"What is it like to be a ex-USSR today?"
DAVID MANDEL How did you come to be involved in political life?
TATIANA MARKOVA I entered the political movement during the election
: ampaign to the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in May 1989.
-ntil then, I lived a simple life. It wasn't as if I hadn't been thinking, but per-
-aps because of my upbringing, I had been floating off somewhere in the
But this real life had already struck its first blow in the early 1980s, when I regan to sense that something was wrong in our country. I had graduated
-em a cultural-educational institute with a specialty in directing. I had big
::eams about developing our cultural life until I came face to face with our alitarian practices. I was working as director of a cultural centre in the set-
*:: a about her trip to Rerykhs' home in the Himalayas. It was published in
== magazine Moskva, which we had in our club library. There was a lot in it mut ancient Eastern philosophy, and although at the time I was very far
•*am any sort of mysticism, I was very struck by the purely humanitarian side
: decided to use this material to put together a scenario for a club pro-
INTERVIEW politics in the
:.ouds, far away from real life.
ement Severnyi in Kaluga!
: Rerykh's teachings.
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
woman active in , when I came across the book of Valentina Sido-
42 International Marxist Review gramme, since our young people adore unusual themes. By chance, news of this reached the cultural department of the city's party committee, and when I went to consult the magazine again in the library, it was gone — on order of the city's party organs. I was surprised. A week later I was summoned to the cultural department and given a good working over: "Rerykh is a closed topic. He is a mystic, etc. How did you dare!?" I was so shocked that at first I couldn't grasp what was happening.
This was just before Brezhnev died. After his death, life in our club went completely crazy. With Andropov's arrival, they shut down our sciencefiction society. Under Chernenko, they decided to close the discotheques. Each leader sought to leave his mark on cultural life, but in just the opposite way than we needed. But the main blow came with Gorbachev in 1985, when they totally destroyed my work, forcing me to leave. My salary was very low, 100 rubles. I killed myself for each kopeck that I earned but I was a fanatic about my work. They had promised me an apartment but didn't feel the need to keep that promise, assuming that I would go one working anyway. But in the end, life pushed me out.
After that, I worked as a taxi driver. I have a varied work biography and have seen many spheres of life. But only now have I had the chance to generalize this experience in my political activity. With perestroika, information began to flow through the media. We learnt about our past, about all the negative things. This confirmed me in my thought that not all was right in our society.
But I became active politically quite casually, when I got involved in the electoral campaign of Artem Tarasov to the first Congresss of People's Deputies. At the time, he was chairman of a technical co-operative in Moscow, a very clever and charismatic figure, who aroused a lot of hope in connection with the economic reform. He had large support groups, but the party and KGB tried to block him by fixing the elections. A movement arose in reaction to this that eventually took on a number of different social and political goals. • How did you get involved in the Social-Democratic Party? Soon after the elections, the Popular Front began to fall apart, because it was made up of people with very diverse interests and political views. I promoted the idea of organizing some kind of new party, and we formed a social democratic cell in Kaluga. I was co-chairperson and was elected as a delegate to the second congress of the Social-Democratic Party (SP)) of
A woman active in politics 43 Russia in October 1990 and to the third in May 1991.
