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I first encountered Alina Rotenberg in the summer of 2012. At thirty-six years old, she was divorced, but her family name still carried significant weight in Moscow society: her former spouse, Igor, was the offspring of Arkady Rotenberg, a boyhood chum and judo partner of Vladimir Putin. There were numerous women similar to Alina in Moscow. They possessed striking looks, their impeccably maintained skin and conspicuously lavish attire flaunting their affluence. However, to the city at large, they were merely attractive in spite of certain perceived shortcomings: despite being discarded, despite being considered past their prime in their thirties, despite possessing a “temperament”—the Russian equivalent of being “challenging.”
After Putin assumed the Presidency in 2000, he embarked on the establishment of a fresh oligarchic system, bestowing lucrative, uncontested contracts upon longtime associates or individuals within the governmental structure. This is how Arkady Rotenberg, Alina’s one-time father-in-law, amassed a fortune. The post-Soviet establishment wasn’t greatly dissimilar to the one preceding it—and that was by design. Putin had joined the K.G.B. during Leonid Brezhnev’s leadership, in the seventies, and, having exploited its power dynamics to ascend to the country’s highest echelons, he was perfectly content to replicate it. Back were the palatial homes and luxury apartments, the private drivers and the paramours draped in expensive foreign goods. This time, however, it unfolded on a vastly different scale. Russia now enjoyed access to global markets—a boon for its exports and for its élites’ insatiable craving for properties and upscale commodities. Among Russian women, there was an intense longing to propel oneself into this opulent domain, achievable solely by captivating a man who resided there.
Within the hierarchy of Putin’s inner circle, Alina’s surname indicated the extent of her ascent and subsequent descent. She arrived for our meeting in a white Audi coupé—her summer vehicle, as she informed me. (A Range Rover Sport served as her preferred mode of transportation during the winter months.) She was an arresting figure, with lustrous, meticulously styled hair cascading over her shoulders. A Rolex graced her wrist, while diamonds and pearls adorned her neck and earlobes. It was a humid late-summer day, but for a former member of the new Russian élite, adhering to protocol was paramount.
In certain respects, Alina’s narrative could have mirrored my own. We both hailed from Soviet Jewish households, representing the third generation of women born into a sweeping social experiment that commenced when the Bolsheviks seized control and resolved to render the conventional bourgeois family obsolete. Vladimir Lenin believed such familial structures to be restrictive for women, and his revolutionary comrades—including his spouse, Nadezhda Krupskaya; his mistress Inessa Armand; and his associate Alexandra Kollontai—were tasked with liberating them from it. Kollontai, who held the distinction of being the world’s first female cabinet minister, spearheaded the most radical reforms. In 1918, Soviet women were granted the entitlement to higher education, equal compensation, uncomplicated civil divorce proceedings, child support (encompassing children born outside of marriage), paid time off for maternity, and access to complimentary maternity facilities. By 1920, abortion had been legalized within the Soviet Union. By the time my mother and Alina’s were born, female illiteracy, a widespread norm in imperial Russia, had been virtually eradicated. At the time of Alina and my birth, women comprised over half of the Soviet workforce and seventy per cent of the nation’s physicians. In families like ours, girls were expected to pursue university education and engage in professional work. It was simply understood.
Alina was born in Lvov, within Soviet Ukraine, and emigrated to Israel during her teenage years, coinciding with the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. In Israel, she obtained a degree in psychology and sociology from Tel Aviv University, subsequently relocating to England, where she pursued organizational psychology studies at the London School of Economics. While in London, she associated with a circle of women akin to herself: intelligent, educated individuals in their twenties who were employed as investment bankers and consultants in the financial domain.
In 2001, she accompanied a Russian boyfriend to Moscow. Having matured amidst the resilient women of Israel and the emancipated ladies of London, she was struck by the priorities exhibited by Russian women. “I frequently observe them at the gym, these highly conspicuous, fleeting figures,” Alina shared with me. “Long, styled hair; exceedingly slender physiques. These girls are typically quite attractive physically, often lacking substantial education, and generally originate from regions outside of Moscow. You might see them suddenly arriving in a Bentley one day, and you realize, O.K., she’s made it.” These were the very women to whom Alina would consistently find herself losing ground in the city’s intense competition for male attention.
