age

People age

People age

People age

slowly and

slowly and stay

slowly and stay

slowly and stay

quickly and

stay healthy.

healthy in the

healthy.

healthy.

have bad

(Old people

countries of

(Aging can be a

(Aging can be a

health.

form an active

Soviet

sign of

sign of

part of non-

socialism

conservatism.)

rebellion or of

utopian

or

society.)

age as in novels

conservatism.)

of realism. The Land

Battle in the

The Land of the

Gonguri,

Ether,

Happy

In a Thousand

Aelita11

We

Chevengur, The Foundation Pit

Years, The World to Come, The Next World

10 The term used by Glebov-Putilovskij in his foreword to Jan Larri’s The Land of the Happy (1931). 11 Aelita is also very difficult to categorize, because the attempt to bring communist society to Mars fails.

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In summary, in the novels The Land Gonguri, In a Thousand Years, The World to Come and The Next World, people age slowly and stay healthy and old people form an active part of non-utopian society. These novels can be considered as canonical Soviet utopias. In the novels Battle in the Ether, Aelita or The Land of the Happy, we see a different approach to the issue of aging: characters can age as in novels of realism or aging can be a sign of conservatism. This can be considered as one of the signs that these novels are not canonical Soviet utopias,12 since the canonic utopian texts see aging as a normal process of life, but this process in utopian societies works much more slowly than in non-utopian societies. The difference between anti-utopian and dystopian texts13 can also be seen in the way they deal with the aging “issue.” In Zamjatin’s We, which we can consider the canonical anti-utopian novel, Zamjatin shows aging as in other canonical utopian texts, but on the symbolic level, in his novel aging can be a sign of rebellion or of conservatism. Platonov’s texts, which we can consider dystopian, offer the most complex approach to aging. Contrary to utopianism, aging is quickened, and there is no big difference between the young and the old – both are hungry, sick and close to death. In utopian/dystopian literature, aging is an ideological question and not a personal one – in the sense that a “good society” enables “good aging.” In any case, in both, utopias and dystopias, young and old people need each other to survive (even if they are sometimes not aware of it).

REFERENCES Beljaev, Aleksandr (1928): Bor’ba v ėfire. http://az.lib.ru/b/beljaew_a_r/text_ 1927_borba_v_efire.shtml/ [accessed April 12, 2018]. Božić, Rafaela (2017a): “Revolucija – od utopije do distopije”, in: Književna smotra: časopis za svjetsku književnost 3, 7-15. Božić, Rafaela (2017b): The Language of the Dystopian Novel. Zadar. Čubarov, Igor’ (2011): “Smert’ pola, ili “bezmolvie ljubvi” (Obrazy seksual’nosti i smerti v proizvedenijach Andreja Platonova i Nikolaja Fedo-

12 My current research (ongoing) gives me reason to classify them as either Soviet utopian thriller (Battle in the Ether, Aelita) or Soviet fantasia (The Land of the Happy). 13 According to recent definitions, anti-utopian novels describe seemingly ideal societies, while dystopian novels describe clearly politically, economically, morally unsatisfying societies.

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rova)”, in: NLO 107. http://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2011/107/chu27-pr.html/ [accessed May 2, 2018]. Glebov-Putilovskij, Nikolaj (1931): “Strana Sčastlivych: Predislovie”. http:// epizodyspace.ru/bibl/fant/larri/strana/01.html/ [accessed April 12, 2018]. Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar (2016): “The Sameness of the Ageing Self: Memory and Testimony in 20th-Century Russian Narratives of Ageing”, in: Russian Literature 85, 23-41. Günther, Hans (2011): Po obe storony ot utopii: konteksty tvorčestva A. Platonova. Мoskva. Günther, Hans (2012): “Andrej Platonov sub specie anthropologiae”, in: NLO 113. https://magazines.gorky.media/nlo/2012/1/andrej-platonov-sub-specieanthropologiae.html [accessed March 5, 2018]. Itin, Vivian Azar’evič (2014): Strana Gonguri. Biblioteka ėlektronnoj literatury. http://litresp.ru/chitat/ru/%D0%98/itin-vivian-azarjevich/strana-gonguri/1/ [accessed March 12, 2018]. Kataev, Valentin (1924): Ostrov Ėrendorf. https://www.e-reading.by/ bookreader.php/26326/Kataev_-_Ostrov_Erendorf.html/ [accessed May 2, 2018]. Larri, Jan (1931): Strana sčastlivych. Leningrad. http://larri.lit-info.ru/larri/ proza/strana-schastlivyh/ [accessed April 12, 2018]. Nikol’skij, Sergej A. (2014): “Živoe i mertvoe: putešestvie Andreja Platonova po carstvu smerti”, in: Voprosy filosofii 9, 210-220. https://iphras. ru/uplfile/philec/nikolskiy/article-on-platonov.pdf [accessed September 19, 2018]. Nikol’skij, Vadim D. (1927): Čerez tysjaču let. https://www.litmir.me/br/?b=954 96&p=1/ [accessed May 7, 2018]. Okunev, Jakov (1923): Grjaduščij mir. http://az.lib.ru/o/okunew_j_m/text_1923 _gryadushiy_mir.shtml/ [accessed May 12, 2018]. Platonov, Andrei (1978a): Chevengur. Ann Arbor. Platonov, Andrei (1978b): “The Foundation Pit”, in: Collected Works. Ann Arbor. https://archive.org/details/AndreiPlatonovTheFoundationPitbOk.xyz/ [accessed March 7, 2018]. Platonov, Andrej (1929): Kotlovan. http://modernlib.net/books/platonov_ andrey_platonovich/kotlovan/read/ [accessed May 7, 2017]. Platonov, Andrej (2006): Čevengur. Moskva. http://knijky.ru/books/chevengur/ [accessed April 7, 2018]. Šestakov, Vjačeslav P. (2012): “Utopija kak problema rossijskoj mental’nosti”, in: Мeždunarodnyj žurnal issledovanij kul’tury/International Journal of Cul-

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tural Research 4/9, 6-9. http://intelros.ru/pdf/isl_kult/2012_04/1.pdf/ [accessed April 12, 2017]. Suvin, Darko (2010): Metamorfoze znanstvene fantastike. Zagreb. Tarakanova Аnna D. (2008): Žanr utopii v russkoj literature (k postanovke problemy genezisa i razvitija žanra). Magnitogorsk. http://www.gramota.net/ materials/1/2008/2-1/81.html/ [accessed April 12, 2017]. Tolstoj, Aleksej N. (1923): Aėlita. http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/prose/ tolsa001.htm/ [accessed May 12, 2018]. Zamiatin, Eugene (1952): We. Dutton, NY. Zamjatin, Evgenij (1920): My. http://az.lib.ru/z/zamjatin_e_i/text_0050.shtml/ [accessed April 12, 2017]. Zamjatin, Evgenij (2002): “O sintetizme”, in: My. Ekaterinburg, 309-320. Zelikovič, Ėmmanuil (1930): “Sledujuščij mir”, in: Bor’ba mirov 1-7. http:// maxima-library.org/citate/b/421230/read/ [accessed May 12, 2018].

Ageless, Vital, Immortal Human Transformation in 20th-Century Russian Science and Literature Tatjana Petzer

INTRODUCTION Since the end of the 19th century, experimental biological research and medical engineering have increased their interest in questions of longevity and immortality. Such queries raised the issue of human transformation and of the dissolution of the boundaries of life in Eastern as well as Western philosophy and literature. The ancient philosophical concept of “potential immortality”1 was introduced to biology, challenging the notion of “natural death.” A major impulse came from the German physician and zoologist August Weismann (1834-1914), describing unicellular organisms as potentially immortal, in that they proliferate by cell division, do not age and, since they do not leave any corpses behind, do not die naturally (Weismann 1882: 29). Organisms without death from old age or with astonishing longevity (in relation to body size and weight) were shown to have a spectrum of natural “immortality techniques” – e.g., cell renewal and regeneration of whole body parts, survival in extreme living conditions due to anabiosis – and to be solely threatened by extrinsic mortality factors, i.e., catastrophic death. With increasing development of organisms and organs, the vitality decreased reciprocally, and bisexual reproduction seemed to be closely linked

1

In his treatise On the Nature of Man (c. 400), the Greek philosopher and bishop of Emesa Nemesios described man as “potentially immortal,” δυνάµει αθάνατος, and from a Christian perspective this means not only the survival of the soul after death, but also that the mortal body is made immortal (see Nemesios von Emesa 1925: 12).

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to an inner program of death (in order to ensure evolutionary adaptation by means of genetic information transfer). A new topos was created: death as a disease or misprogramming that had to be cured and repaired. In this context, the Russian zoologist, immunologist and gerontologist, and winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize for his contribution to immunology, Il’ja Mečnikov (1845-1916), who emigrated to France in 1888, directed his research interest towards the physical mortality of cell colonies and multicellular organisms. According to Mečnikov, aging and death were the result of the crisis of the cellular state triggered by external enemies, and thus an immunological problem and a consequence of autointoxication (especially of an intestinal nature), rather than natural parts of physiological development. Mečnikov’s “philosophy of optimism,” based on his bacteriological, immunological and dietetic investigations, paved the way for a theory and medicine of aging.2 He focused on rejuvenation by means of probiotics and designed “orthobiosis” (coined from the Greek ortho ‘correct’ and bios ‘life’) as a method of transforming the human being according to an ideal of longevity (Metschnikoff 1908: 301-303). The ancient philosophy of nature always distinguished between mortal man and the world of ageless gods. Because of human individuality, man was also separated from the imperishable nature and the cycle of biological life, from the generic immortality of animals. With Weisman, who defined the complex organisms’ hereditary substance (“germplasm”), because of its ability to produce infinitely new life, as the seat of the “so longingly desired immortality” (Weismann 1883: 79), humans apparently moved back into the vicinity of nature’s cyclicity. His concept of human immortality was thus based on continuity. Mečnikov’s writings, however, spurred on the hope for physical optimization of the individual and he became a reference figure for projects in Russia concerning the overcoming of death (see Polianski 2018: 8). Indeed, the assumption that the natural techniques of longevity and regeneration could be applied to man and would pave the way to man’s physical immortality was particularly influential in the

2

According to Igor Polianski (2018: 8-9), the success of Mečnikov’s The Nature of Man: Studies in Optimistic Philosophy (Études sur la nature humaine. Essai de philosophie optimiste, published in 1903; Metschnikoff 1904) and The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies (Essais optimistes, 1907; Metschnikoff 1908) is due to his ability to link together the four pillars of medicine and life sciences of his epoch (Darwinism, Ivan Pavlov’s theory of aging due to damage to nerve cells, Rudolf Virchow’s cellular pathological parable of the human body as a cellular state, and the medical bacteriology of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch). On Mečnikov’s philosophical approach see also Schmuck 2008.

Ageless, Vital, Immortal | 255

Russian-Soviet discourse at the beginning of the 20th century. This is testified not least by the keyword “anthropotechnics” (“антропотехника”)3 in the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Bol’šaja sovetskaja ėnciklopedija) of 1926. Analogous to the breeding biology (“зоотехника”), anthropotechnics united all the methods that served to transform the physical and psychological dispositions of man (see BSĖ 1926). With the discovery and decoding of DNA since the second half of the 20th century, hopes have also been raised that genetic analyses and technologies could have a decisive influence on life and mortality. A popular scientific contribution by the botanist and president of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences Vasilij Kuprevič (1897-1969) provides a glimpse of how the discourse on immortality resurfaced during the 1960s. With the insertion that the proposal was hypothetical, if not fantastic, Kuprevič proposed the creation of an “immortality virus” (“вирус бессмертия”), which should destroy genetic information leading to demise and correct errors in such a way that every single cell of the organism becomes rejuvenated or even immortal (Kuprevič 1966: 32). In this article, I will discuss three literary thought experiments by physiologists and engineers from around 1910, 1920 and 1970 which have brought together scientific premises of gerontology and immortology and challenged common attitudes towards aging and death. In the following, therefore, the focus will not be on the versatile penetration of science into fiction, but on texts which document specific changes in the scientific and social discourse on the creation of spheres of immortality: on the one hand, before and after the October Revolution through the prism of Aleksandr Bogdanov and Andrej Platonov, and on the other hand, after the advent of the scientific-technical revolution of cybernetics in Eastern Europe (Petzer 2018) using the example of Nikolaj Amosov. This exploration will demonstrate the juxtaposition of different models and major shifts from the biological and individual to the environmental and collective, the Bolshevik turn to science (see Krementsov 2014) as well as their (sometimes subversive) continuation of participation in the global scientific discussion.

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL INTERVENTION Mečnikov’s idea was not immortality, but vital longevity, i.e., the prevention of a premature death by antitoxin (serum therapy) and lactic acid-producing bacteria for the protection of the nerve and intestinal cells. According to his scientis-

3

Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the author’s [T.P.].

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tic-optimistic world view, the long-lived human being would overcome their fear of death by saturation with life and take leave of their life without any problems at the age of 120 to 150 years. Thus, Mečnikov’s theory pointed to the improvement of the medical as well as psychological state: an enormous extension of life (in view of the life expectancy of his time) and overcoming the fear of dying. Two far more radical gerontological visions were represented by the physician, writer and politician Aleksandr Malinovskij alias Bogdanov (1873-1928). The first of these aimed, through reciprocal blood transfusions, at increasing vitality, not only of the individual but of the collective society. Bogdanov explained this practice in his 1908 utopian novel The Red Star (Krasnaja zvezda), which deals with a future Martian society.4 The physiological condition of the Martians is of particular importance. The health system is designed to counteract weaknesses caused by self-inflicted work overload, experiences of pain or old age. A special form of life-prolonging therapies on Mars is the mutual transfusion of blood. The exchange of blood is intended to stabilize and harmonize the vitality of the society as a whole. Through the divided blood circulation, society becomes one happy and satisfied organism. The second vision was given in Bogdanov’s short story Immortality day (Prazdnik bessmertija) published in 1914.5 There, the general immortality of the world’s population owes itself to a serum – a brilliant chemist “had invented a remedy for physiological immunity, the injection of which renewed the tissues of the organism and maintained an eternally blooming youth in the people” (“изобрел физиологический иммунитет, впрыскивание которого обновляло ткани организма и поддерживало в людях вечную цветущую молодость”) (Bogdanov 1914: 53). Only some years before, the historian and politician Nikolaj Rožkov (1868-1927) expressed his confidence in chemistry, that it can find and manipulate a structural formula of life which exactly represents all electrical connections of the human organism or could even raise the dead in the chemical laboratory (see Rožkov 1911: 132). Furthermore, Bogdanov’s story follows not only Mečnikov’s postulate that death should be treated immunologically. In addition to the social implications of the immortality achieved (in particular, the regulation of planetary life, the prevention of overpopulation through birth con-

4

While the model of a physiological rejuvenation of the collective outlined in this novel has been widely received in connection with the concept of a proletarian science and culture (see Vöhringer 2007: 173-229; Krementsov 2011), the second model of monistic immortality from 1912/1914 (see below) remains largely unnoticed.

5

A first version of this short story was published a couple of years before under the title The Immortal Fride (Bessmertnyj Fride; Bogdanov 1912).

Ageless, Vital, Immortal | 257

trol and the resettlement of the 500-year-olds to neighboring solar systems), one thing in particular is examined here: the saturation with life in the quasipathological state of agelessness. For the discoverer of the immortality serum himself, his thousand years of life prove to be a repetitive lifetime, an eternal return of the same, which – especially for geniuses like him – results in apathy and weariness towards the widely ramified family community and leads to conscious self-extinction. The last thoughts of the protagonist are of Prometheus, who brought fire to mankind, and of the wisdom of nature, which through death guarantees a continuous renewal in the cycle of eternal matter. Suicide is carried out through self-burning in the cosmos in order to enter eternity. In literature, figures circulate who perceive their earthly immortality as condemnation and want to overcome it, because it separates them from the mortal world. The fact that in Bogdanov’s superorganism of immortals the will to die manifests itself is now in keeping with the ethical conviction of monistic natural philosophy, according to which, from a scientific point of view, immortality exists solely in the sense of the preservation of substances in the eternal cosmos (see Haeckel 1908: 24-25). In his theoretical writings of that time, Bogdanov returned to the physiological collectivism which he considered an integral part of his universal theory of organization, putting it under the heading “Tektology of the Struggle against Old Age” (Bogdanov 1922: 306-316).6 The Institute for Blood Transfusion, founded by Bogdanov in Moscow in 1926, then turned his vision of a tektological overcoming of aging into reality. As with the cultural technique of the plug, the blood injected between young and old, sick and healthy, was used for rejuvenation in one case and for refinement in the other (see Vöhringer 2007: 173-229). This practice, however, ended abruptly with Bogdanov’s early death in self-

6

Bogdanov adopted the term “tektology” from Ernst Haeckel, who understood it as a “structural theory of the organisms” (Haeckel 1901: 101) pointing to the biogenetic constitution, which he derived from connections between embryonic or germ development (ontogenesis) and tribal history (phylogenesis). Bogdanov, however, used it more comprehensively and synonymously with the modern understanding of “organization.” Since Setrov (1967), Bogdanov’s “organization theory” has been appraised as a forerunner to general systems theory and to cybernetics, and his tektological device of human rejuvenation and refinement could, as a mechanism of regulation and controlling, be vaguely linked to the later biological cybernetics.

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experimentation – his method had proved to be an incalculable elixir of life and society’s happiness.7

THE ELECTROIMMUNOLOGICAL VISION In his early writings of the 1920s, Andrej Klimentov alias Platonov (1899-1951), who at that time dealt intensively with this idea of immortality (see Ljubuškina 1988), linked Mečnikov’s pioneering research in immunology with Russian salvation myths (Masing-Delic 1992), especially with the philosophy of physical resurrection drawn by the Orthodox Christian thinker Nikolaj Fedorov (18291903),8 further with Christian ideas of chastity and asceticism as well as ideas of vitalism, monism and marxism (see Tolstaja-Segal 1981: 241-242). Furthermore, Platonov, himself an engineer, represented electricity in accordance with Lenin’s 1920 electrification dictum, making it the main key to the transformation program. When he wrote his first stories, Platonov was still working on the construction of irrigation and electrification systems in rural areas. He writes from a “noospheric” consciousness of mankind which – as Vladimir Vernadskij would call it in 1942 – is a “geological force” (Vernadskij 1988: 44); accordingly, science creates a new earthly, yet transcendental sphere that completely transforms the biosphere. One particular invention is the “photoelectromagnetic resonance transformer” which can alter cosmic light or light waves into ordinary electric current and thus solve the energy question in a visionary way; the dawn of the golden age is imminent. According to Platonov’s essay on the “Proletarian Culture,” scientific thought and systematic work will “destroy” death and lead to immortality (Platonov 1920: 27). Two years later, Platonov’s essay on “Proletar-

7

Bogdanov’s successor as director of the Institute of Blood Transfusion, the Ukrainian physiologist Aleksandr Bogomolec (1881-1946), a follower of Mečnikov’s theory of aging, developed an anti-reticular cytotoxic serum derived from spinal cord and spleen before World War II. He held the cells of connective tissue responsible for aging and developed an anti-reticular vaccination based on the model of serum therapy, which was supposed to extend the individual life span by 50-60 percent (Bogomolec 1938; Fridland 1948: 27).

8

Platonov’s estate contains a copy of Fedorov’s Philosophy of the Common Work (Filosofija obščego dela, 1906/1913) with handwritten notes (see Semenova 1979). On the influence of Fedorov’s philosophy on the writings of Platonov see also Teskey 1982 and Petzer 2016.

Ageless, Vital, Immortal | 259

ian Poetry” still reads full of optimism: “And we are moving towards the immortality of mankind, towards its redemption from the casemates of physical laws […]” (“И мы идем к бессмертию человечества и спасению его от казематов физических законов […]”) (Platonov 1922b: 30). The threshold spaces for overcoming death designed in Platonov’s literary texts are closely tied to the question of the conditions of a possible deathless existence. However, they are increasingly critical reflections on Soviet visions proclaiming man’s transformation and contemporary anthropotechnics. In his early narratives, Platonov designed figures who invented means for human transformation towards immortality, such as the somehow naïve inventor-transformer Elpidifor (Epiška) from the short story Baklazhanov’s Adventure (Priključenie Baklažanova; Platonov 1922a), while Vogulov from The Satan of Thought (Satana mysli; Platonov 1921) is betting on new creation and wants to liberate the universe radically from the old world and mortal mankind.9 In his Story of Many Interesting Things (Rasskaz o mnogich interesnych veščach),10 the main character Ivan, a half-wild boy who remains unbaptized but grows up like a hero and is thirsty for knowledge, goes on wandering with a female companion, and both encounter an “Experimental Science Institute for Individual Anthropotechnics” where they will be subjected to an experimental project. The founder of this kind of anthropotechnics is also the author of the treatise “About the Building of the New Man” (“О постройке нового человека”) (Platonov 1923: 376-377). Without having deciphered the secret of electricity, he has developed a technique which does not, as expected, change the human body from within, e.g., eugenically or psychologically; rather, in a first step, it consolidates the carnal body (“плоть”) through chastity, whereby the sexual energy is transformed into inventiveness, and in the second step it produces immortality through electrical disinfection: “And the immortal body already emerges from the enduring chaste body by means of electricity” (“А бессмертная плоть уже делается из прочной11 целомудренной плоти посредством электричества”) (ibid.: 379). The recipe to produce the New Man seems simple: the combination of bacterial immunology with electricity as a new miracle cure and asceticism in

9

Like “Platonov,” these names also served the writer as pseudonyms in the 1920s.

10 Some parts of this story, printed 1923 as a serial in a Voronež newspaper, were coauthored with the writer and journalist Michail Bachmet’ev. Rediscovered in 1977, researchers recognized in it Platonov’s typical handwriting (see Malygina 1977). 11 The adjective прочный ‘durable, enduring, robust’ seemingly plays with порочный ‘vicious’, i.e., that characteristic of man which must be extinguished by the new technology in order to create the chaste body and thus pave the way to immortality.

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order to – in accordance with Fedorov’s philosophy – make the sexual energy usable for the work of a fraternal working community.12 In this way, a sterile electrosphere is created which not only conquers death but produces needless and tirelessly active machinists: The immortals rushed to work like animals on their food. The machine tools began to howl and rave, drive pulleys and flywheels were about to take off because of the speed […]. All parts of the mechanism were adapted and chained together by the immortal strapping men for all eternity, firm and tight. They set the pace themselves. (Бессмертные принялись за работу, как звери за жратву. Станки загудели, освирепели, шкивы и маховики готовы были подлететь от скорости […]. Прочно, навечно, втугачку пригоняли и заковывали части механизма одна к другой бессмертные дюжие люди. Сами по себе судили. [ibid.: 380])

According to Platonov’s prose, the practical anthropotechnical solution of creating immortals in the 1920s has thus been transmitted from the biology and physiology of the individual to an electrosphere, which is a new collective environment. Due to their scientific inexplicability, the transformation technologies run into emptiness, bear witness to the uncertainty regarding the Christian model of salvation and lead to ambivalent images of the animal and the automaton. Platonov’s immortals thus move into the vicinity of the “robots,” those androids or artificial people from the 1920 science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek, R.U.R., which stands for “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (“Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti”), who are used as cheap and lawless workers and in the end revolt against their creators. This is not the case with Platonov’s New Men, who stand rather prototypically for the new communist worker in the machine age, which was to be psycho-physically formed in the Central Institute for Labor (CIT) founded by Aleksej Gastev (1882-1939) in Moscow in 1920. This picture can be read not only as a critique of Gastev’s scientific organization of work, the promises of social change and the cultural-revolutionary movement of proletarian culture (Proletkul’t), but also as a self-ironic dissociation from Platonov’s own fantastic scientific studies. Above all, however, it implies the instrumentalization of man in an atmosphere electrified by revolutionary upheaval, whose creators shifted the key to immortality from physiology to the influence of the environment.

12 On the reception to Fedorov’s concept of “positive chastity” (“положительное целомудрие”) see Hagemeister (1989: 122, 352 and passim).

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The topos of physical immortality and electricity as the motor of a comprehensive transformation are also central to the novella The Ethereal Tract (Ėfirnyj trakt), written in 1926-1927 but not published until Platonov’s death. The plot begins with the discovery of the “electron microbe,” i.e., the fact that the electron is a biological phenomenon. The scientist Popov draws two conclusions from this discovery: firstly, that the ether is an electron cemetery and that the living electrons feed on electron corpses; secondly, that an intensive ether current can be generated by accelerated nutrient influx and conducted via an electromagnetic path. After the early death of the scientist, his assistant Kirpičnikov administers the estate, conducting his own research in the field of “electron biology.” But only Kirpičnikov’s later work in the permafrost area, where cryopreserved corpses and artefacts are discovered, brings to light the nature and use of the ether stream. These frozen corpses, descending from an ancient and lost culture, had been in the possession of old knowledge which was stored with their bodies – a treatise on the “principles of individual immortality from the point of view of the exact sciences” (“изложение принципов личного бессмертия в свете точных наук”) (Platonov 1927: 28), which bears witness to successfully carried out life-prolonging experiments based on electromagnetic sterilization. Neither Kirpičnikov nor his son, who follows him in the field of electrobiology, succeeds in realizing the idea of ether technology, which should serve to regulate life pace and growth in nature. He dies before another discovery from the permafrost, a treatise entitled “General Work” (“Генеральное сочинение”) – in fact another translation of Fedorov’s concept of the “Common Work” (“общее дело”; Fedorov 1906/1913) – can reveal the secrets of cosmic electrons and ether. Physical immortality is not decoded in The Ethereal Tract, rather the scientific engagement of the protagonists accelerates their death. Platonov intertwined cryobiology with progress in the field of electromagnetism and let it become the key not only to new technologies that man instrumentalized to conquer and transform nature, but also to the belief in material monism. In the end, it is not the anabiosis of cryopreserved corpses, but the anabiosis of the spiritual legacy about electro-immortality that is central, and the hope that the blossoming science will succeed in bringing the dead back to life remains symbolic. In exemplary fashion, Platonov’s early prose shows not only Soviet thought experiments and theories in overcoming death, but above all depicts the process of negotiating the relationship between life, death and immortality. In the literary discourse, and this is the strength of Platonov’s narration strategy, it is not only that diverse positions of different provenances overlap. They are broken by the mirror of the omnipresent ideological rhetoric as well as Platonov’s own visions

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and scientific findings, which now had to conform with the interest of communist construction. All positions and perspectives appear hybridized in the figures’ speech. This process of hybridization feeds Platonov’s peculiar language,13 a manifestation of both the hope and the absurdity of the Soviet transformation claim. At that time, it was not aging processes that were on the agenda of the new system, but rather the tabooing of death. This discussion has, as evident in Platonov’s electroimmunological vision, shifted from the biological to the psychological and ideological.14 Platonov’s following works, written in the later 1920s and early 1930s, explore, in different settings, the antagonism between the revolutionary society, that is the will to live, and the death instinct which the revolution was not able to neutralize. Exemplary for this stand the people of Dzhan (Džan) from the eponymous novella (published in 1936), who were undead rather than alive, because they faced the world with indifference and blindness and, in the end, recognize: “We lived as if dead” (“Мы по-мёртвому жили”) (Platonov 1936: 230). Analogous to the program of cell death of complex organisms, there was some inner force which extinguished their interest in life. As the plot goes on, the survival of this people on the country’s edge could only be guaranteed by a literally biblical miracle; namely, when the sight is restored to a blind person, which makes the people of Dzhan believe in life again, to overcome their fear not of death but of life – in a life under the care of the state. With its promise to increase life expectancy to “about one hundred and fifty” (ibid.: 220) years, this state turns back to the physical and thus, at least in Platonov’s scenario, to the agenda of human wellbeing and longevity in contrast to the actual deification of the collective and social immortality.

THE BIOCYBERNETIC EXPERIMENT The keyword “anthropotechnics” has been deleted from the second edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia which appeared after World War II. Optimization

13 Platonov’s linguistic device has been characterized as “Uglossie” (Hodel 2001) and “Ėlektroskaz” (Kaminskij 2016: 28). 14 The Soviet ideology also intensified pre-revolutionary ideas of social immortality, such as those presented by the Russian neuropsychologist Vladimir Bechterev (18571927) in a speech to the Russian Physical Society in February 1916 (reprinted 1918; Bechterev 1999), which he based on the monistic concept of the eternal cycle mentioned above.

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programs based on breeding-genetic methods which were in opposition to Lysenkoism and the belief in evolution through control of the environment were banned from the mid-1930s until the early 1960s. In the Soviet Union the same fate almost befell a new chapter of the scientific approach to human transformation – cybernetics. In the Soviet press, cybernetics was condemned in the early 1950s as a reactionary pseudoscience of the West (Jaroševskij 1952). As early as the mid-1950s, a general rethink was evident in official publications (see Kol’man 1955). When Norbert Wiener, since 1919 professor at MIT and founder of cybernetics – the son of Leo Wiener, a Polish-Russian Jew who emigrated to the USA, a polyglot and the first professor of Slavic Literatures at Harvard University, who also translated Lev Tolstoj – came to Moscow in 1960 for the 1st Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), founded in 1957, cybernetics, previously suppressed and condemned as bourgeois, had already been rehabilitated (see Gerovitch 2002: 103-151). The program adopted at the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1961 included cybernetics among the fundamental sciences of communism. In this sense, the application of cybernetics referred to the ideologically determined human sciences (psychology, sociology, economics, technology, culture, etc.). In his programmatic book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948), Wiener had expressed the conviction that organic systems could be translated into cybernetic-technical principles.15 Biology is code and information, man is an information system. Against this basic assumption of cybernetics, the theory and modeling of regulation and control processes of complex systems, the overcoming of illness, old age and death and various paths to immortality have been explored since the end of the 1950s (see Gullichsen 1994). The cybernetic analogy between man and machine suggests that a cybernetic organism would not only counteract the entropic loss of information (i.e., death), but could also be copied or restored on the basis of the stored information. Moreover, the question is about abandoning individual physical existence in favor of perpetuating cognition in a cybernetic machine. This path requires the decoupling of cognitive content from the body, the creation of a hybrid that transplants the brain onto a prosthesis or uploads abstract cognitive information into a data network and thus integrates brain waves into an immortal meta-being. Here, too, there is an analogy to biology: for biologists, the infor-

15 This book was preceded by the essay “Behavior, Purpose and Teleology” (1943) on technical and – in functional analogy – organic feedback systems, known as the “cybernetic manifesto,” which Wiener published together with the computer pioneer Julian Bigelow and the psychologist Arturo Rosenblueth.

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mation stored in DNA, which was deciphered in 1953, is the key to immortality due to its continuous copyability and reproducibility. However, biocybernetic medicine also represented physiological approaches. Wiener was convinced that this would establish an unlimited extension of life and that the only moral dilemma for medicine after its successful fight against (old age) death would remain the moral dilemma of induced death (see Wiener 1964: 67-68). Observing this new horizon of views, the engineer and physician – expert in heart and lung surgery – Nikolaj Amosov (1913-2002), who from 1960 also headed the Department of Bioenergetics at the Institute of Cybernetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, published the first part of his science fiction novel Notes from the Future (Zapiski iz buduščego) as a serial in a popular journal (Amosov 1965a-d). This publication linked the medical application of cybernetics to cryopreservation.16 The first part of Amosov’s novel includes the scientific treatise “Note on Anabiosis” (“Записка об анабиозе”; Amosov 1965a: 107-110). Its author, a fatally ill professor of physiology, has developed a cryopreservation method for humans and secretly led the construction of a cybernetic apparatus for monitoring and regulating bodily functions in the state of hypothermia (see Figure 1). With the term “anabiosis,” Amosov draws on the Russian and Soviet experimental research on the cold and cryobiology, respectively. The founder of this area of research, the physicist and experimental biologist Porfirij Bachmet’ev (1860-1913), had already suggested making use of the technique of anabiosis (from ἀναβίωσις ‘revival’) – e.g., an innate ability of organisms to reduce their vital functions to a minimum over long periods of time in extreme cold by the state of cryostasis and to reactivate them when the temperature normalizes – for the prolongation of human life as well as for journeys into the future (Bachmet’ev 1901). Succeeding in completing the anabiotic machine, the professor in Amosov’s novel underwent a self-experiment in 1969 at the age of 42 – in full consciousness of the still unexplored revival of cryonically “suspended” bodies,

16 Amosov was on a business trip to the USA in 1962, where he visited cardiosurgical clinics. Whether he came into contact with the idea of cryonics on this occasion, inspired by the groundbreaking book The Prospect of Immortality of that year, published by Robert Ettinger, son of Russian Jewish immigrants, is not known. Literary drafts that were critical for the application of cryobiology to human beings had already been developed in reaction to early Soviet publications (see, in the succession of Bachmet’ev, Metal’nikov 1924 and Šmal’gauzen 1926) with Nor Life, Nor Death (Ni žizn’, ni smert’), written by Aleksandr Beljaev (1926a-b), and A Matter of Death (Delo smerti) by Boris Pil’njak (1928).

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but with an optimistic view of future cybernetics. 22 years later, as the second part of the novel reads, he is resurrected and healed. Figure 1: Cybernetic Anabiosis: Control Loop for the Regulation of Body Functions in the State of Hypothermia from N. Amosov’s Notes from the Future (1965)

From top to bottom: Управляющее устройство – Control device; питательн[ые] вещества – nutrients; Камера – Chamber; Компрессор и кондиционер – Compressed air and air conditioning; Лаборатория // Периодические биохимич[еские] анализы – Laboratory // Regular biochemical analyses; Забор крови – Blood collection; Искусств[енная] почка – Artificial kidney; АИК [Автоматизированный измерительный комплекс] – AMS [Automatic Measuring System]. Source: Amosov (1965a: 109).