A crisis erupted at the second congress. The situation in the party was rather curious: a group of people's deputies of Russia, Rumyantsev, Obolesnkii and others, had needed some sort of popular base and so created a "pocket party" that they could manipulate. People saw through this, and a revolt broke at the congress which led to a qualitatively new stage in the party's development. I feel that if the party does not split, it will have a big future. • What is the nature of the divisions? The thing that I like about our party is its pluralism. Despite a series of big disagreements on a range of questions, we try to find a common language. And we succeed. At our third congress, when it became clear that we had left, centre and right wings, we adopted a rule allowing fractions. People understood that this was necessary, although some think that we should not advertise the fact that we have these fractions and that, as far as possible, we should try to overcome them. Nevertheless, even these people agree that as long as these differences exist, they should be allowed to develop freely. • What fraction do you belong to? I belong to the democratic centre. I liked that part of its platform that says that it does not want to promote any specific programme but sees its task as maintaining balance between left and right, so as to prevent a split. At the same time, I went up to Rakitskaya' and told here that I like her fraction's programme and would work in it, since in I am very involved in the labour movement back home in Kaluga. In our party, one can work in all fractions. • What do you like about Rakitskaya's positions? Oleg Rumyantsev's? idea that the party should seek its social base in the mid¿ie class is totally detached from reality. What kind of middle class can can the speak of when there very few skilled workers and our entrepreneurs are - asically recruited from the mafia-style elite of the nomenklatura? This so -alled middle class is such a small and feeble stratum that if we adopt it as ur social base we will never win significant support, let alone form a govinment. This is a general weakness of our party's programme and the source ::many of the disagreements at the congress. Rakitskaya, in contrast to Rumyantsev, argues that we should seek our base
44 International Marxist Review in the labour movement, since, whether we like it or not, it is the preponderant group in society, and if we ignore that crucial side of life, we simply won't find anyone to vote for us. It is among these masses that we need to work predominantly. This was the base historically of Russian social democracy. I believe that life will force the workers to organize and to actively participate in political life, like the miners. • What do you do now for a living? 1 am a simple postal worker. I deliver telegrams. My own experience at work and that of the broad circle of people I deal with in Kaluga confirms the correctness of my political position. Each day, it is the ordinary worker who lives worse and worse. These are people totally dependent on the state system; they are cruelly oppressed by the totalitarian regime. At the factory, the worker is under the thumb of the administration. Through the trade union, that is supposed to defend him, he depends upon management for an apartment, a place for his child in day care. An isolated struggle is virtually impossible in these circumstances. You have to organize a collective. But when any worker tries to do this among our frightened people, he is simply fired before he really can get started. When I was active in the Popular Front, my boss called a meeting in my absence in an effort to turn my collective against me. She told them that my political views were very harmful and she proposed I be fired. • On what legal basis could she fire you? In our system, you can always find something. That's the beauty of it as a system of oppression. Fortunately, I had been able by then to form a cohesive group of supporters, who were infuriated by this suggestion. When the administration realized that it couldn't get to me through the collective, it tried other means, like depriving me of my bonus for some insignificant detail which they ignored in others, or by transferring me to a more difficult and less well-paid job. These are a few of their repressive mechanisms. It wasn't easy, but I held out. After two years of hard, painstaking work, I have succeeded in finding people in our telegraph section with whom I have organized an independent trade union. There are now five members. How we Will proceed from here, to tell you the truth, I don't know. It's all very complicated, and I'm learning on the go. There is an awful lot that I don't know. I lack the specific trade-union knowledge that I need. But I will get help from
my comrades at work, from Rakitskaya, and from people in Sotsprof. I am going the latter tomorrow for help in printing up a collective agreement.
We will be an affiliate of Sotsprof. Of course, I don't feel that Sotsprof is the kind of union we need. It is not strong, like the union of co-operators. It all comes down to finances. And it's the same for parties. Look at Travkin's?
party, for example. He's got money and so has his own paper and the party is able to expand its activity. The SDP is so poor that its secretariat is housed in someone's apartment. Sotsprof also began from zero. Khramov', despite all the criticism of his organization for this, was forced to engage in business.
People who criticize this don't understand that any organization needs an information centre, which in turn requires equipment that costs a lot of money. At any rate, I know that Sotsprof is the only trade union, except for the
Independent Federation of Trade Unions of Russia'', that has made legislative proposals to the Russian Supreme Soviet. Its network has many branches and links with other republics. It has an economic service that helps rank-
In Kaluga there are about 600, but the problem is that they are scattered. You have to know what a post office is: we have several branches across the city,
Somewhere around 300,000. It is a regional capital. You might even say it is a military-industrial complex, since a large part of the factories are in that sector, very large enterprises like the turbine factory, engineering works, electromechanical factory, the electrical car parts factory. That is why I say hat the problems of the labour collectives and the labour movement are very
: have a rather original relationship with our official trade union. As it turned nut, they tried to fire my boss for her failure to get rid of me. She then kept running to me for help and she even took me along to our city-wide trade-
-nion conference, where a small revolution took place: they elected a new chairperson to the city's postal union. For the first time in the history of this and-file organizations that are trying to get on their feet.
in villages and the suburbs.
• What is Kaluga's population?
acute in our town.
• Does the official trade union do anything for you?
A woman active in politics 45
• How many employees are there at your post office?
46 International Marxist Review conservative organization, the workers rose up against the chairperson of the trade-union committee, who was for all practical purposes a member of the administration, and elected someone of their choice.
This woman at first tried to work through the existing structure. But they soon showed here her place. She knew me, that the administration was afraid of me, and we soon found a common language. When she felt under pressure from the administration, she came to me for advice, and I suggested that we form an independent trade union. She agreed. So in practice, we could have taken the entire collective with us. But I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do this properly, since I had so little knowledge. I finally told her: "Valentina Aleksandrovna, I feel that it is still too soon. You continue to work in your structure as best you can. On my part, I will organize my independent trade union. You will press on the administration from your side, and I from mine, and we will work together."