Eventually, she parted ways with the boyfriend, commenced employment for an oligarch, and, in 2003, achieved an exceptionally advantageous marriage to Igor Rotenberg. As his father’s wealth escalated, Igor was positioned as his successor, receiving government contracts. However, Alina struggled to navigate the intricacies of their marital relationship. “We enjoyed a very positive dynamic for an extended period, until my career gained momentum, and I started vying with him for recognition,” she explained. She had relinquished her corporate role and, akin to numerous élite spouses, initiated an interior-design enterprise. She surmised that there were now two business owners within the family structure, but her husband held a different viewpoint. Even as Igor’s fortune expanded, Alina revealed to me that she persisted in underscoring her achievements and his perceived shortcomings. She had pursued higher education abroad at esteemed institutions; he had attended St. Petersburg’s State University of Physical Education. She was sophisticated; he was athletic. “Everyone regarded him admiringly, while I continuously criticized him,” she stated. “At a certain juncture, he simply grew weary of it.” They divorced in 2009.
“It was attributable to my actions,” Alina concluded. Given a second opportunity, she would alter everything. “It’s essential to safeguard the male ego with utmost care,” she elucidated. “It’s misguided to assume that a man requires an exceptionally accomplished woman. What he needs is a woman in whose presence he feels extraordinary.” Igor had since remarried, to a woman whom Alina perceived as possessing “questionable inner qualities.” Yet, “in her company, he feels like a distinguished figure,” she remarked. “I hadn’t comprehended this previously. I had always envisioned that he would derive joy from my achievements, that he would proclaim, ‘This is my counterpart. I take immense pride in her. I am her partner.’ But it’s not at all like that.”
Indeed, Alina observed that none of the immensely wealthy men within her social sphere had married educated, career-oriented women like herself. They typically wed women resembling Igor’s second spouse. Two years following Alina and Igor’s marriage, Igor’s father, Arkady, married Natalia, a twenty-four-year-old with bleached blond hair. She was a dance instructor from Kurgan, an impoverished and remote locale beyond the Urals. Natalia had transitioned from a modest apartment dwelling to the Moscow and London mansions of one of the world’s wealthiest individuals. To Alina’s astonishment, Natalia, who was five years her junior, never appeared insecure about her origins. “She possesses absolute confidence in her entitlement to everything,” Alina stated. “Someone once inquired whether she could have ever conceived of owning a three-hundred-foot yacht, and she responded affirmatively. How? How did she envision it? She originates from a large family with numerous children, all residing in a cramped apartment.” Whenever Natalia contacted her husband, Alina informed me, Arkady invariably answered the phone, even when engaged in meetings with Putin.
As a skilled observer of human behavior, Alina had meticulously noted the strategies that appeared effective for these youthful, elegant women. For instance: “A man values a woman far more if she constantly extracts gifts from him,” she remarked, “and he esteems her far more than a woman who declines everything offered. ” Alina gently held her teacup, appearing simultaneously awestruck and perplexed. “They obtain everything through this approach,” she commented. “I believe these principles should be instilled in girls during childhood. It’s crucially important. And it matters little whether the girl is academically gifted or not, because a girl who attains a Ph.D. and is exceptionally accomplished can still be overshadowed by these attractive young women who will usurp her husband before she can count to three.”
Alina cautioned that deriving a sense of superiority from these women was a misguided comfort. “Everyone mocks them for flaunting designer handbags with diamond clasps, but they are faring exceedingly well,” she asserted, shaking her head. “They possess genuine ingenuity. Absolute ingenuity.”
A few months later, on a crisp evening in September, I was seated with a dozen women on the floor of the Academy of Private Life, just off Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Street. Our instructor was Olga Kopylova, a middle-aged psychologist sporting a blond bob. “A man doesn’t gravitate toward a place where he is berated, nor where he is demeaned, but where he is affirmed as exceptional, a supreme being, a guiding light,” Kopylova declared. The Academy of Private Life was conducting an open house, and Kopylova, alongside her fellow instructors, was present to elucidate how these occupied Moscow women might attain contentment in their personal relationships.