During Amosov’s lifetime, only fragments from the second part were published in the Soviet Union, diary notes from the future starting with 1991,17 when the cybernetic anabiosis research would have already been established and focused on practical applications in space travel, surgery and genetics. With his efforts,

17 The complete novel was first published in English only (Amosov 1970). In the first Russian edition with both parts, which appeared in 2003, the diary entries of the second part begin in 2021; the text is slightly modified.

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the inventor of anabiotic cybernetics helped a science to a breakthrough, which – in the novel – was first ascribed the discovery of immortality. However, in the hypermodern and fully automated world of the future, immortology is accompanied by new biosynthesis and biocybernetics processes as well as AI research. The scientist finds it difficult to re-join contemporary research and integrate his gerontological concept of immortality into the new research landscape. Neurocybernetics is increasingly dominating over the physiological-medical search for life elixirs; in the former, the overcoming of death is hardly thought of as a physical continuance as in the cryobiological-cybernetic approach. At the end of the novel, the protagonist is left with nothing but his genealogical, personal immortality, embodied by his daughter, who was born during his post-anabiotic “second life.” As with Bogdanov und Platonov before him, Amosov’s scenario shows a certain detachment from scientific-technical immortology and the corresponding environmental spheres. At the very least, they articulate more or less ambivalent feelings about artificially prolonged life. The self-experimentation of Amosov’s alter ego remained within the framework of the novel. Beyond his visions of the future, the physician has conducted experiments to rejuvenate his body with physical training and developed an exercise program. His late work includes the popular book publications An Experiment: Rejuvenation Through High Physical Activity (Ėksperiment: omoloženie čerez bol’šie fizičeskie nagruzki, 1995) and Overcoming Old Age (Preodolenie starosti, 1996) which do not reach for the transformative potentiality of man, but rather for a careful gerontological monitoring of the body’s vitality, i.e., for a healthy aging.

REFERENCES Amosov, Nikolaj (1965a): “Zapiski iz buduščego. Kniga pervaja: Start”, in: Nauka i žizn’ 27/9, 97-120. Amosov, Nikolaj (1965b): “Zapiski iz buduščego”, in: Nauka i žizn’ 27/10, 97121. Amosov, Nikolaj (1965c): “Zapiski iz buduščego”, in: Nauka i žizn’ 27/11, 97116. Amosov, Nikolaj (1965d): “Zapiski iz buduščego”, in: Nauka i žizn’ 27/12, 97110. Amosov, Nikolaj (1970): Notes from the Future. Translated by G. St. George. New York. Amosov, Nikolaj (2003): Zapiski iz buduščego. Petropavlovsk.

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Bachmet’ev, Porfirij (1901): “Recept dožit’ do XXI veka (Biologičeskij očerk)”, in: Estestvoznanie i geografija 8, 1-13. Bechterev, Vladimir (1999): “Bessmertie čelovečeskoj ličnosti kak naučnaja problema”, in: Bechterev, Vladimir: Psichika i žizn’. Izbrannye trudy po psichologii ličnosti. Sankt-Peterburg, 225-252. Beljaev, Aleksandr (1926a): “Ni žizn’, ni smert’”, in: Vsemirnyj sledopyt 5, 315. Beljaev, Aleksandr (1926b): “Ni žizn’, ni smert’”, in: Vsemirnyj sledopyt 6, 314. Bogdanov, Aleksandr (1908): Krasnaja zvezda. Sankt-Peterburg. Bogdanov, Aleksandr (1912): “Bessmertnyj Fride: Fantastičeskij rasskaz Al. Bogdanova”, in: Probuždenie 16, 497-505. Bogdanov, Aleksandr (1914): “Prazdnik bessmertija”, in: Letučie al’manachi 14, 53-70. Bogdanov, Aleksandr (1922): Tektologija. Vseobščaja organizacionnaja nauka: časti I i II zanovo pererabotannye i dopolnennye i čast’ III. Berlin/SanktPeterburg/Moskva. Bogomolec, Aleksandr (1938): Prodlenie žizni. Kiev. [BSĖ] (1926): “Antropotechnika”, in: Bol’šaja sovetskaja ėnciklopedija. Vol. 3: Anrio-Atoksil. Moskva, 130-131. Fedorov, Nikolaj (1906/1913): Filosofija obščago děla: stat’i, mysli i pis’ma. Eds. Vladimir Koževnikov, Nikolaj Peterson. Vernyj/Moskva. Fridland, Lev (1948): Verlängerung des Lebens. Berlin. Gerovitch, Slava (2002): From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics. Cambridge, MA. Gullichsen, Eric (1994): “Cybernetic Methods for Attaining Immortality”, in: Leary, Timothy (ed.): Chaos and Cyber Culture. Berkeley, 199-202. Haeckel, Ernst (1901): Prinzipien der generellen Morphologie der Organismen. Berlin. Haeckel, Ernst (1908): Der Monismus als Bund zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft. Leipzig. Hagemeister, Michael (1989): Nikolaj Fedorov: Studien zu Leben, Werk und Wirkung. München. Hodel, Robert (2001): Erlebte Rede bei Andrej Platonov: Von “V zvezdnoj pustyne” bis “Čevengur”. Frankfurt am Main. Jaroševskij, Michail (1952): “Kibernetika – ‘nauka mrakobesov’”, in: Literaturnaja gazeta 42, 05.04., 4. Kaminskij, Konstantin (2016): Der Elektrifizierungsroman Andrej Platonovs: Versuch einer Rekonstruktion. Köln/Weimar/Wien.

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Kol’man, Arnošt (1955): “Čto takoe kibernetika?”, in: Voprosy filosofii 9/4, 148159. Krementsov, Nikolai (2011): A Martian Stranded on Earth: Alexander Bogdanov, Blood Transfusions, and Proletarian Science. Chicago, IL. Krementsov, Nikolai (2014): Revolutionary Experiments: The Quest for Immortality in Bolshevik Science and Fiction. New York, NY. Kuprevič, Vasilij (1966): “Priglašenie k bessmertiju”, in: Technika molodeži 34/1, 31-32. Ljubuškina, Marina (1988): “Ideja bessmertija u rannego Platonova”, in: Russian Literature 23/4, 397-424. Malygina, Nina (1977): “Idejno-ėstetičeskie iskanija A. Platonova v načale 20ch godov (‘Rasskaz o mnogich interesnych veščach’)”, in: Russkaja Literatura 20, 158-167. Masing-Delic, Irene (1992): Abolishing Death: A Salvation Myth of Russian Twentieth-Century Literature. Stanford, CA. Metal’nikov, Sergej (1924): Problema Bezsmertija i omoloženija v sovremennoj biologii. Berlin. Metschnikoff, Elias (1904): Studien über die Natur des Menschen. Eine optimistische Philosophie. Leipzig. Metschnikoff, Elias (1908): Beiträge zu einer optimistischen Weltauffassung. Transl. Heinrich Michalski. München. Nemesios von Emesa (1925): Anthropologie. Ed. Emil Orth. Saarbrücken. Petzer, Tatjana (2016): “Utopie und Unsterblichkeit: Tod und Erlösung bei N. Fedorov und A. Platonov”, in: Osteuropa 66/8-10, 267-282. Petzer, Tatjana (2018): “Kybernetische Unsterblichkeit in Osteuropa”, in: Petzer, Tatjana (ed.): Interjekte 12: Unsterblichkeit. Geschichte und Zukunft des Homo immortalis. Berlin, 48-56. Pil’njak, Boris (1928): “Delo smerti”, in: Novyj mir 2, 133-140. Platonov, Andrej (1920): “Kul’tura proletariata” in: Platonov 2011, vol. 8, 1730. Platonov, Andrej (1921): “Satana mysli”, in: Platonov 2011, vol. 1, 302-311. Platonov, Andrej (1922a): “Priključenie Baklažanova”, in: Platonov 2011, vol. 1, 311-313. Platonov, Andrej (1922b): “Proletarskaja Poėzija”, in: Platonov 2011, vol. 8, 3035. Platonov, Andrej (1923): “Rasskaz o mnogich interesnych veščach”, in: Platonov 2011, vol. 1, 347-398. Platonov, Andrej (c. 1927): “Ėfirnyj trakt”, in: Platonov 2011, vol. 3, 8-94. Platonov, Andrej (1936): “Džan”, in: Platonov 2011, vol. 4, 111-234.

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Platonov, Andrej (2011): Sobranie sočinenij v 8 tomach. Moskva. Polianski, Igor (2018): “Langlebigkeit und physische Unsterblichkeit im Fokus der russisch-sowjetischen Medizin zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts”, in: Petzer, Tatjana (ed.): Interjekte 12: Unsterblichkeit. Geschichte und Zukunft des Homo immortalis. Berlin, 8-16. Rožkov, Nikolaj (1911): Osnovy naučnoj filosofii. Sankt-Peterburg. Schmuck, Thomas (2008): „Il’ja Il’ič Mečnikov – Denkwege zwischen Philosophie und Medizin”, in: Kaden, Heiner/Riha, Ortrun (eds.): Studien zu Carl Julius Fritzsche (1808-1871) und Il’ja Il’ič Mečnikov (1845-1916). Aachen, 91-170. Semenova, Svetlana (1979): “V usilii k buduščemu vremeni… (Filosofija Andreja Platonova)”, in: Literaturnaja Gruzija 11, 107. Setrov, Michail (1967): “Ob obščich ėlementach tektologii A. Bogdanova, kibernetiki i teorii sistem”, in: Učenye zapiski kafedr obščestvennych nauk vuzov goroda Leningrada 8, 49-60. Šmal’gauzen, Ivan (1926): Problema smerti i bessmertija. Moskva/Leningrad. Teskey, Ayleen (1982): Platonov and Fyodorov: Influence of Religious Philosophy upon a Soviet Writer. Atlantic Highlands, NJ. Tolstaja-Segal, Elena (1981): “Ideologičeskie konteksty Platonova”, in: Russian Literature 9, 231-280. Vernadskij, Vladimir (1988): “Naučnaja mysl’ kak planetarnoe javlenie”, in: Vernadskij, Vladimir: Filosofskie mysli naturalista. Moskva, 20-208. Vöhringer, Margarete (2007): Avantgarde und Psychotechnik. Göttingen. Weismann, August (1882): “Über die Dauer des Lebens”, in: Weismann 1892, 1-72. Weismann, August (1883): “Über die Vererbung”, in: Weismann 1892, 73-121. Weismann, August (1892): Aufsätze über Vererbung und verwandte biologische Fragen. Jena. Wiener, Norbert (1948): Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. New York. Wiener, Norbert (1964): God and Golem: A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion. Cambridge, MA.

Noticing Signs and Stereotypes of Aging Representations and Performance of Mind and Body in Tolstoj’s War and Peace Jane Gary Harris

INTRODUCTION Russian prose fiction has long offered a window into Russian attitudes towards aging, providing images of the performance of the aging mind and body. This essay begins with the premise that age as a category of analysis, as an endeavor to examine representations and misrepresentations of the aging process, deserves more attention. Literary gerontology, a relatively new field of scholarship (see Oró-Piqueras/Falcus 2018; Zeilig 2011; in Slavistics, see Gramshammer-Hohl 2017; Savkina 2011), is applied here to constructs and markers of aging in Russian culture and society first observed, contemplated and detailed in Lev Tolstoj’s [Leo Tolstoy’s] War and Peace (Vojna i mir, 1865-1869). Because change and contingency emerge as dominant themes over the novel’s 15-year timeframe (1805-1820), it may not be surprising that Tolstoj gives significant voice to issues of aging, providing commentary on alternative possibilities of aging through a diverse fictional portrait gallery. Queries are raised, directly and indirectly: what is old, what is aging; how does one know, recognize, understand and respond to such categories, and what agency is available, appropriate or permitted. Epistemological, existential and esthetic analyses of the constructs of aging and the conceptualization of Russian cultural norms or pre-Eriksonian developmental stages associated with the life course and aging process emerge through Tolstoj’s close examination of how older male and female characters are “noticed” by an astute 19th-century observer of human development. Tolstoj’s narrator is keenly aware that contingency may trigger both mental and physical

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change over time and that gender differences may engender attitudinal variants, acquiring different forms of agency (see Field 2001: 128-129). Initiated in the salon conversations of the novel’s opening pages, the narrator encounters particular signs, imminent and gradual changes, and indeed, perceives how the extraordinary is admired as “ordinary.” His numerous older figures not only complement their youthful counterparts during their lifetimes, but die with dignity, respect, authorial admiration and compassion. Perceptions and constructs of aging are established through signs of physical description (i.e., wrinkles, gray hair), topics of conversation, references to mood, gestures (i.e., “glances”), tradition and behavior (expected and unexpected). Language plays a key role in defining “age,” while age consciousness matters not only in the seemingly stable worlds of salon society and family gatherings, but also on the battlefield. Character introductions in War and Peace are immediately associated with age consciousness and age-appropriate conventional behavior established in the opening pages, in keeping with Tolstoj’s fascination with the phenomenon of change, and what I designate here as the literary process of “noticing” – direct, detailed empirical observation of old age and aging – showing how such concepts can be represented esthetically, psychologically and sociologically. Applying Gary Saul Morson’s insight that Tolstoj distinguished between “the noticed and the unnoticed” is particularly apt here: “What is unnoticed now may come to light at any moment through a refocusing of attention.” And “[i]n Tolstoy, accidents can change the self, whose very essence is composed at all times of accidental as well as ordered elements” (Morson 1987: 201-205). Hence, it appears that aging – change associated with the developmental processes of growing old – is not only determined by biological order (the anticipated Eriksonian trajectory of life cycle stages; see Erikson 1997), but is affected by unexpected contingencies and/or perceptions of them. Tolstoj actively represents how both types of change are, and become, noticed.

ALTERNATIVE POSSIBILITIES OF AGING Changes associated with the life course are observed in detail among the male and female heads of major families as well as in depictions of friends, relatives, acquaintances and servants, confronting life expectations and shocks to their psyches due to chance personal experience and accidents of history. Though aging may appear in incremental, predictable stages, overall the processes of aging

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are uniquely expressed through each individual character, thus representing alternative possibilities of aging. Age is established as a significant element in physical description early on, in aging signs, in notably recurrent epithets – “old,” “gray,” “withered,” “wrinkled,” “drowsy.” “Wrinkles,” for example, serve to identify and differentiate four distinct male psychological personality types1 through their physiognomy. Age defines key traits in comparative authorial character analysis. A prime example is the mother figure. Introduced as “50-ish,” comparisons are based on maternal behavior: Countess Rostova’s bedtime conversations with Nataša and anxiety over her sons; Anna Michajlovna Drubeckaja’s maneuvers to promote her son’s career; Mar’ja Dmitrievna Achrosimova’s stalwart refusal to worry about her sons; Alina Kuragina’s jealousy of her daughter, Hélène; and Mar’ja Ivanovna Dolochova’s bragging about her son. Male heads of families are similarly juxtaposed to each other as well as to the historical figure, Kutuzov, all identified as “near 60” or “over 60.” Parental roles are also associated with the aging process through parental challenges as well as external events. In addition to the prominent male heads of family, Prince Vasilij Kuragin, Count Il’ja Rostov, Prince Nikolaj Bolkonskij and Count Kirill Bezuchov, other elderly male figures include the Mason Iosif Bazdeev, the Bolkonskijs’ trusted servant Jakov Alpatyč and, most significant, Tolstoj’s historical hero Commander-inChief Michail Kutuzov. Other female characters whose age is referenced, but whose marital status is unmentioned, include Anna Pavlovna Šerer, “ma tante” and Mar’ja Ignat’evna Peronskaja. Age-appropriate behavior is also linked to traditional social gestures and situations, and thus considered “ordinary” – expected from one’s designated place, function or role in the life cycle or given social environment. The topic of age or aging emerges frequently in conversation, with reference to mood, gestures and both expected and unexpected behaviors. The narrator’s authoritative descriptions and authorial analyses of aging processes are individualized but also generalized, as might be anticipated in a Tolstoyan novel. As Lidija Ginzburg noted: The Tolstoyan hero exceeds the dimensions of his personality; he functions not merely as a personality but as one in whom the laws and forms of life in general are manifest, and through whom they may be cognized. […] the source of psychological features that transcend the merely personal […]. (Ginzburg 1991: 246-247)

1

See below.

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The technique of “defamiliarization,” essential to Tolstoj’s character analysis, is used primarily to redirect the reader’s attention to unanticipated, exceptional or ironic behavior, to unusual physical traits, or to rivet attention on aspects of character previously ignored or unnoticed, but which focus on facets of behavior Tolstoj deems “ordinary” or “natural.” In Book One, at Anna Pavlovna’s soiree and later at the Rostovs’ name day party, characters are represented as conscious of their “age,” while “age” in the worlds of salon society and family gatherings is a vital topic of conversation: a constant of social gossip, coquettish gestures and nostalgic reminiscences. Besides identifying the first guest at the soiree, Prince Vasilij Kuragin, by his old-fashioned dress and gestures, the narrator defines his speech and intonation as natural to one who has aged in society: He spoke in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. (Tolstoy 1996: 3; emphasis added)2 (Он говорил на том изысканном французском языке, на котором не только говорили, но и думали наши деды, и с теми тихими, покровительственными интонациями, которые свойственны состаревшемуся в свете и при дворе значительному человеку. [Tolstoj 1937/IX: 4]3)

His personality is defined by aging signs: “[…] the wrinkles around his mouth clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant” (1996: 6) (“[…] особенно резко выказывая в сложившихся около его рта морщинах что-то неожиданно-грубое и неприятное” [1937/IX: 8]). Age also helps him selfidentify: “I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for anything” (1996: 63) (“мне шестой десяток, надо быть ко всему готовым” [1937/IX: 88]). In direct contrast, Anna Pavlovna Šerer, “enthusiast despite her 40 years,” (“[…] энтузиасткой […] несмотря на свои сорок лет”) exhibits a “subdued smile which did not suit her faded features […]” (“[с]держанная улыбка […] хотя и не шла к ее отжившим чертам […]”) (1996: 4; 1937/IX: 5). Her salon duties include paying respect to “ma tante” and offering matchmaking services; she ascribes to herself the proverbial role of “old maid,” but coquettishly denies

2

Citations refer to the Maude translation, slightly revised by me [J.G.H.], in Tolstoy 1996.

3

Citations refer to volume and page in the Russian Jubilee edition: Tolstoj 1937, volumes IX-XII.

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it: “They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, though I don’t feel that weakness in myself […]” (1996: 6) (“Говорят, что старые девицы ont la manie des mariages. Я еще не чувствую за собою этой слабости […]” [1937/IX: 8]). The very presence of “ma tante” (recalling Puškin’s “Queen of Spades”) defines conventional age-appropriate behavior: “To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said: ‘You have not yet seen ma tante […]’ and gravely led him or her to a little old lady, wearing large bows in her cap” (1996: 7) (“Вы не видали еще? или – вы не знакомы с ma tante? говорила Анна Павловна приезжавшим гостям и весьма серьезно подводила их к маленькой старушке в высоких бантах” [1937/IX: 10]). With some irony, readers are directed to notice visitor perceptions: Each performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not one of them knew, wanted to know, nor cared about […]. She spoke the same words to each, about their health and her own, and the health of Her Majesty, “who thank God, was better today.” (1996: 7) (Все гости совершали обряд приветствования никому неизвестной, никому неинтересной и ненужной тетушки […]. […] говорила в одних и тех же выражениях о его здоровье, о своем здоровье и о здоровье ее величества, которое нынче было, слава Богу, лучше. [1937/IX: 10])

Anna Michajlovna Drubeckaja, first introduced as an elderly nameless nobody, keeping “ma tante” company, emerges later as Prince Vasilij’s female equivalent, a schemer of equal wiles: “one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face was rather out of place in this brilliant society […]” (1996: 9) (“одна пожилая дама с исплаканным, худым лицом, несколько чужая в этом блестящем обществе […]” [1937/IX: 13]), is soon depicted humiliating herself: The elderly lady, sitting with the old aunt, rose hurriedly and overtook Prince Vasily […]. Affectation of interest left her kindly, tear-worn face, now expressing only anxiety and fear. (1996: 13) (Пожилая дама, сидевшая прежде с ma tante, торопливо встала и догнала князя Василья […]. С лица ее исчезла вся прежняя притворность интереса. […] выражало только беспокойство и страх. [1937/IX: 19])

Only then is she identified as “belonging to one of the best families in Russia […], having come to Petersburg to procure an appointment […] for her only

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son” (1996: 13) (“Пожилая дама носила имя княгини Друбецкой, одной из лучших фамилий России […]. Она приехала теперь, чтобы выхлопотать определение в гвардию своему единственному сыну” [1937/IX: 19]). The narrator judges her age a hindrance to her attempts to beguile Prince Vasilij “with the smile of a coquettish girl […] ill-suited to her careworn face […]. Apparently, she had forgotten her age and by force of habit employed all the old feminine arts” (1996: 15) (“с улыбкой молодой кокетки, которая […] теперь так не шла к ее истощенному лицу. Она, видимо, забыла свои годы и пускала в ход, по привычке, все старинные женские средства” [1937/IX: 21]). The narrator’s incremental use of repetition emphasizes her physical traits – her aging, careworn face – reinforcing psychological desperation and wily persistence attributed to maternal instinct. Subsequently, she plies her skills to take advantage of her friendship with Countess Rostova. Conversations at both Anna Pavlovna’s and the Rostovs’ focus on politics and family gossip and, as Ginzburg points out, reflect each speaker’s personality and interests (Ginzburg 1991: 252). Gossip defines the dying Count Kirill Bezuchov, whose deathbed scenes Tolstoj treats unconventionally, focusing instead on the effect on others of an old man’s passing. The scenes demonstrate and generalize the impact of an old man’s death. A letter in addition to personal reminiscences convey varied responses to the Count’s death: “The chief news of Moscow gossip is the death of old count Bezukhov and his inheritance” (1996: 79) (“Главная новость, занимающая всю Москву, – смерть старого графа Безухого и его наследство” [1937/IX: 112]). Countess Rostova nostalgically recalls his youthful charm: “How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!” (1996: 32) (“Как старик был хорош, – сказала графиня, – еще прошлого года!” [1937/IX: 46]). Pierre provides a respectful, noble image: Pierre saw […] the familiar, majestic figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that gray mane of hair above his broad forehead reminding one of a lion, and the deep characteristically noble wrinkles of his handsome, ruddy face. (1996: 69) ([…] знакомая Пьеру величественная фигура его отца, графа Безухого, с тою же седою гривой волос, напоминавших льва, над широким лбом и с теми же характерноблагородными крупными морщинами на красивом красно-желтом лице. [1937/IX: 96])

His sign – “noble wrinkles” – warrants comparison to Vasilij’s notably “coarse and unpleasant” ones.

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Vivid detail depicts the aging of the most prominent elderly characters, namely, the Rostovs, Prince Bolkonskij and Commander-in-Chief Kutuzov. The Rostovs, a conventional older married couple, represent the ordinary or normal aging process itself – the dynamic inner logic of the life course. Exhibiting capacity for experiencing the full potential of family life, they are ultimately honored in the First Epilogue – Tolstoj’s paean to traditional family life. The aging of the Rostovs also provides an example of gender differences in a married couple’s response to aging, while offering contrasts to other aging parental figures, demonstrating Tolstoj’s unequaled ability to capture a broad range of aging patterns. Their depiction as older characters is expanded in the Epilogue: while the count dies in 1813, the countess, despite profound losses, remains a respected presence in 1820. The older couple’s intimate relationship is evaluated through conversation, but equally via gently ironic signs particularized as attentive “glances.” The countess shows her awareness of signs of aging, noticing her husband’s gray hair as well as spots of sauce on his waistcoat – ordinary, natural and expected facets of his character. They are also shown as unique individuals. Early in the novel, Countess Rostova is presented as a […] woman of about forty-five […] evidently worn out with childbearing – she had had twelve. A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness, gave her a distinguished air which inspired respect. (1996: 30; emphasis added) ([…] женщина лет сорока пяти, видимо изнуренная детьми, которых у ней было двенадцать человек. Медлительность ее движений и говора, происходившая от слабости сил, придавала ей значительный вид, внушавший уважение. [1937/IX: 43])

Her marriage exemplifies a traditional but ordinary Tolstoyan happy family; her role as a loving, kindhearted and dutifully anxious wife, mother and friend is highly valued. First identified in a lengthy conversation with Anna Michajlovna, the narrator contextualizes the complexity of female friendship, ironically framing it in terms of shared nostalgia and aging: They wept because they were friends, and because they were kindhearted, and because they – friends from childhood – had to think about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over […]. But those tears were pleasant to them both. (1996: 49-50; emphasis added)

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(Плакали они о том, что они дружны; и о том, что они добры; и о том, что они, подруги молодости, заняты таким низким предметом – деньгами; и о том, что молодость их прошла… Но слезы обеих были приятны… [1937/IX: 70])

Countess Rostova’s devotion to her husband defines her further. Conversations demonstrate shared affection as well as individual strengths and weaknesses, including mutual ignorance of money matters. Their relationship is also evaluated through gently ironic signs suggesting mutual concerns; for example, their caring “glances” at the evening celebratory meal are significant markers for the Rostov family, reappearing in the Epilogue: From behind the crystal decanters and fruit vases the count kept glancing at his wife […]. The countess in turn […] threw significant glances from behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. (1996: 53) (Граф из-за хрусталя, бутылок и ваз с фруктами поглядывал на жену […]. Графиня так же, из-за ананасов […] кидала значительные взгляды на мужа, которого лысина и лицо, казалось ей, своею краснотой резче отличались от седых волос. [1937/IX: 75])

Count Il’ja Rostov is introduced at the name day party as an affectionate, loving husband, father and host, “with the air of a man who enjoys life and knows how to live,” trusting the principle “everything is possible”; also as a man “weary but unflinching in the fulfillment of duty,” and as “stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald patch” (1996: 30-31; emphasis added) (“с видом человека, любящего и умеющего пожить”; “усталого, но твердого в исполнении обязанности человека”; “оправляя редкие седые волосы на лысине” [1937/IX: 43]). The Rostovs are further defined by friends and acquaintances. Although showing his age in his tendency to doze off at cards, he is roused to perform a favorite dance, “The Daniel Cooper,” with a favorite guest. “Everyone smiled with pleasure at the jovial old gentleman, standing beside his tall and stout partner, Marya Dmitrievna […]” (1996: 59-60; emphasis added) (“Действительно, всё, чтó только было в зале, с улыбкою радости смотрело на веселого старичка, который рядом с своею сановитою дамой, Марьей Дмитриевной […]” [1937/IX: 83-84]). He offers a nostalgic conclusion: “That’s how we used to dance in our time, ma chère” (1996: 59-60; emphasis added) (“Вот как в наше время танцовывали, ma chère […]” [1937/IX: 83-84]).

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The First Epilogue, covering 1813-1820, presents the inevitable conclusion of the aging process within the family context, paralleling the decline of the elder Rostovs. Explanations are sought through generalizations, but observations noticing the details dominate. While the aging process is shown to affect Count Rostov’s personality most profoundly at the novel’s end, reminders of his weaknesses are juxtaposed to his characteristic optimism. He is not shown to be affected by negative aspects of aging until Prince Andrej’s death forces him to contemplate his own: while “the countess and Sonya wept from pity for Natasha and because he was no more, the old count wept because soon he, too, must take the same terrible step” (1996: 872; emphasis added) (“Графиня и Соня плакали от жалости к Наташе и о том, что его нет больше. Старый граф плакал о том, что скоро, он чувствовал, и ему предстояло сделать тот же страшный шаг” [1937/XII: 65]). Petja’s death is depicted in Book XV as a decisive blow, due not only to the terrible loss itself, but because the count senses his inability to share the pain with his wife. By the First Epilogue, Count Rostov is observed gradually losing faith in his life principle that “everything is possible” and sinking into what today might be called “late life depression.” A persistently sad mood, loss of interest in his usual activities and low selfworth are exacerbated by guilt over loss of control of his life and environment. The narrative summarizing his death lacks deep analysis, but empathizes through hesitant repetitions of “it seems” and “as if”: The events of the previous year […] fell blow after blow on the old count’s head. He seemed unable to understand the meaning of all these events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual sense as if expecting and inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed now frightened and distraught, now unnaturally animated and enterprising. (1996: 1006) (События последнего года […] всё это, как удар за ударом, падало на голову старого графа. Он, казалось, не понимал и чувствовал себя не в силах понять значение всех этих событий и, нравственно согнув свою старую голову, как будто ожидал и просил новых ударов, которые бы его покончили. Он казался то испуганным и растерянным, то неестественно оживленным и предприимчивым. [1937/ XII: 247])

After Nataša’s wedding, the narrator briefly details the final stages of his decline:

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[…] he grew very quiet and began to complain of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his bed, realizing he would not get up again, despite the doctor’s encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in an armchair by his pillow without undressing. Each time she gave him his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his last day, sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for having dissipated their property – that being the chief fault he was conscious of. After receiving communion and unction he quietly died. (1996: 1006) ([…] он затих и стал жаловаться на тоску. Через несколько дней он заболел и слег в постель. С первых дней его болезни, несмотря на утешения докторов, он понял, что ему не вставать. Графиня, не раздеваясь, две недели провела в кресле у его изголовья. Всякий раз, как она давала ему лекарство, он всхлипывая, молча целовал ее руку. В последний день он, рыдая, просил прощения у жены и заочно у сына, за разорение именья – главную вину, которую он за собой чувствовал. Причастившись и особоровавшись, он тихо умер. [1937/XII: 247])

In conclusion, readers are told his memory was honored with only kind words: “Whatever he may have been he was a most worthy man. One doesn’t meet such men nowadays…” (1996: 1006) (“Да, там как бы то ни было, а прекраснейший был человек. Таких людей нынче уж не встретишь…” [1937/XII: 247]). In contrast, Tolstoj shows profound interest in detailing the complexity of Countess Rostova’s decline: suffering extreme bereavement when son Petja dies, then a loss of purpose after her husband’s death a year later. However, she “endures” what Tolstoj terms her “condition” (“положение”), the source of his fascination and elaborate analysis in the Epilogue. Her last years model an ordinary “old woman’s” decline in the heart of family, having fulfilled her maternal role – “the traditional feminine experience [is valued as a] source of wisdom and power” (Field 2001: 128-129) as her impact on the next generation is recognized. She thus comes to exemplify the maternal essence of family, that which endures and deserves respect. To portray her complexity, Tolstoj performs a four-stage analysis. First, the narrator claims her core personality – her social habits and needs – never changed, forcing son Nikolaj to conceal the family poverty. Second, it is suggested that she found temporary purpose in her natural role as matchmaker, returning to her old self after Mar’ja Bolkonskaja’s visit. Mar’ja and Nikolaj marry in the winter of 1813. Third, by 1820, more pronounced physical changes are noticed: “[…] now over sixty, she was quite gray, and wore a cap with a frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper lip had sunk in, and her eyes were dim” (1996: 1022) (“Графине было уже за 60 лет. Она была вся седа и носила

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чепчик, обхватывавший всё лицо рюшем. Лицо ее было сморщено, верхняя губа ушла, и глаза были тусклы” [1937/XII: 276]). Fourth, she is described at Nikolaj’s name day party, reacting to Pierre and Nataša’s visit and their gifts in a seemingly paradoxical manner, for which Tolstoj seeks with both irony and compassion an elaborate explanation of her inner “condition.” After summarizing her physical and emotional aging, Tolstoj endeavors to penetrate her consciousness to explore and analyze just how an “old woman’s” physiological and emotional resources keep her functioning, how her family adjusts, continuing to provide love, support, respect and pity. First, the facts are presented: After the deaths of her son and husband […], she felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world, left without aim. She ate, drank, slept, or kept awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She wanted nothing from life but tranquility, such that only death could give her. But until death came she had to go on living, that is, to use her vital forces. (1996: 1027) (После […] смертей сына и мужа, она чувствовала себя нечаянно забытым на этом свете существом, не имеющим никакой цели и смысла. Она ела, пила, спала, бодрствовала, но она не жила. Жизнь не давала ей никаких впечатлений. Ей ничего не нужно было от жизни, кроме спокойствия, и спокойствие это она могла найти только в смерти. Но пока смерть еще не приходила, ей надо было жить, т.е. употреблять свои силы жизни. [1937/XII: 276])

Following an analysis of the physiological essence of her condition, he concludes with a theory of the moral significance of aging. His art achieves remarkable poignancy in noticing the family’s mutual exchange of glances, echoing those “from behind the pineapples”: Only by a rare glance exchanged with a sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the common understanding of her condition expressed. (1996: 1028; emphasis added) (Только в редком взгляде и грустной полуулыбке, обращенной друг к другу между Николаем, Пьером, Наташей и графиней Марьей, бывало выражаемо это взаимное понимание ее положения. [1937/XII: 277])

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Viewing aging as an ordinary, natural part of the life cycle, he explains how and what the next generation learns from observing their elders: But those glances expressed something more: they said she had played her part in life, and what they now saw was not her whole self; we must all become like her, so they were glad to yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being formerly as full of life as themselves, but now to be pitied. […] Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of the household, and little children failed to understand this and avoided her. (1996: 1028; emphasis added) (Но взгляды эти кроме того говорили еще другое; они говорили о том, что она сделала уже свое дело в жизни, о том, что она не вся в том, что теперь видно в ней, о том, что и все мы будем такие же, и что радостно покоряться ей, сдерживать себя для этого когда-то дорогого, когда-то такого же полного, как и мы, жизни, а теперь жалкого существа. […] Только совсем дурные и глупые люди, да маленькие дети, из всех домашних, не понимали этого и чуждались ее. [1937/XII: 277])

