Russia's Portrait in the Women's World Gallery

As a participant of the NGO Forum on Women in Huairou, China, I would like to share my impressions, as a “post-Soviet person,” about taking part in such an impressive gathering in this former solagernik (co-camper) of communism. Specifically, I will address the problems facing Russians in participating in such conferences, the workshops organized at the Forum by Russian NGO activists, the resonance of the Beijing Conference in Russia, and the necessity of incorporating Russian women into the international women’s movement.

At the UN Conference on Population in Women, the only Russian NGO representatives were members of the former Soviet Women’s Committee (now renamed the Union of Russian Women). This was the only women’s organization in the Soviet Union and it functioned under the auspices of the former Communist Party. At the UN Conference on Women in China, 200 representatives of women’s NGOs from different regions of Russia took part in the NGO Forum. The broad representation from Russia at this conference was made possible through the financial support of Western foundations. Without this outside aid, only “businesswomen” and members of nomenklatura women’s organizations, supported by their local authorities, could have afforded the travel and accommodation expenses. The expenses for representatives of the independent women’s organizations were primarily paid by the Ford Foundation, the John and Catherine MacArthur Foundation, SOROS, Global Fund for Women, and Change.

The US Agency for International Development—via the Eurasia and ARD/Checchi Foundations—contributed enormously by providing money for different US organizations (the League of Women Voters Education Fund, the NIS/US Women’s Consortium Winrock International, and the Network for East-West Women) to organize research and training seminars in Russia prior to the conference. As a result, representatives of the independent women’s groups participating in the Forum had a chance to review the Draft of the Documents for the Beijing Conference before arriving at the Forum. Western foundations, especially the Eurasia Foundation and Winrock International, also played a key role in helping to provide interpreting for the Russian representatives at the NGO Forum and partly at the official conference. (Although Russian is an official language of the United Nations, interpreting services were not provided at the Beijing Conference.) Interpretation became an important and delicate issue since the language of the UN documents and the careful wording devised at the preparatory meetings (in Vienna, Bratislava, New York, and Copenhagen) is new to Russian women. Before Gorbachev’s reforms, only Orwell’s novoyaz (new speak) was used. The language of international documents, such as The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, were, and still are, largely unknown to the Russian public. Only since perestroika have Russian activists had a chance to attend international women’s meetings where they could receive this type of information.

All this preparation produced a Russian delegation that was the most active, from both a quantitative and qualitative point of view, of all the groups from the former Soviet Union and the east central European countries. In my opinion, it proves that the women’s movement in this country is gaining momentum and becoming a key factor in the democratization process. Women’s voices are finally coming to be heard in different spheres of life: in politics, in charitable activities, and, to a lesser extent, in the economy.

Addressing the NGO Forum on Women, Hillary Rodham Clinton cited a young Indian woman’s poem: “And yes, there must be freedom if we are to speak. And yes, there must be power if we are to be heard.” Freedom in the Soviet Union was at first “provided” from above, when the revolutionary communist reformer Gorbachev revived the women’s councils in 1986. Just one year later, there were 24,000 women’s councils that were initiated by the Communist Party committees and the managers of enterprises. This trend spread with the appearance of grass-roots women’s initiatives and independent women’s organizations. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the first feminist groups, together with independent women’s...