It was a considerable undertaking. During the Second World War, approximately twenty-seven million Soviet citizens perished, predominantly men in their prime reproductive years. In an endeavor to rebuild and repopulate the country, Nikita Khrushchev encouraged women to marry and bear as many children as possible, yet there was a scarcity of available men. Those who had managed to return from the war often suffered physical and psychological wounds. These men, too, were encouraged to marry—and remain married. Obtaining a divorce became markedly more arduous. Consequently, millions of women resigned themselves to bearing children with men who were already married to other women—a situation that the state sanctioned. By the twenty-first century, the male population had long since recovered, yet there persisted a pervasive apprehension that suitable men—single, virtuous, and gainfully employed—were becoming an endangered species. As one Russian girlfriend remarked to me, “Men are comparable to public restrooms: either occupied or defiled.”
Many Russian women were acutely aware of the passage of time, seemingly aware of the precise duration they had before their physical attractiveness—their primary asset—ceased to be competitive in a ruthless environment. Until that moment, they capitalized on their natural endowments, investing heavily in apparel, cosmetics, and cosmetic procedures. (I was frequently questioned by women in Moscow as to why their American counterparts “neglected their appearance.”) During the financial upheaval of 2008, Russia was the G-20 country most severely impacted by the economic downturn, yet sales of cosmetics remained unaffected. Russian politicians, predominantly male, frequently lauded Russian women as the world’s most beautiful, as if they were, like oil and gas, yet another natural resource to be exploited in the nation’s resurgence to superpower status.
Among themselves, Russian women engaged in fierce competition for male commitment—a commodity even scarcer than the actual men. Expecting marital fidelity from a man was perceived as prudish and unrealistic; infidelity was simply inherent in men’s nature, women asserted, implying that, in this nation that had once diverted wild rivers and drained entire seas, a man’s intrinsic nature was unchangeable. If anything, having mistresses was a mark of prestige: How many women (and illegitimate offspring) could a man afford to support? One Moscow banker I knew, who was embarking on his third marriage at thirty-six, recounted a real-estate endeavor that his bank was contemplating financing: a luxurious gated community featuring ten-million-dollar residences in the core, intended for the wives and legitimate children, encircled by a ring of smaller, more unassuming homes, valued at approximately two million each, for the mistresses and their illegitimate offspring. This arrangement would offer greater convenience for all parties involved, the banker explained, noting that he always vacationed with his wife, two former wives, and all their progeny, despite the fact that each successive wife had initially been a mistress.
And yet, despite the meager, uncertain reward awaiting them at the conclusion of this pursuit, it was one that Russian women relentlessly pursued: first to secure a husband, then to defend against the other women who were undoubtedly plotting to wrest him away from her. The Academy of Private Life was conceived to cater to this demand, which itself stemmed from the failure of the Soviet feminist experiment. By the latter part of the nineteen-eighties, Soviet women were accustomed to returning home following a draining work day to manage unmechanized households and procure dwindling food and clothing supplies for their children, who were primarily their responsibility. These women, in the words of the historian Greta Bucher, “were compelled to perform each of their roles—worker, mother, and homemaker—as if it were their sole occupation.” And as if it were their individual responsibility.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 only exacerbated their hardships. Faced with starvation, instability, and salaries that remained unpaid for extended periods, men and women responded in divergent ways. Millions of Russian men, reluctant to accept lower-status employment, retreated to their couches and succumbed to alcohol. Simultaneously, women stepped in to fill the void. Former school principals cleaned toilets; physicists became cashiers. As their men declined—and divorce rates surged—women undertook whatever measures were necessary to provide sustenance for their families. All of this engendered a desire among many to become stay-at-home wives, supported and protected by a wealthy and masculine man. As Elena Zdravomyslova, a sociologist and feminist scholar based in St. Petersburg, contended, with regard to motherhood and professional life, the liberation of women from “the dual burden” could “be perceived, at least in part, as an emancipation for women.”
This novel aspiration, which Zdravomyslova termed “civilized patriarchy,” extended several advantages to Russian women, the foremost being the option to choose. She could, in theory, remain at home, or she could pursue employment for her own gratification and self-fulfillment. She could dictate reproductive decisions while her husband earned the income, shielding her from the harsh realities of the Russian workplace. A family sustained by a single breadwinner is “what everyone here yearns for, because they have never experienced it,” Zdravomyslova stated. A century after Kollontai and Lenin inveighed against conventional, financially driven marriage, it had evolved into women’s ultimate ideal.