Tolstoj then further explores the highly complex, even seemingly paradoxical psychology of an ordinary old woman’s consciousness, differentiating between what outsiders perceive and what to the countess is normal and explicable behavior. He shows her determination first to finish her game and only then to open presents. He also notices her seeming indifference to what should have been a precious gift – the snuffbox bearing her husband’s portrait, but also perceives how her response is actually an act of restraint – so as not to lose control or weep in public: The countess had long wished for such a box, but as she did not want to cry just then she glanced indifferently at the portrait and paid attention chiefly to the […] cards. “Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up,” she said as she always did. (1996: 1029; emphasis added) ([Графиня давно желала этого.] Ей не хотелось теперь плакать, и потому она равнодушно посмотрела на портрет и занялась больше футляром. – Благодарствуй, мой друг, ты утешил меня, – сказала она, как всегда говорила. [1937/XII: 278])

Tolstoj thus expresses equal awareness of the inner dynamism of his aging characters and youthful heroes. A certain skepticism towards the idea of the typical allows him to deviate from psychosocial theories of development as well as pure literary stereotypes. Rather, what Ginzburg refers to as “conditionality” deter-

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mined that all his characters would be mutable, changing, developing identities, defined by circumstance as much as by physiology. She claims that “our contradictions are not only inevitable; they may also be explained” (Ginzburg 1991: 261). Juxtaposed to Prince Vasilij and Anna Michajlovna as well as Count Bezuchov and the Rostovs, old Prince Nikolaj Bolkonskij is first portrayed living a “vigorous old age” (1996: 76) (“упорная сила старости” [1937/IX: 106]) despite retirement to his estate. He is dignified by being associated with distinguished military leaders and heroes of Catherine’s reign, including his friend and compatriot, Field Marshal Michail Kutuzov, with whom he is also compared. Tolstoj’s maternal grandfather may have provided the factual evidence supporting his exceptionally accurate “case study” of an older man suffering from “vascular dementia” (see Feuer 1996). While initial symptoms of deteriorating mental function are noticed as early as 1805, Tolstoj’s narrator traces the old Prince’s aging process through seven years of observations, interactions with his children and views expressed by family and visitors. In capturing the processes of mental deterioration, which medical science now attributes to vascular dementia or even Alzheimer’s disease (see Christensen 2018), Tolstoj recognizes how mental function can fluctuate: how symptoms worsen in steps, exhibiting “stepwise cognitive decline” with each new stroke, but often offer some improvement. And while some cognitive areas may be entirely unaffected, alertness and inattentiveness can also vary dramatically. He notices too how a person with dementia may be cognizant of his failings, but in suffering distress, anxiously tries to hide his condition through defense mechanisms (anger, hostility, even maliciousness or withdrawal, fantasy or paranoia). And he records how such persons justify their actions to the consternation of outsiders. Vascular dementia may deteriorate into Alzheimer’s disease, whose symptoms Tolstoj seems to capture observing the final stages of the Prince’s erratic behavior. Besides memory loss, insomnia, disorientation in time and place, inappropriate behavior and lack of inhibition or difficulty controlling moods and behavior, psychosis may emerge as a form of paranoia. Other behaviors include wandering, agitation, hostility and physical aggression. Nikolaj Bolkonskij is first introduced through the narrator’s analysis of his obsessive-compulsive personality and its effect on his household; nothing “upset the regular routine of life in the old prince’s household” (1996: 75) (“не нарушало стройного порядка, по которому шла жизнь в доме старого князя” [1937/IX: 105]). While the narrator claims that “the prince still possessed tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age” (1996: 76) (“видна была в князе

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еще упорная и много выдерживающая сила свежей старости” [1937/IX: 106]), Andrej, as early as 1805, worries about his erratic behavior: The old prince did not evince the least interest in his son’s explanation […], interrupting three times unexpectedly […]. The third time […] the old man began singing in the cracked voice of old age: “Malbrook s’en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra.” (1996: 85) (Старый князь не выказал ни малейшего интереса при рассказе, как будто не слушал […], три раза неожиданно перервал его […]. В третий раз, […] старик запел фальшивым и старческим голосом: “Malbrook s’en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra”. [1937/IX: 123])

When preparing to leave for the Austrian front, the narrator indicates how well the old prince grasped his son’s attitude towards his wife; he spoke to him rationally, directly and emotionally, belying Andrej’s suspicions of senility. But as he leaves, the old prince’s ambivalence towards demonstrative love is shown as he loses control over his voice: “He spoke so rapidly he did not finish half his words […]. ‘We’ve said goodbye. Go!’” (1996: 93-94) (“Он говорил такою скороговоркой, что не доканчивал половины слов […]. – Простились, ступай!” [1937/IX, 134-135]). His verbal outburst is echoed, in true Tolstoyan fashion, by louder, harsher non-verbal sounds: “From the study, like pistol shots, came frequent sounds of the old man angrily blowing his nose” (1996: 93-94) (“Из кабинета слышны были, как выстрелы, часто повторяемые сердитые звуки стариковского сморкания” [1937/IX, 134-135]). Bolkonskij’s character is subjected to the narrator’s increasingly conscious awareness of developing dementia, documenting his decline year by year, with intervals of respite. In Book IV, Tolstoj captures the effect of life-changing shock on the mind and body of an older person, contrasting the old prince’s demands for certainty and control over his life with the uncertain news of Andrej’s death. He “would not cherish any hope […] and told everyone his son had been killed. […] his strength failed him. He walked less, ate less, slept less, and became weaker everyday” (1996: 281; emphasis added) (“Старый князь не хотел надеяться: […] всем говорил, что сын его убит. […] силы изменяли ему: он меньше ходил, меньше ел, меньше спал, и с каждым днем делался слабее” [1937/X: 37]). But when Andrej returns, he is emotionally overwhelmed, revealing his psychological frailty: “[…] he began to sob like a child” (1996: 285) (“зарыдал как ребенок” [1937/X: 41]).

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Two years later, in Book VI, he is described expressing blatant hostility to Andrej’s marriage proposal. Tolstoj elucidates how he filters all news through his own narrowly restricted thought processes, though still capable of outward calm: “He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life was already ending” (1996: 419; emphasis added) (“Он не мог понять того, чтобы кто-нибудь хотел изменять жизнь, вносить в нее что-нибудь новое, когда жизнь для него уже кончалась” [1937/X: 221]). By Book VIII [1811-1812], a list of symptoms of “senility” is followed by an analysis of the old prince’s public behavior: He showed marked signs of senility in a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of recent events, remembrance of remote ones, and childish vanity […]. Despite this, he inspired in all his visitors a feeling of respectful veneration – especially […] when he entered in his old-fashioned coat and powdered wig […] telling abrupt stories of the past, or […] more abrupt and scathing criticisms of the present. (1996: 478; emphasis added) (В нем появились резкие признаки старости: неожиданные засыпанья, забывчивость ближайших по времени событий и памятливость к давнишним, и детское тщеславие […]. Несмотря на то, когда старик […] выходил […] в своей шубке и пудренном парике, и начинал […] свои отрывистые рассказы о прошедшем, или еще более отрывистые и резкие суждения о настоящем, он возбуждал во всех своих гостях одинаковое чувство почтительного уважения. [1937/X: 298])

By Book X, Tolstoj captures the demented mind moving in and out of consciousness and multiple levels of consciousness through which a mind may travel. Bolkonskij’s wish to relive his past is accompanied by memories of old rivalries, followed by anguished wishes to exit the present: He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. Before him arose the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian camp, and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face, vigorous and alert, entering Potemkin’s gaily colored tent, and a burning sense of jealousy […]. (1996: 616; emphasis added) (Он спрятал письмо под подсвечник и закрыл глаза. И ему представился Дунай, светлый полдень, камыши, русский лагерь, и он входит, он, молодой генерал, без одной морщины на лице, бодрый, веселый, румяный, в росписной шатер Потемкина, и жгучее чувство зависти […]. [1937/XI: 109-110])

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Preceding his final stroke, his imagination garners strength as he proudly imagines himself a revered military dignitary, recognized as one of Russia’s oldest generals. Afterwards, however, having begged Mar’ja’s forgiveness, he is described as “softly and distinctly uttering, ‘Russia has perished. They’ve destroyed her’ and he began to sob” (1996: 638) (“– Да, – сказал он явственно и тихо. – Погибла Россия! Погубили! – И он опять зарыдал […]” [1937/XI: 139]). Tolstoj thus honors him in his final moments: seen to soften towards his daughter, he admits his faults, while simultaneously linking his own patriotism, pride and his demise with Russia’s. While the discussion of old age and aging is most prevalent in scenes of society and family life, scenes of military life are dominated by the historical figure of Michail Ilarionovič Kutuzov, alternately judged and rejected, or embraced as an “old man” revered for his elder’s wisdom but also noted suffering the frailty of old age. In contrast to the portrayal of the mental decline of the fictional Prince Bolkonskij, Kutuzov’s historical personality is initially depicted through external physical features and signs, hearsay, references to his relationship with old Prince Bolkonskij and Andrej, and interaction with subordinates and foreign generals, who notice above all his alertness to his men’s morale (Gustafson 1986). Such perceptions distinguish him from other generals and define his leadership as grounded in experience, intuition and accumulated wisdom, the natural prerogatives of an old man. Kutuzov is identified primarily by the perceptions of others, then clarified and re-evaluated by the narrator’s moral analysis and Tolstoj’s defiant defense, celebrating his unique personality, wise leadership and the singular moral heroism of this “ordinary old man.” By Book III, ageism is increasingly used to challenge his capacity to function. However, Tolstoj employs the device of “defamiliarization” at the war council preceding the battle of Austerlitz to emphasize the irrelevance of age in decision-making, juxtaposing Kutuzov’s wit and natural desire for sleep to the artifice of battle plans: “‘[B]efore battle, there is nothing more important…’ he paused, ‘than to have a good night’s sleep’” (1996: 226) (“А перед сражением нет ничего важнее… [он помолчал] как выспаться хорошенько” [1937/IX: 319]). In contrast to Bolkonskij’s rigidly ordered life, Kutuzov’s motto “patience and time” (“терпение и время”) reflects his principles of faith in experience and intuition. A lengthy conversation in Book X introduces the reader to his humility and Russianness:

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Prince Andrey […] was reassured as to the general course of affairs and the man to whom it had been entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all personal motive in that old man […] the more reassured he was… “Above all […] one believes in him because he’s Russian […].” (1996: 664) ([К]нязь Андрей […] успокоенный на счет общего хода дел и на счет того, кому оно вверено было. Чем больше он видел отсутствие всего личного в этом старике […], тем более он был спокоен […]. “А главное”, думал князь Андрей, “почему веришь ему, это то, что он русский […]”. [1937/X: 172])

Most important, for evaluating his military leadership, he is heralded for his unique vision, his capacity to understand Russia’s needs – “wisdom” attributed to “age and experience”: Kutuzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy body relaxed […] gave no orders, he only assented to or dissented from what others suggested. […] By long years of military experience he knew, and with the wisdom of age understood, that it is impossible for one man to direct hundreds of thousands of others struggling with death; he knew a battle is decided not by orders of a commander […] but by that intangible force called the spirit of the army; he watched this force and guided it as far as it was in his power. (1996: 718; emphasis added) (Кутузов сидел, понурив седую голову и опустившись тяжелым телом […]. Он не делал никаких распоряжений, а только соглашался или не соглашался на то, что предлагали ему. […] Долголетним военным опытом он знал и старческим умом понимал, что руководить сотнями тысяч человек, борющихся с смертью, нельзя одному человеку, и знал, что решают участь сраженья не распоряжения главнокомандующего, […] а та неуловимая сила, называемая духом войска, и он следил за этою силой и руководил ею, насколько это было в его власти. [1937/X: 245])

Throughout the last books, Tolstoj represents his own authorial views as closely aligned to those of Kutuzov and the Russian people. His moral perspective dominates as he proudly informs the reader that after the French abandoned Moscow, Kutuzov’s activity was devoted to restraint: “Kutuzov alone used all his power […] to prevent an attack” (1996: 910; emphasis added) (“Кутузов один все силы свои […] употреблял на то, чтобы противодействовать наступлению” [1937/X: 117]). Book XV concludes with Tolstoj’s assessment of Kutuzov in the context of his attack on historians for not recognizing his hero as “a truly great figure,” “the

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representative of the Russian people,” and above all, “an ordinary man, not grand” (1996: 960-961) (“представитель русского народа,” “простая скромная, и потому истинно величественная фигура” [1937/XI: 186-187]). The speech at Dobroe, thanking his soldiers and praising their victory, is noteworthy for the narrator’s perception of signs of Kutuzov’s sudden transformation in mien and speech, attributable to the kindliness of “an ordinary old man”: “You see brothers…” […] all at once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no longer the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man wanting to tell his comrades something very important […] “I know it’s hard for you […] but you are home while they […] the prisoners: Worse off than our poorest beggars. […] now we must pity them. They’re human beings too. Isn’t that so, lads?” His face brightened as the old man’s meek smile drew the corners of his lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. (1996: 963; emphasis added) (– Вот что, братцы […]. И вдруг голос и выражение лица его изменились: перестал говорить главнокомандующий, а заговорил простой, старый человек, очевидно чтото самое нужное желавший сообщить теперь своим товарищам. […] Я знаю, трудно вам, да всё же вы дома; а они […] указывая на пленных. – Хуже нищих последних […] а теперь и пожалеть. Тоже и они люди. Так, ребята? […] лицо его становилось всё светлее и светлее от старческой кроткой улыбки, звездами морщившейся в углах губ и глаз. [1937/XI: 187-188])

Thus, Kutuzov’s wrinkles emerging from his smile bear comparison to Vasilij’s coarse wrinkles, Bezuchov’s noble wrinkles, and Bolkonskij’s nostalgic dream of being young and wrinkle-free. Tolstoj’s “ordinary old man,” the representative of the Russian people, dies a hero because “nothing remained to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the representative of the national war but to die, and Kutuzov died” (1996: 975; emphasis added) (“[…] русскому человеку, как русскому, делать больше было нечего. Представителю народной войны ничего не оставалось, кроме смерти. И он умер” [1937/XI: 203]). Most significant in Tolstoj’s claims to “defy the historians,” his portrait of Kutuzov elevates and dignifies “ordinary” and “old” as terms of the highest praise and honor. This honor may be equated to Tolstoj’s elaborate concluding analysis of old Countess Rostova in the Epilogue, who achieves the highest respect and honor from her family for the ordinary work of her life. Morson’s conclusions best sum up this view of “ordinary”: “Tolstoy’s uniqueness lies in his profound understanding of the ordinary, and in the very ordinariness of his pro-

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found understanding” (Morson 1987: 270-271). I would only add that this conception of “ordinary” in its association with “old” adds a dimension of moral integrity and moral wisdom to the older person’s life and legacy, or as Richard Gustafson summed up Kutuzov’s function: “Just as Kutuzov’s mode of being in the world is in loving accord with others, so is his mode of knowing the world” (Gustafson 1986: 231).

CONCLUSION What then is Tolstoj’s contribution to the depiction of age as a category of analysis? How does he challenge our assumptions and stereotypes? His empirical – verging on the scientific – treatment of old age and aging is revealed through signs and details, through keen psychological and physical observations of individual characters in lieu of generalized portraiture. In contrast to his predecessors, his older characters are numerous and varied in background, gender and ability. Each is represented as an individual whose experiences of old age are as varied as they are “ordinary” and “natural,” allowing each one to offer an alternative possibility of aging, and thus be honored for fulfilling his/her life’s role. Indeed, aging is apprehended as no less diverse a category than other ordinary life processes, the natural trajectory of life cycle stages subject to contingency. Acutely aware of the dynamism and uniqueness of aging in his older characters as in his youthful heroes allows for a skeptical attitude towards the idea of the typical. Tolstoj focuses instead on the seemingly paradoxical, or the unexpected attributes and behaviors of his older figures. He notices and emphasizes their unique strengths and individual contributions to family and national life as he deviates from both psychosocial theories of development and traditional literary stereotypes. It would seem that for Tolstoj those who attempt to control their lives according to some preconceived model, norm or random principle inevitably confront severe mental distress (Prince Bolkonskij) or lose control at life’s end and sink into depression (Count Rostov), while those intuitively capable of taking responsibility, fulfilling their “ordinary” duties and appointed roles, such as Countess Rostova and Commander Kutuzov, are best at acclimating to the aging process, and thus achieve a dignified old age, reaping honor and respect from those around them, as well as from Tolstoj.

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REFERENCES Christensen, Lynne (2018): Alzheimer’s Disease: Advances in Prevention and Treatment, 2018 Report. New York. Erikson, Erik (1997): The Life Cycle Completed. Extended Version with new chapters on the Ninth Stage of Development by Joan M. Erikson. New York. Feuer, Kathryn B. (1996): Tolstoy and the Genesis of War and Peace. Ithaca, NY. Field, Corinne T. (2001): “‘Are Women…All Minors?’: Women’s Rights and the Politics of Aging in Antebellum United States”, in: Journal of Women’s History 12/4, 113-137. Ginzburg, Lydia (1991): On Psychological Prose. Trans. Judson Rosengrant. Princeton. Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar (ed.) (2017): Aging in Slavic Literatures: Essays in Literary Gerontology. Bielefeld. Gustafson, Richard (1986): Leo Tolstoy: Resident and Stranger. Princeton. Morson, Gary Saul (1987): Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in ‘War and Peace’. Stanford, CA. Oró-Piqueras, Maricel/Falcus, Sarah (2018): “Approaches to Old Age: Perspectives from the Twenty-First Century”, in: European Journal of English Studies 22/1, 1-12. doi.org/10.1080/13825577.2018.1427199 [accessed May 6, 2018]. Savkina, Irina (2011): “U nas nikogda uže ne budet ėtich babušek?”, in: Voprosy literatury 2, 109-135. Tolstoj, Lev (1937): Polnoe sobranie sočinenij. Serija 1: Proizvedenija. Ed. V.G. Čertkov. Volumes IX-XII. Moskva. Tolstoy, Leo (1996): War and Peace. Ed. George Gibian. 2nd edition. New York/London. Zeilig, Hannah (2011): “The Critical Use of Narrative and Literature in Gerontology”, in: International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 6/2, 7-37.

Does Genre Matter? The Role of Literary Genre and Narrator in Contemporary Russian Caregivers’ Narratives Maija Könönen

INTRODUCTION There are two master narratives of aging, namely the “decline narrative” and that of “positive aging,” the latter belonging to the narratives of the so-called “posttraditional aging” (Katz/McHugh 2010: 271; see Zeilig 2011: 14). However, the most persistent narrative associated with old age is that of loss and decline. According to this narrative, our physical strength and mental resilience are gradually weakened to the point that we are no longer capable of leading an independent life. The most severe form of the decline narrative is related to persons with dementia. The dementia narrative appears in various forms in different sectors of society and in different disciplines, but can easily be recognized by its recurring traits or, rather, “symptoms.” Dementia involves human tragedy, but the way in which this tragedy is represented and interpreted has more to do with the surrounding culture, time and place than with biology. What is the role of literature in articulating and understanding old age and dementia? Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, has become a synecdoche for all kinds of dementing illnesses and is often said to be compelling in fiction – and so cruel in life. At their best, narratives of aging can provide us with access to some knowledge and understanding of issues related to aging. As my approach combines narratological analysis with critical gerontology, it belongs to the domain of literary gerontology, a discipline that embraces various literary genres from fiction to non-fiction. Following Zeilig (ibid.: 14-15, 20), I argue that contradictions and presumptions embedded in narratives of aging can be revealed with the tools of narratology and that in

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addition to being a personal experience, aging, dementia included, is a social and political affair. Moreover, I am interested in exploring the value of the employed narrative techniques in enhancing our understanding and empathy towards a protagonist with dementia. What are the ethical and aesthetical implications of writing and reading about dementia?

THE DEMENTIA NARRATIVE According to the master narrative of dementia advocated by the biomedical model of the disease, dementia denotes progressive brain diseases that affect the cognitive skills, memory, emotional life and behavior of the person inflicted with it to such an extent that everyday activities become difficult. This tragic narrative of decline culminates in the intimidating loss of self. The narrative’s emphasis on dementia as a progressive illness that cannot be cured derives from biomedical determinism. As a consequence of the narrative, a person with dementia may be stigmatized as an anomaly, even as someone who has lost his human nature, notwithstanding the fact that the progress of the disease is gradual and does not change abruptly one’s personality or ability to “function.” Before the present prevalence of the biomedical discourse, senility was considered as part of the ordinary course of aging, a perception that has been denied by modern medicine, which emphasizes the view that symptoms of dementia are connected to diseases (see, e.g., Herskovits 1995: 149). Notwithstanding the influence of earlier perceptions of senility, in the mainstream cultural discourse dementia represents the harshest version of negative stereotypes connected to old age. According to this, high age is associated with memory loss and overall physical and mental degeneration, although the individual experience of a person with dementia, or of someone close to him/her, may be much more intricate. We constantly hear case stories about people living with dementia that corroborate the dreadful master narrative. In most of these stories those suffering from dementia are only silently present. If they have a voice, they speak through mediators (a family caregiver, a nurse, a doctor or a scientist), a fact implying the disintegration of subjectivity inherent in the master narrative. The very term dementia (Lat. de mens ‘being out of one’s mind’) is associated with insanity.1 “Senile dementia” – age-related cognitive decline – connects

1

As a medical concept it emerged in the 18th century and was conceived as a “synonym of madness” (Berrios 2005: 5, quoted from Goldman 2017: 13). Initially dementia was not linked to a specific age, nor did it refer exclusively to cognitive impair-

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the condition with aging, which contributes to a fear and anxiety towards old age. The cause of the fear is the assertion of “a spoiled identity,” which arises most often with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) but is implicitly present in all constructions of dementing illnesses.2 Such metaphors and images of dementia as “living dead,” “zombies,” “death before death,” “social death,” “never-ending funeral,” “private hell of devastation and destruction,” “lower primates” and “vegetables” are common and imply the effacing of selfhood or refer to the problem of debased personhood at the later stages of the disease (Bitenc 2012: 306; Herskovits 1995: 148, 153; Zeilig 2014: passim). The perception of an elderly person as “naturally” senile has transformed into a condition of pathological, uncurable illness that dehumanizes those suffering from dementia and results in a loss of meaning in life. The medicalization of senility has been approved and popularized as a discourse in the wake of the spreading of the “Alzheimer-epidemic.” The debate on whether dementia is a qualitatively pathological state or a quantitatively extreme form of essentially normal aging continues, and both views have their ramifications.3 The disease model normalizes the condition by making the “disorder” comprehensible. It brings order to the often chaotic experience. By the same token, it stigmatizes the patient, questions his/her subjectivity and consequently makes it easier to control the patient socially and medically. Dehumanization and degradation of selfhood are regarded as the most devastating effects of the prevailing construction of AD and other dementing illnesses because these symptoms signify the loss of those fundamental aspects through which we define our humanness (Herskovits 1995: 152).

ment, but to various states of psychosocial incompetence. It was in the late 19th and 20th centuries that dementia was reduced to “the cognitive paradigm,” intellectual impairment being its essential symptom. 2

As Zimmermann, among others, asserts, Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia among the elderly, has become a synecdoche for all kinds of dementing illnesses in the developed world (Zimmermann 2017: 72). The outcome of this confusion of terms and difficulties in their definitions is that both conceptions, dementia and AD, have become value-laden terms invoking not only anxiety about old age, but also dread about mental illness. They both represent biological mental disorders, but are open to various interpretations that depend on their historical and cultural contexts (Zeilig 2014: 259-260).

3

For details of the debate and further discussion about the self-in-AD, see Herskovits (1995: passim) and Lock (2013: 4-6, 48).

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This situation has led to a discussion about the meanings embedded in such notions as “selfhood” or “subjectivity” and the ways they become manifest. In theorizing subjectivity, the social and cultural factors in the construction of individual identity and personal experience are emphasized. The role of cognitive abilities and speech – the very abilities affected by dementia – in the construction and maintenance of “selfhood” and “subject” is traditionally determinate in Western cultures. However, ways are sought to return “selfhood” to those diagnosed with dementia by differentiating the viability of “the self” from cognitive capabilities by locating the “problem” of dementia outside the patient, for example, as a problem of disturbed interaction and intersubjective relations (see, e.g., Hydén/Örulv 2009; Hydén 2014: passim), or by differentiating the core self from the autobiographical self. The former refers to the idea of an ontological or spiritual identity that may exist after the collapse of autobiographical memory (Freeman 2008: 180-181). In addition to medical sciences and the media, various forms of art, including literature, participate in the construction of the dementia discourse. The popularized discourses of the media, in their turn, frequently regard age-related cognitive impairment as an apocalyptic and Gothic horror story (Goldman 2017: 4-7, 29-36). Literary representations of senility may choose not to follow the stigmatizing pathological narrative equated with erasure of agency and meaning. At their best, literary accounts, fictional and documentary, enhance our understanding of dementia by immersing us in the lived experience of a dementing illness. The ways that these narratives are produced, received and interpreted are affected by and affect our cultural attitudes towards old age and conceptions of health and illness. Ultimately, it is the question of our view of humanness that is at stake. Since my account deals with dementia narratives in Russian literature, it is important to pose the following questions before moving on to the exploration of literary texts: What are the cultural attitudes toward old age and senility in Russia and what is the social situation? Is the master narrative of dementia different in Russian society? Negative stereotypes of aging and the elderly are prevalent also in Russia where television and other media reinforce the images of old age as a phase of life characterized by physical and mental decay, illness, poverty, dependence and helplessness (Starikova 2011: 44). In spite of these negative attitudes, Russia as a historically and culturally diverse and geographically large country embraces various views of aging that coexist in people’s minds. These views are dynamic and change at different tempos, and not necessarily in the same direction, depending on the social group in question. Consequently, a distinctive generally

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accepted view of old age does not exist in today’s Russia (Ovsjannikova 2011: 36-39). Perceptions of age-related memory disorders also differ. Bio-deterministic conceptions concerning dementia as a pathological illness are not as widely accepted as in the Western world.4 It is still common to perceive senility as belonging to a more or less normal process of aging. Interviews in newspapers with relatives of the persons inflicted with dementia testify to the fact that symptoms of the disease are generally attributed to old age.5 Despite this fact, the emergence among specialists, as well as the general public, of new social phobias and horror associated with old age testifies to the transformation of cultural conceptions concerning the elderly due to the growing consciousness of the biomedical model. Moreover, it is not easy to ascertain an accurate picture either of the public awareness of dementia or the number of cases with a dementia diagnosis in the country. It is estimated that at the moment there are 1.5-1.7 million people inflicted with dementia in Russia (see Martynjuk 2014).

4

In a survey conducted in 2014, only 16 percent of the respondents identified or admitted to having persons with dementia in their immediate circle (in Western countries the corresponding figure was 70 percent). Almost half of the respondents were not able to name a single symptom of dementia (Martynjuk 2014).

5

See, e.g.: “The stories told by relatives of those inflicted with dementia are very similar: for a long time they did not pay attention to the oddities in the behavior of their near one – they ascribed them to old age and a difficult nature” (“Истории родственников больных деменцией очень похожи: долгое время они не обращали внимание на странности в поведении своего близкого – списывали на возраст и сложный характер” [Tass 2018]), оr “In Russia only few people know about dementia. Therefore, in 80 percent of cases first signs of their own or their near one’s illness remain unnoticed. And when noticed, they often don’t know how to deal with it. Many people think: ‘It’s just old age’ – and do nothing” (“В России о деменции знают немногие. Поэтому в 80% случаев первые признаки заболевания у себя или у своих близких люди просто не замечают. А когда замечают, то часто не понимают, что с этим делать. Многие думают: ‘Старость’ – и не делают ничего” [Repenko 2018]). Moreover, according to Ol’ga Tkačeva, the director of the Russian Clinical and Research Center of Gerontology, Russian society is not yet ready to cope with the problem of dementia, because many Russians do not regard dementia as a disease, but see it as a natural process of aging that does not need any treatment (Mir novostej 2017). Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Russian are the author’s [M.K.].

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THE DEMENTIA NARRATIVE IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE Notwithstanding the fact that literature provides a flexible mode of expressing and rendering meaning to the unfathomable complexity of dementia by illustrating individual cases, we have to keep in mind that fiction as a manifestation or interpretation of the experience of aging and dementia is problematic, because it is always in discursive interaction with the broader non-fictional social discourses of aging. Consequently, fictional representations of aging and dementia have to be properly contextualized and conceived as just one among other cultural discourses. In literary representations, it is often the human experience that forms the narrative crux of the story, telling us how it feels to suffer from dementing disorders. When the disease adopts a verbal form in a literary text, it materializes in the mind of the reader and, at its best, may generate empathy. As was stated earlier, dementia was and is still often juxtaposed with insanity. Madness has long ago found its own rhetoric and logic, accompanied by its own champions in literature. Is this true with literary representations of dementia? Is the person with dementia capable of rendering his/her experience in words or has it to be conveyed through a mediator? Madness has made itself heard and survived as a speaking subject mainly through literature.6 What of dementia? Can it find a speaking and experiencing subject in literature, and how could this be achieved? Or does it remain an object of description, yet another case study about a person’s life story, the later stages of which are predictable, predetermined by the master narrative? As such, dementia as a theme in a narrative is not enough to enhance the understanding of the experience of the condition, but this goal may be achieved by combining the employed narrative technique in aesthetic interaction with the content matter. I argue that the significance of a dementia story depends on the literary genre in which it is written and that the position of the narrator is decisive in invoking empathy, understanding and insight in the reader’s mind. I don’t want to deny the biological basis of the condition; rather, I want to stress that dementia as a conception is open to interpretations that go beyond the borders of the medical field. At its best, a literary text builds a bridge between the pathology of dementia and the sufferer’s experience of the disease, thereby complementing the efforts of biomedical research.

6

For a discussion on madness as a continuous theme throughout literary history, see, e.g., Feder 1980 and Felman 2003.

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My explorations testify to the fact that stories about senility are rare in Russian literature. There are stories with senile protagonists, but they usually have a minor role in the story and their condition is not explicitly dealt with. Moreover, dementia, originally a medical term, rarely appears in literary texts; rather, the condition is referred to by such value-laden terms as starčeskoe slaboumie or the more colloquial starčeskij marazm,7 both denoting “senility” or “insanity” (bezumie). I chose for consideration two stories that deal with senility, namely Michail Panteleev’s Everything Will Pass (Vse prochodit, 2000) and Nina Katerli’s In Two Voices (Na dva golosa, 2003).8 Both stories were published in literary journals and are set in Russia in the late 1990s and early 2000s. They share a common theme of senility, but belong to different subgenres of prose. Importantly, they approach the theme of senility from different perspectives using different narrative techniques. While Katerli’s story represents fictional short prose, Panteleev uses the diary form. He claims in the preface to the story that the published entries from his intimate diary represent authentic, true writing “without any novelties, intrigues, tricks, scenarios, plots, phantasy, styles or genres. Everything was recorded by ‘a candid camera’ and is published without any editorial involvement or censorship, without any didactic purposes, explanations, moral judgments” (“Без изысков, ухищрений, сценариев, интриг, фантастики, трюков, штилей и жанров. Все зафиксировано ‘скрытой камерой’ и публикуется без редактирования и цензуры, без наставлений, объяснений, выводов и ‘моралей’”) (Panteleev 2000: 149). The author adheres here to the conventions of the genre: diaries are

7

The word marazm is adopted from Greek, denoting extinction, dying out. Starčeskoe slaboumie (“senile feeblemindedness”) is frequently used as a synonym for dementia (demencija) both in articles and common speech. These concepts are not associated as clearly with biological brain disorders as are dementia and AD in Western societies.

8

Michail Panteleev (b. 1921) is an amateur writer from Yekaterinburg who has written poetry and kept a diary since 1946. In addition to Everything Will Pass, he has also published the autobiography of his life after retirement (Panteleev 2000: ft. 145). Nina Katerli (b. 1934) is a professional writer from St Petersburg. She made her literary debut in 1973 with the short story Dobro požalovat’. Since then she has published numerous collections of short stories and novellas. During her early years as a writer she moved between experimental fantastic prose and realism. Later, in her more realistic texts, she focused on human relations within the context of everyday Soviet and postSoviet life. She is also a journalist and a political activist who has struggled for human rights and rights for the elderly (see LiveLib).

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assumed to convey an authentic, sincere picture of daily life and reveal the true character of the diarist as they spontaneously record the immediacy of the living moment (Hassam 1993: 24-25). However, since Panteleev’s diary is published in a literary journal, it can be conceived as a literary work, considered to be written not just for oneself or a specific addressee, but also for an implied audience. The reader of a published journal does not have to accept the position of the addressee and thus he/she is free to account for the work in terms different from those of the diarist. As such it can be examined as a literary object and juxtaposed with Katerli’s fictional short prose. Moreover, it can also be treated as an object of social history. The comments that Panteleev as the author of the story has added afterwards to his diary – the title, the preface, the subtitles and notes between entries, as well as the date at the end of the story indicating the period of time spent on preparation of the diary for publication (in which process he selected the entries to be included in the published version) – all imply that we are not actually dealing with an authentic journal. The published diary is an edited and possibly censored version of the original. In his introductory remarks, the author defines his work as “a story about old people and old age” (“Это рассказ о стариках и старости”) (Panteleev 2000: 149). Unexpectedly, he questions the relevance of the story to anyone other than himself by stating that it is written for his own sake, with the purpose that he himself would never forget. He adds though that it may offer some information and things to ponder upon for others, too. What Panteleev does not take into account is the paradox inherent in the literary genre itself. Everything Will Pass is meant to be read as a sincere authentic journal, but the publication of a diary turns the text into literature by altering the status of the work. As Hassam and Kuhn-Osius note, a published intimate journal can be subjected to the types of scrutiny applied to prose and other literary genres. Thus, it is open to a range of interpretations and critical discourses (Hassam 1987: 439-442; Kuhn-Osius 1981: passim). The diarist of the story records the last years of his life with his wife Lena, who suffers from many diseases, progressing senility included. Panteleev, the narrator, is a man in his 70s, who takes care of his dementing spouse. Within the field of illness narratives, it represents a story told by a significant other in the life of the ill subject (Rimmon-Kenan 2002: 10). While various kinds of illness narratives have become extremely popular in our time, the abundance of caregivers’ biographies among dementia stories in the last few decades is striking (Bitenc 2012: 307). As a caregivers’ account, Panteleev’s story conveys his view not only on Lena and her illness, but also on himself as a troubled caregiver in a troublesome situation in Russia of the 1990s.