We are in constant contact, secretly of course. I give her advice. But you see, she is under the thumb of the administration, which pays her wage, gives or doesn't give her bonuses. She is totally dependent upon it. Such is the system of state trade unions. • Hasn't the new law on trade unions done anything to correct that? This law is very imperfect. Thanks to Yeltsin's decree!?, trade unions can now officially be created only with the agreement of the administration. That is paragraph nine of the decree. Fortunately, we are so politically illiterate, from the administration and down to the simple worker, that the decree is mostly ignored. But where the administration has understood its import, it has quickly moved to dissolve any independent trade unions.
My present situation is very complicated. Having organized my trade union, have obtained the documents needed to register it, to receive a stamp and open bank account, I am not yet ready to make its existence public. I am trying to fight through the official trade-union structures and through the women's council. The chairperson of our union local, who is also chairperson of the women's council, is not formally a member of my party. But she is sympathetic, and we work in close contact. In practice, I fulfil the functions of chairperson of the women's council. • I am surprised to hear that the women's councils are still functioning.13 Well, they still exist but they are also appendices of the administration. Ordi-
A woman active in politics 47 nary working women don't know of their existence. I myself was surprised to learn of them, even though in the district soviet buildings there are offices with "Women's Council" written across the door. What do the women's councils in our city do? They basically carry out distributive functions. In this period of total shortages, they manage to get a hold of a few goods. But they don't do any political work. • Are you mostly women at the post office? Until recently, work in the communications sector — I can't speak about military communications, not having worked there — was very poorly paid, and because of that only women worked there. Men would never take such work. What is 110 rubles to a man who needs 300 to maintain his family — though around last January they did raise our wages to 250 and they sometimes give us bonuses. In other words, the wage system itself is incorrect, and we will have to fight to change it.
Here's a concrete example that is characteristic of our situation. I came spe¿ally to Moscow to see the conditions of telegraph workers here. I found that he women who deliver telegrams receive 370 rubles a month. There are six ef them to deliver 100 telegrams that arrive each day, and they manage to to ¿eliver them on time. In our town: 400, and holidays sometimes even 600 or -00 telegrams arrive daily, and there are only twelve people to deliver them.
As I said, our wage is now 250 rubles now, with a bonus of 50 or 100. But hey can also decide not to give the bonus. You have to understand the speciricity of communications. First of all, it is a structure that will never be privasized, a state structure. Second, it is almost a military situation. The regulations covering dismissal are similar to those in military factories. Communications is also secrecy, and the like. So union and political work is very difficult.
Picture it: we deliver telegrams for a basic wage of 250 rubles a month, and ¿ne complaint is all it takes to lose your entire bonus. It's quite a feat to live in 250 rubles today, when prices have risen so much. Yet, complaints are possible at any time because things are organized in such a way as to make it Impossible to work without complaints. The work load is simply too great. In Moscow, with its big apartments buildings close to each other and with telehones in almost all homes, is a very different situation from Kaluga, where here are relatively few telephones and very long delivery routes. It might ine a whole hour just to reach one's route, while the time limit for delivery : an urgent telegram is one hour. So if one urgent telegram is delivered on
48 International Marxist Review time, the next one is sure to be late. Hence, the complaints, because the administration refuses to reorganize our work and to spend the money for extra people. So if it isn't the thirteenth month's wage, it's some other bonus that we lose.
We are really oppressed. I really don't know how I managed to create a local union of Sotsprof, despite all the pressure from management. We have suffered so much arbitrariness from it over this past year. As an activist, I exploited the intensity of the workers' anger to organize two meetings that very nearly resulted in a strike, particularly in my division. • I remember reading somewhere about six months ago that postal workers were preparing a strike. That was in Perm'. 14 I can tell you how it came about. I have said that communications workers are generally conservative. Besides the pressure of the party organs, the administration itself is very conservative, and as a result the employees are very downtrodden. In addition, their intellectual level is not high. People with higher education aren't going to work there. It is purely physical work and requires no thinking. So it is generally very peaceful. All around us today political life is seething, but here it is quiet. They don't know how to begin. They have no confidence that they can achieve anything.
