title: Soviet Women: Walking the Tightrope
author: Francine Du Plessix Gray
description: Gender stereotypes, fragile families, sexual frigidity and limited knowledge or use of birth control are rampant in the U.S.S.R., where women are expected to have both full-time jobs and large families. According to PW , "Gray's series of sharply focused, brilliantly incisive vignettes add up to a remarkably revealing, often surprising profile of Soviet women under glasnost ." <br />Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: # 1.
  
  
  
  
  
  When the bus pulls to the corner where Comrade Snarky had agreed to wait, she
  stands there in an army-surplus flak jacket—dark olive-green—and baggy
  camouflage pants, the cuffs rolled up to show infantry boots. A suitcase on
  either side of her. With a black beret pulled down tight on her head, she
  could be anyone.
  
  
  
  
  
  “The rule was . . . ,” Saint Gut-Free says into the microphone that hangs
  above his steering wheel.
  
  
  
  
  
  And Comrade Snarky says, “Fine.” She leans down to unbuckle a luggage tag off
  one suitcase. Comrade Snarky tucks the luggage tag in her olive-green pocket,
  then lifts the second suitcase and steps up into the bus. With one suitcase
  still on the curb, abandoned, orphaned, alone, Comrade Snarky sits down and
  says, “Okay.”
  
  
  
  
  
  She says, “Drive.”
  
  
  
  
  
  We were all leaving notes, that morning. Before dawn. Sneaking out on tiptoe
  with our suitcase down dark stairs, then along dark streets with only garbage
  trucks for company. We never did see the sun come up.
  
  
  
  
  