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How does writing a diary help the narrator to understand his wife’s condition and how does the story itself help the reader to get an insight into dementia as experienced by the person inflicted with the disease with the help of the mediator, her husband? How does the story invoke interest and empathy towards its characters? Due to the generic specifics of diary writing, to the role and position of the narrator in particular, it may evoke empathy towards the burdened narratorcaregiver. There are certain traits pertaining to the diary as a form. These characteristics constitute a norm associated with the genre. According to Hassam (1993: 21), the diary is a first-person narration in which the narrator is also the protagonist. It is a personal record of events and elements selected subjectively by the diarist and, consequently, the diary is written from the diarist’s point of view.9 Panteleev, the narrator, is extremely involved in the events. His main focus is on himself and on his behavior towards Lena. His relationship with her fluctuates between pity and utmost irritation. In a rage of anger, he frequently resorts to physical violence towards her and afterwards he is filled with remorse over his behavior. The main purpose for his writing, besides publishing excerpts of the diary, seems to be his need to confess and, ultimately, to be forgiven by the implied reader. As a confession of personal anxieties, Everything Will Pass fulfills one of the main functions of a diary. It remains questionable, however, whether it helps to unburden the worn-out narrator of the shame produced by the fate of his wife. The diarist rarely dwells on self-reflection, nor does he try to understand or convey Lena’s experience of her condition. He tests Lena’s impaired memory by asking her over and over again about details concerning the length of their marital life without giving consideration either to the effect of Lena’s condition on her mind or to the effect of the questioning. The extent of the narrator’s illtreatment of Lena is revealed in the following entry where he depicts in detail how he beats his helpless wife, but is himself just as helpless in changing his own appalling conduct:10

9

For other generic attributes, values and functions associated with diary writing, see Paperno (2004: 561-565) and Hassam (1993: 21-26).

10 Although ill-treatment of the demented is still a taboo subject, it does come up in Internet forums where caregivers exchange their experiences (see, e.g., Azbuka zdorov’ja).

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18.6.1997 […] My forgetful, senseless, thoroughly ill wife Lena told the truth. Indeed, she is beaten […]. Not often, not every day and no longer with fists or feet, strap or slipper (that happened, too), but I do beat her. Sometimes I hit her with my knee on the bottom, sometimes I poke her back or neck with my hand. Most often and most hard I hit her face and head by the kitchen table, on a toilet bowl or in an armchair with rags that happen to be at hand – with a dishcloth, drying cloth, old trousers (so that I would not hurt her, so that no place would be injured or left with bruises). I beat her because of her poor health, weakness, senselessness. Because she vomits, wets her pants and defecates. I beat her although I know, I realize a 1000 times that I am beating a sick and old person, my own wife, the dearest person left in my life. (18.6.1997 […] Беспамятная, бестолковая, в доску больная баба Лена сказала правду. Ее действительно бьют […]. Не часто, не каждый день, и уже не кулаками, не ногами, не ремнем, не тапком (был такой случай), но бью. Иногда ударю коленом под зад, иногда толкну рукой в спину или в шею. Но чаще и ожесточеннее всего бью ее на кухне за столом, в туалете на унитазе, в кресле в комнате по лицу и по голове подвернувшимися под руки тряпками – кухонной салфеткой, посудным полотенцем, старыми трусами. (Чтобы не сделать ей больно, не повредить что-либо, не наставить синяков)… Бью за болезненность, слабость, бестолковость. Бью за то, что блюет, мочится, ходит под себя… Бью, хотя 1000 раз знаю, понимаю, что бью больного и старого человека, свою жену, кроме которой и дороже которой у меня уже давно никого нет. [Panteleev 2000: 167])

There are long intervals between the published diary entries. It is difficult to say whether the author has consciously chosen entries that deal with Lena’s illness and the increasing burden of her care. In any case, the “plot” of the story follows the progress of Lena’s illness to her death and the subsequent reactions of Michail, the spouse caregiver, covering a period of 16 years. In this respect, the story represents a common dementia narrative told by a family caregiver, although the biomedical term dementia is not used. The narrator depicts Lena’s condition first in terms of regression, divorcing her from adulthood by infantilizing her personality: “29.3.1989 …Lena is getting older and weaker day by day so that one has to treat her like a child” (“29.3.1989 …Лена стареет и слабеет с каждым днем, что к ней надо относиться как к ребенку” [ibid.: 151]). Two and a half years later, the heartbreaking episode when Lena is not kept at the neurological department of the local hospital where her husband manages to get her admitted, but instead is taken to a mental hospital, indicates equating a

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senile person with a lunatic. It is also a telling fact about the treatment of sufferers of senility on the societal level.11 The paramedic describes Lena’s condition as “totally senile.” The words used in the following passage disclose the lack of awareness of the disease even among medical staff: 20.9.1991 – If you don’t come to collect your wife, we will take her to a mental hospital. The fact is that she has a serious psychic illness, she is totally senile. She has to be kept in a special space, in ward no. 13 where total idiots are kept. (20.9.1991 – Не заберешь жену, мы отвезем ее в психбольницу. Она у тебя тяжелая психически больная, находится в состоянии полного маразма. Ее нужно содержать в особом помещении, в палате № 13, где находятся полные дураки. [ibid.: 153])

Even if the focus of Panteleev’s diary is on the experience of the overwhelmed caregiver, as readers we can raise the question about Lena’s experience of her condition. Although Lena is the other main protagonist, she hardly gets her voice heard in the story. Her condition is conveyed through the narrator’s detailed description of her physical deterioration. As Rimmon-Kenan (2006: 247) notes in her account of illness narratives and their reception, the abundance of bodily details stresses the materiality of the physical experience, thus endangering the desired reception and control over the implied reader. She raises the question of whether readers have a moral obligation to read narratives about “embodied distress,” which she regards as a complex ethical problem. Without giving a definite answer to the problem, she concludes that writers must in any case be aware of the potential reaction of the withheld empathy of readers. Panteleev’s style is realistic to the point that it was characterized as “too human” (“слишком человеческое”) in one review (Remizova 2000). According to Remizova, the story consists of unworked facts, “raw material,” and thus lacks the purifying effect of a catharsis, characteristic of a genuine work of art. Without aesthetic aims or values it remains a record of the vulgar banalities of life

11 Due to the lack of proper nursing homes for the elderly, dementia patients are often taken to mental hospitals in Russia. Public nursing homes for the elderly are regarded as the worst solution and private ones are too expensive for most Russians. See, e.g., U-mama.ru 2012.

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(pošlost’).12 Panteleev’s harsh naturalism may serve as an object of identification for readers who have gone through the everyday frustration and exhaustion of a caregiver.13 The contradictory emotional reactions of the caregiver to the sufferer are rendered in a convincing manner in the diary. As the task of critical gerontology is not to tell what is already known, but rather to unveil what is missing in representations of aging, I argue that Panteleev’s treatment of aging lacks the emotional, evaluative and perceptual distance between the author M. Panteleev and the narrator-protagonist M. Panteleev, resulting in the absence of the level of multiple significations in the text. The missing detachment has a crucial role to play in the failure of the story to evoke empathy, too. It may be, of course, that the story shows also how impossible it can be for a family caregiver to distance himself from the tragic experience which, in turn, leads to his egocentric view on the situation. When considering Panteleev’s story, I could not help thinking of several “what ifs” that could have engendered a more positive reception of the story: what if the narrator had managed to find another point of view distanced from himself with the help of some narratological device? What if he had not insisted so fervently on plausibility, on the assertion of one single truth and one perspective while sticking to the conventions of an authentic journal? Quoting Hassam (1993: 34), a personal diary can never be an unmediated transcription of reality, as Panteleev insists in his foreword, due to the fact that a diary is always constructed by written language and it is a highly coded form of signification. As a textual construction of reality it cannot be neutral or transparent, but is tied to the cultural values of the diary paradigm as well as to the cultural specificity of the depicted world. Undoubtedly, Panteleev is sincere in his quest for truthfulness and he conveys a realistic experience of the life of a spouse caregiver. Moreover, his moral transgression and frequent inability to see Lena beyond her disease is partly due to the lack of support from the family, the community or the state. He is expected to cope on his own. However, he does not use the opportunity to reflect

12 In fact, Remizova takes a critical stance towards all popular genres of “documentary literature,” such as memoirs, diaries, etc., stressing the importance of literary devices used in fiction (Remizova 2000: passim). 13 Apart from fictional texts, it would perhaps be fair to consider the ways in which Panteleev’s story interacts discursively with non-fictional caregivers’ narratives in online forums for relatives of persons with dementia; see, e.g., ester66, October 4, 2015 (Azbuka zdorov’ja).

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upon his behavior as a family caregiver and its impact on Lena’s condition. Thus, Lena becomes treated not as a personality, but as a sum of her illnesses. Since my basic argument is that narratological devices are actually part of the content matter, the ideological basis of a text, I will juxtapose Panteleev’s story with Katerli’s short story In Two Voices, which offers a different perspective on the problem of narrating old age and senility. In both stories under examination, senility is connected to the theme of family relationships, as is often the case with dementia narratives. The effect of the disease on marital relations as well on relations between generations does come up implicitly, although it is not addressed as a theme of its own. In terms of gender, Katerli’s story, with its middle-aged daughter looking after her aging mother, illustrates the most common case of a family caregiver in Russian society today.14 While Panteleev’s published diary maintains a single perspective – that of the diarist – on life with dementia, Katerli’s short story, as implied by the very title, engages two perspectives, those of an elderly mother and her adult daughter who share the same household. The story begins with a first-person narrator, the voice of the daughter. She describes her mother’s conduct and her own current strained relationship with the mother after the death of her father a few years back, as follows: One can also be driven crazy by her keeping silent, by moving around with a miserable face or responding with restrained solemnity to the question how are you? – “bad.” Or by her explaining that “dEprEssion” hit again and blood pressure is rising, but that it doesn’t matter – that one would be ready to go to the other world, to father, right away, but as God doesn’t want to take her, there’s no sense or delight for anyone to live life as such a wreck. She repeats this so often that I have gotten used to it and I try not to pay attention to it, which, believe me, is not easy. […] There really isn’t any delight. Especially for me. (Ведь можно и молча довести человека до остервенения, если ходить с постоянно скорбным лицом, на вопрос, как дела, отвечать с затаенным торжеством – “плохо” и разъяснять, что – опять дЭпрЭссия и давление зашкаливает, но на это плевать – она бы хоть сегодня отправилась на тот свет, к отцу, но, поскольку уж Бог не берет, существовать в виде развалины, от которой никому никакого толку, радости мало. Это

14 According to Isupova’s sociological studies, it is taken for granted that a daughter will take care of her elderly parents or grandparents. Male caregivers are rare and they have even more difficulties in coping with the situation (Lepina 2014).

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она повторяет достаточно часто, так что я привыкла и стараюсь не обращать внимания, что, согласитесь, не легко. […] Радости действительно никакой. Особенно мне. [Katerli 2003])

In the second part of the story the perspective suddenly changes to that of Ol’ga Nikolaevna, the mother. The mother’s narrative is told by a third-person narrator, which allows emotional distancing from one’s self. Ol’ga Nikolaevna has decided to take her destiny into her own hands. She is planning to commit suicide at her late husband’s grave. Before carrying out her intention she visits a doctor for a consultation. Despite the undertone of irony – another sign of emotional detachment – her depiction of the conversation with the doctor illustrates the prevailing negative associations with old age. Furthermore, it is indicative of the confusion with medical terminology: The doctor happened to be a wise and honest woman. She told me frankly that there is nothing to be done, that when getting on in years one does not get better. Sooner or later nearly everyone has to face the three D’s: depression, dementia and delirium. Delirium means senility, which Ol’ga Nikolaevna, thank God, did not have yet and would not have under the circumstances. But she did have depression and symptoms of dementia. It was true that she forgot to switch off the gas and lost her keys. What next? (И врачиха попалась умная и честная. Прямо сказала – ничего не поделаешь, с годами человек не становится лучше. Почти каждого рано или поздно настигают три ”Д” – депрессия, деменция и делириум. Делириум – это старческое слабоумие, этого у Ольги Николаевны, слава Богу, пока еще нет и теперь уже не будет. Зато депрессия и частично деменция – есть. Ведь забывает же она выключить газ, и ключи теряла. А дальше? [ibid.])

Interestingly, the term dementia is used only to denote occasional problems with memory, while the colloquial Russian word for a female senile person, marazmatička, seems to embrace a socially dead person who has lost not only her interest in actual matters, but also her ability to think rationally: What to do with an old lady who howls out of loneliness and when even her daughter does not want to talk with her frankly, but takes her for a broken fool with whom there’s nothing to talk about?

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(Но что делать старухе, воющей от одиночества, да еще когда дочь не желает быть с ней откровенной, считает выжившей из ума маразматичкой, разговаривать с которой не о чем? [ibid.])

In both Panteleev’s and Katerli’s stories, the person with symptoms of senility is paralleled to a madwoman. As was noted, Panteleev’s wife Lena is taken to a psychiatric hospital, while the mother in Katerli’s story is haunted by the thought of being taken into an institution for the chronically ill. How does Katerli succeed in expressing the voice of a person with senility? While Panteleev’s focus is on the physiological symptoms of old age and senility in Lena’s body, i.e., her troubling corporeality, Katerli conveys thoughts and emotions from inside. She brings to the fore the conflicts, feelings of guilt and irritation, depression and anxiety together with the experience of the meaninglessness of life from the sufferer’s point of view. Ol’ga Nikolaevna, who is clearly aware of the still rather slight changes in her health and memory, not only tries to perceive herself through the eyes of her daughter Anželika but, apart from that, questions her own moral right to write in the name of her daughter: Did she do the right thing in writing so ruthlessly about everything and in the name of her daughter? She began to write for herself with a sincere craving to watch the situation from the sidelines. And she succeeded in doing so. It became clear that both of them are to blame for the rows and mutual insults. […] It isn’t important how things really are, but how the daughter perceives it, how she feels… (Хорошо ли она поступила, так безжалостно написав про все, да еще от имени дочери? Начинала ведь писать для себя самой – искренне хотела взглянуть на ситуацию со стороны. И – получилось. Стало ясно, что в ссорах и взаимных обидах виноваты обе. […] Ведь важно не то, что есть на самом деле, а то, как это воспринимает дочь, что она чувствует… [ibid.])

And indeed, Katerli’s double exposure succeeds in rendering the inner world of both protagonists, although in the end it becomes clear that the two voices are actually a product of one single mind – that of Ol’ga Nikolaevna. With the technique of double voicing, the mother actually makes herself available to herself and to the reader. In comparison with the unifying first-person perspective peculiar to diary writing in Panteleev’s story, with her double perspective Katerli manages to operate with at least two “truths” and points out at once that neither the daughter

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nor the mother alone is to be blamed for their embittered relationship. Unlike Panteleev, Katerli provides the reader with an opportunity to identify with both protagonists and, more importantly, gives room for the voice and self-definition of the old protagonist by using the possibility of narrative fiction to inhibit another person’s consciousness imaginatively. The bleak outlook on the future with the three “D’s” hovering over her destiny does not plunge the old protagonist into despair. With the help of writing she is able to increase her self-knowledge and it helps her to transform her experience of aging from that of a sufferer to a meaningful survivor.15 In Panteleev’s case it is difficult to discern any immediate therapeutic impact of keeping a diary, although the journal obviously has a redemptive role since it provides an opportunity for a public confession.

QUESTIONS INSTEAD OF CONCLUSIONS Drawing on the above analysis, would it be fair to conclude that caregiver narratives may be more harmful than helpful to our understanding and acceptance of dementia? Is there a risk that with their recurring “fabulas,” which we know all too well, they unintentionally reinforce stereotypical representations of dementia sufferers instead of challenging the stereotypical sociocultural construction of the disease? Is there not a danger that the caregiver’s close perspective reduces the diseased person to a series of losses, because “as a caregiver, you’re obsessed with what’s been lost” (Andrew Ignatieff, cited in Goldman 2017: 199)? Or, should one pay particular attention to the limited scope of one’s narratorial view and try to bring the perspective of the person with a dementing illness as much as possible into the narrative by looking for ways to speak in “our voice” instead of “my voice,” as Katerli does? Could strategies of aesthetic distancing be an effective enough tool in making the potential emotional difficulty experienced by readers of dementia narratives more bearable? One of the main questions to be posed when dealing with literary dementia narratives seems to concern the purpose of writing. Is it to expose the harsh facts of and around the disease, or is it to enhance and deepen our understanding of the experience of those inflicted with it by appealing to the reader intellectually, emotionally, aesthetically and, ultimately, to render a meaning to a life with dementia? To counterbalance the tragedy discourses that strengthen stereotypical

15 Writing has proved to be a way to reclaim social identity by bringing clarity, finding positive meaning and providing an emotional outlet. It can provide an opportunity to evoke insights about coping with dementia, too. See, e.g., Ryan/Bannister/Anas 2009.

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images of dementia, it would be useful to find ways to adopt also in non-fiction the enriching aesthetical devices characteristic of fictional representations, not forgetting the importance of ethical concerns when dealing with the subject. This is not to say, however, that realistic literary representations of dementia that force the reader to leave their comfort zone are not welcome. Quite the contrary; critical, honest, even embarrassing approaches may bring forward new kinds of empathy and openness to difference, as well as a desire to learn more about the backgrounds and reasons behind unique individual experiences and ways of being with a dementing illness.

REFERENCES Azbuka zdorov’ja [n.d.]: “Starčeskij marazm ili bolezn’ Al’cgejmera – opyt uchoda za bol’nymi.” https://azbyka.ru/zdorovie/forum/threads/starcheskijmarazm-ili-bolezn-alcgejmera-opyt-uxoda-za-bolnymi.38 [accessed June 10, 2019]. Berrios, Germán E. (2005): “Dementia: A Historical Overview”, in: Burns, Alistair/O’Brien, John/Ames, David (eds.): Dementia. 3rd ed. London, 5-17. Bitenc, Rebecca Anna (2012): “Representations of Dementia in Narrative Fiction”, in: Cohen, Esther/Toker, Leona/Konsonni, Manuela/Dror, Otniel E. (eds.): Knowledge and Pain. Amsterdam/New York, 305-328. Feder, Lillian (1980): Madness in Literature. Princeton, N.J. Felman, Shoshana (2003): Writing and Madness. Palo Alto, CA. Freeman, Mark (2008): “Beyond Narrative: Dementia’s Tragic Promise”, in: Hydén, Lars-Christer/Brockmeier, Jens (eds.): Health, Illness and Culture: Broken Narratives. New York/London, 169-184. Goldman, Marlene (2017): Forgotten: Narratives of Age-Related Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease in Canada. Montreal et al. Hassam, Andrew (1987): “Reading Other People’s Diaries”, in: University of Toronto Quarterly 56/3, Spring, 435-442. Hassam, Andrew (1993): Writing and Reality: A Study of Modern British Diary Fiction. Westport, CT/London. Herskovits, Elizabeth (1995): “Struggling over Subjectivity: Debates About the ‘Self’ and Alzheimer’s Disease”, in: Medical Anthropology Quarterly. New Series 9/2, June: Cultural Contexts of Ageing and Health, 146-164. Hydén, Lars-Christer (2014): “Cutting Brussels Sprouts: Collaboration Involving Persons with Dementia”, in: Journal of Aging Studies 29, 115-123.

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Hydén, Lars-Christer/Örulv, Linda (2009): “Narrative Identity in Alzheimer’s Disease: A Case Study”, in: Journal of Aging Studies 2, 205-214. Katerli, Nina (2003): “Na dva golosa. Rasskaz”, in: Zvezda 6. http://magazines. russ.ru/zvezda/2003/6/kater-pr.html [accessed February 4, 2018]. Katz, Stephen/McHugh, Kevin (2010): “Age, Meaning, and Place: Cultural Narratives and Retirement Communities”, in: Cole, Thomas R./Ray, Ruth E./ Kastenbaum, Robert (eds.): A Guide to Humanistic Studies of Ageing. Baltimore, 271-292. Kuhn-Osius, K. Eckhard (1981): “Making Loose Ends Meet: Private Journals in the Public Realm”, in: The German Quarterly 54/2, March, 166-176. Lepina, Marina (2014): “‘Vozmožnost’ vyrvat’sja iz doma: kak vytjanyt’ togo, kto tjanet bol’nogo’. Sociolog, docent Instituta Demografii NIU VŠĖ Ol’ga Isupova rasskazyvaet ob uchode za bol’nymi rodstvennikami”, in: Miloserdie.Ru: pravoslavnyj portal o blagotvoritel’nosti. 27.08. https://www. miloserdie.ru/article/vozmozhnost-vyrvatsya-iz-doma-kak-vytyanut-togokto-tyanet-bolnogo/ [accessed August 7, 2018]. LiveLib [n.d.]: “Nina Katerli – o pisatele”. https://www.livelib.ru/author/709nina-katerli [accessed June 10, 2019]. Lock, Margaret (2013): The Alzheimer Conundrum: Entanglements of Dementia and Aging. Princeton. Martynjuk, Elena (2014): “Rossijan sprosili, kak oni otnosjatsja k demencii”, in: Moskovskie apteki: farmacevtičeskaja gazeta, 01.10. http://mosapteki.ru/ material/rossiyan-sprosili-kak-oni-otnosyatsya-k-demencii-4330 [accessed June 10, 2019]. Mir novostej (2017): “Bor’ba s gipertoniej vedet k slaboumiju?”, in: Mir novostej, 15.04. https://mirnov.ru/zdorove/borba-s-gipertoniei-vedet-k-slaboumiyu. html [accessed June 10, 2019]. Ovsjannikova, Natal’ja V. (2011): “Starost’ v sovremennoj kul’ture”, in: Naučno-metodičeskij žurnal XX vek: itogi prošlogo i problemy nastojaščego. Periodičeskoe naučnoe izdanie. Penza, 34-40. Panteleev, Michail (2000): “Vse prochodit”, in: Ural 4, 149-174. Paperno, Irina (2004): “What Can Be Done with Diaries?”, in: The Russian Review 63, October, 561-573. Remizova, Marija (2000): “‘Sliškom čelovečeskoe’. Nekotorye razmyšlenija o literature non-fiction”, in: Novyj Mir 12. http://magazines.russ.ru/novyi_mi/ 2000/12/remiz.html [accessed February 22, 2018]. Repenko, Nika (2018): “‘Štoby ne bespokoilsja, kormjat galoperidolom’. Kak v Rossii pomogajut ljudjam s demenciej”, in: Nastojaščee vremja, 26.11.

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https://www.currenttime.tv/a/dementia-galoperidol/29626447.html [accessed June 10, 2019]. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith (2002): “The Story of ‘I’: Illness and Narrative Identity”, in: Narrative 10/1, January, 9-26. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith (2006): “What Can Narrative Theory Learn from Illness Narratives?”, in: Literature and Medicine 25/2, Fall, 241-254. Ryan, Ellen B./Bannister, Karen A./Anas, Ann P. (2009): “The Dementia Narrative: Writing to Reclaim Social Identity”, in: Journal of Aging Studies 23, 145-157. Starikova, Marija M. (2011): “Stereotipy starosti i starenija: sociologija i social’naja rabota”, in: Vestnik Nižegorodskogo universiteta im. N. I. Lobačevskogo. Serija Social’nye nauki, 43-50. Tass (2018): “Žizn’ na predele: kto pomožet, esli u blizkogo demencija”, in: TASS. 20.08. https://tass.ru/obschestvo/5444978 [accessed June 10, 2019]. U-mama.ru (2012): “Starčeskoe slaboumie u babuški – nužen sovet, podderžka.” https://www.u-mama.ru/forum/family/health/357217/2.html#mid_9000201 [accessed 30 July, 2018]. Zeilig, Hannah (2011): “The Critical Use of Narrative and Literature in Gerontology”, in: International Journal of Ageing and Later Life 6/2, 7-37. Zeilig, Hannah (2014): “Dementia as a Cultural Metaphor”, in: The Gerontologist 54/2, 258-267. Zimmermann, Martina (2017): “Alzheimer’s Disease Metaphors as Mirror and Lens to the Stigma of Dementia”, in: Literature and Medicine 35/1, Spring, 71-97.

Traumatic Aging in Borisav Stanković and Miloš Crnjanski The Symptomatic Body in the Modern and Expressionist View on Soul and Society Ingeborg Jandl

Sofka, darling! Beauty and youth are ephemeral. (Sofka, sinko! Lepota i mladost za vreme je.) Borisav Stanković: Impure Blood1 The past is a threatening, dreary abyss; whatever disappears in this darkness, ceases to exist, and has never existed at all. (Prošlost je grozan, mutan bezdan; što u taj sumrak ode, ne postoji više i nije nikad ni postajalo.) Miloš Crnjanski: Migrations2

INTRODUCTION Symptoms of aging represent the main naturalist elements in Borisav Stanković’s modern realistic novel Impure Blood (Nečista krv, 1910) and in a similar way lend anti-aesthetic notions to Miloš Crnjanski’s expressionistic novel Migrations (Seobe, 1929). Aging frames these two Serbian texts through a concept

1

Stanković 1981: 77. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are the author’s [I.J.].

2

Crnjanski 2008: 83.

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of ugliness and degeneration. Furthermore, aging is linked to an inner state of helplessness and resignation, which the physical symptoms seem to illustrate. 3 Far too early for their biological age, the two young female characters fall into apathy and seem to become old at once, which is motivated by traumatic circumstances in their family life. In the first text, Impure Blood, female aging is a reaction to the husband’s disrespect, whereas in the second text, it accompanies a hysteric state of “between the pregnancies” (when female functions are not needed). In both novels, corporal and mental prostration are caused by the fading fascination for the respective characters. This indicates an inversion of the common principle: it is not aging that would lead to ugliness and disregard, but disrespect that causes ugly characters and physical traces of old age. Beyond individual aging, both texts refer to the phenomenon of aging in order to illustrate a pathological dynamic within the family.4 Reading Impure Blood as a degeneration novel, Riccardo Nicolosi draws the connection between corporal anti-aesthetics and continual failures within the family throughout generations, after which he finally states that the desperate situations lead “from one form of degeneration to another” (see Nicolosi 2007: 174). Indeed, Stanković’s novel opens with a reflection on the great-grandfathers and the grandfathers, about whom there was “still more left to tell” (“više se znalo i pričalo”) (Stanković 1981: 9) than about Sofka and her mother. The introduction anticipates the inevitable fate of a patriarchal society, in which ancestors destroy the heritage of their children. This will also cause Sofka’s traumatic aging. Similar tendencies become visible in Crnjanski’s novel, which also reports the end of the Isakovič family rather than their origins or future.

THE SYMPTOMATIC BODY AND TRAUMATIC AGING Traumatic aging differs from the usual experience of growing older in that there is the perception of a sharp discontinuity in life. While biological aging constitutes a slow process that implies personal development, traumatic aging appears at once, confronting the individual with a gap that separates them from their own past.

3

The primary importance of showing compared to telling, which Dušan Marinković suggests as typical of Stanković’s style, lends an essential basis also to his symptomatic writing (see Marinković 2010: 203-204).

4

Robert Hodel connects this dynamic to that in Zola’s novelistic cycle of the RougonMacquart novels (see Hodel 2008: 440).

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Nevertheless, even the awareness of aging per se is often perceived as drastic change. Following Ricœur, Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl discusses literary contexts in which female characters reflect on their experience of biological aging that counteracts their physical (self-)recognition (see Gramshammer-Hohl 2016: 38). On the level of aesthetics, even Lessing warns of breaking the identity of characters by including bodily distortions into their sculptural portrayal (see Lessing 2012: 78). Adapting these findings to the given context of traumatic aging, the discontinuity felt, triggered by traumatic events, leads to bodily symptoms that reinforce this experience of non-(self-)recognition, so that mental and physical processes amplify each other reciprocally. Physical signs of aging are clearly discernible in both novels. Stanković’s Sofka grows up as a protected child of an ancient Chorbaji family. Even though the family has lost large sections of their properties and regardless of her father’s conflicts with her grandparents, Sofka is treated kindly by everyone and loved, especially by her father. [Sofka] knew that she would one day become a beauty; not a common one, blooming with force, but one of those others, the raving, higher and richer ones, who are very rare, who do not fade but become increasingly brighter and more intoxicating, and who with every step and every movement radiate their charm. ([Sofka] je znala da kod nje neće biti ona obična svakidašnja lepota, kada se postane devojkom, i koja se sastoji u bujnosti i nabreknutosti snage, nego ona duga, istinska, viša, jača, koja se ne rađa često, ne vene brzo, sve lepša i zanosnija biva i od koje se pri hodu i pokretu oseća miris njen. [Stanković 1981: 30])

Notwithstanding that Sofka is right with her lucky fantasies in the beginning, she ends up emaciated and ugly: Her once slim and elastic shape is now entirely distorted, and her back is curved like a hump. Her black eyes are sunken, her nose long and pointed […]. She walks slowly, never hastening, with insecure steps, her hands crossed over the chest, where her suit is therefore always crumpled and dirty. One never sees her eat anything. And she actually hardly eats. She merely drinks coffee […]. (Nekadašnja njena tanka i vitka polovina izvila se, te joj kao grba štrči i odudara od nje. Crne joj oči ušle, nos joj se izvukao i utančao […]. Ide polako. Nikada se ne žuri, već nesigurnim koracima s uvučenim rukama u nedra, te joj košulja na grudima uvek nabrana,

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skupljena i prljava. Nećete je nikad videti da jede. Gotovo nikad ništa. Samo što pije kafu […]. [ibid.: 168])

Having conserved her raving beauty until her mid-twenties, Sofka suffers from two traumatic experiences that cause her immediate aging: firstly, she is espoused to a twelve-year-old child, Tomča, and thereby, furthermore, declassed from a Chorbaji family to a farmer’s. This is all the more shameful since Sofka is exposed to the whole village during the ceremonies and expected to spend the wedding night with her groom’s father, which she only serendipitously manages to prevent. Bravely taking her fate into her own hands, Sofka recovers from this first traumatic experience, arranges with her mother-in-law as well as the domestics and slowly even becomes fond of her young husband. Already pregnant with their first child, Sofka, however, faces a second shock, when her father comes to visit the young couple and destroys the harmony, jaundiced by their obvious wealth and happiness. This second event marks the beginning of Sofka’s final decay. Due to her father’s visit, Tomča finds out the truth about the financial background of their marriage, and, as a consequence, loses his respect for his wife. Sofka’s aging and physical ugliness is not the direct result of her father’s ominous visit, but of her loss of Tomča’s childlike love. Humiliated and beaten by her husband, Sofka adopts his increasing bad manners of drinking and neglecting the children. The naturalistically depicted aging of Sofka’s hitherto indestructibly pure, female body expresses not only her experience of trauma but, thereby, also a change in her personality. Aging is thus a visible marker, underlining the irreversible loss of her inner qualities. A similar change in character accompanied by bodily symptoms can be noticed in Crnjanski’s novel Migrations; Lady Dafina’s vitality and beauty are linked to her pregnancies and so is her instant bodily decay after giving birth. Her changing physical state can only be explained as a symptomatic reaction to the relationship with her husband, who regularly passes longer periods of time abroad due to his position in the army. When she was expecting a child, her skin […], laugh, breath and eyes were gleaming harmoniously, something was shining from inside her. Pregnant, round and incredibly happy during these months, she became weak, ugly and silent after childbirth and hard on the servants and maids. (Koža njena […], smeh i dah, kao i njen pogled, imali su neki gladak sjaj što je svetleo u njoj, dok je nosila čedo u sebi. Teška i puna, ludo vesela u tim mesecima, ona je posle

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porođaja slabila i ružnjala, postajala tiha, a okrutna prema slugama i sluškinjama. [Crnjanski 2008: 9])

Regardless of the modern exaggerating of naturalistic elements, Lady Dafina is a typical representative of a female hysteric well known from realism. She also dies as one of them: after her affair with her husband’s brother, she becomes ill. Again, symptomatically, her poor health is linked to her femininity: “And this is how Lady Dafina fell, her hands trembling in the dark, the first day right after her adultery, and thereby hit the fruit of her womb” (“Tako pade i gospoža Dafina, tresnuvši rukama u mrak, odmah prvog dana preljube, povredivši u sebi porod”) (ibid.: 60). Having lost blood for two weeks, Lady Dafina dies; in the meantime, she has aged years. “On account of this dreadful evening, her eyes stayed open wide, great and blue, but apart from this she had completely changed, she had become haggard and aged” (“Od one strašne večeri ostadoše joj oči razrogačene, velike, modre, inače se beše sva promenila, sasušila, zbabala”) (ibid.: 61). Migrations contains further contexts that refer to aging as an unaesthetic transformation, e.g., when Dafina’s husband meets the old Duchess of Württemberg. Isakovič had continuously dreamt of her as his eternal, first romantic love, even though he had never been able to reach her officially, due the class distinctions. The scene of their renewed encounter in an impersonal, official context is described across a couple of pages that focus in detail on symptoms of her unaesthetic aging. The discovery of the Duchess’s old age, but also of her bad-taste attempt to hide wrinkles and other irregularities under a large quantity of makeup, mean the end of Isakovič’s dream. The chapter is not without reason entitled: “The past is a threatening, dreary abyss; whatever disappears in this darkness, ceases to exist, and has never existed at all” (“Prošlost je grozan, mutan bezdan; što u taj sumrak ode, ne postoji više i nije nikad ni postajalo”) (ibid.: 83). Even though Isakovič has been contemplating the aged Duchess with disgust, it is she who brings up the topic of aging: “I would not have recognized you […], you have changed and aged enormously” (“Ne bih Vas bila poznala […] toliko se ste promenili i toliko ste ostareli”) (ibid.: 88). Although the further sections of the paper will focus exclusively on traumatic aging, the example given is important, because it outlines aging as a category of othering. Furthermore, in this passage, the gender arrangement is contrasted by the power relations. Unless this conversation had been taking place between the soldier Isakovič, subordinate to her, and her as a duchess, never would she have dared to wonder loudly about his old age.