Prices started to rise. As a state institution, the administration had some leeway to raise our wages, but what should have been the post office's income was taken by the Souyzpechat''', which gave a large part of this to the Ministry of Communications, which in turn gave it to the state. The state then turned around and gave us a small subsidy. In practice, except for that subsidy, the mail and telegram carriers received next to nothing for their work. The Perm' postal workers were the first to say that the time had come to force the publishers to pay us for delivering their materials. That is when they struck. In Kaluga, I concluded an agreement with the old administration that had been trying to get rid of me that we would stop harassing each other and I suggested that they write a letter to the Supreme Soviet in the name of our post office demanding an agreement between the publishers and the postal service that would give us our due. This was the goal of the strike: to obtain a direct agreement between the postal service and the publishers that would exclude Soyuzpechat' ' which had been receiving the money for the delivery work that we did. As you probably know, the Ministry of Communications speculated on this movement and ended up taking about 50% of our profits.
A woman active in politics 49 • I read that the ministry even helped the strike. That was in its interests, because under the new conditions of self-financing, :t understood that without subsidies it would soon go bankrupt. So the strike had the support of the ministry. And it was a success. At present the law says nat the postal service gets money from the publishers.
But that wasn't the end of it. The money we got from the publishers was ¿laced in the State Bank, and we couldn't touch it. The head of the post office rad promised the employees a raise by the New Year but he couldn't deliver *cause the money was stuck in the bank. The whole matter was thrashed out in the higher state organs until April or May. Finaliy, it seems that the Minis? of Communications was able to get a hold of a piece of the money, since • e did get a small raise. And after April 2, in connection with the subsidy, we got 65 rubles. Now our post office is beginning to get some money, though I em not sure from what source. All this has to be clarified, since it is possible hat we are being cheated. Where is our money if we are now receiving such ag sums from the publishers? The publishers have raised their own prices enfold, but our wages have not risen by anything even resembling that. In rinciple, we should be receiving the subsistence minimum of 360 rubles, but ur base pay is only 250. • You obviously believe that it is necessary to act on the political level. What is your attitude to the present Russian government? = my opinion, Yeltsin's speech yesterday at the Russian Supreme Soviet •cowed that after the putsch he has simply betrayed the people.! Of course, I an not surprised, since 1 have been critical of him for a long time. My analy:: is more on the psychological than political level. Who is Yeltsin? A for-.er Communist, a man with totalitarian inclinations. I don't want to criticize -e entire Communist movement. I am told that in the West there are good ceople in it, that the movement there is what it should be. But here it is linked ::otalitarianism. Yeltsin spent his whole life in it, was a leader there. He is -it close to 60, and one can't expect him to change completely. Second, he suffered from that regime. He is a decent person, with a conence and other good human qualities. Since he suffered, something shifted - his head and he realized that it was all wrong. But the habit remains. As a •ever and wily politician — you have to give him his due — he is capable of pocrisy and betrayal, and he made use of these traits when he tried to make •imself into a hero on the crest of the popular upsurge following the putsch.
50 International Marxist Review
Frankly, I don't believe in his sincerity. Sure, it hurt him to be attacked by his own party comrades. But history shows that such individuals very quickly forget about the people on whose shoulders they came to power. He worried me right from the start of his activity in the Supreme Soviet of RSFSR. If he were a politician who cared about his people, he would have first of all done everything possible to defend the sovereignty of Russia, to defend his people from the Centre. But look how he wavered. He constantly tried to find a common language with Gorbachev and to impose this position on the popular movement, not considering that a putsch could occur any day and the people would be completely defenceless against it. This was clear from the logic of events, but he is obviously playing some unclean game.
And so I stopped trusting him as a politician. And after that came other mistakes. I learnt of these things from information I received in Moscow - in the provinces we had less information about his activity in the Supreme Soviet and about the Supreme Soviet itself — and I could draw conclusions and make a prognosis. My prognosis was that since some 50% of the Supreme Soviet of Russia is made up nomenklatura people, we could not expect reforms that would improve the lot of the people. And, of course, they made sure they passed laws that served only their own interests, not those of the people.
We can now see all this in practice. They passed a law on privatization that suits the nomenklatura strata very well. And those so-called "democrats" people whom until recently we called democrats, who passed this law, are basically individuals who sought to make a political career for their own private benefit on the wave of perestroika. Real democrats, genuinely honest and principled people, are very very rare in our political life. Indeed, it would be surprising if this were not so. After all, for 70 years public life has been conducted without any reference to principle or morality. This is probably the natural evolution of politics in our country, and my task and that of other political activists who seek truth and justice is to try to influence the course of political life as best we can by whatever means available, adhering to a principled orientation, so lacking among our politicians. But compared to them, we are very few. • You are also active in the women's movement. Yes, we have a group in Kaluga, and I am a member of the women's commission of the Social-Democratic Party.
