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Chapter 1 Introduction to the Question Project Genesis This project began in a St. Petersburg apartment in the summer of 1995, while I was visiting a family whose son was studying to be a doctor. He and his wife were in the midst of their three internship rotations (roughly described as general practice/internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology and pediatrics). I inquired what specialization they might choose. The husband said that he would not specialize in obstetrics, as that was women's work. His wife agreed and thought that precisely for that reason, she might become a doctor of obstetrics and gynecology. I was struck by this comment; it seemed strange that this particular field would be singled out as women's work, since most doctors in Russia were (and are) women1 In essence, the entire profession of physician in Soviet Russia was "women's work." Why then would this young man specifically sta te that obstetrics was different from the other fields of specialty? I began to wonder if there might not be a connection between the role of women as healer and midwife in nineteenth-century village life (see Glickman 1991 and Listova 1989, 1992 for discussion) to the contemporary urban attitude that women were the best candidates to be physicians, and particularly obstetricians/gynecologists. I asked my Russian friends (all lifelong urban residents) whether they had had a female or a male obstetrician for their delivery. Overwhelmingly they answered that they were treated by female physicians. While this response in and of itself is not surprising, given the large percentage of female doctors in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, I was struck by the number who added that men are not suited to being obstetricians. It seemed to me that this attitude, so markedly different from that in the United States, might well have been inherited from the nineteenth-century village. Men were generally excluded from the delivery, which was the purview of women healers. I was 1 As of 1975, 72 percent of doctors were women (Ryan 1978, 42). Sacks (1976, 97) notes that 91 percent of all medical persOlm el were women in 1970. As Rivkin-Fish (2005, 26) notes, the percentage of women was even higher among obstetricians. 2 VILLAGE VALUES surprised to hear this conservative, "folk" attitude expressed by urban professional people, particularly in the face of assiduous Soviet attempts to root out both nineteenth-century values and ritual practices. I had imagined that the Soviet officials had indeed destroyed folk culture after sixty years, just as my informants all insisted. Repeatedly they would ask why I wanted to interview them, since, as they often said, "we have no folklore . You need to go to a village for thaL" This view of the folk as village inhabitants and of lore as their exclusive possession is the result of ideology about folklore as a discipline, both in the former Soviet Union and in Western Europe and the United States (for a discussion of these issues, see Olson 2004 and Bronner 1998). Nevertheless , contemporary folklorists have broadened their investigations not only to urban groups, but to those defined by profession, age, gender, hobby or class, as well as ethnicity and region (whether rural or urban). In essence, every group may potentially be defined as "folk." since they all may possess folklore, defined by Sims and Stephens (2005, 8) as informally learned, unofficial knowledge about the world, ourselves, our communities, our beliefs, our cultures and our traditions, that is expressed creatively through words, music, customs, actions, behaviors and materials. It is also the interactive, dynamic process of creating, communicating, and performing.... This study will examine how the "informally learned, unofficial" beliefs of urban Russians from the 1950s to the present day have interacted and conflicted with the official norms of the government throughout this period. When I began this project, it was extremely difficult for an outsider to gain admittance to the maternity hospital. As a result, direct observation of birth procedures was impossible in the early stages of my research. 111erefore, I began my study by interviewing women about their birth experiences. I limited my informants to women, since no men were allowed into the delivery room until after 19902 As I interviewed people, I learned a great deal about both medical practices surrounding birth in Russia and about related folk material. In the course of four collecting trips between 1995 and 2001, I discovered that the rituals were changing rapidly in the face of post...

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