Véra Starkoff (1 April 1867 – 19 March 1923) was a French playwright, anarchist, and feminist born in Russia-occupied Poland. Born under the name Tauba Efron to a wealthy Jewish family, she moved to Geneva, Switzerland to study in 1884. She moved to Paris, France in 1889, where she resided until her death on March 19, 1923.
Starkoff was significantly involved in the People’s University (Université Populair) movement that emerged in Europe during the early 20th century. She staged and directed plays that included feminist ideals and advocated the working-class to receive an education. Her work in this movement provided the groundwork for establishing the "popular theater" in Paris. She used the theater to express her political ideas about the working class, women’s rights, marriage, and humanism.
She established one of the People's University branches and was engaged with the Union Fraternelle des Femmes, writing for a feminist newspaper, La Fronde. She worked with the Théâtre du Peuple, and her plays, written for working class-audienced and tied to Université Populair, were politically charged. Her two major works were L’amour libre (1902) and L'Issue (1903).
Starkoff was an ardent follower of Leo Tolstoy's works and philosophies, citing his work as the basis for much of her religious and philosophical beliefs. In Starkoff's nonfiction works, she drew on Tolstoy’s philosophies about beliefs of humanism and Christian anarchism as support for her arguments against repression and violence in all forms. She wrote a number of political and philosophical essays and articles for newspapers like Le Populaire, a socialist newspaper based in France.
She was a critic of the Russian Revolution. While she supported aspects of Communist thought, the Soviets’ methods of violent repression, like the Red Terror, conflicted with her deeply held pacifist views stemming.
Early and family life
Véra Starkoff was born on April 1, 1867 to a wealthy Jewish family in Poland, which was then under Russian occupation. Her birth name was not Véra Starkoff; she was born under the Jewish name Tauba Efron. When Starkoff was young, anti-semitic sentiment was prevalent across Eastern Europe. Her immediate family converted to Protestantism as a means to avoid persecution.
Starkoff's family was closely involved in politics and in the literary world. Taube Wilner, her grandmother, was believed to be descended from Vilna Gaon, a prominent rabbi born in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1720. Ilya Efron, her father, founded a publishing house in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The publishing house published books covering topics on cultural, social, and economic issues. The most notable book published by Efron’s publishing house was the Brockhaus-Efron Encyclopedia, an extensive multi-volume encyclopedia written in Russian. Akim Effront, her uncle born in 1855, was thought to be associated with the Russian government and was even believed to have been a Tsarist spy. When Starkoff died in 1923, she and Akim shared a grave in Montaparnasse Cemetery in Paris. During the late 19th century, her other uncle, Jean Effront, was arrested for his revolutionary involvement and was forced to leave Russia as a result. In 1889, other members of her family were investigated by the Tsarist police who had reason to believe that the Efron family was collaborating with Vera Davidovna Gurari, a labor organizer and Russian revolutionary figure.
In 1884, when Starkoff was seventeen years old, she moved to Switzerland to study philology at the University of Geneva. While she attended the university, she went by the name Thérèse Efron. During this time, it was common for young Russian women to leave Russia or Russian-occupied countries to study in different countries. After completing her studies in Geneva, Starkoff moved to Paris in 1889, the year her family was investigated by the Tsarist police in Russia, and remained there until her death in 1923.
Starkoff's first marriage was to Léon-Paul Nicod in 1892. Nicod attended the École Pratique des Hautes Études and became an agrégé of grammar. He later taught at the Lycée Stanislas in Paris and was known for his work in editing various verses that were published in 1917 by Adam de la Halle, a French poet. Starkoff and Nicod had two children together. Although no records have been found discussing their second child, the couple had a boy named Jean. In 1901, when Jean was eight years old, Starkoff and Nicod divorced.
The year of her second marriage is unknown, but she married Robert-Adolphe Schutz, an author and artist.
Universities and development of theatre Starkoff played a prominent role in establishing People's Universities across France—institutions that offered working-class individuals access to free education. She was placed in charge of one of the first people's universities, though the specific institution and year she was appointed are unknown. Starkoff's work in the development of these universities was notable, as she used theater as a means to educate individuals by staging her own plays as well as those of other similar artists.
