Introduction

This matryoshka is a small oval doll that opens to reveal more dolls of decreasing size, one nestled inside the other. Like most such dolls, it is made of linden wood. At 3 inches tall, it can fit in the palm of your hand. It has a circular gold-colored base. The doll is in the form of a rosy-cheeked peasant woman, and everything about her is round: her wide blue eyes, pudgy hands, rosebud mouth, the pink circles of blush on her cheeks, and her overall shape. Her expression is that of saintly simplicity. Her straw-colored hair is modestly covered by a brown, fringed headscarf decorated with tiny designs of purple circles with pink dots inside, black dots in triangle shapes, and gold dots arranged as flowers. She is clad in a reddish-pink vest, and the sleeves of her blouse are green with polka dots.

Unlike a typical matryoshka, this doll is matte rather than glossy. The few shiny accents —the gold base and some of the flowers on her headscarf—thus stand out all the more. The lack of varnish adds to the aura of vulnerability around this delicate doll. Perhaps that serves as a selling point for some —she looks as if she is beseeching you to take her home and keep her safe. Four more matryoshki are concealed inside. Though the colors of their clothes vary, each one wears a headscarf decorated with dots, and a vest with polka-dotted sleeves peeking out; each one has a similarly sweet, naïve expression.

Who made this object?

The creator of this matryoshka is a pensioner named Tamara, who sells painted wooden crafts at the market along with her daughter Ol’ga. Tamara and Ol’ga buy unpainted matryoshki from a dealer and paint them in their central Moscow apartment. When she designed this matryoshka, Tamara was planning to cover it with varnish, but the fumes seemed unhealthy to her, so she decided to do without it. Tamara modeled this matryoshka on her grandmother, a thrifty woman who always wore vests. When the grandmother died at the age of 103 and people were preparing her body to be washed, they took off her clothes and found numerous pockets inside her vest where she had squirreled away coins. She used to refer to money by the colloquial word “denyozhka,” а “caressing diminutive” form of the word for money (den’gi) (the word is analogous to the diminutive matryoshka) and now their family business is called “Denyozhka” in her honor.

Ol’ga, by profession a film director and artist, makes matryoshki in the same naïve style. Tamara spoke proudly of her creations, from the naïve matryoshki to miniature wooden cathedrals and poseable figurines that she called “Transformers,” and she made a point of asserting their originality. She said that she was the first at the Vernisazh to make this type of matryoshka, which everyone now copies (she called those epigone dolls “clones”), as well as her mini-cathedrals. Echoing what we heard from other merchants, Tamara said that she was “happy that Americans are coming to visit us—now more will start coming, you’re about to have your election and everything will work out. Europeans will come too.”

Origins

The word for this type of doll, matryoshka, derives from the name Matryona, which at the time of the doll’s creation signified a full-figured, robust peasant woman. According to most accounts, the first matryoshka was created in 1892. It was carved by Vasily Zvyozdochkin and painted by Sergei Malyutin, artists working at the “Children’s Education” toy workshop at Abramtsevo, an estate north of Moscow. The doll depicts a smiling peasant woman, identifiable as such by her sarafan (loose jumper dress). Inside her are seven more dolls of decreasing size,  down to a tiny swaddled baby; these can be read as the children of the outermost doll. The largest matryoshka is shown holding a black rooster, and she is echoed by smaller matryoshki who hold other items encountered in rural everyday life, such as a sickle and a loaf of bread (karavai). The only male in the group wears a dashing embroidered shirt and is holding a wood splinter known as a luchina (derived from the word “luch” meaning “ray of light”) –used to light the stove, luchiny also served as traditional light sources in the peasant households until they gave way to electric light bulbs, nicknamed “Lenin’s little lamps” (lampochki Il’icha), in the early twentieth century. (Thank you to the staff of the Toy Museum in Sergiev Posad (Художественно-педагогический музей игрушки им. Н.Д. Бартрама) where this Malyutin matryoshka is located, who confirmed that the male matryoshka is holding a luchina.)