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This focus on male aging is also remarkable for another reason, namely that aging is, as pointed out by Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl, more often attributed to women (see Gramshammer-Hohl 2014: 9). Even apart from the Duchess’s remark, Crnjanski extensively describes male aging by physical traces of old age and this is true for Stanković’s unaesthetic depiction of Sofka’s father as well. Nevertheless, this does not seem to be specific for the Serbian novel but for modernity in general and especially for naturalism. Male aging is prominently depicted also in other contexts, such as Bunin’s The Gentleman from San Francisco (Gospodin iz San-Francisco, 1915), but all of this happens within a tradition of “degeneration novels” that has its beginnings much earlier, namely in realism (see Nicolosi 2018).

AGING AND AESTHETICS The physiognomic imprint of inner states into the outer appearance follows the traditional aesthetic concept broadly discussed by German intellectuals of the 18th century. Between popular psychology and literary aesthetics, this discussion on the symptomatic visibility of psychological traits includes emotional patterns as well as affective states. Consensually, the thinkers within this discourse and even before assume that a “bad” character is connected to an “ugly” physiognomy, whereas outer “beauty” originates from a “good” soul (see Marfutova 2017). Lessing contributes to this discussion by his observation that the facial expression of uncomfortable feelings such as grief, anger or fear would lead to an unfavorable physiognomics and thus run into danger of being misinterpreted as imprints of negative character qualities. In the traditional aesthetics of visual arts, mimesis of these expressions is avoided: in contrast to literature, where affects and bodily symptoms are conceptualized within a framework of continual change, they would trigger too strong and static an expression in spatial media (Lessing 2012: 78). Stanković does not hide the grotesque traits of his heroine’s suffering; he even shows them as persistent irreversible physical marks, which involves an aesthetic rapprochement to visual arts. This is not primarily to be explained by an overcoming of traditional aesthetics, but rather by a realistic depiction of trauma: Sofka’s surpassing of her emotional thresholds involves the loss of her formerly pure identity, and her unrecognizable, haggard body appropriately illustrates her new psychological traits – her apathetic state and her violent comportment.

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Lady Dafina’s death at the end of Crnjanski’s novel prevents the ugly state of her physical and mental illness to be imprinted in the reader’s memory as prominently as that of the traumatically broken Sofka. However, in contrast to classic heroines such as Anna Karenina, whose death prevents the psychologically clearly defined traumatic condition from entailing physical signs of aging, Lady Dafina’s degeneration is indeed both mental and bodily. Nedžad Ibrišimović reflects upon the fact that Sofka, on the contrary, does not die and compares her final condition to a long state of dying: “Without shouting and crying Sofka accepts dying, her life fades, and a long dying begins” (“Sofka bez krika i jauka pristaje na svoju smrt, nestaje života, a nastaje dugo umiranje”) (Ibrišimović 1981: 7). The non-occurrence of Sofka’s death is, like a minus-device, of high significance, because it produces an imposing, unaesthetic mental monument of traumatic aging and destruction. Death seems thus to be one possible solution to prevent traumatic aging. Still, Crnjanski does not renounce the unaesthetic via Lady Dafina’s life coming to an end, as this very element through repeated and extensive retelling becomes part of a traumatic vision. Servants, children, husband, lover – each of them is haunted by the visual impression of the heroine’s grotesque corpse with her leitmotif blue eyes that stay wide open: This gaze was the only thing he had left of her, and he was never able to forget the color of her eyes. When she breathed her last breath, he had the impression of seeing the wide sky. As in his brother’s dream, he saw, beside himself with fear and grief, blue circles, and in them a star. (Taj pogled mu ostade jedino, i njegovu boju nikad više nije mogao da zaboravi. U izdisanju njegove snage, koja više nije mogla da govori, njemu se učini kao da se pojavljuje visoko nebo. Kao i njegov brat, u snu, i on je nad njom video, van sebe od straha i žalosti, plave krugove i u njima zvezdu. [Crnjanski 2008: 150-151])

Lady Dafina’s grotesque, dead and rapidly aged body, as also Sofka’s static life with brutal comportment against her children, are similar in their effect: they become symbolic of the traumatic relationships within the whole extended family and, furthermore, represent a trigger by which the trauma is passed on to their husbands,5 children and to the following generations of their kinship.

5

Even though preventing her aging, Anna Karenina’s suicide becomes a trigger for Vronskij’s traumatization, which is described, in contrast to Anna’s mental suffering before her suicide, not only by his loss of vital forces and emotional health but also in

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MARRIAGE, INCEST AND GENDER RELATIONS BETWEEN GENERATIONS The most prominent and widely discussed traumatic moment in Impure Blood is the implication of Sofka’s marriage that she is supposed to pass the wedding night with her father-in-law. In view of this very event, she understands the reality of life in the village: At once Sofka understood the huge number of children that were born, […] and why they were so similar to each other. It was as if everyone from the whole village had the same father and mother […]. And all these terrible stories, according to which the farmers married their sons when they were still children, to have more farmhands, and that they chose young women for them, who would be ready to fulfill any task. (Tada Sofki bi jasno ono silno rađanje dece, […] i ona onolika sličnost među njima. Svi, iz celog sela, ko da su od jednoga oca, matere […]. I onda one jezovite priče, za koje se u varoši da bi što više radne snage imali, ženili svoje sinove još kao decu, uzimali za njih odrasle devojke, već dosta u godinama, sposobne za svaki rad. [Stanković 1981: 139])

Even though Sofka will be an exception and manage to avert this duty, the topic of incest is very important within the novel. Incestuous relations between fathers-in-law and daughters-in-law are outlined as the norm for relationships within the rural population: “And ever since this custom was passed on from one generation to the next. No one accounted this as abuse or a sin; not even later, when the sons grew up. This was nothing. They would have their own daughtersin-law…” (“I to se radi oduvek, s kolena na koleno. Niko to ne smatra za uvredu, greh; ni docnije, kada sinovi porastu. Ništa to nije. Imaće i oni, sinovi, kad, imaće i oni svojih snaja…”) (ibid.). The given tradition implies a shift of generations: marriages between immature boys and too old, motherlike wives, and similarly, relationships of their traumatized and aged fathers to young women, to whom they are not officially engaged, are not motivated by love. They are a result of the system, in which the older generation oppresses that of their children. Within this system, male aging implies a gain in power, as men one day will choose their daughters-in-law, while their wives will be supposed to fulfill their duties in the house and stand

terms of instant physical aging: “His [Vronskij’s] aged face visibly expressed his suffering and had become stony” (“Постаревшее и выражавшее страдание лицо его [Вронского] казалось окаменелым”) (Tolstoj 1982: 371).

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aside to a younger woman, once the husband has arranged for the son to be married. However, Stanković represents men not as strong and successful, but as weak and insecure. Sofka’s father-in-law’s shyness towards her is the result of his marriage to a wife who has passed her young days as the lover of his father. “[Sofka was] right on one thing: that he was now tormenting his wife with questions about how she had lived with her father-in-law, his father, when he was still a little child” (“[Sofka je] bila sigurna u to: da on sada svoju ženu muči, ispituje, da mu ona prizna, kako je zaista živela sa svojim svekrom, njegovim ocem, dok je on bio mali, dečko”) (ibid.: 142). And, furthermore, Landlord Marko, her father-in-law, is even afraid of intimacy with Sofka: “But the worst thing for her was to hear the fear in Marko’s voice […] his fear of them leaving him alone with her” (“A najgore joj bi kada se oseti kako u glasu Markovu […] zvuči i strah, strah, što su ga ostavili samog”) (ibid.: 139). Even though he is a married man as old as her father, Marko’s longing for Sofka is more pitiful than cruel, because Sofka is obviously the woman of his choice, and yet he is not able to obtain her: And Sofka heard him wheezing and writhing, focussing his strength in order to run with head and shoulders against the door to open it. But he is not able to do so. He falls. His hands, elbows, and knees do not obey him, because the moaning of his wife chokes him, so that he is – as if corded to the door – unable to pass the threshold. (I Sofka ču kako on krklja i valja se, upinje, napreže, da bar glavom, ramenima gurne iz vrata, otvori ih i uđe k njoj. Ali ne može. Pada. Ruke, laktovi, i kolena ga izdaju, jer ga ono ženio cviljenje kao neko uže oko vrata steže, ne da mu i ne pušta ga da se digne, pređe prag. [ibid.: 143])

A composition of inappropriate male desire for a younger woman occurs in Crnjanski’s Migrations, when Vuk Isakovič, the main character, returns from his military expedition. Aged, betrayed by his wife and suffering from her unforeseen death without any reconciliation, he realizes the female forms of his servant’s youngest daughter: “When he left the room, he realized that Ananij’s youngest daughter turned around and leaned into his direction. She was a broadhipped and full-bosomed girl” (“Najposle, kad iziđoše, vide kako se oko njega vrti i saginje najmlađa Ananijeva kći. Jedno kukato i grudato devojče”) (Crnjanski 2008: 179). Similar visions repeat several times during this very evening, and it remains unclear whether the situations are real or a phantasma created by his

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obsession. Isakovič feels old and young at once, realizing how the girl stimulates his fantasies, while he is trying to contain himself: In this moment, by the pale light of the night light, Isakovič realized her naked legs and the white skin of her legs under her knees, and no matter how old and weak, nearly dead, he considered himself, he felt now at once a new energy and force coming up inside him. […] And when she came again, bending herself forward and leaning against the bed, with her hips and breasts, he coughed throatily, astounded. Discomposed, he sent her away. He felt like a grain deep inside the earth, sprouting when the rain falls onto it, blood surged to his face, to one bright and crystal spot of his mind, the last one that stayed clear in his thoughts, calm and immortal, in the future. (Pri slaboj svetlosti žiška tad, Isakovič vide njene gole noge i bilo meso pod kolenima, i onako star, iznemogao, već mrtav kako mišljaše, oseti kako sav zadrignu i nabreknu. […] A kad ona opet priđe, saginjući se, obilazeći oko postelje, svojim okruglim bedrima i grudima, on se muklo nakašlja i prenerazi. Uzvrpoljivši se, reče joj da odlazi. Oseti kako mu se, kao ta kiša, na neko seme u dubini zemlje, što klija, sliva krv u glavi na jednu blještavu, zvezdanu tačku uma, poslednju što mu ostade čista u mislima, nepomična i neprolazna, u budućnosti. [ibid.: 179-180])

Marko’s and Isakovič’s obsession for girls who could be their daughters can also be read as an effect of their midlife crisis. While Marko’s obsession for Sofka will destroy his life, because he has bought but could not possess her, Isakovič’s circumstances already are unpromising at the point when he comes to see the servant’s daughter as attractive. Her stimulating presence seems to lend new forces to him, and as he does not permit himself – in contrast to many other men in the same novel – to give in to his sexual fantasies, they even seem to strengthen him to tackle his future plan of emigrating to Russia.

THE FATHERS’ RETURN AND AGING Incestuous relations criticized as a common practice within the farmer’s milieu are in the same novel also visible within Sofka’s merchant family, albeit in a more subtle and individualized way. Peter Thiergen and Riccardo Nicolosi explain the girl’s intermediately good relationship to her father-in-law, Landlord Marko, with her close binding to her own father (see Nicolosi 2007: 170-172; Thiergen 1984). Particularly during her childhood, Sofka’s ties to Effendi Mita are outlined as special. The distant and patriarchal husband, who tries to hide the

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decline of his heritage and passes increasingly longer periods of time abroad in Turkey, maintains a warm relationship to his daughter. As a result, the heroine’s mother is put into the backdrop, just as her mother-in-law is later in the novel; both of them stand aside, slowly aging and fading away. Only once does Sofka’s mother seriously try to protect her daughter and for that matter even opposes her husband, disagreeing with his decision for the inappropriate marriage (Stanković 1981: 58-59). By her role as “daddy’s little princess,” Sofka has an intermediate function within the distant relationship between her parents. “Never could she [the mother] hug and kiss Sofka enough, because it was only thanks to her child, to her Sofka, that he, her husband, his love, returned to her” (“Ne bi mogla Sofke da se nagrli i da je se naljubi, jer eto njoj, svome detetu, Sofki, ima da zablagodari što joj se opet vratio on, njen muž, njegova ljubav”) (ibid.: 25). This comprises also the sexual relation between the parents,6 because it was only during the family trips that he “unbraided her hair and still singing, hugged her and kissed her face and her lips” (“rasplitao joj kose i jednako pevajući grlio bi je i ljubio u lice i usta”) (ibid.). There is no tense mother-daughter relationship, only the relation between the parents and Sofka’s part in it. This relation changes with the father’s return after his financial failure, when his unaesthetic outer appearance and his obvious aging illustrate his physical decay and change of character: his aggressive manners, the egoistic decision on Sofka’s fate and his contentious behavior show that he has changed entirely. His beloved daughter has become an object to him that he is going to sell for his own benefit, even though he is not going to resolve his desperate situation in doing so. The situation of his returning after a long period of absence underlines the physical and moral change to this character. Effendi Mita becomes visible as a discontinuous subject of two separate states, one alienating the other. Only Sofka’s rationalizing makes her accept this estranged father-figure as her own father, for whom she is obliged to feel sympathy and compassion: Never had Sofka seen him like that. And the worst of it for her was to feel that now she, her marriage, her pain and misery had all gone. And that he was now here, his misfortune and his dark fate. He paced back and forth. He was out of breath. His knuckles were cracking, his head, already drained, old, wrinkled and shaven, was trembling.

6

Marija Grujić points out the asexual concept of marriage within Sofka’s family, according to which Effendi Mita married his wife because of her classical beauty and without sexual desire for her (see Grujić 2008: 233).

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(Nikada ga Sofka ne vide takvog. I što najstrašnije bi, to je što oseti kako je sada ona, njena udaja, njen bol, jad, sve otišlo. A da je on, on sad tu, njegova nesreća i crna sudbina. Hodao je. Nije mogao da se nadiše. Prsti su mu pucali, glava njegova, već uska, stara, sparuškana i obrijana, sva se tresla. [ibid.: 78])

Even though the long-awaited return of the father means Sofka’s dream having turned into a nightmare, she will, because of her sympathy with his poor state, sacrifice her own fortune for his: “Sofka felt a strong and violent pain of remorse. If only she had known, never would she have tried to resist […]” (“Sofka poče osećati jak, težak bol. Čisto se pokaja. Da je samo znala, ne bi ona ni pokušavala da se protivi […]”) (ibid.: 81). Sofka’s compassion for her father is inappropriate, as his request is directed against her happiness in life. The heroine is, on the one hand, afraid of his new and violent appearance; on the other hand, she feels the persisting emotional attachment to him from childhood. Her emotional reaction thus resembles the sympathy of victims for their abusers. Even in this new situation, where the mother tries to protect her adult daughter, Sofka constitutes an emotional link between the parents. She tries to justify her father’s behavior, but at the same time, she accesses her own feelings of fear only indirectly by her empathic reaction to her mother’s emotions: “But Sofka was most confused and wondered about her, the mother. She was not, as all the other times he would leave the house, upset or frightened. […] And she spent the entire day upstairs, without coming down or showing herself, as if she were ill” (“Ali što Sofku najviše zbuni, začudi, to je bila ona, mati. Nije, kao drugi put, pri takvim njegovim ponovnim odlascima od kuće, bila onako uzrujana, uplašena. […] I ceo dan tamo, gore, presede. Ne siđe, ne pojavi se, kao da odbolova”) (ibid.: 62). While the return of Sofka’s father brings bad luck to his family, Crnjanski’s Vuk Isakovič is himself the one to suffer the most by his returning: unlike Sofka and her mother, Isakovič’s family has entirely changed, so that he returns as a stranger. What drove Vuk Isakovič out of his mind in the first days after his wife’s death was the terrible sensation that her death had come so unexpectedly, that she had died completely separately from him, that she had vanished, that she was nowhere now, and that he would return home, if he returned at all, without ever seeing her again. (Ono sto je Vuka Isakoviča toliko izbezumilo tih prvih dana, posle ženine smrti, bio je taj grozni osećaj da je to došlo tako iznenada, da je ona umrla bez ikakve veze sa njim, da je

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nestala nekuda, da je sad nigde nema, a da se vrati kući, ako se uopšte vrati, da je više nikad neće videti. [Crnjanski 2008: 168])

Isakovič anticipates that his return from the army will mean that he finds himself in a completely new situation. His wife’s death is all the more difficult to bear, as she has in the meantime betrayed him with his brother and even dissolved their marriage to marry him. Besides his grief about her death, returning means for him facing an existential crisis, because he is not awaited by the loving family he had left. He is aware of having lost his youth and his personal fortune by dedicating all his forces to his career in the army. Different from Sofka’s father, Isakovič recognizes his fault and therefore resignedly bears the consequences without blaming anyone. His failure has thus brought him wisdom and in addition to his own mistakes, he reflects on the negative dynamics within society. Finding his child in poor health makes him finally realize the misery of his soldiers and the whole regiment: He understands that he has returned from an idle mission. That he has waged war Lord only knows where and in vain. He feels that his wife has abandoned him with a weak, unhealthy child. Thinking of the war, he understands that no one cares about them, that they exploit them, herding them around the world and slaughtering them like cattle. (Shvati da se vratio sa uzaludnog posla. Da je ratovao bog te pita gde i nizašta. Oseti da ga je žena ostavila sa nejakom, bolesnom decom. Zagledan u vojne, shvati da za njih ne mare, da ih varaju, da ih teraju po svetu kao stoku i da ih kolju. [ibid.: 171])

On the occasion of his return, Isakоvič realizes his own aging: “[…] he felt very old and weak when he left Osjek, and the next day, Isakovič turned back home without any desire for his life to go on” (“[…] sasvim star i nemoćan se osećao, pri izlasku iz Oseka, sutradan, Isakovič, vraćajući se kući, bez ikakve želja da dalje živi”) (ibid.: 175). Traumatic aging is thus not exclusively the fate of Stanković’s and Crnjanski’s female characters, but also of the male ones. For the young women, aging means not only losing their sex appeal but also their sexual interest. Especially for Sofka’s mother-in-law, aging is linked to irrational feelings of remorse that leads to her confusion and death; and, more appropriately, Lady Dafina’s aging, illness and death are connected to her feelings of remorse, too. These examples seem to show the main difference in coping with trauma that is, even though not exclusively, linked to gender. Isakovič feels attracted to his servant’s daughter but is also conscious of her youth, which makes him realize

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his own aging. He does not give in to his sexual fantasies, which at the same time lend to him positive energy and advance his dreams of the future, his decision to emigrate to Russia that is linked to his dream of having a great number of offspring: And at the same time, […] thoughts of leaving, of going somewhere, to Russia, kept springing up […], to leave after so many months of wandering […], like a star, the last grain of his former youth. […] The grain that, even in old age, had the power to sprout and give birth to beings that will transcend time […]. (I dok se mu, u duši, […] jednako ponavljahu misli o odlasku, o odlasku nekud, u Rusiju, […] posle toliko meseci tumaranja, […] kao neka zvezda, poslednje zrno nekadanje mladosti. […] Zrno, što je i u njegovoj starosti sačuvalo u sebi moć da proklija i nadnese nova bića nad vremena […]. [ibid.: 180])

In these fantasies, the new generations of successors that will be born in Russia are supposed to return to Serbia, in order to crowd Isakovič’s home. It is thus the dream of rebuilding their entirely lost home by transcending the individual life to a continuation through descendants. Sofka’s father, conscious of his hopeless situation, also addresses Sofka, as the younger generation, but thereby does not project a continuation, in contrast to Isakovič, but rather revenge for his own misfortune: He had himself once thought that beauty and youth were the greatest and most important thing, and this had only led him to this misery and this poverty; had he thought differently, he never would have married her mother, never would have suffered for it so, never would have agonized and wandered, and even now, when he had conceded to come home to them, instead of gratitude, this is what he gets! (On je sam to tako nekada mislio da je lepota i mladost najpreča, najveća, sada evo zbog toga došao dotle, do siromaštva; a da nije tako mislio, ne bi njenu mater uzeo, ne bi zbog toga ovoliko pretrpeo, ovoliko se namučio, potucao i još, sada, kada se smilovao i rešio da se k njima kući ponova vrati, a ono mesto blagodarnosti, gle šta! [Stanković 1981: 77])

Like the daughter of Isakovič’s servant, the young and beautiful Sofka serves as a contrast character to outline the decay of her aged and shabby father. Her own fate will further illustrate her responding to his claim, i.e., her continuation of his destiny without prospects.

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Gramshammer-Hohl’s observation that homecoming novels in many cases do not lead to a circular plot (Gramshammer-Hohl 2017: 199) can be stated also regarding the male protagonists of Impure Blood and Migrations. More specifically, Isakovič’s return is countered by his decision to leave, but even this decision means a new search for circularity, which Isakovič could not find himself, but is now trying to find by relying on future generations. Effendi Mita’s return, on the contrary, seems to be circular at first glance, but turns out not to be at the second, because of Mita’s personal transformation. By his return, he himself interrupts circularity that has during his absence been preserved by his family. For both novels, homecoming constitutes, even though within the narrative of a physical return after a long journey, rather an inner concept, which is why it is destroyed not by an impossibility of return but on the level of broken dreams and the estrangement of characters. While male characters try to avert their fate by changing their surrounding situations, Isakovič by emigrating and Sofka’s father by appealing to his family, the female characters fully internalize their experience and suffer inside. This difference allows the male characters to avoid being hit with their trauma at the same point as the female characters, who cannot prevent their symptomatic reaction of aging, illness and death.

ANCESTORS AND TRANSGENERATIONAL TRAUMA IN A PATRIARCHAL SOCIETY It is only at first glance that connections between individual and transgenerational trauma seem to be arbitrary. Already Freud connects his theory on personal trauma in Moses and Monotheism (Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion, 1939) closely to his thoughts on the historical heritage of traumatic experiences (Caruth 2016: 17). In the two Serbian novels under study, transgenerational trauma is represented as a supernatural plot or rumor about the broken women haunting their descendants and village. Caruth focuses on voices reminding of a traumatic experience: “What returns to haunt the victim […] is not only the reality of the violent event but also the reality of the way that its violence has not yet been fully known” (ibid.: 6). In both novels, such a transgenerational link appears in a twofold manner: similar to “voices” of the ancestors, rumors about the family history already prepare the fate of the main heroines, who will, firstly, enact the traumatic settings of their prehistory, and, secondly, pass down their personal trauma to the following generations.

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The initial sentence of Impure Blood already characterizes Sofka as a main character, relying on a firm system of male ancestors. “About her greatgrandfathers and grandfathers there was still more left to tell than about her parents, or about Sofka herself” (“Više se znalo i pričalo o njenim čukundedama i pramdedama, nego o njima samima: o ocu joj, materi, pa čak i o njoj – Sofki”) (Stanković 1981: 9). Still, Sofka is not the first and only family member to experience trauma, but at least the second generation of a growing transgenerational trauma that comes to a head in her fate. Her grandfather Hadži Trifun, who represents political force, material wealth and traditional religiosity is, although absent, a key character of the novel, as the patriarchal traditions end with his lack of control over his son, Sofka’s father. This unsuccessful father-son relationship leads further to a row of traumatic relationships within the family. Throughout the novel, problems arise from the male family members, who are dreaded by the servants because of their power and within the family for their rude and unpredictable nature. The ones who suffer emotionally from the difficult circumstances the most are the female characters: Sofka herself still thought with fear and dread of what she had heard as a child, when her grandmother, her mother and her aunts talked about it thinking nobody could overhear them, and much less supposing that little Sofka could understand it and certainly not remember it and, later in life, see it with her own eyes. (Sama Sofka uvek se sa jezom i strahom sećala što je, ili još kao i dete, od svoje babe, matere i ostalih tetaka i strina mogla da načuje, kad su one bile nasamo i mislile da ih niko neće čuti, još manje se bojale da će to Sofka, onako mala, razumeti, a kamoli upamtiti, ili što je i sama, kad je odrasla, svojim očima videla. [ibid.: 16])

Already as a child Sofka learns about the destructive conditions of society that affect women in particular. The familial trauma is reproduced throughout generations without any way of stopping the dynamics. Some women – Sofka, her mother, her mother-in-law and one of her servants – try to rebel against the patriarchal system, but are, however, not able to change it. Even though the ties between Sofka and her mother are not very close, there is some kind of solidarity between all female characters, linked to their inferiority when facing the male family members. For her daughter, Sofka’s mother is ready to oppose her husband, and Sofka’s mother-in-law feels so ashamed for her husband’s and son’s bad manners, that she decides to sleep in a corner, so as not to bother Sofka with making her bed.

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Trauma is linked to the social decline of the family, and therefore constitutes a taboo; Sofka’s mother in particular tries to hide her husband’s ruin: From the outside, ungrateful world they distanced themselves, ran from it, fearing it nonetheless because of its envy and ready disposition to mockery, derision and malicious joy – it was known that they had always carefully concealed anything that happened within the family: the rudest disputes about property, the worst passions and habits, and even illnesses were kept secret. (I valjda zbog toga spoljneg, neblagodarnog sveta, od koga su se oni toliko odvajali, bežali, ali kojega su se toliko isto i bojali, jer je, usled zavisti, taj svet uvek gotov da se podsmehne, siti i zazloraduje – znalo se: da oni, oduvek, što god bi se desilo u njihnoj rodbini brižljivo kriju i taje. Najveće svađe prilikom deobe imanja, najgore strasti i navike, kao i bolesti, u tajnosti se su se čuvale. [ibid.: 16])

That the reasons for trauma and aging – poverty, violence and shame because of the bad habits in the family – constitute a taboo, is true for Migrations, too. Lady Dafina’s affair with her husband’s brother, Archangel, is kept secret, and her new marriage is at first delayed and then also kept hidden. Archangel agrees to marry his brother’s wife only because of her bad health after her infidelity. Being conscious of her betrayal of her husband is traumatic to Lady Dafina, and everyone facing her in this state of bad health, Archangel as well as the servants, is disgusted and keeps their distance. In the rumors and scare-stories Lady Dafina becomes a ghost, haunting family members, house and village: [T]his is how Lady Dafina became […] the bogeyman of the village. A plague spread among the sheep, then among the pigs, then the women got purulent nipples, the whole region suffered from atrocities and horrors. […] Somebody saw her, white and huge, sitting on the well behind the Isakovič house. […] On one of the colder nights, with the first snow, a pregnant woman saw her in front of the stable, in the shape of a white cow, and dropped dead. ([T]ako je gospođa Dafina postala […] celom selu kao strašilo. Udari pomor u ovce, pomor u debele svinje, žene se razboleše na dojkama, načini se čudo i pokor u okolini. […] Neko je vide kako čuči na đermu, iza kuće Isakovičeve, bela i velika. […] Jedne hladnije noći, kad poče provejavati prvi sneg, vide je jedna bremenita žena, pred štalom svojom, u obliku bele krave, i pade mrtva. [Crnjanski 2008: 158-159])

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Lady Dafina’s supposed afterlife as a ghost resembles that of Hamlet’s father, who searches for revenge.7 Her traumatic experience of being left alone with the children for long periods of time, of being desired by her husband’s brother and her having a bad conscience for having given in to him stay within the village. Even though only by rumors, everyone is informed about the incidents that are now regularly making themselves remembered. The trauma is collective because every family faces similar circumstances. Partly, it is linked to Isakovič’s late consciousness of the soldiers’ exploitation for a senseless war. The major part of the trauma, however, is a result of the bad family habits that destroy women in particular, but also the younger generation. Lady Dafina’s personal trauma is transmitted through generations: to her child, who after her death suffers from bad health, but even to the whole village, where everyone subsequently feels haunted. Transgenerational trauma is also a central category in the world view of Stanković’s Impure Blood. Even the main character Sofka suffers from the mental injuries inherited from earlier generations, and her fate confirms the given system, considering that her own pain will destroy not only her, but also her progeny: If only it had ended with her, but everything went on with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And who knows, one of her great-great-granddaughters, whose name might also be Sofka, would surely be as beautiful and exuberant as she had been, and would also end up like her, pay with her head, and curse grandma Sofka, so that even her bones in the tomb would find no peace. (A bar da se njome završi, nego se eto produžava njenom decom, unucima, praunucima. I ko zna, neka njena čukununuka, koja će se možda zvati i Sofkom, biće sigurno onako lepa, bujna, kao što ona beše, a ovako će i svršiti, ovako će sve njih platiti glavom i nju, Sofku, babu svoju, proklinjati i kosti joj u grobu na miru ne ostavljati. [Stanković 1981: 165166])

As in Migrations, difficult fate is not seen as a personal issue that one could possibly change by one’s own achievements, but as a curse, transcending through generations. Family memory keeps the scare stories of the past alive, transforming them through retelling, so that ancestors seem to act like ghosts. Just as Sofka understands the incestuous scandals at the village on the occasion of her own marriage, Lady Dafina’s death is directly linked to the moral

7

For a detailed analysis of transgenerational trauma in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet see Assmann 2011: 195-197.

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traditions of her village, which are quite similar to those outlined by Stanković. Crnjanski, moreover, reverses the line of argumentation: motivated by an inner focalization on the villagers, Lady Dafina, because of her own escapade, is regarded as responsible for all the countless incestuous relationships within the whole village: In the houses, the daughters-in-law had started seeing trouble. The fathers-in-law were losing their minds with the pushing and shoving in the night. The old women would go to the well in the morning […], they would tell each other about the peculiar events, repeatedly and ever faster making the sign of the cross. Lightning should have struck the village and burned it down. (Po kućama snahe počeše da pate. Svekri poblesaviše od muke, pri gurkanju i hrvanju noću, po vajatima. Babe, izlazeći ujutru […] do bunara, zgražale su se, pričajući svoja čuda jedna drugoj, krsteći se, pri tom sve brže. Grom je trebao da udari u selo, pa da ga spali. [Crnjanski 2008: 159])

Lady Dafina’s afterlife as a ghost in the village signals that the trauma within her personal life cannot be resolved unless society changes. This is the source of an endless circle, as on the other hand, the patriarchal system is resistant against transformation and the only way to free the souls would be the extermination of the village. The same dynamics are true also for the transgenerational afterlife of Sofka’s personal trauma. Lady Dafina’s and Sofka’s children respond symptomatically to their mother’s trauma, and this means the decay of the following generations. Furthermore, all of them are subject to the patriarchal rules of their ancestors, which they will reproduce: But nothing happened. Death was not going to come. Even more and more children were born. But what children, what offspring! Only the first son had some force and power, while all the others were pale and bloated. […] Everything was recurring, as it always had. Just as her family’s decay had begun with Hadži Trifun, the same was beginning here, with her father-in-law Marko, with her husband Tomča and with herself. (I ništa se ne desi. Još manje smrt da dođe. Čak počeše deca dolaziti i rađati se. Ali kakva deca, kakav porod! Jedini sin, prvenac, što je imao neke snage jačine, dok su sva ostala bila sve bleđa, podbuhlija. […] Sve se, isto kao nekad, i sada ponavlja. Isto kao što od onog njihovog hadži-Trifuna njeni počeli da propadaju, ako, evo i ovde počinje od svekra joj, Marka, muža, Tomče, i same nje. [Stanković 1981: 165])

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Both Impure Blood and Migrations outline the system of reproducing traumata as productive. Degeneration is obvious, but does not lead to the erasure of its origins; trauma continues to spread and not only to infect but also to produce new generations. Sofka is going to be cursed even by her great-granddaughter, as Lady Dafina continues to haunt her village; both of them lend a mythical explanation to disgusting traditions. Migrations and all possible changes will not extinguish transgenerational trauma; family members, history and memory will fade, but they will unexpectedly reappear somewhere else. “There, where the Isakovič family […] had gone […] was no trace left of all this, except for two or three names. Migrations have always existed, and always will, just like children will always be born. There are migrations. There is no death!” (“Tamo, kud su Isakoviči […] otišli […], nema više traga, svemu tome, sem ta dva-tri imena. Bilo je seoba i biće ih večno, kao i porođaja, koji će se nastaviti. Ima seoba. Smrti nema!”) (Crnjanski 2009: 717). An important effect of migrations as a main concept in both novels is connected to transgenerational trauma: leaving one’s home or one’s family also means to leave behind the obvious traces of the family history, which are at the same time everlasting in the individual. This is why trauma will reproduce even in new places, where it is linked to the individual fates of the past only metaphorically, transformed into ghost stories.

CONCLUSION: TRAUMATIC AGING BETWEEN MIMESIS AND METAPHOR The expressive representation of aging in Impure Blood and Migrations leads to different kinds of conclusions. In obvious contrast to the realist tradition, both Stanković and Crnjanski use signs of aging in a naturalist manner for an unaesthetic depiction of suffering characters. As physical features are at the center in visual arts, it seems useful to refer to Lessing’s theory on aesthetics, where he outlines that corporal defaults like bodily expressions of negative emotions are avoided and reduced, so as not to destroy the expression of the character’s pure soul. Interestingly, the main characters in Impure Blood and Migrations are extensively depicted in their bodily degeneration, which is affected by traumatic experiences. This is, however, no opposition to Lessing’s remark on aesthetics, because the heroines at the same time also lose their inner qualities: their physical and mental discontinuity is thus motivated as effects of the trauma.

