Glorious fate to be always a foreigner!:’ Anna and Rose Strunsky in Russia and in Love

• In Event: Graduate Student Lightning Session: Modern Jewish History

Abstract

In 1886, a large family of budding intellectuals departed from Babinots, a small village about twenty miles east of Polotzk, settling first in New York and, later, in San Francisco where they became well-known fixtures of the Bay Area intelligentsia. Writing about the Strunskys over half a century later, the Forverts recalled that the family boasted two main “attractions” - sisters named Anna and Rose - young and captivating writers dedicated to the revolution. Events in 1905 drew the two to St. Petersburg where they embarked on literary careers publicizing the revolution for an American audience. Anna, who had recently co-authored a philosophical book on love with Jack London, dedicated her time to writing romantic profiles of leading radical personalities that eventually comprised an unpublished memoir, in addition to a brief but moving portrait of the Jewish community in Homel in the wake of the 1906 pogrom. Rose, meanwhile, focused her energies on studying Russian history and attaining proficiency in Russian, Swedish, and Finnish. In her spare time, she participated in clandestine revolutionary activities that eventually resulted in the sisters’ expulsion from the empire. Rose became one of the leading translators of Tolstoy in the early twentieth century, and penned a couple of obscure Marxist histories.

Anna and Rose Strunsky’s ties to Russia carried additional significance for their roles as representatives of the country of their birth. Aside from their cosmopolitan identities, intellectual interests, and professional endeavors - all tied to Russia - both sisters found themselves being courted by an impressive array of Anglo-American intellectuals and writers who were deeply interested in all things Russian. An impressive cast of well-known American authors and publicists, including Jack London, William English Walling, Arthur Bullard, and Sinclair Lewis, were romantically involved with the sisters and wrote about their desires for them in a variety of capacities. This paper explores the complicated ways in which these women served as conduits of cultural, political, and linguistic knowledge of the country of their birth, in addition to their objectification in the eyes of their American-born contemporaries and romantic partners.

Author

• Ashley Walters, Stanford University