A woman active in politics 51 • As a woman, what sort of social policy would you like to see? What are the most urgent state measures needed by women? The most urgent measures must be directed to protecting women's living standards. The first and main blow of the market reform will be directed against women. They will be fired first. Services are already being cut and becoming more expensive, undermining our ability to raise our children decently. Look at our young girls and boys. They are growing up like little animals who will later rip us to pieces. The law on privatization also hurts women, because there are very few women economists, people who can orient themselves well in these questions. • Do you see any concern for women's interests in the government? None whatsoever. • Whose interests does the government serve? Those of the nomenklatura strata, that is, the old party comrades and the new "democratic" nomenklatura. They are concerned exclusively with their own interests. • What do you think of the private businessmen, for example, the proliferation of merchandise exchanges? How does it feel to watch adverisements on television that offer seats on these exchanges for a million and a half rubles, while your wage is 250-350 rubles? I can't speak with any authority about Moscow's exchanges, but who are the : operators in Kaluga?' They are energetic, active people with initiative ho were unable to find an outlet for their energy in the old society. They are rying to earn money, like in any normal country, by selling their intellect, heir brains. But since we lack normal laws in this country, they encounter remendous difficulties. And since the moral level in this country is very low, one can say that the larger part of the co-operative and entrepreneurial stratum is made up of animals, people totally lacking in moral values. Theirs is the law of the jungle, in fact, it is total lawlessness. At the same time, 1 have * admit that there are some among them who are prepared to help me.
We have been placed in a situation where the main question is survival. It urns out that to survive, you have to live by the laws of the jungle. The sys-
52 International Marxist Review tem itself created these conditions, although, strange as it might seem, over the past 70 years during which the human being in us was stifled, some people did emerge with real moral and spiritual fibre. But all those stocks and exchanges and the like — they are lawlessness, the jungle law of our society. If a barrier isn't erected to contain them, they will simply sweep over the society and devour us whole. • Why in your opinion don't they make good laws to regulate this activity and to channel it in a direction that would improve people's lives? Our economy is on the verge of collapse. It would seem sensible to allow ordinary people who have some entrepreneurial ability and inclination to work and help turn things around. They should not be taxed too heavily, perhaps at 35%; they should be able to freely purchase raw materials and machinery. But our Supreme Soviet has set the tax at 47%.
Yet, there was initially a good Russian law on small enterprises that gave them a two-year tax holiday so they could get on their feet. This law has been abrogated and replace by a predatory tax. In addition, ordinary, honest people lack the capital needed to start a business and they can't find it anywhere. For example, you come to register your small enterprise and although you have only a few hundred rubles, the functionaries start immediately to rob you of it. To write the enterprise's charter, the city soviet asks 300 rubles, sometimes more. For registration — 1300. For a stamp — 200. To open a bank account — 200. And these figures are from before the price rise. It is clear that even if I have the will and the capacity, I can't start a business. • And those who manage to accumulate capital, how do they do it? Only through illegal methods. In my opinion, all the people in our country who have capital accumulated it originally through some kind of illegal dealings. It was very easy. Now also there is tremendous speculation. They buy cigarettes in Moscow for two rubles a pack and sell them in Kaluga for four. This is not trade. They earn more in a month than I do by working honestly in a state job. This kind of illegal accumulation really expanded under Brezhnev. You could make big money only by stealing from the state or else by robbing your own comrades. Yeltsin wasted a whole year. He could have done a lot for the economy by making laws to promote small business. But aside from the high cost of obtaining all the necessary documents, a whole system of bribes has grown
up. I tried to open a small enterprise, part of whose profits would have been gone to support invalids, but I couldn't pay the bribe they were asking. Without it, you have to wait months for the documents. The people who have come to power exploit our flawed legislation, and the SDP itself has a long
The situation in the Kaluga city soviet is similar to that in Moscow. The mayor of Moscow, Gavriil Popov, is what we call a "democratic nomenklatursh-
, and the chairman of our city soviet, Chernikov, also presented himself as a democrat in the beginning. But he has in fact merged with the old mafia.