At the Academy of Private Life, Kopylova explicated how that aspiration could be realized. Every woman, Kopylova stated, cycled through four states of being: the young girl, the temptress, the queen, and the khozayka, or the mistress of the house. What did it signify, Kopylova posed to her students, if a man ceased offering gifts? “It indicates that the state of the young girl is suffering, that the girl is insufficiently present,” she proclaimed. “Because the girl motivates the man to action, to acts of chivalry.” Alternatively, Kopylova inquired, what if you were adept at attracting a man but unable to retain him? That clearly signified the weakening of your internal khozayka.
“This represents a man,” Kopylova stated, raising a dry-erase marker to symbolize a phallus. She gripped it tightly with her manicured hand. “A man possesses a special instrument that indicates his vector, his direction. Thus, if he suddenly finds a woman attractive, his instrument immediately reveals the direction he should pursue.” However, Kopylova clarified, it was possible to confuse a man’s instrument. “When we continually assert, ‘I’ll handle it myself,’ or when we offer him guidance—foolish guidance, frankly—a man interprets it as you castrating him.” A woman who exhibited excessive determination, Kopylova stated, risked converting her feminine energy into masculine energy. “A man can perceive, on an intuitive level, that you possess a member and he possesses a member,” she said. “Can you engage in sexual relations with him? You cannot!”
Naturally, the skilled instructors at the school were delighted to guide women back toward a genuine feminine equilibrium. The Academy of Private Life, which asserts to have served over one hundred and fifty thousand women, maintains several national branches and an extensive curriculum of courses: Flirtation from A to Z, The Art of Graceful Walking, Mysteries of the Jade Cave: How to Utilize Your Intimate Muscles, How to Play the Magic Flute: The Art of Fellatio. (These final two offerings garnered the greatest interest during the open house.) Throughout all courses, the pedagogy involves an uncomfortable fusion of traditions, integrating Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Slavic paganism, Siberian shamanism, and Asian spiritual practices, punctuated with aspects of Jungian and American pop psychology.
Following her elucidation of the four feminine states, Kopylova revealed that an imbalance could only be rectified by realigning one’s chakras, an ancient Hindu concept. “I had one young woman who ardently wished to gift her boyfriend an expensive new vehicle,” Kopylova recounted, illustrating how an erratic chakra could backfire. “While it remains your prerogative, providing a man with costly gifts invariably transforms you from his girlfriend to his maternal figure, and men typically do not desire intimate relations with their mothers.” By the session’s end, she was promoting a highly convenient dildo, offered for sale at the academy for merely twenty-two hundred rubles—ideal for practicing the Magic Flute technique.
One evening shortly after the open house, I visited the Academy of Private Life to conduct an interview with its founder. Larisa Renar possessed a gentle demeanor, adorned with dyed copper hair and large blue eyes. She donned a flowing, diaphanous gown and the Medallion of Women’s Strength—an intricately designed pendant, worn by several of the academy’s instructors, featuring four gemstones that symbolized the four states of femininity.
As Renar served me tea, I inquired as to why she had established the academy back in 2000. “I believe the fundamental issue lies in the fact that modern society, not solely in Russia but globally, compels women to adhere to male standards: to emulate men, to behave like men, to resemble men,” she began. In Russia, this problem was particularly pronounced. “Women bear all the responsibility,” she clarified. “A woman makes all the decisions. She earns the income. And in Russia, many women are overly active, excessively independent. This is connected to historical events, to wars and revolutions during which men were killed, compelling women to assume leadership roles. My generation of women, those born in the sixties—we find it simpler to manage everything ourselves and abstain from relying on men.”