Artists at Abramtsevo had been working to revive traditional folk crafts and designs; they were conducting an ethnographic study of Russian peasant costumes and creating dolls dressed accordingly, an endeavor that influenced the creation of the matryoshka. But another key influence was a Japanese nesting kokeshi doll that Elizaveta Mamontova, the wife of industrialist and art patron Savva Mamontov (owner of Abramtsevo), brought back from the island of Honshu and showed to Malyutin. Kokeshi dolls themselves have Chinese origins—the Chinese made nesting boxes and eventually started making dolls using the same design principle. This origin story, with its merging of Russian and Japanese design, speaks of the plurality of Russian identity, even in cases of things people tend to see as quintessentially Russian.

Visitors from far away come to the village of Polkhovskii Maidan, southwest of Nizhnii Novgorod, to observe matryoshki being made. A painter named Irina recalls Japanese visitors to whom she gave a matryoshka as a gift. “In Japan they call a matryoshka a ‘kokeshka’! It’s interesting!” In this way, cultures take inspiration from one another. The matryoshka doll has traveled back to Japan as a souvenir, and in the form of a musical instrument called the matryomin, developed in 2000, which merges the doll with a theremin–an electronic instrument played without touching it, originally invented by a Russian, Lev Termen.

But then, what does it mean for an object to be “Russian”? In 2009, Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov expressed indignation at what he said were counterfeits masquerading as authentic Russian folk crafts. An Izvestiia article from this period claimed that in souvenir stores in virtually every tourist destination in the city, up to 90% of the matryoshki had been made in China. According to the director of the Izmailovo tourist complex, “Only master craftsmen can identify a fake, and even then not always—after all, the material and paint are the same. For the Chinese, making counterfeits is their national sport. They ripped off our Su-27 fighter jet so that you can’t tell the difference. And here we’re talking about some little matryoshka.”

Matryoshkus Blanco, a computer-lingo matryoshka from the Art Lebedev design studio, along with its “clone” that the company Frontline made two years after the original design debuted.

At the market, we met a wood sculptor trained at Abramtsevo named Igor Stupkin. Igor is also an amateur historian of material culture and intangible cultural practices, and was eager to share an alternative origin story with us. He sees two sorts of popular misapprehension around matryoshki: that they are just souvenirs for tourists—an impoverished way of looking at them as mere commodities; and that they only go back 100 years. According to Igor, the origin of these dolls in fact reaches back to antiquity, as attested by excavations in Novgorod, Russia that uncovered a family of figures, each smaller than the previous (the idea of putting one inside the other was what came from Abramtsevo, using the kokeshi model).  These were likely objects given as gifts; the total number of figures had a symbolic meaning: for example, five represented good fortune. In the Soviet period, information about the tsarist past was often concealed or obliterated. As a result, the expedition findings were obscured for decades. Stupkin’s view of the matryoshka’s origins resonates with that of Joanna Hubbs, who connects the matryoshka figure with ancient pre-Christian goddesses and the Scythian figures of worship known as stone women (kamennye baby) found throughout the eastern and central Russian steppes.

How are these objects made?

First, the artist chooses the appropriate wood with which to work. Linden, thanks to its softness, is the most popular choice; occasionally alder or birch are used. After the tree is chopped down, the artist removes the bark, but not entirely, so that the wood does not crack while it is drying. The logs dry for several years in a well-ventilated place.

When the wood is ready to be turned, it can be neither too moist nor too dry. A turner places a small piece of wood into a lathe. He makes the smallest doll first, from a single piece of turned wood; then the turner makes the next size up by hewing a piece of wood down to the appropriate size, dividing into an upper and lower part, then turning both parts in the lathe and hollowing them out so that the smaller doll fits snugly inside. The process is repeated several times. Each doll is then covered with oil varnish. (Originally, matryoshki were made for children to play with, and the varnish served to protect the painted surface).

After being dried and polished, the matryoshka is ready to be painted using gouache, sometimes watercolors or tempera, and occasionally oil paint. The village of Polkhovskii Maidan, southwest of Nizhnii Novgorod, specializes in hand-painted matryoshki that serve as the villagers’ sole source of income. Thanks to a steady demand for these dolls, the residents of Polkhovksii Maidan are better off financially than their fellow Russian villagers.