Exploiting the situation, they have managed to bring all the democratic papers under control, and the papers now are afraid to publish critical information about the soviet. And we, democrats, simply cannot get anything of our own printed in these democratic papers. We have to go to the reactionary, former Communist press, like Sovetskaya Rossiya. Personally, this does not
The electoral campaign to the Kaluga soviet in June 1991 gives a concrete dea of our political process. These were by-elections in nine city districts
:hat coincided with the presidential elections in Russia. In Kaluga, Democrat-
:: Russia has in fact replaced the CP as the ruling party.!& These are often
•ery educated, intelligent people, former members of the CP, and even refore these by-elections they had some eight deputies in the soviet in key costs as chairmen of commissions. These "democrats" decided it would be
-ice to conduct an experiment with multiparty elections. But it turned out
-at there were too many CP and Social-Democratic candidates — seven or ght people stood in each electoral district — and the dispersal of votes
So at a meeting of Democratic Russia, they decided to reduce the number
:: candidates. Of course, their intention was to arrange things so that the elec-
:.ens would strengthen their bloc in the soviet. They proposed to conduct sur-
• ays: only the candidates shown to be the most popular would be allowed to
-an for election. To this end, they organized meetings in which they ensured
Fat they would have a majority and where the surveys would be conducted.
Naturally, their candidates turned out to be the popular ones, and ours were
This "democracy" frankly shocked us. We told them that it is up to the votas to determine the popularity of candidates. If it was necessary to reduce way to go to develop a correct position in this area.
chik"
bother me.
createned the elections.
-ked to step down.
A woman active in politics 53
• Who are the new people who have come to power?
54 International Marxist Review the number of candidates, each party could be limited to only one candidate per district. Faced with such dishonesty, we dove into the campaign with even greater energy. And, in effect, we won. Three of our candidates won on the second round, including myself. But no one, in fact, was elected, since too few people showed up to vote on the second round. This is what happens when democrats fight with democrats, when they use uncivilized methods, hurl abuse and slander. And I think the same thing is going to happen in the coming elections in 1992. This fighting among democrats will be even more terrible than the fight between democrats and Communists in the past. • What happened in Kaluga during the putsch? The city soviet supported Yeltsin, but I believe they did so only because they felt it had no chance and also, of course, because they wanted to protect their own positions. • And the people? The soviet organized public meetings. In a population of 300,000, 3,000 came. The rest were completely inert. • You mean they were indifferent? Not only indifferent, they felt that a military dictatorship would be better than what they had. If, God forbid, there is another putsch, some people are predicting that it could win. • What is it like for a woman to be active in politics? First of all, I am not a true political person, since, in my view, such a person has to be well-grounded in theory. At first, I had a very difficult time understanding things and only gradually did I begin to feel more comfortable.
I recently read a book by Ivan Efremov, Thais of Athens, about ancient Greece. Thais said that where women are in the position of slaves, they grow up with the mentality of slaves, and the generation they raise will never be bold and courageous. In other words, a society that does not understand that woman, that is the free woman, is the basis of everything, of the cultural and spiritual development of the nation, will never be able to rise above the materialism of this world, above purely selfish goals, animal instincts.
As a woman, it is hard for me in the political movement, and not only cause men are for the most part merciless toward us and don't understand
: oman's psychology, that women tire more quickly, they are more emotion-
... But it is hard also because, if I have succeeded in raising myself to a high-
*: level of spiritual life and have deeper grasp of things, I can find no
-derstanding. People are so mired in the worries and pettiness of everyday
• Is this only in relation to women's issue or more generally?
I remember your argument yesterday with a man at the socialsemocratic labour commission who denied that there was anything pari cular about women's situation in your society that required a special men are somewhat above men in their spiritual development. This is not
- i: a question of intellectual breadth. What is the difference between a man
- i a woman? A man thinks with his brain, with cold, logical reasoning. A man thinks more with her heart, with her subconscious and intuition. One
- not say that women should think like men. This is fundamental to the
• is not part of that specificity women's weaker position in society?
:: sically, of course, we are weaker. And morally, we are more vulnerable.
.. so easy to break a woman's soul. This is also why it is harder for us in mical life. I am terrified by how our youth is being raised now. We are not
'..ing women and wives capable in turn of raising a normal generation, but men who are capable of selling their bodies for money, for trinkets. Eco-
•rically, too, we are much weaker. Well-paying jobs are generally inac-
..is also unacceptable that women should not have any free time for them-
: es. as men do. How else can you talk of equality? The limited measure of
::-ality that we have has mainly been in the professional sphere. But there is aquality of opportunity for spiritual growth. Most often in our country men marry not so much out of love, but out of calculation, to have a nor-
-: tamily. But then, because of our low cultural level, women most often he that they simply lack the strength to rise above it.
wore generally, I think.
approach and separate women's demands.
cecificity of women.
. = ible to us.
