Theodore Dreiser's Red Stenographer in Russia: Amanuensing Power

Arriving in Moscow in 1927 before embarking on a tour of the Soviet Union, Theodore Dreiser hired Ruth Kennell--a children’s librarian from Oklahoma who had been living and working in the Soviet Union for the past five years--to serve as his secretary. Though ostensibly his stenographer, Kennell actually wrote Dreiser’s Russian diary while the two traveled throughout the Soviet Union; Dreiser later used the diary as basis for numerous articles as well as a book (Dreiser Looks at Russia [1928]). Dreiser published a thinly-veiled sketch of Kennell’s Russian days (she was part of a wave of temporary migrants to the Soviet Union in the 1920s) in his 1929 Gallery of Women, its Russian translation making her a feminist icon in the Soviet Union. Today, Kennell is forgotten while Dreiser remains a canonical figure in American literature. But their careers were significantly intertwined, especially as the Soviet Union shaped the outlook and output of each individual at different stages of their lives. In Kennell’s case, working for Dreiser, and maintaining a (sometimes sexual) relationship with him until Dreiser’s death, launched Kennell’s own career as an author of children’s books and helped advance her ideological agenda, as Kennell’s book Theodore Dreiser in the Soviet Union (1968) explicitly appealed to New Leftists who’d dismissed the Old Left’s Soviet loyalties. Through a paper discussing international labor migrations, gender, professional advancement, politics, writing, publishing, and revolutionary desire, I explore ways that women have used subordinate and supportive roles to advance their own goals and careers.