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Even though symptoms of aging are attributed to female as well as to male characters, conceptual differences are apparent. Both narratives outline women as victims of the patriarchal system, which they are not able to change even though they try to speak up. With their trauma, resignation, aging and death, the texts lose their future-directed chronotopic dynamics and segue from a state of slow degeneration to a more general narrative about society that will continue reproducing the old structures, which is to the injury of the generations to come. The aging of male characters is also linked to difficult circumstances, i.e., to material failure and excessive demands, which, however, they do not internalize. In contrast to Stanković’s female characters, Sofka’s father searches for revenge and cares nothing about destroying the fate of the other family members. Crnjanski finds another solution for his Isakovič, who emigrates to Russia without causing harm to anyone. A similarity of the novels concerning male aging can be stated in the rising desire for younger women. Like an effect of the midlife crisis, Isakovič feels attracted to his servant’s daughter. In contrast to the majority of the male characters in both novels, he is able to resist his sexual fantasies; nearly as a principle of nature, other villagers, however, live such a desire and even force their daughters-in-law to involuntary incestuous relations. As the female main characters’ individual trauma is meant to illustrate the eternal dynamics of destructive family ties and rural traditions, their death cannot lead to reconciliation. Sofka’s and Lady Dafina’s exemplary state for the terrible fate that they share with many other women of their family and village is outlined by their transformation into legends. Both of them are thought to haunt the further generations, notwithstanding of their own traumatic experience; they are thus transformed into scapegoats to explain cruel sexual relations and the periodical renewing of transgenerational trauma. “The past is a threatening dreary abyss; whatever disappears in this darkness, ceases to exist, and has never existed at all” seems to describe the chronotope of trauma in Impure Blood and Migrations, where all characters fade into the abyss of losing what has been most precious to them and forgetting their initial ideals. One should add that by losing their past, the traumatized subjects, even more importantly, lose also their future. Aging mimetically illustrates the experience of discontinuity in soul and identity and thereby, against Lessing’s warning, translates this inner experience to the reader, who becomes the witness of an obvious unaesthetic changing of the character. Lessing’s and Ricœur’s theoretical position of self-concept depending on the physical recognition by a beholder is therefore reversed to illustrate not the consistency of the character but its immediate change caused by the traumatic experience.

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On a societal level, traumatic aging symptomatically illustrates the cruel dynamics of fate that repeat throughout generations. The mimesis of personal suffering such as the experience of discontinuity, therefore, comes also to symbolically illustrate an everlasting destructive dynamic of society. This leads to the conclusion that the symptomatic aging of the analyzed characters illustrates the transmission of trauma mimetically for the individual fate as well as metaphorically on a societal level as a whole.

REFERENCES Assmann, Aleida (2011): Einführung in die Kulturwissenschaft: Grundbegriffe, Themen, Fragestellungen. Berlin. Bunin, Iwan (2004): Der Herr aus San Francisco. Russisch/Deutsch. Stuttgart. Caruth, Cathy (2016): Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore. Crnjanski, Miloš (2008): Seobe. Beograd. Crnjanski, Miloš (2009): Druga knjiga Seoba. Beograd. Freud, Sigmund (1939): “Der Mann Moses und die monotheistische Religion“, in: Freud, Sigmund: Gesammelte Werke. Vol. 16. Frankfurt am Main, 103246. Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar (2014): Repräsentationen weiblichen Alterns in der russischen Literatur: Alt sein, Frau sein, eine alte Frau sein. Hamburg. Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar (2016): “The Sameness of the Ageing Self: Memory and Testimony in 20th-Century Russian Narratives of Ageing”, in: Russian Literature 85, 23-41. Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar (2017): “Exile, Return and ‘the Relative Brevity of Our Life’: Aging in Slavic Homecoming Narratives. Nabokov – Kundera – Jergović”, in: Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar (ed.): Aging in Slavic Literatures: Essays in Literary Gerontology. Bielefeld, 185-201. Grujić, Marija (2008): “Rod, klasni identitet i seksualnost u romanu Nečista krv Borisava Stankovića”, in: Rosić, Tatjana (ed.): Teorije i politike roda: rodni identiteti u književnostima i kulturama jugoistočne Evrope. Beograd, 227235. Hodel, Robert (2008): “Zum Familienroman als Genre”, in: Kempgen, Sebastian et al. (eds.): Deutsche Beiträge zum 14. Internationalen Slavistenkongress Ohrid 2008 (= Die Welt der Slaven; 32). München, 437-448. Ibrišimović, Nedžad (1981): “Sofka: Življenje i umiranje u romanu Borisava Stankovića ‘Nečista krv’”, in: Stanković, Borisav: Nečista krv. Sarajevo, 5-8.

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Lessing, Gotthold E. (2012): Laokoon oder Über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie. Studienausgabe. Stuttgart. Marfutova, Yulia (2017): “When the Author Is Not the Author of Passions: J. J. Engel’s Herr Lorenz Stark and the Pathognomy of Style”, in: Jandl, Ingeborg/Knaller, Susanne/Schönfellner, Sabine/Tockner, Gudrun (eds.): Writing Emotions: Theoretical Concepts and Selected Case Studies. Bielefeld, 233245. Marinković, Dušan (2010): Poetika proze Borisava Stankovića. Beograd. Nicolosi, Riccardo (2007): “Unreine Liebe: B. Stankovićs Nečista krv als Degenerationsroman”, in: Hodel, Robert (ed.): Darstellung der Liebe in bosnischer, kroatischer und serbischer Literatur: Von der Renaissance ins 21. Jahrhundert. Prikazi ljubavi u bosanskoj, hrvatskoj i srpskoj književnosti: od renesanse do danas. Frankfurt am Main, 159-176. Nicolosi, Riccardo (2018): Degeneration erzählen: Literatur und Psychiatrie im Russland der 1880er und 1890er Jahre. Paderborn. Ricœur, Paul (2005): Parcours de la reconnaissance: Trois études. Paris. Shakespeare, William (2014): Hamlet. Englisch/Deutsch. Stuttgart. Stanković, Borisav (1981): Nečista krv. Sarajevo. Thiergen, Peter (1984): “B. Stanković’s Nečista krv als Roman des Fin de siècle”, in: Zeitschrift für slavische Philologie 44, 116-143. Tolstoj, Lev N. (1982): Sobranie sočinenij v 22 tomach. T. 9: Anna Karenina. Časti pjataja-vos’maja. Moskva.

The Dark Past of Family Age Roles and Superstition in Southeast European Literature and Popular Culture Natalia Stagl Škaro

Every crone is a witch and every old man a sorcerer. (Svaka baba vještica a djed vještac.) South Slavic folk saying1

INTRODUCTION Individualization took hold in Southeast Europe relatively late. The collective family is still the most important aspect in an individual’s life (Klarin/Šimić Šašić 2009: 243-261). It has more impact than ethnicity, religion or social class. The family assists in getting an education, employment and housing, helps financially and takes care of the children, sick and elderly. It does everything a welfare state would. Age roles define a person’s place in the family and vice versa. Not even 2 percent of Croatia’s elderly population are in institutional care as opposed to the average 5 percent in the EU (Bađun 2017: 20). To “put parents away” is considered unthankful and cruel and “granny dumping” is unheard of. Therefore, most elderly citizens are cared for by relatives at home. Is Southeast Europe an intergenerational idyll? Historical concepts of relationships between generations as represented in folk, literary and popular cultures show a darker picture. Age roles were linked

1

Krauss 1908: 37. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Bosnian/Croatian/ Serbian are the author’s [N.S.Š.].

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to superstitions and certain stages in life were associated with special magic powers. The honored gray-haired grandfather was paralleled by the abhorred and equally gray-haired vampire, and the kind grandmother in her headscarf by the witch or the plague demon. Middle-aged men found their counterpart in werewolves, girls in mischievous fairies and little children in bloodsucking little demons. The appearance of a “monster” within a family was a catastrophe for all of its members. The family was ostracized and marriage became almost impossible for the direct descendants. Like most uncanny secrets, vampirism, witchery and the killing of its perpetrators was therefore kept in the family. Research into contemporary witch killings in non-European societies shows the relevance of economic factors. Was killing “monsters” in the Balkans a euphemism for getting rid of elderly or sickly family members who had become a burden?

AGE ROLES AND POWER Today’s concepts of family and age roles are an inheritance of the past. A rural Balkan joint family household, up to the middle of the 20th century the norm, consisted typically of twelve to 20 relatives living and working together under the strict rule of a patriarch, usually the eldest married male (Kaser 1995, 2003; Todorova 1989; Vinski 1938: 32). Lands, houses, livestock and rights were owned jointly by the family and there was little individual property. Important decisions were discussed by the married men; women were excluded. The starešina (“eldest”), gospodar (“master”), domaćin (“householder”) or dedo (“grandfather”) had the ultimate power in the house and was its representative to the outside world. His function was also ritual, as he would lead all religious celebrations. His patria potestas2 was only challenged if he became unable, by reason of age, and made obvious mistakes in his business decisions. How a person would lead his or her individual life was not a personal decision: the choice of a partner, the number and upbringing of children, division and amount of labor, style of clothing, quality and quantity of meals and even living arrangements were decreed by the elders. Patriarchal culture privileged men of a certain age, ascribing and giving over power to them, thus keeping the younger men and all women subordinate. Men and women’s age roles were perceived differently (Popova 2003: 200-205). Traditional male age roles in a rural zadru-

2

Lat. “power of a father”; in Roman Antiquity, the legal power and authority of the head of the family.

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ga (extended family or clan) were: child until ten years of age, from ten to 16 youth/shepherd, from 16 to 24 young adult, and man until 60 (Vinski 1938: 22). Over 60, men were considered old grandfathers. At 60, a starešina would be expected to abdicate, being considered mentally unfit for his position (ibid.: 28). Female age roles were: child until 13, girl until 20, young daughter-in-law until 30 or until the hair started to gray, wife/aunt until 40 and grandmother over 50. For both sexes, 20 was considered a marriageable age (ibid.: 27-28). There was a highly developed hierarchy between the age groups. The children and youngest daughter-in-law would take commands from the elderly, get up when they entered the room, be quiet and sedate in their company and wash the men’s feet on their return from work (Erlich 1972: 26-28).3 An older man would take precedence in everything and an older woman over a younger one (ibid.: 27).

BINARY APPRAISAL OF AGE ROLES The patriarch would take precedence in ceremonies at the council and at the table.4 He would schedule the work in the fields and forests. His wife or another able woman – starešica (“eldest”), gospodarica (“mistress”), domaćica (“housewife”) or baba (“grandmother”) – ruled the inner workings of the household. She would allot work to the women, ration cloth and food, prepare healing potions, tend to the sick and assist in childbirth. The elder generation had all the power and worry, whereas the younger generation was dependent but secure (ibid.: 29). An individual gained more and more authority as he or she grew older. Very old age carried infirmity and a return to dependence but had its recompense in the honor and respect paid by the whole household. In a dominantly oral culture, the elderly served further as keepers of knowledge and tradition. The extreme dissymmetry of power between men and women as well as between the elder and the younger generation was geared to create resentment, which tended to manifest itself in times of catastrophes or extremities. Structural abuse of authority would then lead to revolts which were repressed in ordinary times. Excessive physical chastisement was one factor, sexual encroachment an-

3

Girls and young women would get up both for elder men and women. Boys and men only for elder men and the domačica (“housewife”).

4

Women would eat separately either after the men (Kosovo, Albania), at a separate table (Bosnia), kneeling (Herzegovina) or standing behind the sitting men and grabbing the odd bite (Slavonia). Children mostly had a separate table (Lovretić 1897: 378).

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other. In order to reduce the danger, young girls were closely guarded, segregated and married out of the house as soon as possible, leaving young daughters-inlaw as the easiest victims. In parts of Serbia, the custom of snohačenje, where fathers chose nubile girls to marry to their infant sons and then cohabitated with the former until the latter became old enough to interfere, was practiced until World War II (Kaser 2012).5 In rural Russian families, such occurrences were also common though not ritualized (Vinski 1938: 56). Laments of ill-treated daughters-in-law are constant literary topoi (Farnsworth 1986). The death of a patriarch of a joint family household did not result in inheritance of property, as in a nuclear family, but in a change of regime and a step up in the hierarchy for the younger generation. The next in line of power would sometimes try to speed this process up, especially if the patriarch was harsh, unjust and clinging to his position longer than his due.6 Patricide is a constant in world literature, especially in Greek Mythology.7 Freud sees it as the beginning of human culture and its division from nature: The [...] primal horde [...]. There is only a violent, jealous father who keeps all the females for himself and drives away the growing sons. [...] One day the expelled brothers joined forces, slew and ate the father, and thus put an end to the father horde. (Freud 2013: 235)

5

The novel Impure Blood (Nečista krv, 1910) by Borisav Stanković deals with this custom. See Ingeborg Jandl’s contribution in this essay collection.

6

This I was told by an old man who was born into a joint family household in Western Herzegovina. He told me that some women, usually a malcontent in-law, would mix the stubble left over from shaving into the gruel. This would, over time, cause inflammation and piercing of the stomach, leading to death. This was probably not the only discreet method in practice. Paudler (1937: 15) also names poison as the manner of choice, as opposed to the axe or a hammer or stone.

7

Uranus was castrated and probably killed by his son Chronos, who was removed from power by his son Saturn, who was in his turn killed by his son Zeus. Parenticide and especially patricide unsurprisingly has also caught the attention of Michel Foucault (1975). The topic is further addressed in Aeschylus’ Oresteia (450 B.C.), Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (429), Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1599-1602), Dostoevskij’s Brothers Karamazov (Brat’ja Karamazovy, 1880) and Andrej Belyj’s Petersburg (Peterburg, 1913) and has been discussed by Freud 1989.

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RITUAL KILLING OF THE ELDERLY Lapot: the forced death of the elderly. (Lapot: nasilna smrt staraca.) Etymological dictionary8

Geronticide or mandatory suicide of the elderly in order to ensure the survival of the clan or family seems to be a global, but not ubiquitous custom (Pousset 2018: 7). There are many similarities across widely-dispersed cultural spaces, such as exposing of the moribund old on a mountain, eating them or burying them alive. In some narratives,9 a justification is given for such killings: […] those who have become helpless because of old age or sickness are thrown out alive as prey to dogs kept expressly for this purpose, which in their native tongue are called “under-takers,” […] the reports about the Caspians are similar, for instance, that when parents live beyond seventy years they are shut in and starved to death. Now this latter custom is more tolerable; and it is similar to that of the Ceians […]. (Strabo 11.11.3)

Many fairy tales warn against geronticide (Paudler 1937: 8-17; Moser-Rath 1977). It is mainly addressed in the South, East and to a lesser degree West Slavic as well as Japanese and Russian (the Chukchi and Buryat Siberian) oral literatures (Keane 2011: 288).10 It seems that ritual geronticide has never been practiced in societies where the elderly own land or have considerable financial means (Elwert 1994: 268). In Serbia, these rituals were called lapot. Geronticide was ritualized, public and festive in some cultures, quiet, hidden from the public and individual in others. It would often have been preceded by a phase of segregation, marginalization, contempt and ostracism. The victims were increasingly ridiculed, ignored, then neglected, for example, by having their food taken away and compelled to beg or starve (Pousset 2018: 7-8). Ritualized geronticide takes the guilt from the individual and throws it onto the collective (Freud 2013: 232-233). In South Slavia, ritualized killings of the elderly were

8 9

Skok 1971: 271. Strabo (Geography 10.5.6, 11.8.6, 11.11.3), Herodotus (Histories 1.2.16, 3.9.9), Karamzin (History of the Russian State [Istorija gosudarstva Rossijskogo] 1; Karamzin 2003: 28). See also Parkin 2003: 260-272.

10 In the Chukchi peninsula, geronticide is called kamitok, in Tamil Nadu thalaikoothal (“leisurely oil bath”), in Japan oyasute or ubasute. See Elwert 2018: 260-283; Paudler 1936: 1-57.

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offset by unritualized private killings. In the former, the elderly had been publicly ostracized before the actual killings, in the latter, they were intimately demonized as werewolves and witches and killed privately. As demons they were neither part of human society in general nor of the particular family, which made the killing easier. Slavic vampires and witches live embedded in society, not on its margins or outside of society.11 Their annihilation can thus be interpreted as a younger form of the once widespread geronticide.12 In South Slavia, the slaying of witches and vampires never became thoroughly organized. Between the middle of the 17th and the middle of the18th centuries, the “iron century” at the peak of the European witch hysteria, there were only 28 recorded witch trials in the Croatian capital Zagreb as compared to 140 in the city of Salzburg in only one year (1680) (Burns 2003: 59; Behringer 1987: 141). An additional difference between Southeastern and Middle Europe regarding women accused of being witches is their respective ages. Whereas the women condemned in Croatia were mostly elderly, only 30 percent of those condemned in Salzburg were over 22 years old (Behringer 1987: 150). However, extrajudicial and therefore unrecorded killings, such as that after the bad harvest of 1685, were the norm in Southeastern Europe (Burns 2003: 59). Possible reasons include: a lesser influence of the Catholic Church due to the Ottoman rule in large parts of the Balkans, as well as late modernization. Geronticide is thus twice removed – chronologically and geographically. But German fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel or Town Musicians of Bremen prove that the motif of discreetly getting rid of burdensome children as well as of the elderly is closer than we like to think. Food used to be especially scarce in winter when rural families had to rely on the provisions of the last harvest. It was when resources were being rationed that “useless eaters” were in particular danger. In hard times, families tended to cast off infirm and unproductive members – both the elderly who had become weak and the very young who had not yet become strong. Illegitimate, sickly babies or those whose mothers had died in childbirth were often killed or neglected until they died (Vekarić 1999: 114120). Motherless stepchildren were also in danger, as related in many fairy tales. In Slovakia and Poland, between winter and spring the effigy of an old witch called Morena/Marzanna is burned and then thrown into a river. In North Mace-

11 In Papua New Guinea, for example, most alleged “witches” live alone on the margins of society (Jorgensen 2014: 267-286). The same is true for most German fairy tales. 12 Schönhuth (2007) calls the killing of witches the “dark side of family” – a term I have adapted in my title.

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donia and Southern Serbia, on the last day before lent (Karaveštice, Bele poklade), there is a custom of “Driving away” or “Burning the witches”: paljenje palalija/veštica (Petrović 2015). These traditions of driving out winter and inviting spring might well be a “survival” of something much more sinister, namely a modern substitution of rag dolls for the sacrifice of old women in the past. Similar motifs constantly appear in popular culture.

AGE ROLES IN SOUTH SLAVIC FOLKLORE Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. Exodus 22:18

Old Witches – Young Fairies In Croatian and Serbian, witches are commonly termed vještice/veštice, which has its root in vješt/vešt (“experienced, knowledgeable, expert”) and originally designated somebody “who knows” things (Skok 1971: 603). Krauss also has vračara/vračarica (“soothsayer”), a woman who knows how to heal. In Krauss’ opinion (Krauss 1908: 33-34, 39), witches were seen to be evil only with Christianization. The Grimm dictionary similarly defines a witch as a “wise woman” (verschmitztes weib) and adds that she is a crone who deals in sorcery (Grimm 1984a: 1299). It also states that before the 13th century, sorceresses (zauberinnen) were clearly differentiated from witches and were positively associated with malefica, magia, pharmaceutria, pythonista, saga, incantatrix and venefica (Grimm 1984b: 387). Further, the dictionary lists “woman of the forest” (waldweib), which corresponds to the South Slavic vila. Greek στριξ, Latin striga, Italian strega, Polish strzyga, Croatian striga, Slovenian štriga and Albanian shtrigë have probably been introduced via Italian. The lamia and furia are bloodsucking night creatures (Grimm 1875: 898-992). Grimm defines lamia as vampyrisch (“vampiric”) and so underscores the connection between witches and vampires (Grimm 1984b: 387). According to Krauss, copernica, which is mostly used in central Croatia and Slovenia, has its origin in the German Zauberin, and just like vještica, the name is taboo and used only clandestinely and never in public, so as not to call the monsters hither (Krauss 1908: 32-33). Vuk Karadžić in his seminal Serbian Dictionary (Srpski Rječnik, 1852) adds that beautiful young women are never witches, only babe (“crones”) are (Karadžić 1852: 66-67). Grimm agrees with this and adds: “Witch: a pejorative for an old disgusting woman because one thinks of her as shriveled and watery-eyed” (“Hexe als scheltwort für

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eine alte, widerliche frau, weil man sich die hexen verschrumpft und triefäugig denkt”) (Grimm 1984a: 1299). Krauss underscores the connection of age roles to evil magic: I have heard from elderly Hajji and judges that every Serbian woman, when she turns 40, gives herself to the devil and becomes a witch. […] A real witch has a cross under her nose, every evil one a few mustache hairs and a sorceress a wrinkled forehead and red spots on her cheeks. (Slušao sam od starih adžija i kadija, da svaka vlahinja kad pređe 40 godina preda se nečastivome i postane vještica. […] Prava vještica ima krst pod nos, svaka zlokobnica po nekolko brčnih dlaka, a maćionica namrskana čela i krvave pečate po obrazu. [Krauss 1908: 32-33]13)

According to Jurić-Arambašić (2000: 401), witches eat humans, especially their hearts, or drink their blood, and they prefer younger victims. This is quite possibly a memory of sacrifices. Others steal their neighbor’s milk. They usually are rich and fat and their children are healthy. Witches fly to their meeting places using witch salve or brooms and can shape-shift to moths, snakes, chickens and toads (Karadžić 1852: 66-67). When moths fluttered into houses at night, people would singe one of their wings and say “Come back to borrow salt tomorrow” in order to identify whom to burn for real – which fate would befall the first old woman asking for some salt (ibid.: 67; Krauss 1908: 57). In accordance with patriarchal Balkan culture, witches, being elderly married women, are not interested in sexual activities with other men or demons, unlike their Middle European counterparts (Krauss 1908: 39). The typical social roles of witches are mother, wife and master’s wife (ibid.: passim). They were usually burned alive or drowned – not by the people of a village or town or professional witch hunters, but by their own husbands, sons, servants or neighbors. A trial was deemed unnecessary, the simple identification was quite enough.14

13 Krauss is citing Vrčić (1881: 93), which I have not been able to access. Vlah or vlahinja in the Muslim Bosnian contexts always denotes someone of Orthodox faith and/or Serbian nationality (Karadžić 1852: 68). Zlokobnica which I have loosely translated as “evil one” means an evil woman in possession of the “evil eye” according to Leland (1891: 67). 14 There is a similarity between the burning of witches and vampires: both are underground demons and in both cases the goal is to make their return impossible. The dif-

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How does one become a witch? Either by being born as the daughter of a witch or a vampire, making the evil a hereditary strain, or by some peculiarities of birth such as having been born in “a red sack” or “in a shirt” (a red amniotic sack) which turns a mortal into a witch or wizard, or into someone who can recognize a witch or wizard by their peculiarities (Jurić-Arambašić 2000: 401). Some witches were vile (“fairies”) before, but became witches on turning 40 or on marrying. Vile are female sorceresses, young, single, wild and beautiful (Alb. zana e malit). They live together in forests and on mountain ranges where they congregate and dance. Sometimes the fairies teach čaranje, the casting of spells, healing and the medicinal usage of wild herbs to young girls they take to their hiding places. These girls become famous healers as they get older (ibid.: 402). It may happen that vile fall in love with young travelers and either take them home or assist them in their adventures. Young men suffering from frequent selfpollution at night were considered victims of the insatiable vile: jaše ga vještica (“the fairy rides him”).15 More also sleep with young men and drink their blood before turning into witches in old age (Krauss 1908: 56; Lovrić 1918: 163-164). Both are jealous, fickle and dangerous when provoked. Krauss sees their cruelty and wickedness as a new trait that came with Christianization. Children who die before they are christened do not find peace. They live between the spheres – being unbaptized, they were buried on the margins of cemeteries or elsewhere – and are called movje, macići, movići or tintilinići (Krauss 1908: 45). They can take the shape of animals or beautiful young boys and are often mischievous and dangerous. Tintilinići frighten and kill little children, whose blood they suck.16 They congregate at night, especially near graveyards (Jurić-Arambašić 2000: 403). Sometimes they serve a human master, helping him to get rich and sleeping under his bed (Lovrić 1918: 163). These little demons are a constant in South Slavic children’s culture.17

ference is that witches are burned before and vampires after death (Čajkanović 1974: 263; Krauss 1908: 53-54). 15 The Croatian figure of speech cited above relates to fairies (see Krauss 1908: 38-39). The terms vještica (“witch”), mora (“nightmare, demon”) and vila (“fairy”) are often confused or used synonymously. 16 This is a detail I was personally recounted in 2016, by informants from the islands Lopud and Koločep, Croatia. 17 See, for instance, children dancing and singing as mići tintilinići in Rijeka dance festival (Croatia). Today they are used to frighten children into obedience as I overheard on the island of Šipan in 2018: “Don’t go there or the movići will get you” (“Nemoj ići tamo, movići će te uhvatiti”).

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Young Werewolves – Old Vampires Both werewolves and vampires were originally humans but have changed into something worse. The difference between them is not clearly defined and the terms are often used synonymously. The werewolf is of Indo-European origin and not restricted to Slavia. He is a metaphor for the “beast inside a man” (Stagl Škaro 2019: 190). The concept of a man able to turn into a wolf was common to most of Europe, especially Greece (λυxάνθρωπoς), Rome (versipellis), France (loup garou), Russia (oboroten’, volkolak), Germany (Werwolf), Latvia (wilkats), Poland (wilkołak), South Slavia (vukodlak, varkolak, volkodlak, vărkolak), Albania (vurvolak) and Romania (Vârcolac, Pricolici). He symbolizes strength, anger and lust (ibid.). The werewolf is a man in his prime and prefers younger victims he is not related to (Lovrić 1918: 162-163). He is uncovered by his family or neighbors and killed by burning. After death, he may become a vampire (Summers 2001: XIV). The vampire, an “undead” spirit returned in human form, is believed to be of Slavic origin. The etymology is controversial and uncertain (Stagl Škaro 2019: 191). Vampires are referred to only by taboo names: talason, štrigon, lorko, pokora, nečisti duh, očajnik, hudoba, mrakonja, etc. (Petrović 1900: 296-297). Men of violent character while still alive, they had been in foreign lands or in close contact with strangers (see Stagl Škaro 2019). They had usually experienced a “bad death,” that is, a death by a violent accident or murder. Sometimes an animal spirit enters the body after death and starts the process of vampirization (Jurić-Arambašić 2000: 403).18 According to Karadžić (1852: 79), vampires most often appear in the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany, that is, in the intermediate period between the old and the new year, as well as after bad harvests and other times of food shortage, when they prefer to haunt water mills and warehouses. Vampires are usually elderly men – the former heads of their families and extended households. They return home at night to violate their young wives or daughters-in-law (ibid.). The children of such unions (Alb. dhampir, Serb. vampirović, Bosn. lampijerović) have no bones, can recognize vampires and often become vampire slayers (Husić 2010: 2). Only with its exportation from Southeast European folk culture to Western popular culture and literature did the vampire change from an endemic to an epidemic danger, illustrating changing cultural concepts (see Stagl Škaro 2019). The infection always started with a patriarch; women and children were invariably secondary vampires. Their unearthed corpses were pierced with hawthorn stakes and burned. In

18 The dead were carefully guarded so that no cat could jump or bird fly over the corpse.

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Serbia this custom had already been banned in 1349, which proves how common it must have been.19 In Eastern Slavia, the age difference between the vampire and his victims is less prominent. In the Russian fairy tale The Vampire (Upyr’) which Afanas’ev collected as no. 363 of his Russian Folk Tales (Narodnye russkie skazki, 1873) and which in variants also exists in Southern Slavia (Afanas’ev 1957: 124), a girl falls in love with a young and handsome stranger. Worried because he leaves her every night, she secretly follows him and finds him in the church eating corpses. He bites and infects her and she changes into a flower.

AGE AND SUPERSTITION IN SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN LITERATURES AND POPULAR CULTURE The main focus of this essay is on Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia with some digressions to Eastern and Western Slavia, especially Russia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Demonic beings have been and still are a constant in these literatures. Russian and Polish national poets Aleksandr Puškin and Adam Mickiewicz have translated epics collected by Vuk Karadžić and written by Prosper Mérimée after Slavic motifs and thus introduced the Balkan vampire to Russia and Poland, respectively.20 This newcomer, named vurdalak by Puškin (a corruption of vukodlak), drove out and superseded the local upyr’ or upior both in literature and in popular culture.21 Aleksej Tolstoj wrote his The Family of the Vourdalak (La famille du Vourdalak) in 1839 in French (Tolstoj 1950). The story’s chronotope is a timeless Serbia, where an elderly, violent pater familias has become infected with vampirism by a Turkish bandit. He in turn infects his family and within a few months, the whole area becomes depopulated. The beautiful daughter of the vourdalak tries to seduce and kill the narrator, who has a narrow escape. In the Russian movie version Sem’ja vurdalaka (1990) set in contemporary Moscow, the young hero is saved from the vampire by an icon of the Virgin Mary. In 1841, Aleksej Tolstoj published a second vampire novella The Vampire (Upyr’), teaming with clichés: a ball of elderly vampires, powdered wigs, elderly noble bloodsuckers, secluded country residences and a young, pretty, naïve victim.

19 Emperor Dušan’s Zakonik (Book of Law), §20. 20 Mickiewicz translated Le Morlaque à Venise from Mérimée’s collection La Guzla (1827) as Morlach w Wenecji. 21 See Puškin’s Marko Jakubovič (v. 43-46) (Puškin 1835: 405).

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The Serbian author Jovan Subotić in his poem Sabre Boy – Flower Girl (Sablja-momče, Cvet-devojče, 1841) is only superficially influenced by Western Gothic literature, in this case Gottfried August Bürger’s Lenore (1773). The fabric of the text is much nearer to Slavic folklore. The “flower girl” of the title evokes Afanas’ev’s tale no. 363 (see above), and the vampire in his fixation on his young wife evokes the local folklore, the only deviation being the vampire’s youth. Jovan Jovanović Zmaj parodied Subotić’s poem as Bitter Grandpa – Diaper Grandma (Čemer-deka, Pelen-baka, 1860). Here, the bespectacled old grandfather tells his wife on his death bed that he will soon come for her, whereupon, after a few glasses of wine, she prepares for a vampire killing. Milovan Glišić’s Ninety Years Later (Posle devedeset godina, 1880) is so closely based on folklore that its antagonist Sava Savanović is today perceived as a historical vampire. The chronotope is a rural, timeless Serbia. The romantic hero Strahinja, driven away from home by hopeless love for the beautiful Radojka, is desperate and as a dare spends the night alone in a water mill, all of whose former millers had died a terrible death at night. Young and clever Strahinja outwits the ancient vampire Sava Savanović as well as his evil future father-in-law. He kidnaps the girl and finds and kills Savanović with the help of elders; only a moth escapes from the grave. This story was adapted by Serbian director Đorđe Kadijević (for the movie The She-Butterfly [Leptirica]) in 1973. Here Radojka is the vampire, which Strahinja discovers too late. Radojka rides him in witches’ fashion to her grave and kills him. The frightening female vampire testifies to changed cultural concepts. Kadijević also loosely adapted Nikolaj Gogol’s novella Viy (Vij, 1835) in 1990 for the movie A Holy Place (Sveto mesto). The witch here appears in two forms, as a beautiful refined young woman and as a crone. In her young facet she is an erotic bisexual predator but also a victim of her old father’s lust. In Antun Gustav Matoš’s poem Mora (1907), the vampire is a metaphor for “old” foreign powers enslaving the Croatian peasants. This is a very early example of “allegoric remythologization” (Ajdačić 2014: 7). In Ivana Brlić Mažuranić’s collection of modern fairy tales, Croatian Tales of Long Ago (Priče iz davnine, 1916), folklore is at the core of most stories. In How Quest Sought the Truth (Kako je Potjeh tražio istinu), an evil spirit enters two boys who thus possessed try to kill their kind old grandfather. In the story Stribor’s Forest (Šuma Striborova), a young man unknowingly marries a witch. Only his old mother sees the truth and through her goodness and luck gets little tintilinići to help, saving herself and finally also her son. The “good old” vampire Sava Savanović recurs in the novel Fear and His Servant (Strah i njegov sluga, 2000) by Mirjana Novaković. During the Austrian reign (1718-1733), a government commission investigates alleged cases of vam-

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pirism in Serbia. These turn out to be a cover-up for court intrigues and political murders staged by the occupiers. The “real old vampire” Sava Savanović, imitated by the hired killers, appears a national hero in comparison to the foreign invaders. A short story by Srđan Tešin called Don’t Let the Witch Live (Vještici ne daj da živi, 2010) deals with the ritual killing of a confused old woman in a contemporary suburban setting. The narrator, her neighbor, identifies her as a witch and instigates her granddaughters to do the deed: Witches […] such a woman gets drunk, doesn’t bathe and doesn’t get out much, but they say that, while asleep, she can turn into a chicken or a turkey and fly into houses and eat people, especially female children. […] They say it is best to attack a witch in her house and that the hunters should be related to her. (Veštice […] Takva žena se opija, ne kupa se i malo se kreće, ali se tvrdi da može u snu da se pretvori u kokoš ili u ćurku pa da leti po kućama i jede ljude, a naročito žensku decu. […] tvrde da je najbolje vešticu napasti u njenoj kući i da lovci treba da budu u krvnom srodstvu sa njom. [Tešin 2010: 13])

The traditional images and concepts underpin the dehumanization of older people in modern South Slavic literature. The topos of the “good old vampire” reappears again and again in anti-global national sentiment, both in literary and historical works. Tomislav Longinović in his monograph Vampire Nation: Violence as Cultural Imaginary (2011) interprets the vampire as a universal symbol for violence, blood and community. According to him, Serbia is the eternal “Other” on the border of Europe, attributed by those in its center with the traditional vampire characteristics. This “vampire identity” is generally accepted in Serbia as a national unifier. Longinović relates the story of an exorcism in the course of which a Serbian conceptual artist – half jokingly, half in earnest – sought to exorcize Slobodan Milošević’s “vampire spirit” with holy water and hawthorn so that he would no longer afflict the Balkans. Such concepts are extended in Katarina Luketić’s treatise The Balkans: From Geography to Fantasy (Balkan: od geografije do fantazije, 2013), especially in the chapter “Vampiric Balkans” (“Vampirski Balkan”). Her attempt to deconstruct the “Eurocentrism” in the Balkans focuses primarily on Croatia, Serbia and ultimately Bosnia. For Luketić, the construction of a new “Croatian identity” is possible only by confronting old

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“Balkanism,”22 at the heart of which lies the vampire, like the worm in the apple (Stagl Škaro 2019: 315-317). Boris Dežulović’s Christkind (2003) deals with the rise of anti-Semitism in the 19th century. His narrator has come from contemporary Split in Croatia to Lambach, Austria, in order to kill eight-year-old Adolf Hitler. Vampires, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the latter’s Romanian prototype Vlad Ţepeş figure in numerous instances and functions. Most importantly, Ţepeş articulates the wellknown paradox about the rightfulness of preventing evil by killing the innocent (Levanat-Peričić 2012: 421-423). World War II in Croatia is the chronotope of Boris Perić’s Vampir (2006) and vampirism the metaphor for bloody Balkan history repeating itself over and over (ibid.: 427). Perić postulates that there is a bloodthirsty vampire lurking in all of us (Perić 2006: 291). The Historian (2005) by American author Elizabeth Kostova describes a quasi-scientific quest for ancient Dracula, who is like an inherent flaw in both Western and Eastern cultures. Milena Benini (2013) calls vampires the mirror images of our societies. Her witches in Dragon Mountains (Zmajska gora, 2016) re-migrate to Istria from the US, and vampires in Partial Eclipse (Djelomična pomrčina, 2012) are young urban professionals and add quaint local charm to the areas they inhabit. Aleksandr Ėtkind argues that in Russia the memory of the Great Terror and the Gulag system brings the monsters to life again and interprets the monuments set by the post-Soviet NGO Memorial at symbolic places as exorcizing the vampire of the past (Etkind 2009: 644-646). In this sense, Ėtkind reads texts with “vampire thematic,” such as Jurij Mamleev’s The Sublimes (Šatuny, 1966) and Viktor Pelevin’s Empire V (Ampir V, 2006). The Soviet reality is said to have led to a “zombification,” which made the people, all of whom lived in some way on and in tombs, undead and in need of an alternative history. Ghosts, werewolves and vampires are necessary to explain a story that would otherwise be incomprehensible in its extent of senseless cruelty and dehumanization. As an example of the relevance of vampire metaphors in contemporary Russian media discourse, Ėtkind mentions the branding of corrupt police in the pro-government press as werewolves (oborotni). In the post-Soviet discourse, the vampire is not the individual, but the collective evil that has adapted to corporate capitalism, which makes its exorcism almost impossible. Here, too, the vampire metaphor is a postmodern, or better, post-Soviet self-attribution, but not positively connoted as in the Balkans.