A woman active in politics S5
suffer from this family life. Either the husband beats her or else he cannot understand her desire for spiritual growth, something to which women are
• Some women have told me that they would really prefer to raise their
Yes, very many feel that way. There is a great failure of men to understand women. I am 37 now and I cannot find a man who would be able to understand the freedom I desire for my soul, that I don't want to be terrorized, that
I want to live the way I choose. This is very rare in our society.
• It is probably not so different in my country. I know women who say that a woman cannot develop spiritually living with a man, no matter how good he is, since she will always try to adapt to his needs and
In principle, that is how it should be. In the process of human evolution, woman should be a friend to man. Her life's predestination is to create a spiritual hearth in the home. She must give the man the force to achieve great
• You mean the family should be exclusively the concern of the woman?
What about all the work involved in maintaining the household?
That's the problem — in our country, this is a great burden that oppresses
• What about men and women sharing this work equally, with the state itself taking on an increasingly larger share, so that women will be able
I agree, but, unfortunately, very few of us have understood this so far. In general, a man gets married to have a housekeeper that can wash his clothes and prepare his meals. His main purpose is not to have a friend, a loyal companion. And after all, a woman's best characteristics are her loyalty, devotion and understanding. A highly-developed woman even has a sort of intuition, she can understand without words. But few people understand these things.
• You said that given the state of relations between men and women,
56 International Marxist Review more inclined than men.
views.
things.
women.
to participate more fully in public life?
families on their own if they had the material means.
A woman active in politics 57 many women would prefer to bring up a family on their own if this was materially possible. But, of course, that is very rarely the case. I am a single mother, divorced. And I can tell you that it is unbearably difficult in this society to raise a child on your own, especially without an education in a field that would allow a decent living. If men could only grasp how hard it is for single mothers to raise normal children and not criminals or moral degenerates. But they think that a single mother can do this on her wage and alimony payments. Alimony is only one quarter of the man's wage, in my case — 40-50 rubles. This is, I receive one quarter less than I need for my son. I am in constant material need. What does that mean? I can't afford to buy him another toy, or book, sign him up for extra-curricular classes that would help him to develop spiritually. A child that grows up under these conditions will not contribute to society's progress. He will live only for his purely egoistical interests. • How old is your son? He is sixteen and a half. And I am amazed that in my situation I was able to raise him not to be a criminal. Yesterday at the commission, when I brought the example of a single mother with a handicapped child who received absolutely no consideration from the government, I was really talking about myself. He has psychological problems related to insufficient development of the nervous system. I have encountered so many difficulties with him and received not one bit of support. You can't imagine what it is like. Each day I live in fear that he might get into some trouble. He is not mentally ill, but his nervous system has been seriously weakened as a result of illness and he is capable of anything. He has stolen from me, become caught up in some criminal gang. A mass of troubles from which I pulled him only with the greatest difficulty. At least I have raised him not to be criminal. But I wasn't able to help him develop spiritually. I simply didn't have the time. Like all young people today, he wants to dress well, he wants money. • What is the school's role? We constantly changed schools, since he couldn't stay for long in any one. I taught him at home for two years. But this was like being in a hard labour regime, since it is very hard to find work that will let you stay home for entire days and that will give you a wage that keeps you from starving to death.
58 International Marxist Review • Tell me now about the women's movement in Kaluga. It's history began with a woman's conference in the town of Dubno last March. I was supposed to go from the party, but I couldn't make it. We sent someone else, a very intelligent woman, who brought back documents and told us what happened. Even this little bit of information made me realize that we needed a woman's movement, that we have very many problems that are specific to women who are about to enter a market. So our social-democratic organization in Kaluga decided to raise these problems at the third congress of thẹ SPD. The SPD's programme had no section on women, and we offered to help write one. This was accepted, and now the woman's commission, which I helped initiate, is in the process of writing it. There are seven of us and today we are meeting for the second time. The next time we meet 1 will definitely invite you.
In Kaluga itself, I became acquainted with another woman who had also been at Dubno and had begun on her own to organize a women's movement in our town. She was working in the regional soviet social welfare department. She is from Yakutiya and had been put forward there as a candidate to the Russian Supreme Soviet. She did not make it solely because she was a woman. Even at that time they were saying that a woman has no place in government. After that, she came under strong pressure at work and had to leave the soviet. She now works as a lawyer in a commercial bank. She returned from Dubno and began to organize the woman's movement on her own. It is extremely difficult to be a leader when the movement is only beginning to blossom. She was looking for people, and we found each other. The organization's acronym is rather original: NOZhI (knives), which stands for Independent Organization of Women's Initiative. For some reason, she dislikes men very strongly, though the situation in her own family is quite good. She is a very decisive person. It helps that she is a lawyer. She has already helped many women with legal advice. Initially, her idea was to create a purely legal defense movement. But when I told here about the women's commission in our party and after we had discussed the problem of privatization, we concluded that it was necessary to develop a movement with a broader profile that could deal with the various dimensions of our life. It was only necessary to find women who could take charge of the different aspects. And we agreed that I would head the trade-union section. That is why I am working with Rakitskaya in her commission. • What are the other directions of NOZhI's activity?
