The low status of domestic service in the Soviet hierarchy of labor undermined efforts to politicize domestic workers through union mobilization. The appeal of “productive” work inspired domestics to use their activism as springboard for careers outside of domestic service rather than for organizing their peers. Domestics’ reluctance to engage with the union only confirmed the long-standing suspicion that domestic service fostered “lackey’s souls” rather than conscious proletarian selves. This chapter provides insight into the problem of marginalized workers that have largely been excluded from organized labor. While the difficulty in organizing domestic workers is often negatively affected by their vulnerability and dependency on employers, the low status of housework in the gendered hierarchy of labor poses a different challenge as it conditions household workers to invest in changing careers rather than strengthening their labor organization.

The chapter traces attitudes of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Marxists toward paid domestic labor and domestic servants. Discursively connecting domestic service with slavery and serfdom, European and Russian radical thinkers saw it as antimodern. Following this line of thinking, the Bolsheviks emphasized the nonproductive nature of servants’ labor and placed them outside of “the modern proletariat.” Only after the active participation of domestic servants in the First Russian Revolution of 1905 did the party began to engage with what was then the largest female occupational group outside of agriculture. The chapter demonstrates that the Bolsheviks had given little thought to the place of paid domestic labor in the new society, anticipating its disappearance. Yet, it also shows that the key elements of the Bolsheviks’ approach to domestic service were present in their prerevolutionary thinking: ambiguity about the class status of servants, paternalistic attitudes toward them as the most backward members of the proletariat, and, most importantly, the vision of society in which housework was women’s work, whether it was paid or unpaid.

Previous historians have acknowledged the existence of paid domestic labor in the Soviet Union, but their work always proceeded from the assumption that domestic service was something illicit. This book shows that domestic service not only remained legal under Soviet law, its existence was openly discussed and even considered essential for the Soviet economy. Yet, the compatibility of domestic service with the Bolsheviks’ egalitarian message remained a contested issue. Critics of domestic service argued on Marxist grounds that it was an “unproductive employment” of workers. Proponents of paid domestic labor emphasized the domestic workers’ contribution to the building of socialism because this labor freed the still more valuable labor of their employers. Throughout the seven decades of the Soviet Union, the question of paid domestic labor came up time and again, but its contradictions could not be resolved. Bolsheviks’ sincere desire to make maids and nannies equal participants in the building of socialism came into conflict with their gendered vision of society where housework was women’s work.

The conclusion analyzes the rapid decline of residential domestic service in the last decades of the Soviet Union. The disappearance of live-in domestics did not prompt a discussion about who was now doing the housework. Instead, Soviet citizens relied on female part-time “helpers” and “sitters” or unpaid labor of grandmothers to make up for deficiencies in the Soviet service industry. With the growing concern with birthrates and divorces in late Soviet society, the metaphor of a kitchen maid to rule the state lost its revolutionary appeal. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, it now serves to ridicule its original promise of egalitarianism. The book concludes with reflection on the key issues in the study of paid domestic labor as a global phenomenon such as its dependence on inequalities, the importance of government regulation of domestic service, and the potential of socialism to solve the problem of housework.

Transition to socialism meant that the relationships between domestic workers and their employers had to be reimagined. Rather than framing the relationship between domestic workers and their employers as a contractual one, the state now celebrated employers and domestics who treated each other “like family.” The economic nature of the relationship between Soviet families and their domestics puts into sharp relief the meaning of Stalinist socialism for domestic workers and their employers. Similar to capitalist countries, class inequality lay at the heart of domestic service in the Soviet Union. Yet, this inequality was less stark and more fragile. As a result, domestic workers were able to negotiate special bonuses, such as extended vacation time to visit families. However, in return domestic workers had to give up labor rights guaranteed by Soviet laws, such as days off or regular pay. The chapter demonstrates the limits of legal regulations within the household and the role of informal arrangements in domestic service.

Chapter 1 analyzes the shift in the understanding of domestic service from a problematic institution intrinsically connected to inequality and exploitation to an acceptable practice in the 1920s. These early conversations revealed the two main tensions in the understanding of paid domestic labor after the revolution. The first involved class. While quick to reimagine domestic servants as domestic workers, the Bolsheviks struggled to articulate a coherent position on the class affiliation of their employers. Even though employment of household workers did not constitute exploitation in the strictly Marxist sense, the practice had a distinctly petty-bourgeois character in the eyes of many Soviet citizens. The second tension had to do with gender. The Bolsheviks had no resources to fulfil their vision of socialized housework but still sought to mobilize urban women for work outside the home and for political life. Rather than encouraging redistribution of labor in the home, the state saw employment of female migrant peasants with no professional qualifications in Soviet homes as an acceptable solution to the problem of housework.