22 See the introduction to this essay collection for details on Maria Todorova’s concept of “Balkanism” (Todorova 1997).

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The subject matter of sorcerers, witches and vampires today is almost exclusively aimed at children and young adults: Harry Potter (1997-2007), The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956), the movies Maleficent (2014), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) and Tale of Tales (2015) are examples. Since the 1980s, there have been numerous Vampire TV sitcoms, animes and movies for children. In Zagreb, one can book guided tours of the city center led by local “witches” in full costume as tour guides. Wizardry has sunk down to children’s repertoire. The process of rejuvenation and beautification of both vampires and witches can be clearly traced in popular culture. The first vampire movie, Nosferatu – A Symphony of Dread (Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, 1922), featured an ugly old vampire. A decade later, Bela Lugosi starring in Dracula was much younger, charming and better looking. In The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), vampires become funny and attractive. After the Millennium, this process arrived at its peak with Dracula Untold (2014) where Dracula – Vlad Ţepeş – has become a romantic and national hero fighting for love and his people against evil foreign invaders. The vampire has not just become young and handsome but also more or less good. He has become an attractive person with moral conflicts and affections. Female monsters share the same beautification. The notorious mass murderer Elizabeth Bathory has become a young and beautiful national hero and healer of the poor and unprotected in the Slovak-Czech film Bathory (2008). In the film’s narrative, she is driven to her death by a foreign conspiracy of monstrous emperor Matthias II, king of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia.

GERONTICIDE IN LITERATURE AND POPULAR CULTURE The Greek myth of Tithonus warns about the dangers of ever-lasting life on Earth; it is not something to be desired by mortals who are subject to growth and decay. As Tithonus had been granted the gift of eternal life but not eternal youth, he became disgusting to his lover Eos, was locked away and finally turned into a cricket. The myth underscores the usual stages leading to geronticide: desocialization and dehumanization. Tithonus’ metamorphosis from a human being who lives longer than usual and thus overstays his welcome in society to an ugly “bug” evokes the latter.23 A similar idea is developed in Jonathan Swift’s Gul-

23 This seems quite possible, as insects, especially flying insects, were classical symbols of the human soul (psyche) (Levinson/Levinson 2009: 127).

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liver’s Travels (1726) where the Struldbrugs of Luggnagg are also immortal, but still do age (Swift 1994: 226-235). After 80 – in Antiquity considered the borderline between a wise senectus and a sclerotic senium – the Struldbrugs are declared legally dead in order to relieve their heirs from the avarice and caprice expected in old age (Parkin 2003: 16-17). Geronticide is a rare topic in “serious” literature, although exceptions like Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606), Anthony Trollope’s The Fixed Period (1882), Fedor Dostoevskij’s Crime and Punishment (Prestuplenie i nakazanie, 1886), George Tabori’s Premature Demise (Frühzeitiges Ableben, 2001) and The Parenticide Club (1909) by Ambrose Bierce come to mind. There are some poems and novels about geronticide in Serbia, e.g., the novel Lapot (1992) by Živojin Pavlović where the last 150 years of Serbian history are seen through the prism of geronticide, the poem Lapot (2017) by Slobodan Stevanović, and further the movie Legend of Lapot (Legenda o lapotu, 1972) by Goran Paskaljević, which tries to reconstruct the lifeworld and relationship between young and old in a Serbia of long ago. The discussion of geronticide is mostly reduced to popular culture, and particularly mystery.24

CONCLUSION Uncanny topics such as the beast inside man, geronticide, infanticide or the burning of witches are today relegated to popular and children’s culture. This allows for a more emotional and less rational approach, reduces the horror and leaves only the fascination. “Serious” literature deals with said topics to a lesser extent. Nevertheless, the process of initial demonization and subsequent annihilation is accurately described. Both popular and elite cultures serve as reservoirs of memories of past secrets. Killing off a violent, nasty patriarch, a troublesome old aunt or a sickly orphan was an available, guilt-free option in South Slavia until about the 18th century. Young adults who could have been characterized as fairies or wizards were in less danger, maybe because of their worth as workers.

24 E.g., H. G. Wells’ dystopian Time Machine (1895), Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1916), Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), P. D. James’ The Black Tower (1975), Donna Leon’s Quietly in Their Sleep (1997), Stanley Ellin’s The Blessington Method (1956), William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson’s Logan’s Run (1967) and, in particular, popular TV series or movies, such as the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Half a Life (1991), to name but a few.

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The younger generation generally saw itself as victims of old(er) monsters. The reality was reversed. Obviously, superstitions and myths in the Balkans relate to aging and gender, both correlating with the dominant patriarchal culture. In the latter, old age is expected to be cherished and revered. But the same old age, under certain circumstances, placed one in danger of being killed as a monster. The empowerment of youth – a novelty in a traditionally patriarchal culture – has also led to the acceptance of Freud’s concept that youth is not per se good or innocent. But it also seems to have led to a new cohesion in society where families take care of its members, especially the weaker ones. The vampire of folklore and Gothic novellas has also undergone a complete metamorphosis. In the past, the vampire was elderly, horrible and spread death and fear. Now he has become young and intriguing; he symbolizes youth, strength, the local and authentic as opposed to the global and ungenuine. The same is true of the witch, who has become fearless and beautiful. The Gothic vampire was an old global evil, the contemporary vampire in Slavic literatures and popular culture symbolizes heroic freedom, or in other words: what was once frightening is now appealing.

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Luketić, Katarina (2013): Balkan: od geografije do fantazije. Zagreb. Moser-Rath, Elfriede (1977): “Altentötung”, in: Enzyklopädie des Märchens 1. Berlin/New York, 388-395. Parkin, Tim. G. (2003): Old Age in the Roman World: A Cultural and Social History. Baltimore/London. Paudler Fritz (1936): “Alten- und Krankentötung als Sitte bei den indogermanischen Völkern”, in: Wörter und Sachen 17, 1-57. Paudler, Fritz (1937): Die Volkserzählungen von der Abschaffung der Altentötung. Helsinki. https://portal.dnb.de/bookviewer/view/1032740558#page/n0/ mode/1up [accessed May 2, 2019]. Perić, Boris (2006): Vampir. Zagreb. Petrović, Ivana (2015): “Teranje veštica u Gornjem Međurovu”. City Radio, 22.02. http://www.radiocity.rs/vesti/drustvo/4961/teranje-vestica-u-gornjemmedjurovu.html [accessed April 19, 2020]. Petrović, Vladimir (1900): “Zaplane ili Leskovačko”, in: Zbornik za narodni život i običaje južnih Slavena 5, 84-297. Popova, Kristina (2003): “Jugend und Alter”, in: Kaser, Karl/Gruber, Siegfried/Pichler, Robert (eds.): Historische Anthropologie im südöstlichen Europa: Eine Einführung. Wien, 199-216. Pousset, Raimund (2018): Senizid und Altentötung: Ein überfälliger Diskurs. Berlin. Puškin, Aleksandr (1835): Pesni zapadnych slavjan. http://www.rvb.ru/pushkin/ 01text/01versus/0423_36/1834/0594.htm [accessed May 2, 2019]. Schönhuth, Michael (2007): “Theorien zu Hexerei in Afrika: Eine Exkursion ins afrikanische Hexendickicht”, in: Schmidt, Burghart/Schulte, Rolf (eds.): Hexenglauben im modernen Afrika: Hexen, Hexenverfolgung und magische Vorstellungswelten. Hamburg, 16-31. Skok, Petar (1971): Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika. Zagreb. Stagl Škaro, Natalia (2019): “Vampire daheim: Literatur und Identität in Osteuropa”, in: Erdmann, Elisabeth von (ed.): Spiel der Blicke. Münster, 187-222. Strabo: Geography. English translation. http://perseus.uchicago.edu/perseus-cgi/ citequery3.pl?dbname=GreekTexts&query=Str.%2011.11&getid=2 [accessed May 2, 2019]. Summers, Montague (2001): The Vampire in Lore and Legend. North Chelmsford. Swift, Jonathan (1994): Gulliver’s Travels. London. Tešin, Srđan (2010): Ispod crte. Beograd. Todorova, Maria (1989): “Myth-Making in European Family History: The Zadruga Revisited”, in: East European Politics and Societies 4/1, 30-76.

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Todorova, Maria (1997): Imagining the Balkans. New York. Tolstoj, Aleksej (1950): “La famille du vourdalak”, in: Revue des Études Slaves 26/1-4, 14-33. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43271041?seq=1#page_scan_ tab_contents [accessed May 2, 2019]. Vekarić, Nenad (1999): “Ubojstva među srodnicima u Dubrovačkoj Republici (1667.-1806.)”, in: Anali Zavoda za povijesne znanosti Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti u Dubrovniku 37, 95-155. https://hrcak.srce.hr/11810 [accessed May 2, 2019]. Vinski, Zdenko (1938): Die südslavische Grossfamilie in ihrer Beziehung zum asiatischen Grossraum: Ein ethnologischer Beitrag zur Untersuchung des vaterrechtlichgrossfamilialen Kulturkreises. Zagreb.

The Hag and the Egg Slavic Mythologies of Old Age as Reflected in Dubravka Ugrešić’s Novel Baba Yaga Laid an Egg Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl

It’s only old witches who lay golden eggs!1 (Stare vještice nesu dobra jaja. 2) Dubravka Ugrešić: Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

INTRODUCTION In contemporary fiction, one can observe an ever-increasing interest in the experience of aging: old or aging characters are no longer mere objects of description, but acquire “flesh and voice” (“плоть и голос”; Savkina 2011: 135), which also holds true for Slavic literatures. However, while already in 1990 Anne Wyatt-Brown ascertained the “coming-of-age of literary gerontology,” having mainly in mind the examination of literature written in English, one might say that within Slavic studies, this field of research is still in its infancy. This contribution adds to filling this gap by focusing on a Croatian novel that sets out to narrate from “the foreign country of old age”: Dubravka Ugrešić’s Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (Baba Jaga je snijela jaje, 2007). The text is of particular interest, as it not only brings up the issue of aging, but in a self-reflexive manner also deals with the way that aging is brought up by the narrative. Ugrešić’s novel challenges all kinds of presumptions about aging and old age. It

1

Ugrešić 2009: 155.

2

Ugrešić 2008: 232.

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unmasks supposed knowledge about aging as a myth by reverting to a wellknown figure from Russian mythology: Baba Yaga (Baba-Jaga). Yet, the myth’s nature is that it is constantly re-narrated, told and retold, and open to be presented and perceived from different angles. This very nature of the myth lies at the heart of the endeavor to revisit Baba Yaga: Myths take themselves to pieces, add bits on, mutate, get transformed, adapt and readapt. Myths travel; in travelling, they retell and “translate” themselves. They never reach their destination, they are locked forever in a transitional-translational state. There is usually no single, clear-cut mythic story: there are only numerous variants. It is like this with the story of Baba Yaga. (Ugrešić 2009: 178-179) (Mitovi se razgrađuju, dograđuju, mutiraju, transformiraju, adaptiraju i re-adaptiraju. Mitovi putuju; putujući, mitovi se prepričavaju i “prevode”. Oni nikada ne stižu na svoje odredište, oni se nalaze u trajnom tranziciono-prijevodnom stanju. Najčešće i nema jedne čvrste mitske priče: postoje samo brojne varijante. Slično stoji i s pričom o Babi Jagi. [Ugrešić 2008: 265-266])

Ugrešić’s novel, indeed, is a “path through a fairytale turned inside out” (2009: 180) (“prolazak kroz izvrnutu bajku” [2008: 267]); it turns inside out and upside down prevailing images of old age and aging, especially images of the old woman. This paper will focus on how Ugrešić’s text narrates and enacts aging, and female aging in particular, thereby unmasking it as a social construct and as a myth that can, and must be, demythologized. The first chapter will give an overview of the manifestations of older women in Slavic mythology, as these are the novel’s point of departure. The following textual analysis of Baba Yaga Laid an Egg will center around three crucial aspects: the protagonists’ invisibility (social as well as mythical), the three-part model underlying the text and, last but not least, the meaning of narrative brought up by the novel.

THE OLD WOMAN IN SLAVIC MYTHOLOGY While in archaic societies elder people use to hold privileged positions, a general aversion can be observed toward high, decrepit age. This might partly be due to the sometimes frightening appearance of elders (caused by bad healthcare and neglect), but also to their seemingly secret wisdom. Most notably older women with their knowledge of the medicinal benefit of herbs have been deemed in folk belief to be associated with supernatural powers. This belief had its effect on

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mythology as well. Demons often take the shape of elder people, and a sheer look at them may cause harm or have fatal consequences. In Germanic mythology, for instance, encountering an old woman in the morning is thought to bring bad luck. Moreover, an old woman should not be the first to enter a new house, nor do people welcome her presence at a childbed (Bächtold-Stäubli/HoffmannKrayer 1987/I: 329). In Slavic mythology, older women occur in various manifestations. They appear as diseases, as incarnations of winter and/or death, as witches, spinners of fate and mistresses of initiation. The latter include Baba Yaga, who is more than an ordinary witch. Diseases In Slavic mythology, there is the widespread belief that diseases appear as women, especially old women. The Russian Lichoradki are a case in point: they are thought of as Herod’s twelve stepdaughters who come to humans to provoke in them diverse illnesses. The Lichoradki mainly personify symptoms that go with fever, such as shivering and cramps. A Lichoradka appears either as a woman in a white dress or as an ugly, hunchbacked crone who knocks on the window; those who let her in will fall ill (Vlasova 1995: 221). Other diseases have also been personified as old women, such as scurvy (Cinga-starucha), pox (Babucha or Babuški) or Korov’ja smert’, a bovine disease (Ternovskaja/Tolstoj 1995: 122; Vlasova 1995: 191, 338). In the 19th century, in some regions of Russia one could still meet the belief that plagues, such as the cholera, were best fought by burying alive an old woman (Kantorovič 1990: 207). Winter/Death The notion of death appearing in the guise of an old woman is widespread in Slavic mythology.3 Hereby, death can have a twofold meaning: on one side, that of an individual’s death announced by the encounter with death’s personification; on the other hand, that of nature’s death, which means winter (see Bächtold-Stäubli/Hoffmann-Krayer 1987/I: 330). The idea of Death/Winter as an old woman (or man) manifests itself, for instance, in the spring rite of “carrying away death”: it involves carrying away from the village a straw puppet representing an old woman or man, burning it or disposing of it in water, which is

3

In Slavic languages, “death” is a feminine noun: smert’ in Russian, smrt in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Slovenian and Czech, śmierć in Polish, etc.

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meant to symbolize the end of winter. Occasionally, the belief has prevailed that by burning or drowning the old, the young women would be made fertile and diseases could be prevented (Becker 1990: 127). A character of Russian mythology that embodies winter as well as death is Mara/Marena. Some of her features correspond to those of Kikimora (a spinner of fate that dwells in the house) or the Belaja devka (the “White Maiden,” a spirit announcing death). As a rule, Mara takes the shape of a tall woman or hunchbacked crone; in any case, she has long, untidy hair. In Russia’s South and Southwest, the puppet used in the custom of “carrying away death” is named after her: Marena (Russ. Vynesenie Mareny)4 (Vlasova 1995: 235-236). Thus, Mara/Marena is a figure characterized by an ambivalence of death and fertility typical of Great Mother goddesses, as will be explained in this article. Witches The witch stereotype of the Middle Ages is distinct from the pre-Christian concept. Originally, witches were thought of as half-human and half-demonic and did not necessarily have only negative qualities. Some researchers assert that witches were considered mostly beneficial. Only after the spread and adoption of Christianity was her image transformed into that of a vicious sorceress (Vinogradova/Tolstaja 1995: 297). In the West, during medieval Inquisition, witches were accused of the following crimes: courting the devil, heresy, the use of malevolent magic, riding through the air and shapeshifting. Thereby, the first two accusations are based on the theological notion of witchcraft, whereas the last three characteristics trace back to pre-Christian folk belief. It is noteworthy that in the Orthodox Church, sorcery was not considered a heresy. In Russia, for instance, witches used to be tried, but due to the economic damage they supposedly caused and not on religious grounds (Kantorovič 1990: 161-164). The idea of the witch’s courting the devil is likewise absent from the Russian mythological tradition. The fact that the witch was originally not considered a mere negative figure is reflected in her Slavic names: ved’ma in Russian, vještica in Bosnian and Croatian, veštica in Serbian, wiedźma in Polish, etc. They go back to the Old Church Slavonic vědati ‘to know’, which means that a witch is a “knowledgeable” person who has a special – magic – knowledge. In Slavic mythology, the witch is

4

In Slovak language, the rite is called Vynášanie Moreny (“carrying away Morena/Marena”), in Czech Vynášení smrti (“carrying away death”), in Polish Topienie Marzanny (“the drowning of Marzanna/Marena”).

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mainly characterized by her shapeshifter skills, whereas the idea of the witch riding through the air is not that common. She usually looks like an old, ugly woman with untidy hair, though occasionally she may appear as a young and beautiful girl (Vinogradova/Tolstaja 1995: 297; Jusim 1997). In Russian mythology, the ved’ma is responsible for bad harvests, the cattle’s condition and often also for the weather, especially drought. In a sense, she has the ability of attracting and holding back nourishing water. In some regions of Russia, people believed that the witch was stealing the moon. Her connection to the moon points to the fact that she represents a very ancient mythic character, just such as Mara or Mokoš’ (Vlasova 1995: 72). Spinners of Fate and Mistresses of Initiation In many mythologies, deities of fate appear as old women. By analogy with the waxing, the full and the waning moon, they often also take a threefold shape – such as the Greek Moirai, the Roman Parcae or the Norns from Norse mythology. The moon is a symbol of growth and decay, hence, the mistresses of fate and time frequently are fertility goddesses, too. Their threefold aspect reflects the natural cycle of birth, life and death, which are usually represented as maiden, mother and old woman. Great Mother goddesses are most often spinners and weavers: they spin and weave the humans’ fate. The crossing of the threads also symbolizes sexual intercourse; thus, the Greek word µίτος (mitos) designates not only a thread of a warp, but also the sperm (Neumann 1989: 219). Therefore, female reproductive power is displayed in mythology as an act of braiding, weaving or knotting. In fairy tales, young girls often have to learn spinning from a wise old woman. The old woman, thus, is the mistress of initiation who teaches the young to get to know their own sexuality. In Slavic mythology, one can also find such spinning old women who possess features of the Great Mother goddess, as the following examples show. Mokoš’ This character is regarded as a deity from the Eastern Slavic pantheon; she probably is the wife of Perun, the god of thunder. She is known in all Slavic mythologies, but has been especially prominent in Ukraine. She has many features in common with the Greek Moirai and the Norse Norns. After the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in Russia, Mokoš’ merged with the saint Paraskeva Pjatnica (Ivanov/Toporov 1997).

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Both figures are associated with spinning. Mokoš’ has been imagined as a woman with a big head and long hands who spins in the house at night. In order not to irritate her, people would not leave the flax lying around and used to be careful to remove it. Paraskeva Pjatnica was offered spun yarn that would be thrown in a well as a sacrifice. The rite’s name is mokrida; it stems from the same root as the goddess’s name – mok- ‘moist, wet’ –, which points to a connection with life-giving water. It is not by incident that Mokoš’ is also considered a fertility goddess, most notably as patron of sheep breeding (see Vlasova 1995: 243; Becker 1990: 37). However, an etymological link with *mokos ‘spinning’ is also possible (Ivanov/Toporov 1997). Within Slavic mythology, the figure of Mokoš’ in many respects merges with that of Mara, Kikimora or Mokoša. The latter is regarded as a spinner in the house who decides on its residents’ fate. The character of Mokoša has been considered a transformation of Mokoš’ (Vlasova 1995: 243). Kikimora Kikimora’s main aspect is that of an old spinner who on important days of the year appears in the house, thereby personifying its residents’ fate. Most of the time, she is invisible, but when she materializes, she often does so in the guise of a tiny old woman (ibid.: 170). Usually, she wreaks havoc in the house: she plagues the cattle, smashes the dishes and burns the yarn that has been left unhallowed. Herein, she resembles Frau Holle from Germanic mythology. Baba Yaga Baba Yaga (Baba-Jaga, Baba Jaga, Ježibaba) is one of the most interesting figures of Slavic mythology. Her name recurs in various forms among all the Slavic people. Information about her has mainly been drawn from fairy tales and occasionally from folk beliefs and customs. Baba Yaga is characterized by her ambivalent nature. On the one hand, she is a villain that kills, but she can also be helpful. She dwells on the margins of the netherworld and reigns over the realm of the dead; at the same time, she rules the animals, plants and elements. Due to her ambivalent aspect, she has been related to the Great Mother goddess who also unites both: the powers of destruction as well as creation. In fairy tales, emphasis is placed on Baba Yaga’s destructive side. She mostly appears as an evil, ugly old woman who kidnaps children and wants to eat them. For this reason, she has erroneously been equated with an ordinary witch, though she is rather an archaic figure who was regarded as a powerful deity in

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pre-Christian times. Her connection to the netherworld is indicated, among other things, by the fence surrounding her hut on hen’s legs: it is made of bones and topped with skulls. Her epithet “bony leg” (Russ. kostjanaja noga) points to her partly skeleton-like looks. Baba Yaga’s ambiguous nature is evidence of her primary role in rituals of initiation. In archaic societies, initiation – the passage from infancy to adulthood – is thought of as death and rebirth: as contact with the netherworld and return to life. This aspect elucidates Yaga’s desire to eat children: in a way, acquaintance with Baba Yaga, the underworld’s guard, is equal to (temporary) death. Baba Yaga may also appear as a spinner of fate. She, thus, shares many features with characters from Germanic folklore (Hulda, Frau Holle, Perchta) or Hittite mythology (Toporov 1963). She teaches young maidens how to spin and weave, that is, how to design their own destiny as women. Occasionally, Baba Yaga also has a triple aspect, taking the shape of three old spinners who guard the maidens’ kingdom (devič’e gosudarstvo). Starting from these basic components of the multifaceted Baba Yaga myth, Dubravka Ugrešić adds on a new version. She “spins” a tale about female aging that unfolds destructive and creative powers alike. By deconstructing myths about older women, it creates challenging new visions of old age, women and women’s aging.

DECONSTRUCTING MYTHS ABOUT FEMALE AGING Making Old Women Visible In the novel Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, women emerge from invisibility – first of all, by becoming main characters instead of remaining minor ones. The novel opens with the statement that “At first you don’t see them” (Ugrešić 2009: 5) (“Isprva ih ne vidite” [Ugrešić 2008: 13]). However, the narrative is itself the means by which the readers are forced to look at the elderly and to realize how many of them there are: Sweet little old ladies. At first you don’t see them. And then, there they are, on the tram, at the post office, in the shop, at the doctor’s surgery, on the street, there is one, there is another, there is a fourth over there, a fifth, a sixth, how could there be so many of them all at once?! (Ugrešić 2009: 6)

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(Malene, slatke stare gospođe. Isprva ih ne vidite. A onda, eno ih, u tramvaju, u pošti, u trgovini, u liječničkim ordinacijama, na ulici, eno jedne, eno druge, eno četvrte preko puta, pete, šeste, oh, gle, koliko ih najednom ima? [Ugrešić 2008: 14])

Not seeing the elderly is described as a defense mechanism: people avoid the sight of them in order to contain the awareness of everybody’s most likely future. As formulated in the third part of the text, Baba Yaga, the “surrogatewoman,” is here “to get old instead of us, to be old instead of us” (2009: 227228) (“da stari umjesto nas, da bude stara umjesto nas” [2008: 335]). She – or any older woman – is the mirror into which people refuse to look. As soon as people decide to throw a glance, they are in the old ladies’ “thrall” (2009: 7) (“u njihovoj vlasti” [2008: 15]) and thus cannot help facing up to their own aging anymore. In Ugrešić’s novel, the old women’s invisibility is in stark contrast to an overall noise. This noise is made primarily by birds whose excessive twittering pervades the book’s entire first part. It can be interpreted as a vital sign of those who are invisible. Through their voices they make themselves heard; the elder women empower themselves to tell their own stories, to move to the center of attention and to drown out the silence they are usually immerged in. As the text argues, old women are invisible yet for another reason: they normally disappear behind stereotypes that frame people’s ideas of what it means to grow old. The text sketches a “typology of old women” that supersedes the real lives of the elderly: Because what other variants are there in the typology of old women? Those dotty old creatures surrounded by cats, whose neighbours break into their house one day and find them dead, in a stench of cat pee? Those greedy old hags of unquenched sexual appetite who each spring visit geographical zones in which the local young men prostitute themselves for money? Those wealthy old women who submit hysterically to treatments – face-lifts, liposuction, hormone therapy, shit therapy if necessary – just to delay by a little the inexorable onset of age? (Ugrešić 2009: 94-95) (Jer koje to još varijante u tipologiji starih žena preostaju? Oni luckasti bapci okruženi mačkama kojima susjedi jednoga dana provale u stan i nađu ih mrtve u smradu mačje mokraće? Oni lakomi bapci neugašenog seksualnog apetita koji svako proljeće posjećuju geografske zone u kojima su lokalni mladići navikli da se prostituiraju za novac? Oni bogati bapci koji se histerično podvrgavaju tretmanima – face liftingu, liposukciji, hormonskoj terapiji, terapiji govnima ako treba – samo da bi malko odgodili neumitno starenje? [Ugrešić 2008: 138])

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The prevailing “typology of old women” is contradictory to the diversity of actual life scripts and stories of aging. This very diversity is displayed through, among other things, the novel’s tripartite structure. Unfolding the Diversity of Stories of Aging The novel Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is composed of three distinct parts; by this means, it presents three different views of the aging woman. The first part shows autobiographical references. The narrator tells the story of her mother aging: the problems the latter has to tackle in contemporary Zagreb, problems concerning her health, the gradual loss of memory and language skills, the difficult relationship with her daughter, and the like. The second part depicts a fairytale-like journey of three old “witches” to a post-communist spa. The novel’s third and final piece offers an interpretation of parts one and two by a character from the first part. It is called a “babayagology” (“babajagalogija”) and written by a fictive young Bulgarian ethnologist. Though these are distinct parts, they nevertheless form a unity, as they are connected with each other through the figure of Baba Yaga. Ugrešić’s novel has been referred to as a “triptych” – an altarpiece consisting of three panels (Bachner 2010; Geiger Zeman/Zeman 2014). The word “triptych” is not used in the text; however, the third part refers to the first two as a “diptych” (“diptih”) twice. The novel’s final piece, thus, can be read as the old woman’s act of self-empowerment to be the one who interprets her own life story. The tripartite structure of Baba Yaga Laid an Egg also reflects the aspect of trinity that the readers repeatedly encounter throughout the text. It is a common feature of goddesses of fate (such as the previously mentioned Moirai, Parcae or Norns) who are related to Baba Yaga. All these mythic figures are embodiments of the Great Mother goddess who spins and cuts the thread of life. The novel, in a way, is the altarpiece by which these goddesses are worshipped. The threefold aspect also characterizes the novel’s second part, in which three old women (or hags) called Beba, Pupa and Kukla go on a trip to a spa in the Czech Republic; it finally turns out that Death is traveling with them. Their names are telling: beba means “baby,” pupa and kukla mean “puppet.” Old age, thus, is connected to infancy, as it is in allegorical representations of the “three ages” of a human’s life – usually envisioned as a child, a maiden and a crone – such as, for instance, in Hans Baldung Grien’s well-known painting Three Ages of Man (Die Lebensalter und der Tod, about 1540).

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In a sense, all the women of the novel, whatever their age, are manifestations of Baba Yaga, for instance: • the three old hags in the spa; • the young Bulgarian ethnologist Aba Bagay whose name obviously is an ana-

gram of Baba Yaga and who at one point in the text states “I am an ageing woman. […] Babies are ageing women”5 (Ugrešić 2009: 48-49) (“Ja sam stara žena. […] Bebe su stare žene” [Ugrešić 2008: 70]); • the 4-year-old Wawa whom the reader sees curled up inside Pupa’s foot warmer with a wooden ladle in her hand, just as Baba Yaga rides on her mortar wielding the pestle. In this connection, the symbolic of the egg, which appears already in the novel’s title, is of particular interest. The egg is a symbol of birth and beginning. In Ugrešić’s novel, however, death couches within the egg. It does so in many instances: in Beba’s dream, where she sees herself opening a golden egg and finding her dead son inside it, in the huge Easter egg that will become Pupa’s coffin as well as in the tale of Koshchey the Deathless (Kaščej/Koščej Bessmertnyj). The latter is “deathless” because his death rests on the point of a needle inside an egg inside a duck inside a rabbit inside a trunk on the top of a tall, well-guarded oak tree. Last not least, aging is said to be “the hair in the egg” (“dlaka u jajetu” [Ugrešić 2008: 222]). This is a Croatian figure of speech that corresponds to the English expression “a fly in the ointment.”6 Aging, thus, is an essential part of life and looms large at its very beginning. Aging and Narration The text’s third crucial aspect is the importance of narration that is dealt with in the novel in a self-reflexive manner. Namely, narration stands in opposition to life: life, on the one hand, is characterized by the passing of time, which implies aging. The narrative, on the other hand, is able to overcome time and to overcome the sense of being at time’s mercy. One might cite many examples from the novel’s second part: every chapter ends in two lines composed in the style of magic spells from fairy tales that

5 6

In fact, the Croatian texts literally says “old woman” and “old women,” respectively. In the English translation, the idiom “teaching your grandmother to suck eggs” is used (Ugrešić 2009: 148-149), which, however, does not convey that specific meaning of spoiling something that could have become enjoyable.