At the Vernisazh market, wood sculptor Igor Stupkin told us that in factories, matryoshki are made with stencils, with everyone at the conveyor belt adding a detail; you can tell which matryoshki were factory-made because their eyes are “emotionless.” Hand-painted matryoshki are produced en masse in the village of Polkhovskii Maidan, most of whose residents manufacture these dolls; there is no other source of income. Next to nearly every house you see linden trunks, aromatic with sap, with the bark removed or in the process of being removed. People say that there are almost no lindens left in the forests around Polkhovskii Maidan. Now linden wood is brought over from neighboring regions—Mordovia and Riazan oblast.

Mikhail Masiagin is an artisan from the village who has been making matryoshki for 40 years, virtually every day. He picks up a dry log and hews it down to size. Then he moistens the wood with saliva—he says, “some soak it in water, and others use spit!”— and secures the wood in the lathe. This kind of work is risky; Mikhail reports that “some people break their fingers! Some get hit in the head! The wood is spinning fast, you know. One little slip, and the wood goes flying, or something else happens! All of your tools are sharp and dangerous!” Mikhail warns that you must be vigilant and sober before taking up this sort of work.

Thanks to his decades of experience, it takes Mikhail about three minutes to make a matryoshka. In Mikhail’s garage, assistants pack the matryoshki into boxes and send them to St. Petersburg every week. Previously, Mikhail and his son carved the matryoshki, while his wife and mother in law painted them. Now he finds it more profitable to sell them unpainted for others to decorate.

Other villagers continue to paint the dolls according to tradition. Anna Kaverina has been painting matryoshki for almost fifty years. (Generally, the division of labor with regard to carved, painted wood crafts is that the men carve, and the women paint.) Painting the dolls is a much more time-consuming process than carving them, though the painting techniques have become simpler. Artists used to paint the outline of the drawing using ink-dipped feathers; now they use a gel pen. Aniline paints diluted with moonshine have given way to gouache. The design elements, featuring local flowers and berries, have remained the same.

Some of the villagers transport matryoshki—their own, and that of their neighbors—to markets in places such as Moscow, driving trucks and lugging heavy bags and baskets. 79-year-old Rimma Ignatova drives to Moscow every Wednesday (wholesale day) in order to supplement her meager pension with matryoshka sales at the Vernisazh market. She calls to customers in a rhyming singsong difficult to convey in English: “Here they are, here they are! They don’t drink, they don’t eat, they just sit looking at the wide world! [Ne pyut, ne edyat, na belyi svet glyadyat!] How much are they? 400, but I’ll give it to you for 350! [around 6 dollars] Look at what beauties they are!”

The villagers of Polkhovskii Maidan make only the classic peasant woman matryoshka, which has always been the most in-demand design. Mikhail recalls how local business boomed when Russia’s borders were opened. “Under Gorbachev we lived like lords and ladies! People came from Moscow for our matryoshki and scooped them up! Now things are a little worse. Or things have gotten worse all over the world… We’re working on peacetime production! We need there to be peace everywhere and for people to be happy! And rich! And for more tourists to come here!” Even though business is not what it was before Russia became embroiled in military conflicts, Polkhovskii Maidan is still in much better shape economically than the typical Russian village. The central street is paved, and there are many sturdy brick houses with good-quality foreign-made cars are parked alongside. For this village, the matryoshka has become what peasants call a “mat’-kormilitsa”—literally a “mother who feeds.”

Reflections

The matryoshka is such a universally recognizable symbol of Russia that in 2016, the Prokofiev-sampling song “Party Like a Russian” by pop singer Robbie Williams, primarily about the debauchery of corrupt Russian oligarchs and the mafia-like state, featured a chorus with the words “put a doll inside a doll.” How can we defamiliarize this nesting doll to get at the ways in which it signifies?

As it circulates around the world, the matryoshka conveys a certain image of Russianness – as female, as peasant, as colorful and exotic. Lending itself to both play and display, the doll sets in motion a variety of possible meanings, depending on the beholder. Its multiple layers seem to make concrete Winston Churchill’s characterization of Russia “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” But those layers also evoke psychological inner depths, which might be a key to the doll’s universal symbolism. Another key set of associations around the matryoshka have to do with its structural evocation of maternity. Do we then view the doll as an object that perpetuates gender ideology, or, less oppressively, as a hopeful symbol of the continuity of life?