Besides the purely legal defense functions, many questions are arising in relation to the market — dismissals, people being cheated, thrown out of priratized enterprises that are then taken over by co-operatives. I know of one shop whose employees had worked there for 25 years. They were fired, and shop was given to the cooperative that paid the highest bribe. The city government's concept of privatization of the commercial network is not to lease
:1 to the colléctives or to transfer it to them completely, but to give it to those
*ho offer the largest sum. Unfortunately, this is at present the most urgent
Another problem is the material situation of single mothers. These people ire now totally unprotected. There are no state allocations, nothing. Another area of our activity is the cultural development of women, basically educa-
:: already has about 40 or 50 women, and that is quite good. So far, these are șeople who come because they need some particular kind of aid. But we need
= cople who can help the organization to function. There are only about ten of nese. However, we understand each other well, and I feel our work will take if. These are very determined people. I have to say that women are more
*ganized than men. Their thought is more organized and so is their practice.
-ife dictates this because you cannot maintain a family unless your feet are
= anted firmly on the ground. And the methods that we intend to use in our
: ork, including strikes, picketing, demonstrations and even hunger strikes, I
•an assure you tat when women take to these methods, it will be a very serias affair. Remember when the soldiers' mothers stood in front of the supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and how they conducted their struggle? True, it as somewhat amused when they said they would lay down on the railroad
Our problems are extremely complex. And even though the situation is psy-
-hologically very depressing, I do not get discouraged because I am together problem.
conal functions.
racks. But they would have. This is pure desperation.
: ith women who share my views.
Notes
A city about five hours south of Moscow by train.
A woman active in politics 59
• How many people are there in your organization?
3. Artem Tarasoy, one of the Soviet Union's first avowed millionaires and later a confidant of
Yeltsin, left for the West under a cloud of scandal in early 1991. He is accused of stealing some tens of millions of rubles from his firm. He has since sent back taperecordings, instructing Yeltsin, among other things, about how to make the transition to
4. The popular fronts were broad-based coalitions of democratically-minded individuals with-
5. The SDP, like all other parties in the ex-Soviet Union, is a relatively small organization with
6. Galina Rakitskaya, a researcher at the Institute of Economics, is member of the Support
Committee for the Labour Movement and leader of the left wing of the Social-
Democratic Party. She is chairperson of the commission of the SDP for relations with
8. Sotsprof is an independent trade-union federation. Most of its member organizations are white collar or protessional. It has no mass industrial unions. Its leadership (though not necessarily the lower levels) is liberal in orientation. The federation's activities are
9. Nikolai Travkin, leader of the Democratic Party of Russia, one of the sundry democratic parties. He initially made considerable efforts to court the working class vote but met
11. This is the still largely unreformed Russian federation of formerly official (statized) trade
12. This decree, issued in June 1991, was ostensibly directed against the Communist Party organizations in enterprises, but at the same time it outlawed all political organizations and made the existence of "social organizations" dependent upon the agreement of
13. In 1987, Gorbachev gave the signal for the revival of these organizations that had been created after the revolution and subsequently abolished under Stalin. However, under
Gorbachev they never really became militant organizations and engaged mainly in charity work. In recent years they have been rarely mentioned by politicians or in the press.
16. The failed conservative coup of August 19-21, 1991 organized by most of Gorbachev's
17. In Russia today, "cooperators", for the most part, refers to ordinary private businessmen.
18. The main liberal formation, a coalition of parties and movements. It supports Yeltsin and
60 International Marxist Review the market.
out any particular social programme.
at most a few thousand members.
the labour and trade-union movements.
7. Leader of the party's right wing.
financed through private business activity.
with little success.
10. Leader of Sotsprof, an oceanographer by profession.
unions.
management.
14. An industrial city in the Urals.
cabinet.
the other "democrats" in power.
2. Nikolai Rerykh was a Russian artist who lived in India.
15. The state newspaper and periodicals distribution agency.
MICHAEL LOWY