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rhyme with each other. All these insertions illustrate the very idea of narration as opposed to real life in temporal terms: While life’s road may twist and bend, the tale hurries to reach its – end! (Ugrešić 2009: 76-77) (Dok kuhar čeka da uzavre lonac, priča žuri kraju da dostigne – konac! [Ugrešić 2008: 110]) While life may beguile and tempt like a gift, the tale is decisive and above all swift! (Ugrešić 2009: 97-98) (Dok u životu se mnogima ugađa i titra, priča je odrešita i nadasve hitra! [Ugrešić 2008: 142]) While in life one may often demur and dither, the tale hurries on – we all know whither! (Ugrešić 2009: 113-114) (Dok u životu se često krzma i zdvaja, pričin je cilj da dođe do kraja. [Ugrešić 2008: 167]) While everything in a story goes quickly and easily, it’s not usually like that in real life. (Ugrešić 2009: 116)7 (Dok u priči sve ide brzo i lako, u zbilji obično nije tako. [Ugrešić 2008: 171]) While life stories are muddled and extended, the tale slips along in its rush to be ended. (Ugrešić 2009: 124-125) (Tja, dok životne priče smušene su i dugo traju, naša bez zastoja klizi prema kraju. [Ugrešić 2008: 183]) Life drags as heavy as lead, while the tale just keeps racing ahead. (Ugrešić 2009: 138139) (Život je težak poput bremena, a priča je brza i nema vremena. [Ugrešić 2008: 207]8)

The last quotation is of particular interest. The English translation, in fact, is a free adaptation and therefore does not convey the full meaning. Literally, the Croatian two-liner says: “[…] the tale is swift and has no time.” Narration, thus, is beyond time, which means that it also is beyond age. Conversely, the idea of time being linked to life is expressed in a dialogue that unfolds among Beba,

7

Obviously, the translator has missed the fact that these two lines also rhyme with each other in the Croatian original.

8

Emphasis added [D.G.-H.].

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Kukla and their spa acquaintance Arnoš and in which the following statement is made: “Our whole life is a search for love […]. Our search is frustrated by numerous snares that lie in wait for us on our journey. One of the most dangerous snares is time” (Ugrešić 2009: 102-103) (“Cio naš život potraga je za ljubavlju […]. Naša potraga osujećena je mnogim zamkama koje nas čekaju na putu. Jedna od najopasnijih zamki je vrijeme” [Ugrešić 2008: 150]). Tale-telling, however, is able to overcome the “snares” of time, transience and aging that characterize life. One of its means is the undermining of images of aging that people have got used to. Ugrešić’s tale presents quite an unusual view of age and aging through atypical depictions of its characters: among other things, through atypical language and atypical relationships. Thus, for instance, distinguished old ladies use swear words, labeled “resolute words” (Ugrešić 2009: 79-80) (“rezolutne riječi” [Ugrešić 2008: 115]), which the spa doctor cannot believe having “issued from such a tiny, frail body” (“da […] izlaze iz tako sitnog i trošnog tijela”) (ibid.). Pupa summarizes her attitude toward age-appropriate behavior in the statement: “Dignified ageing is crap!” (Ugrešić 2009: 102-103) (“Dostojanstveno starenje je drek!” [Ugrešić 2008: 150]). Atypical relationships are found in the narrator’s old mother and young Aba Bagay – a friendship that astonishes the daughter – as well as in old Beba and the young masseur Mevlo, who refers to her in plain Bosnian as “jaranica” (“special friend”) (Ugrešić 2008: 233; 2009: 156). Likewise atypical when compared to stock representations of aging is the novel’s central idea that the end, in fact, is a beginning: indeed, Pupa dies, but with Beba’s as yet unknown and unexpectedly emerged granddaughter – little Wawa – at their sides, for Beba and Kukla life starts from scratch.

CONCLUSION Dubravka Ugrešić’s decision to revisit the figure of Baba Yaga may be related to the author’s personal experience: at the beginning of the 1990s, she spoke out against a renascent Croatian nationalism. As a consequence, Ugrešić was publicly attacked by fellow writers, insulted by strangers on the street, threatened in anonymous phone calls and vilified as a “witch” in Croatian media.9 In 1993, she finally went into exile and has lived in Amsterdam and the United States ever since. Having experienced a real kind of witch-hunt, she obviously felt the urge

9

Dubravka Ugrešić describes these incidents in her collection of essays The Culture of Lies (Kultura laži, 1996).

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to take a closer look at witch figures that have always provided a surface for the projection of collective fears and hatred. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg departs from the ambivalent nature that characterizes Baba Yaga in Slavic mythology: she is a villain as well as a helper, malevolent and beneficial at the same time. The novel’s essential idea of the end being a new beginning is but another facet of the ambivalence of Baba Yaga: she is the Great Mother goddess who gives life but also takes it. Ugrešić uses the power of literature to disclose the multifacetedness of living and aging. In her novel, just as in Slavic mythology, Baba Yaga is a liminal figure: she guards the netherworld’s border and therefore belongs to the realm of the dead. However, she also lays an egg – and a golden one at that.

REFERENCES Bachner, Elizabeth (2010): “Which Witch? Reading Dubravka Ugresic’s Baba Yaga Laid an Egg”. http://www.dubravkaugresic.com/writings/wp-content/ uploads/2016/07/Bachner.pdf [accessed May 14, 2019]. Bächtold-Stäubli, Hanns/Hoffmann-Krayer, Eduard (eds.) (1987): Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens. Berlin/New York. Becker, Richarda (1990): Die weibliche Initiation im ostslawischen Zaubermärchen: Ein Beitrag zur Funktion und Symbolik des weiblichen Aspektes im Märchen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Figur der Baba-Jaga. Wiesbaden. Geiger Zeman, Marija/Zeman, Zdenko (2014): “Who’s Afraid of Baba Yaga? A Reading of Ageing from the Gender Perspective”, in: Narodna umjetnost 51/1, 223-244. doi.org/10.15176/vol51no111 [accessed May 14, 2019]. Ivanov, Vjačeslav V./Toporov, Vladimir N. (1997): “Mokoš’”, in: Mify narodov mira. Izd. 2-e. T. 2. Moskva, 169. Jusim, Mark A. (1997): “Ved’my”, in: Mify narodov mira. Izd. 2-e. T. 1. Moskva, 226-227. Kantorovič, Jakov A. (1990): Srednevekovye processy o ved’mach. Moskva. Neumann, Erich (1989): Die Große Mutter: Eine Phänomenologie der weiblichen Gestaltungen des Unbewußten. Olten/Freiburg im Breisgau. Savkina, Irina (2011): “U nas nikogda uže ne budet ėtich babušek?”, in: Voprosy literatury 2, 109-135. Ternovskaja, Ol’ga A./Tolstoj, Nikita I. (1995): “Baba”, in: Slavjanskie drevnosti: ėtnolingvističeskij slovar’ v 5-i tomach. T. 1. Moskva, 122-123.

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Toporov, Vladimir N. (1963): „Chettskaja salŠU.GI i slavjanskaja baba-jaga”, in: Kratkie soobščenija Instituta slavjanovedenija AN SSSR 38, 28-37. Ugrešić, Dubravka (2008): Baba Jaga je snijela jaje. Beograd. Ugrešić, Dubravka (2009): Baba Yaga Laid an Egg. Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursać, Celia Hawkesworth and Mark Thompson. EBook edition. Edinburgh. Vinogradova, Ljudmila N./Tolstaja, Svetlana M. (1995): “Ved’ma”, in: Slavjanskie drevnosti: ėtnolingvističeskij slovar’ v 5-i tomach. T. 1. Moskva, 297301. Vlasova, Marina N. (1995): Novaja abevega russkich sueverij: illjustrirovannyj slovar’. Sankt-Peterburg. Wyatt-Brown, Anne M. (1990): “The Coming of Age of Literary Gerontology”, in: Journal of Aging Studies 4/3, 299-315.

Commemorating Russia’s Great Old Women An Interview with Ludmila Ulitskaya By Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl

On the subject of the publication of your novel Jacob’s Ladder [Lestnica Jakova, 2015], in one of your interviews you expressed the following thought: “[…] we all stand on that enormous ladder. And behind us are our forbears, in front of us our descendants. […] unless the knowledge and the memory that our forbears possessed are preserved we cannot move forward.” Do you consider that sufficient regard is given to the link between the generations in contemporary Russia? How about previously? Has this link between the generations been lost over the last decades? It appears to me that in modernist societies the link between the generations is growing weaker, but the situation in Russia in the 20th century was distinct: the Soviet state made the class struggle the foundation of its ideology, dividing classes into the “good” and the “bad.” There were also classes that were simply eliminated. A person’s parentage could consequently be a decided stigma: to be descended from a priest, an industrialist, a merchant or an aristocrat was a social danger, and for this reason many people concealed their ancestry. The very division into “Whites” and “Reds” – supporters of the monarchy and supporters of Soviet power – implied brutal repression and even physical extermination. The logic of survival was such that it was better to forget about one’s parents’ past or, better still, not to know about it at all. This was the cause of the social amnesia that the people of the Soviet Union suffered from. Recent years have seen a growing interest in one’s family background, and people are attempting to recreate a link with their departed forbears. I know several people for whom the novel Jacob’s Ladder has been a stimulus to look for information and documents about

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relatives who have passed away or perished in the camps. I think that recent decades have seen many attempting to recreate a link with those who are no longer with us and to discover the places and circumstances of their deaths. Researchers have characterized your writing as the “art of tolerance.” Do you believe tolerance is lacking in the modern world (or in modern Russia), particularly in relation to the elderly and what are considered to be their shortcomings? I’m going to respond to this question in a not entirely tolerant manner! I would state the problem somewhat differently: first and foremost, our society lacks humanity. The idea that human life is the world’s main thing of value has been totally forgotten. To this day the interests of the state are considered to be more important than those of the private individual. And this state policy can be observed not only with regard to the elderly but also in relation to the sick and disabled and, more broadly, to any private individual. The word “tolerance” itself has recently been acquiring connotations that are in some sense negative. The very term “tolerance” is now shot through with sanctimony and insincerity. To cite a well-known example: in America people now call blacks “Afro-Americans” even though the word contains nothing offensive. It only refers to a dark-colored skin. So how should one refer to modernday Africans: “Afro-Africans”? Why should the disabled be referred to with the made-up phrase “people with limited capabilities”? Each one of us as living people has a multitude of limitations. Yes, besides the relatively healthy the world contains the deaf, the blind and the legless. And in the present time all these conditions are either treated, or circumstances are created for sufferers that allow them to feel well. Tolerance consists of a good and positive attitude to those who feel ill at ease in this world and who are unlike those who feel healthy and full of strength. For around ten years I was in charge of a series of books for teenagers that between ourselves we referred to just with the letter T, although the series was about tolerance. However, I prefer to talk of “cultural anthropology.” This is essentially the point: it is knowledge of the lives of different ethnic groups that provides the basis for being tolerant of the habits, tastes and predilections of different people. And their physical limitations. The way we relate to old people (please note that according to the rules of tolerance the very phrase “old people” should be replaced by the more attractive expression “elderly people”) in our country is disrespectful. If I am offered a seat in the metro then it will as a rule

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be by a young Muslim person because in their traditional culture old age is respected. We do not have this in Russia, unfortunately. Ludmila Ulitskaya [Ljudmila Ulickaja]

Photograph by Basso Cannarsa. Courtesy of Elkost Intl. Literary Agency.

In your view, who is the most significant “old” or “aging” character in Russian literature? Why? Thank you for the question. I haven’t really thought about it. In my opinion the main hero of Russian literature is not an old man but a clever and cynical young person in the mold of Lermontov’s Pechorin [Pečorin]. Does Russian literature contain an “old” character who is personally dear to you? If so, then in what way? No, I don’t think so. Which “old” or “aging” character from your own works is most important or dear to you and why? Medea from my novel Medea and Her Children [Medeja i ee deti, 1996]. This is a memorial to the great Russian old woman, who in my personal case was a

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Greek living in Crimea. I myself had a large number of old friends and they are all dead now. It is they for whom this memorial was intended. And I did this as I could. This was the incredible generation of people who had lived through revolution, wars, the loss of husbands and children, women who resisted the blows of fate with extraordinary courage and with their humanity, softness and wisdom intact. A number of researchers view the “monster mothers” who oppress their children and who abound in contemporary Russian prose (your Queen of Spades [Pikovaja dama, 1998] is one of these) as the personification of a repressive Soviet power. Do you agree with this supposition? Not in the slightest! Despotic characters can be encountered in all eras and all cultures. Soviet power was highly successful in “dehumanizing” people. But hand in hand with this a thoroughly remarkable resilient and benevolent person also took shape. Set apart from this monstrous process of creating “Soviet people” she stood and still stands, this splendid woman, or, more frequently, old woman. That is the main achievement of that power: those who did not succumb to temptation reached extraordinary heights. Thomas Hoisington, an American translator and publisher of Russian stories about aging, claims that old people are marginalized in Russia to a much greater degree than they are in the West, and that Russians have a much narrower view of what aging means. Do you share this view? One cannot but agree with this unfortunately. Although I’m not completely clear what Thomas Hoisington means by the word “narrow.” He considers (although this is a possible point of disagreement) that in the West aging is perceived as a process that continues throughout a person’s entire life, while in Russia the word “aging” possesses a more limited meaning – something like “becoming an old person.” Can you agree with this? I think that social and sociological processes work according to the same laws in Europe and Russia; Russia is perhaps slightly behind but will eventually catch up. A war is being waged with old age today in both the medical and the psychological sense. I call this the Peter Pan complex: a huge number of people are trying as hard as possible to live as if they were still children. This is a denial of the sense of responsibility that is an intrinsic part of being an adult. In biological

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terms – assuming that the aging process is more gentle in Europe – the standard of living and people’s outlook on life dispose people toward this. In actual fact, aging – in its biological sense – happens more rapidly in Russia for these reasons. By training you are a biologist and for some time you worked as a geneticist. Does this have any influence on your understanding of what “old age” is? It is interesting that in your above-mentioned story The Queen of Spades, for example, the doctor is unable to explain where the old woman gets her incredible energy from… Molecular biologists and geneticists are now intensively studying the phenomenon of aging, the focus of their attention being cell aging. In a sense, the cell, unlike the person, is immortal, which is how while modifying their composition cells are able to retain their identity. This is the most essential point. The saddest thing is that while aging can be delayed, few are able to avoid it. As a 75-year-old I can testify that my hearing is worsening, my vision is deteriorating and I’m not such a fast runner as I once was. So that, while I’m aware that I have grown a little cleverer over the past 75 years, I can confirm that this degradation is proceeding at a faster pace… Energy, I would say, is only partly dependent on age but is also determined to a significant extent by temperament and life motivation. In an interview given to some American journalists the author Tatyana Tolstaya [Tat’jana Tolstaja] described how a number of her works were censored in Soviet times because their protagonists were old people: the censors maintained that she shouldn’t write about old people because old people had problems and those problems didn’t exist in the Soviet Union because “we have no old people.” Have you had any similar encounters with an “old people taboo”? To some extent. At the beginning of the 80s I wrote a screenplay. I think it was one of the best I’ve ever written, but it was rejected for the reason that its heroes were old people. These were a group of old women with an elderly male hangeron. They met on Sundays to walk in the forest. And their relations contained everything that you see with young people – love, ambitions, fears, devotion and egoism… The screenplay was called A Run for Life [Beg radi žizni]. It was a pity it wasn’t produced.

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Works dedicated to questions of old age and aging often speak of the “invisibility” of old people. Can you say that your works are among other things an attempt to make these “invisible people” (and in particular elderly women) visible again? I have not set myself such a task but I had a genuine liking for old people when I was young, and now I am old myself in the eyes of my young friends. I understand what you mean when you speak of “invisible people,” but there has been nothing of the kind in the circle within which I have lived my life. Our old people were our best teachers. There is one more thing to be considered: I admit that in Russia, which is a country that preserves a traditional, even outmoded way of life, old people are cared for and treated well in the family circle. But old people’s homes are dreadful, particularly in the provinces. And here we can speak not about individual “invisible old people” but about a problem that is totally invisible to our state. It seems that there is a taboo on mentioning violence perpetrated against elderly people by family members, medical staff in old peoples’ homes and other men and women. Is this problem recognized in Russia? If so, how, where and by whom? This process is just beginning. It seems to me that violence directed against old people is only one aspect of the cruelty present in our society. But I think that recent years have seen a shift in public awareness, and people have started to notice this and to try to combat it. But in Russia people don’t talk about violence – it exists legitimately in the family, on the street and in attitudes in the army, in kindergartens and in schools… It’s like that unfortunately. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, at the beginning of the 90s, average life expectancy fell to 71 for women and 57 for men (i.e., below the pension age). The Russian government has declared its intention of bringing about a rise in average Russian life expectancy to 80. Do you consider that the government is taking the right steps to achieve this aim? The government may indeed have that intention – though it is only words. But a new law to raise the pension age is in fact causing huge anxiety in the country. In 2017 average life expectancy is 71.8, which is a huge achievement. This represents an average life expectancy of 67.5 for men and 77.6 for women.

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Raising the pension age, which really is low in our country, will generate a large saving for the country because many people will simply not live until retirement or will only draw their pension for a short time. That’s what the statistics indicate. With figures like that you can forget about the moral responsibility of the state for the welfare and health of its citizens. The government’s strategy is nothing short of criminal. During the Russian Federation’s last presidential election Kseniya Sobchak [Ksenija Sobčak] stood “against everyone,” i.e., against the representatives of the “old regime” who had already been in power during her years at school and university. Do you foresee the rapid replacement of this old generation in Russian politics? I’m 75. I’ve had enough of those currently in power to last me to the end of my life. Scripts don’t get written in advance in Russia – an event takes place, frequently one that couldn’t be foreseen, and some time later we are told what the script was and who was behind it. Translated from Russian by Mark Shuttleworth

Contributors

Aštalkovska Gajtanoska, Ana, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Ss Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, North Macedonia. In her MA thesis, she analyzed gossiping as a mechanism of social control in a village in the western part of North Macedonia. Her PhD thesis was devoted to the anthropology of intimacy and methodological aspects of researching intimate topics in the Macedonian context. She is currently interested in the history of ethnocentrism in folklore studies, ethnology and anthropology. Božić, Rafaela, has been working at the University of Zadar since 1993, where she is Full Professor of Russian Language and Literature. She teaches courses on Russian syntax, translation of literary texts, professional translation, dystopia and language, the language of Russian poetry and Joseph Brodsky’s writing. She has held guest lectures at the Saint Petersburg Academy of Civil Aviation, the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow, the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities in Belgrade, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in Graz and the Faculties of Arts in Ljubljana and Olomouc. Gramshammer-Hohl, Dagmar, is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Graz, Austria. She studied Slavic and Romance Languages, Literatures and Cultures in Graz, Moscow and Rouen and holds two master’s and a doctoral degree from the University of Graz. She specializes in literary and cultural studies with a focus on 20th-century Russian literature, gender and age/aging studies. In her PhD thesis (2002) she analyzed representations of women’s aging in Russian literature. Her current research project focuses on narratives of homecoming in Russian and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian literature of exile. Dagmar Gramshammer-Hohl was granted the Prof. Paul Petry Award in Aging Studies in 1998; she is an alumna of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

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and a member of the European Network in Aging Studies (ENAS). In 2011 she was granted the Excellence in Teaching Award of the University of Graz. Gruber, Siegfried, is a researcher at the section of Southeast European History and Anthropology, Institute of History, University of Graz, where he received his doctoral degree in 2004. His main research topics are historical demography, aging, family history, patriarchal structures within Southeastern Europe and European comparative studies. His current research project focuses on the demographic situation in Albania around 1900. He was a member of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock from 2009 to 2014 and a founding member of Mosaic (the largest data collection and disseminating project for historical European census microdata outside of Northwestern Europe, http://www.censusmosaic.org) and still contributes to its growth. In addition to conducting historical research, he participated in an EU project on current family networks and help/support within these networks (“Kinship and Social Security”). Harris, Jane Gary, is Professor Emerita in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA). She earned her PhD at Columbia University and her MSW at the University of Pittsburgh. She has received a number of research grants to Russia and Finland and won the National Book Award for Translation for Osip Mandelstam: The Collected Critical Prose and Letters (1980). Her research has ranged from studies of Mandel’štam [1979-1990] to autobiographical prose (Autobiographical Statements in 20th Century Russian Literature, Princeton 2014 [2nd ed.]). In the past decade, she has focused on the culture of aging in Russian healthcare and social services (“Serving the Elderly: Informal Care Networks and Formal Social Services in St. Petersburg,” 2011; “Re-imagining Russia’s Social Welfare System in the Age of the Internet,” 2018), as well as Literary Gerontology (“Confronting Ageism and the Dilemmas of Aging: Literary Gerontology and Poetic Imagination – Baranskaya to Marinina,” 2020). Current interests include writers’ efforts to confront and re-envision stereotypes of aging and the aging process. Hergenröther, Oana, is a post-doctoral researcher at the Plurilingualism Research Unit and the Center for Inter-American Studies, both at the University of Graz. Her research interests include contemporary American literature and culture, aging studies and literatures in plurilingual and minority contexts. She holds a PhD from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, and was visiting scholar at Long Island University in Brooklyn, New York (2018). At the moment, she is a

Contributors | 381

post-doc project assistant on the international ERA Gender-Net research project “MascAge,” dealing with the cultural representations of masculinity and age in contemporary European literature and film. She is the author of a monograph about Paul Auster’s work (Lica priče: Intermedijalno pripovedanje Pola Ostera, Novi Sad 2019) and an active literary translator between Serbian, Romanian and English. Ivan, Loredana, is a Doctor in Sociology, Associate Professor at the College of Communication and Public Relations, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA), in Bucharest. She founded the research laboratory Social Cognition and Communication at SNSPA, covering topics such as: understanding technology use in later life, perspectives on ageism and the role of emotions in interpersonal communication. Her experience in international projects includes: “Scrutinizing the Impact of CCS Communication on General and Local Publics” (FENCO ERA-NET, 2009-2010) and “ALIGN-CCUS: Accelerating the Low-Carbon Industrial Growth Through CCUS” (ACT, 20172020). She is part of the Ageing Communication Technologies project and of the COST ACTION IS1402 “Ageism – A Multi-National, Interdisciplinary Perspective.” Loredana Ivan was Marie Curie scholar (2003-2004) at the University of Groningen, Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology (ICS), and visiting researcher at Humboldt University Berlin. Jakimovska, Ilina, PhD, is Full Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Ss Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje, North Macedonia. Her research interests include the anthropology of the human body in traditional culture and the role of folklore in shaping contemporary public opinion. She is currently researching the relation between ethnography and literature, organizing workshops for students from different disciplinary backgrounds. For more than ten years, she has been the editor and author of the popular culture blog Bookbox. She has published two poetry and short stories collections. Jandl, Ingeborg, is University Assistant (post-doc) for South Slavic Literatures and Cultures at the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Vienna. She completed her doctoral thesis at the Department of Slavic Studies at the University of Graz, where she worked as University Assistant (prae-doc) for Russian Literature and Culture. For her thesis on perception and emotion in the works of the Russian émigré author Gajto Gazdanov she won a DOC fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Ingeborg Ohnheiser Award of the Austrian Society of Slavistics. Her research interests include interdisciplinarity

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with psychology and natural sciences, narratology, verse theory, intermediality as well as literature/culture and ethics. She graduated in Russian and French Philology, Psychology and Philosophy, having pursued these subjects in Graz, Odessa, Moscow and Sarajevo. Káčerová, Marcela, is Assistant Professor at the Department of Economic and Social Geography, Demography and Territorial Development at the Comenius University in Bratislava. She received her PhD in Human Geography from Comenius University in 2009. She has been dealing with the issue of understanding the formation of population structures, with special attention to the process of change in population age structure. She has published numerous articles, many of them in peer-reviewed journals. Her focus is on the recognition and verification of methods and techniques of analysis, with an orientation toward quantitative methods in demography. Her major fields of interest are geography and demogeography, qualitative research, the aging population and the elderly. She participated in several scientific projects and co-authored a number of maps in the Population Atlas of Slovakia. Since 2016, she has been main coordinator of the project “Intergenerational Social Networks in an Aging City: Continuity and Innovation.” Kaser, Karl, has been Full Professor of Southeastern European History and Anthropology at the University of Graz, Austria, since 1996. His research focuses on historical-anthropological issues and encompasses topics such as the history of family, kinship and clientelism, gender relations and historical visual cultures of the Balkans. His most recent monograph is: Hollywood auf dem Balkan: Die visuelle Moderne an der europäischen Peripherie (1900–1970) (2018). Currently, he is working on the monographic book project Conflicting Femininities and Masculinities in the Digital Age: Realia and Utopia in the Balkans and South Caucasus. He has conducted numerous research projects. At present, he is coordinator of the research and exchange project “Knowledge Exchange and Academic Cultures in the Humanities: Europe and the Black Sea Region, late 18th21st Centuries,” funded by the European Commission. Karl Kaser is Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universities of Batumi (Georgia) and Blagoevgrad (Bulgaria), Honorary Professor of the University of Shkodra (Albania) and Honorary Member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences (ZRC SAZU). Könönen, Maija, received her PhD in Russian Literature from the University of Helsinki in 2003, where she is now Adjunct Professor of Russian Literature. Between 2010-2018, she worked as Professor of Russian Cultural Studies at the

Contributors | 383

University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu. She also holds a master’s degree in Economics. Maija Könönen is the leader of the multi-disciplinary project “Between the Normal and the Abnormal: Cultural Meanings of Dementia and Old Age in Finland and Russia,” funded by Kone Foundation (https://demoldcult.wordpress. com). Her further research interests include “madness” in Russian literature and culture and poetics of space. She has published a monograph “Four Ways of Writing the City”: St. Petersburg-Leningrad as a Metaphor in the Poetry of Joseph Brodsky (2003). She was a co-editor of the volumes Europa – Evropa: Cross-Cultural Dialogues Between the West, Russia, and Southeastern Europe (2010) and Balkanin syndrooma? (2010). Her most recent publications include articles on literary madness and dementia narratives in Russian literature and culture. Krasnova, Olga, holds a PhD in Psychology, is author of more than 200 publications and a competitive specialist in social psychology of elderly people. Her main research interests include elderly people’s public perception, elderly personalities, elderly’s activities, communications, challenges and how they cope with aging. Since the mid-1980s, she has conducted a great number of research projects. She has participated in international projects, conferences and other events in the field. She was a member of the European Council Research Group developing a project on the topic “Elderly People in Family and Society.” Currently, she is a consultant of the Institute of Professional Development of Social Sphere Employees of the Moscow Social Security Department. Levinson, Kirill, is Leading Research Fellow at the Poletayev Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities at the HSE University, Moscow, Russian Federation. His research interests include the social and cultural history of literacy and writing, history of education and educational institutions in Russia and in the West. He holds a C.Sc. in History from the Russian Academy of Sciences and a PhD from the University of Tübingen and is Professor of German History at the HSE University in Moscow. Currently, he is also affiliated to the German Historical Institute in Moscow. He is the author of monographs on civil servants in early modern cities of Southern Germany (Beamte in Städten des Reiches im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, Halle/Saale 2004) and on spelling issues in German- and Russian-speaking countries (Das “Rechtschreib-Elend”: Der Umgang mit orthografischen Problemen im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert im deutsch-russischen Vergleich, Tübingen 2019) as well as an active literary translator between German, Russian and English.

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Majo, Juraj, is Assistant Professor at the Department of Economic and Social Geography, Demography and Territorial Development at the Comenius University in Bratislava, where he received his PhD in 2010. His scientific interests include cultural and social geography, population history and visualization methods in demography and human geography. In the field of cultural geography, he focuses on the study of religion and irreligion, ethnicity in East Central Europe and its connections with demography, and their spatial and temporal aspects. Juraj Majo has received a number of research grants to Hungary, Sweden and the USA. He has co-authored several atlases and papers on religious and ethnic topics as well as book chapters focusing on current electoral behavior in Slovakia. His scientific work also includes participation in a number of interdisciplinary projects. Perišić, Natalija, is Associate Professor of Social Policy at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Political Science, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, where she lectures on the national and European social policy, aging and migration at the undergraduate, master’s and PhD levels. She is also a lecturer at the Master in Migration Studies program (Migration and Social Policy Module) at the University of Belgrade. She is Visiting Professor at the University of Tuzla, Faculty of Philosophy, and the University of Eastern Sarajevo, Faculty of Philosophy, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her scientific and research interests include the nexus between aging, migration and welfare state, national and European social policies and gender perspectives. She has published about 50 papers in national and international journals. She coordinates MIGREC, a project currently funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 scheme. Petzer, Tatjana, is an Interim Professor of Slavic Cultural Studies at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg and a Dilthey Fellow of the Volkswagen Foundation at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL) Berlin with the project “Synergy: A History of Knowledge” (2010-2020). She studied English and American and Slavic Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Belgrade. She holds a PhD in Slavic Philology from the University of Halle-Wittenberg and, after researching and teaching in Germany and Switzerland, she received her venia legendi in Slavic Literary and Cultural Studies from the University of Zurich. Currently, she is translating and editing an anthology on immortality in Slavic literature, philosophy and science forthcoming with Matthes & Seitz (Berlin).

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Saburova, Tatiana, is a Lecturer in the Department of History at Indiana University (Bloomington, USA) and Academic Director of the Russian Studies Workshop at Indiana University. She studied History at Omsk State Pedagogical University, where she was teaching from 1996 until 2016. She was Visiting Professor at Indiana University in 2016-2017 and at the University of Alberta in 2018 and was granted the Fulbright and DAAD awards. Her first book, published in 2005, was on social and cultural representations of Russian intellectuals in the 19th century. Her second book, Družba, sem’ja, revolucija: Nikolaj Čarušin i pokolenie narodnikov 1870-ch godov (Moscow 2016), was coauthored with Ben Eklof, and its English-language version, A Generation of Revolutionaries: Nikolai Charushin and Russian Populism from the Great Reforms to Perestroika, was published by Indiana University Press in 2017. Tatiana Saburova specializes in visual and cultural Russian history. Her current research focuses on biography, autobiography and memory in Aleksandr Amfiteatrov’s works. Satarić, Nadežda, graduated from the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Political Science, where she also obtained her Master of Science degree in Social Policy and Social Work. She is a founder and President of the Managing Board of the NGO “Amity – Snaga prijateljstva” from Belgrade, Serbia. She leads the efforts of “Amity” in three areas of its activities: participation in the creation of policies related to vulnerable groups; development of under-developed social services in the local communities; support and strengthening of the capacities of non-governmental organizations and institutions through monitoring and training. Nadežda Satarić focuses on aging, the elderly and advocating the rights of elderly people (especially of the poor elderly) in society. She has been particularly engaged in community work and in developing connections between academia, non-governmental and governmental sectors. She authored and co-authored various publications on the position of the elderly in Serbia. Stagl Škaro, Natalia, is Associate Professor at the University of Dubrovnik. She was Assistant Professor at the University of Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bonn, Germany, where she held an Erwin Schrödinger fellowship from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Her research interests include literary and cultural studies. Her last monograph deals with Renaissance literature in Dalmatia. Ulitskaya, Ludmila, was born in 1943 in the Urals. After graduating from Moscow University with a master’s degree in Biology, she worked at the Institute of

386 | Foreign Countries of Old Age

Genetics as a scientist. Shortly before perestroika, she became Repertory Director of the Hebrew Theatre of Moscow and a scriptwriter. She is the author of many novels and novellas including Medea and Her Children, Kukotsky Case, Sincerely Yours, Shurik, Daniel Stein, Interpreter, Imago/The Big Green Tent and Jacob’s Ladder, several collections of short stories, of tales for children and plays staged by theaters in Russia and Europe. Ludmila Ulitskaya is one of the most profound and far-reaching writers of contemporary Russian literature and one of the most published modern Russian authors abroad. She is the winner of many prizes and awards, including the Prix Médicis (1996), the Russian Booker Prize (2001), the National Literary Prize BIG BOOK (Russia, 2007), the Prix Simone de Beauvoir pour la liberté des femmes (2011), the Park Kyung-ni International Literary Award (2012) and the Austrian State Prize for European Literature (2014). She was a Man Booker International Prize nominee in 2009 and won the Reader’s Choice Award of the National Literary Prize BIG BOOK for Jacob’s Ladder in 2016. In 2019, she was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa degree of the University of Bucharest. Voľanská, Ľubica, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava. Her main areas of interest include historical anthropology, intangible cultural heritage, intergenerational relations, kinship and family, old age as well as (auto)biographical research. She focuses on the connection between the macro-levels of history and the lives of individuals in the context of the social structures they are part of. Her current projects are related to social networks of senior citizens in urban environments, aging in place and intergenerational relationships in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic. She authored the book “V hlave tridsať, v krížoch sto”: Starnutie v autobiografiách v Bratislave a Viedni (Bratislava 2016).

Cultural Studies Gabriele Klein

Pina Bausch's Dance Theater Company, Artistic Practices and Reception May 2020, 440 p., pb., col. ill. 29,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-5055-6 E-Book: PDF: 29,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-5055-0

Elisa Ganivet

Border Wall Aesthetics Artworks in Border Spaces 2019, 250 p., hardcover, ill. 79,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4777-8 E-Book: PDF: 79,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4777-2

Jocelyne Porcher, Jean Estebanez (eds.)

Animal Labor A New Perspective on Human-Animal Relations 2019, 182 p., hardcover 99,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4364-0 E-Book: 99,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4364-4

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-publishing.com

Cultural Studies Andreas Sudmann (ed.)

The Democratization of Artificial Intelligence Net Politics in the Era of Learning Algorithms 2019, 334 p., pb., col. ill. 49,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4719-8 E-Book: available as free open access publication PDF: ISBN 978-3-8394-4719-2

Jocelyne Porcher, Jean Estebanez (eds.)

Animal Labor A New Perspective on Human-Animal Relations 2019, 182 p., hardcover 99,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4364-0 E-Book: PDF: 99,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4364-4

Ramón Reichert, Mathias Fuchs, Pablo Abend, Annika Richterich, Karin Wenz (eds.)

Digital Culture & Society (DCS) Vol. 4, Issue 1/2018 – Rethinking AI: Neural Networks, Biometrics and the New Artificial Intelligence 2018, 244 p., pb., ill. 29,99 € (DE), 978-3-8376-4266-7 E-Book: PDF: 29,99 € (DE), ISBN 978-3-8394-4266-1

All print, e-book and open access versions of the titles in our list are available in our online shop www.transcript-publishing.com