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OUR LIFE MONTHLY, published by Ukrainian hational Womens League of America Vol. XXXIII __________________________________ March 1976 No. 3 Editor M arta Baczynsky LEONID PLUSHCH; - ADDRESS TO THE INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S TRIBUNAL- "CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN" Dear Sisters, Allow me to honor your Congress and say a few words. Women's struggle for emancipation is a vital struggle for the imancipation of the human being; - economic, political, religious, and national. In the Soviet Union women are emancipated. A woman is paid the same wages as a man for the same work. Women have the same opportunities as men to develop their creative potential. But women, have children and cannot realize this equality with men. The reality of emancipation of women in U.S.S.R. has women bearing the hardships of physical labor of suffering in prisons and labor camps. In my opinion, women are not only physically and anatomically different from men, but also psychologically. It seems to me that women should fight to achieve equality with men in all facets of social and family life, but also to restrain a government from taking advantage of women in hard labor, which ruins their femininity, which harms women as mothers. A women should seek her own place in life which can best suit her feminine individuality. I would also like to tell you about women-political prisoners. In the Kiev prison every morning I saw blood on the wash basin. With horror I thought that this was the blood of Nadijka Svitlychna, who is ill with tuberculosis. Each day I heard her cough, I knew it was her for several times I heard her sweet voice. The life of women political prisoners is much more difficult than that of men-political prisoners. Women political-prisoners are more emotional about torture of themselves and of their friends. Women political-prisoners are morally clean people. Yet they are forced together with women imprisoned for social crimes. It must be pointed out that these women have less shame than men. Undoubtedly horrible are the sexual exploitation of women convicted for social crimes; I heard and saw them in transit from prison to prison. It is a wonder these our political prisoners go through these terrible conditions, and do not break psychologically. The prison conditions are vividly portrayed in the notes of Olha Joffe's father. She was interned in a psychiatric prison. Read these notes and you will see the hell which swallows the woman with a delicate soul. I call to you to intesify your fight for amnesty for all political prisoners in all countries. But first demand the government of USSR to stop sending healthy people to psychiatric prisons. Demand that they separate prisoners convicted for social crimes from political prisoners. The plight of women - mothers and wives of political prisoners is also very difficult. Help these families- support them morally and financially. You all know how the Crimian Tartars, Greeks, and others lost their homeland. Support the fight to return these people to their homeland. Woman- a great moral strength- who can assume a tremendous role in the fight for human rights, for peace and happiness. Leonid Pluschcz ”WE ARE UNITED BY COMMON SUFFERING AND COMMON ASPIRATIONS" With these words, two political prisoners in a Solviet Labor camp in Mordovia appealed to their kinsmen throughout the world to join them in their efforts to set themselves, and others like them, free. The men were Boris Penson, a Jewish artist who was sentenced to ten years imprisonment after being convicted of planning the highjacking of an airplane to escape from the USSR, and Vyacheslav Chornovil, a Ukrainian journalist sentenced for defending Ukrainian national and democratic rights. On Sunday, February 1, 1976, at Temple Beth-EI in Great Neck, their appeal came to fruition when the Committee for the Release of Penson and Chornovil, an outgrowth of the Long Island Committee for Soviet Jewry and the Committee for the Defense of Soviet Political Prisoners, was formed. As the UNWLA Public Relations Chairperson, I was proud to be your representative at this function, which included a warm reception chaired by Marusia Proskurenko and Tobie Newman, a press reception, and a program of eminent speakers. 20 НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ, БЕРЕЗЕНЬ 1976 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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