I conveyed to Renar that I concurred with her perspective. By that juncture, I had resided in Russia for several years and had been involved in a relationship with a Russian man for a period of time. This particular man presented me with flowers and offered me heartfelt compliments; he held doors open and assisted me with my chair in restaurants. Superficially, he appeared prosperous and attractive, yet in my presence, he transformed into a needy and manipulative child. His inability to render decisive judgments or refrain from becoming a sentimental, clinging drunk had altered my role from that of girlfriend and lover to that of mother and disciplinarian. I loathed myself for the transformation I had undergone in his company: a scold, a jealous partner who awaited his slumber to peruse his phone, a woman consumed by anger and bitterness beyond my years.
Nevertheless, I recognized that, within Moscow, he represented the best I could attain. Other women openly expressed desire for him; one attempted to kiss him publicly. “Men are not readily available,” my grandmother rebuked whenever I lamented his conduct. Additionally, as she and my Russian girlfriends emphasized, he genuinely loved me. Did it truly matter that my affection for him had waned? Several of those Russian girlfriends believed that my problems would dissipate if I simply married him and conceived a child. “Divorce remains an option!” my grandmother declared, by way of reassurance. After all, I was approaching thirty and, apparently, nearing the end of my existence.
“Indeed, men have been diminished,” Renar stated. “This situation wherein a woman is strong, not in a feminine manner but in a masculine one, and a man is weak—this role reversal is the root cause of women’s dissatisfaction.” The solution, as Renar articulated in her 2015 publication, “Make Your Husband a Millionaire,” involves channeling your feminine vitality into inspiring your man to attain wealth and success. Renar is herself a successful businesswoman, and she conveyed that she believes it is admirable for women to pursue careers. However, she also exhibited caution toward modern feminism, as it disrupts the natural equilibrium between the sexes. “A man provides women with a home, physical protection, and a woman provides him with pleasure, sexual gratification, beauty,” she stated. “And thus, we should willingly defer to our man, affirming, ‘You are the authority, you are correct.’ ”
Eleonora and Leyla had never attended the Academy of Private Life, yet they instinctively grasped its principles. Similar to myself, they were both born in 1982; Leyla in Ufa, the capital of the Soviet Republic of Bashkortostan, Eleonora in what was then Leningrad. They emerged from the Soviet middle class, from families of engineers, accountants, and factory workers who, during the stagnation of the eighties, discovered themselves to be, in reality, quite impoverished.
Both women led ordinary lives until they encountered men considerably older than themselves. Leyla’s was a Frenchman, an art collector twice her age, who met her in one of Moscow’s fashionable nightclubs and commenced to educate her extensively. Their days consisted of Parisian gallery and museum visits, followed by quizzes in the evenings. “Resembling Pygmalion,” Leyla remarked. Eleonora encountered the heir of a prominent Moscow family in St. Petersburg. He introduced her to luxurious hotels, exquisite dining, and silk napkins. “Evoking ‘Pretty Woman,’ ” Eleonora recalled.
Following Leyla and the Frenchman’s separation, she capitalized on that education and became an interior designer, the ubiquitous profession of a glamorous Russian devushka. Despite her fondness for her work, she longed for the financial stability of marriage, which she secured in record time. After meeting a charming man through a mutual friend, she promptly determined that he satisfied the majority of her criteria. Ten days later, he proposed. How did she accomplish it? “I believe that my skills contributed to my success: conviction, marketing, management,” Leyla stated. “I marketed myself effectively and managed to present myself in a favorable light.” While her relationship with the Frenchman had been based on love, Leyla conceded that this relationship was “a cold calculation.”
And yet, things had not unfolded as she had anticipated. During our meeting, she guided me through the well-appointed apartment she shared with her husband, who also served as her employer in the design business they co-managed. He was not present, having been absent for the entire summer, though he occasionally called to remind her that he owed her nothing. Recounting this, Leyla, who had informed me that she aspired to be “a resolute woman” like Margaret Thatcher, began to weep. “When I married, I had hoped to establish a secure foundation, a husband as my support, yet I have acquired nothing,” she stated. “We have been married for two years, and for the past six months, I have realized that I possess only myself, my work, my intellect, my ambition, and nothing else. There is absolutely nothing surrounding me.”