Each people's university featured a congress of about one hundred members. However, only nine were acknowledged as founding women or representatives. This small group of women held positions of leadership, authority, and influence at these institutions. Starkoff was part of this group from 1900 to 1904. She served as a representative for the popular university located in Montreuil-sous-Bois known as "Workers' Evenings." As a representative, Starkoff's role included staging plays and readings that dealt with feminist ideas. She directed works such as Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll's House and Nelly Roussel's Eve's Fault. Starkoff's first play, Free Love, was dedicated to the "Worker's Evenings." Similarly to Starkoff, other women, such as Jeanne Desparmet-Ruello in Lyon, took part in the creation of people's universities. Although the goal of the people's universities was to provide accessible education for working-class individuals, there were numerous debates about these institutions. In 1904, a division occurred between the founding women of these universities. One side, known as the "Auguste Comte tendency," believed that education should be universal and moral. The other side, with which Starkoff aligned, thought that education should empower workers to participate in social and political struggles.
Starkoff's work in the people's universities laid the foundation for the establishment of the "popular theater" in France. During the late 19th and early 20th century, her plays, and those written by other women such as Louise Michel, Nelly Roussel, Madeleine Pelletier, and Marie Lenéru, were disseminated across Europe. These women used the theater as a means of spreading their political ideas. Instead of writing novels or essays about their ideas, they strategically chose the theater because of its ability to reach and move an illiterate audience. For Starkoff, the theater was a way for her to convey her beliefs about the working-class and connect these ideas to the people's university. In addition to being a playwright, Starkoff directed her plays, and often directed her friends' plays. She staged plays written by Jacques Nayral and Han Ryner. From time to time, she also acted in her friends' plays. Starkoff played a role in Les Vaincues, a play written by Poinsot and Normandy that condemned the oppressive conditions faced by women embroiderers and seamstresses who worked from home.
Although many of these women's plays were censored at the time of their publication, archives have preserved the plays, allowing others to read, interpret, and understand their political messages.
Theatrical works During the early twentieth century, Starkoff wrote and directed plays that showcased her feminist and political beliefs. She was inspired by Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin, Henrik Ibsen, and the L'Université Populaire to use theater as a means to convey her ideas to a live audience in France. She wrote numerous plays in the first decade of the twentieth century, but her most notable were L'Amour libre (1902), L'Issue (1903), Le Petit verre (year unknown), Tolstoïenne (year unknown), and Le Concierge antisémite (year unknown). All five were performed across France, gaining traction and a sizable audience.
In 1909, Starkoff founded the Théâtre de l'Idée, where her play Tolstoïenne was regularly performed. Her role in the theatre was significant, as her plays delved into issues that were often overlooked by prominent politicians and members of society. Rather than attacking or denouncing these individuals, she provided a platform where these issues could be openly discussed.
Although it is unknown when she began using her pseudonym, Véra Starkoff, all of her theatrical works were published under this name. Starkoff's real name was never discovered during her lifetime. In Russian, the name Véra means "faith," and Starkoff contains the root "old" and also means "star." The Russian translation of Véra is significant, as faith may refer to one of the three Christian theological virtues (the other being hope and charity). The Russian translation of Starkoff is thought to refer to Leo Tolstoy. The name she chose for herself was a Russian-sounding name, yet hid her Jewish roots and familial origins. The pseudonym name revealed Starkoff's deep interest in maintaining her Russian culture as well as her desire to immerse herself into her new French life.
In 1902, when Starkoff was thirty-five years old, she wrote her first play, L'Amour libre (Free Love). In this play, she dealt with topics such as marriage, children, the middle and working classes, and the patriarchal society. Most importantly, L'Amour libre challenged the traditional beliefs regarding marriage, as she advocated for the rights of unmarried women and children born out of wedlock. To Starkoff, the institution of marriage symbolized the bourgeois class, even arguing that it was better for a woman to raise her child as a single mother rather than to be part of the bourgeois system. Thus, her play featured an open and friendly dialogue between the two main characters, Blanche and Ruinet, as they spoke about the importance of love, bearing children out of wedlock, the institution of marriage, and union libre. Starkoff's decision to structure her play as an open exchange drew a wide audience, including members of the middle class, allowing them to understand different perspectives, ideological positions, and political beliefs. In Scene III, Blanche is upset due to a past relationship with a man to whom she was not married and with whom she had a child. Yet, she decides to leave those feelings in the past, moving on and raising her child alone. Blanche’s decision mirrors Starkoff's idea of leaving the traditional, patriarchal ideals in the past and adopting a new social norm and identity. This idea was expressed in an article she published in La Fronde, where she addressed the significance of abandoning the traditional patriarchal system. Moreover, her play explored the idea that love and marriage were not the same, aligning her with Madeleine Vernet, a French teacher and pacifist. Ultimately, L'Amour libre gained popularity due to its rhetoric about women's rights, the connection between marriage and love, and children born out of wedlock.