The matryoshka became a popular export soon after it was created in 1892 and exhibited at the Exhibition Universelle in Paris in 1900, and Russian artists responded to the demand. It continues to be a top selling souvenir, so as it circulates around the world, it conveys a certain image of Russianness to all who buy it, see it in stores and friends’ homes, and nowadays, encounter its image incorporated into designs of kitchenware, clothing, and accessories. What was the appeal of a matryoshka back then, and what draws people to it now? It is colorful, and to people unfamiliar with the Russian peasantry, a touch exotic, while still familiar enough as a doll; it is inviting and lends itself to both play and display. The way in which the dolls nestle one inside the other, akin to a many-masted ship in a bottle, attests to an artisan’s skill that most of us lack, so it provokes admiration; there is a pleasure in handling cleverly made things.

In its nestedness, the matryoshka embodies the element of surprise: this is why giftwrap exists—people like to discover what lies beneath the surface. Those multiple layers evoke a psychological dimension too, which gets at the universal symbolism of the doll, hinting at the inner depths we all have and that we usually conceal from one another. But those layers lend themselves to a geopolitical reading as well. Recall Churchill’s description of Russia as consisting of matryoshka-like layers of mystery; the design of this doll in some ways resonates with the notion of a country whose people are very difficult (for rational Westerners) to comprehend. (Not that Russians themselves aren’t guilty of propagating this sort of self-image: contemporary Russian politicians enjoy quoting nineteenth-century poet Fyodor Tiutchev’s declaration that “one cannot understand Russia with one’s mind”).

Appropriately, given the international success of the doll as an export, the word “matryoshka” is one of the few Russian words to have migrated into Anglophone usage (along with vodka, glasnost, and more recently, kompromat). It is an essentially Russian word in the sense that it has a diminutive ending, a linguistic category not found in English. In this case, the diminutive ending signifies smallness and endearment; the customary interpretation is that the word goes back to the typical peasant name Matryona, and derives from the root matr- meaning mother. Matryoshki (for the most part) are female, thus embodying the popular moniker “Mother Russia.” The matryoshka strikes many as a symbol of maternity, given that her body contains the figure of another person. The matryoshki were originally designed as children’s playthings. In his influential study Mythologies, Roland Barthes posits that dolls and toys train children for their future (gendered) social roles; and we see various forms of traditional femininity represented on the dolls. Each doll (except the smallest one) contains a “baby,” suggesting that it is every woman’s lot to have babies.

For Irina Chertovich, director of the Matryoshka Museum in Moscow, this design is about the continuity of life. A reporter from Radio Svoboda asked her, “How did it happen that out of the many different types of trade in Russia, the one that is not the oldest, and not Russian by origin, nevertheless became what is now called the Russian “brand”?” Her response strikes a nationalistic tone but also suggest something more universal: “Probably because the author of this doll was the remarkable artist Sergei Malyutin, the singer of all that is ‘folk,’ all that is ‘peasant.’ The matryoshka was born at the turn of the twentieth century, when there was a strong fascination with folk art in Russia. He intuited it, because the matryoshka is the embodiment of the Russian land—our fecundity, motherhood, and abundance. It is the embodiment of the world without end. A mother gives birth to a daughter, the daughter gives birth, and life will never cease. Probably it is because of these consciously or unconsciously intuited deep roots that the matryoshka became beloved by all Russians.”

Sources

• Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. Farrar, Straus and Giroux : 1972.
• Hubbs, Joanna. Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture. Indiana UP, 1988
• https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Матрёшка
• Article about Polkhovskii Maidan (includes a 24-minute video):
• Kondakov, Vadim. “Zhila-byla matreshka. Kto delaet glavnyi russkii suvenir” May 22, 2017: https://www.currenttime.tv/a/28502602.html
• Pal’veleva, Lilia. “Matreshka: Narodnoe dostoianie ili kitch?” March 23, 2007. https://www.svoboda.org/a/384316.html
• Stepovoi, Bogdan. “Matreshka s kitai’skim prishchurom.” Izvestiia,  No. 164, September  08, 2009: http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/doc/20585041
• Information about the Matryomin: https://interlude.hk/playing-with-dolls-the-theremin-reborn/