As Russian society comes crashing down, one pillar stands fast: the babushka. In fact, the term connotes not so much a familial relationship as an informal institution made up of stalwart, patient, forbearing women of grit. They are the indomitable survivors who keep Russian families afloat during hard times. Many Russians grow up with a babushka in the house, or nearby: only 83,000 people in Russia live in retirement homes, compared with more than 4 million in the United States. As guardians of tradition, babushkas may soothe the national consciousness-or act as a brake on progress. Or they may just be champion busybodies. In any case, they represent practically the only remaining moral authority in post-Soviet society. “We babushkas have been alive practically since the revolution,” said Yevgeniya Georgiyevna, a 71-year-old Muscovite who declined to give her surname. “We’ve seen the good times and the bad times. We know the difference between right and wrong.”
Babushkas play a pivotal role in Russian society partly because there are so many of them. The average Russian woman marries at 22 and becomes a babushka in her 40s. With birthrates falling, Russia is experiencing major demographic distortions: some villages are entirely populated by pensioners-women over 55 and men over 60-as able-bodied young people escape the countryside in increasing numbers. Moscow and St. Petersburg also have unusually high proportions of retired people, putting a desperate strain on municipal budgets. Nationwide, more than 20 percent of the population has reached retirement age-almost twice as many as in the United States. Says sociologist Yuri Levada: “Our society will face some major new burdens caring for this unproductive sector.”
Yet babushkas make a real economic contribution, both to individual families and to the society as a whole. Most food lines are composed almost exclusively of older women, and in Russia, standing in line is practically a full-time job. Babushkas thus free other people to pursue productive activity. They often work to supplement their meager pensions, doing underpaid menial jobs such as shoveling snow or washing floors. “We’re tough, that’s for sure,” says Lyudmila Ivanova cheerfully; at 64, she rises daily at 5 a.m. to wash cars for foreign diplomats in Moscow. But a babushka’s chief contribution to society is spiritual. Russian Orthodox congregations have always consisted mostly of kerchiefed babushkas, who kept the faith alive during decades of official censure. Mikhail Gorbachev’s babushka had her grandson baptized back in the 1930s, when such demonstrations of religious faith could be downright dangerous. Historians have claimed that the baptism ultimately made Gorbachev more tolerant of religion and of dissent in general. “The most important thing my babushka taught me is morality,” says Natasha, an office manager for a U.S. company in Moscow. “They are the only people in our society who are teaching kindness.” Kindness, and how to dress properly. When a NEWSWEEK reporter recently stopped to ask directions in a village, a babushka replied sharply, “I won’t tell you until you put on your hat. Don’t you know it’s cold out here?”
Yet the babushkas’ influence may not be altogether positive. Sociologist Mikhail Matskovsky believes that these self-sacrificing family guardians may encourage an unhealthy passivity in their offspring. “You Americans eventually develop horizontal relations with your parents, as people,” he says. “We live with our parents and depend on them longer. We don’t become responsible for ourselves.” Politically, babushkas often have a strong conservative streak. Yevgeniya Georgiyevna, attending a recent commemoration of Lenin’s death, thinks it’s a babushka’s duty to protect the old ways: “We’re defenders of the socialist path.” The minimum state pension, recently raised to a miserly 342 rubles a month, will buy only a few pounds of sausage at today’s prices; not surprisingly, pensioners are the greatest opponents of Russia’s recent price increases. Babushkas may be the glue holding Russian society together. But it’s not the society of the future.