She remained uncertain about pursuing a divorce. The women within her circle who had found affluent husbands “will undoubtedly remain with them,” she stated, even if these husbands openly engaged in infidelity or had families with their mistresses. Her friends also took lovers, typically men over whom they held some degree of authority: bodyguards, drivers, or hachiki, a racial slur for men originating from the Muslim North Caucasus. Leyla offered a generalized description of a man of this type—perhaps named Mahmoud, perhaps hailing from Dagestan. One such man confided in her that he sought women similar to her friends: affluent, married, and neglected. They were perfectly low-maintenance, he stated, and they sought merely one thing from him. Alina Rotenberg also noted that several of her friends, even those married to billionaires listed in Forbes, occasionally enjoyed liaisons with the occasional Mahmoud.
Eleonora, with whom I conversed over coffee at a Moscow restaurant, initially appeared to be an outlier, as she remained unmarried at the advanced age of twenty-nine. A rosy-cheeked real-estate agent, she had spent the morning inspecting a warehouse outside of Moscow while wearing heels and an elegant cashmere sweater. In Moscow, real estate can represent a strikingly lucrative career, and Eleonora was in no haste to marry. However, when the appropriate moment arrived, she stated, she desired a man who was “stronger”—by which she meant a man who earned more than she did. “It is inherent in Russian women to seek protection behind a man’s back, regardless of their level of success,” she stated. “If a man is present, a woman will invariably prefer to be subordinate.”
This was surprising to hear. Eleonora reminded me of my female companions back in New York: beautiful, intelligent, and ambitious individuals who cherished their careers and earned a remarkably comfortable living through them. However, unlike them, she would willingly relinquish it all in an instant. Renar would undoubtedly approve, I mused.
I initially encountered Renar only a few months following Putin’s attainment of his third Presidential term. He has maintained his grasp on power ever since, fostering a legitimizing ideology based on traditional gender roles, Orthodox Christianity, and Russian neo-imperialism. In recent years, the “global L.G.B.T. movement” has been designated as extremist, equating gay Russians with ISIS terrorists. Abortions have become more difficult to procure, while domestic violence has been decriminalized. Putin’s cabinet ministers now encourage young women to forgo higher education and bear children—as many as possible. As Putin has dispatched hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths in an attempt to conquer Ukraine, he has reintroduced Stalin’s Order of Maternal Glory, military-style honors bestowed upon women who produce an astounding number of offspring. (Stalin himself borrowed the concept from Nazi Germany.) In the militant resurgence of the late Putin era, men are men, women are women, and the men wield authority.
This does not appear significantly divergent from Renar’s vision, but upon meeting her again in 2015, I discovered that she had struggled to implement her teachings in her own life. She had once enjoyed a marriage that most Russian women merely dreamt of. Her husband was a handsome and intelligent older man, a pioneer within the post-Soviet advertising industry. He had facilitated her pursuit of a psychology Ph.D. and acquired a building for her in St. Petersburg to house the business that subsequently became the Academy of Private Life.
And yet, she had not been content. On the scale of love that she had developed, the fifth and highest level depicted two individuals who loved each other so completely that their hearts inhibited their bodies from desiring anyone else. Most forms of love in the world failed to reach that ideal, Renar informed me. She and her husband’s love, for instance, had resided on the second level, where you selected your mate based not on your heart but on your intellect. At this level, Renar explained, your desire for others does not diminish. Consequently, he engaged in affairs, she engaged in affairs, and in this respect, they were simply akin to countless other Russian couples “who are always seeking someone superior, continually evaluating the available options,” Renar stated.
As the academy flourished, Renar had increasingly questioned her marriage. “I wondered, My God, how is this occurring?” she recalled. “I’m intelligent, I’m attractive, I’m alluring, I’ve mastered every sexual technique conceivable. I’m dedicated to self-improvement. I’m devoting everything to our family.” When she requested a divorce from her husband, he deemed it foolish. This represented the closest any married couple in Russia could come to happiness. Seeking more could only result in isolation, a far worse fate for a Russian woman than enduring unhappiness. However, he complied.
During my last conversation with her, Renar was involved with a man a decade her junior, a situation that clearly pleased her. “I believe I will marry again, unquestionably,” she informed me. “And I will only marry a man not because he loves me, or because he satisfies a checklist of criteria, but only when, within myself, I possess the certainty that this man is the ideal choice for me.” ♦
This narrative is drawn from “Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy.”
Sourse: newyorker.com
