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children. Branches can invite speakers in various fields of education, medicine or social services to discuss sub jects pertinent to the child and the family. Because the topic of education is so broad and var ied, and there are many UNWLA branches which do have successful programs and projects in this field, it would be beneficial to our general membership to learn more about this subject and the related work the branches are doing. Therefore, branches and individual members are urged to share their experiences and information by submitting them in writing to OUR LIFE magazine. Martha Bachynsky MARTHA BOHACHEVSKY СНОМІАК WOMEN IN UKRAINE The catastrophe at Chernobyl shook the Ukrainian population from the terrorized torpor into which it had been moulded through the successive waves of Stalinist terror, famine, and corruption of the Brezhnev period. Another impetus has been the increased awareness of the brutalities to which draftees into the Soviet army are subjected by the officers and by the men. A large grass roots organization emerged this spring informally known as the Association of Afghan mothers. Eighteen year old men are subject to the draft and often sent to serve in areas far removed from the republic of which they are citizens. There the young men are subject to what can be charitably called as hazing, but which many of the mothers maintain is brutality that has lead to deaths and suicides. The abuses came to light during the last years of the Afghan conflict, and the mothers went into action. The movement itself reminds one of the Mothers for Peace in the United States, except that the struggle appears to be more difficult, and the society less under standing of the stakes involved. In Ukraine the mothers for peace have already won two significant victories: the democratically elected representatives of local govern ment in Western Ukraine have suspended the obligatory draft for this year; the Kiev representatives are seriously considering the demand that Ukrainian boys serve on Ukrainian territory, except in cases of war. Before I go further I have to point out that the term Ukrainian now means anyone coming from Ukraine, regardless of ethnic origin. Thus women of Jewish and Russian ethnic background consider themselves and are considered by others to be Ukrainian. The very fact that I find myself to make this statement is an indication of the discrimination of the non-Russians in any discus sion of Soviet affairs. If I were discussing Russian women’s organizations I would not feel obliged to remind my readers that all citizens of Russia are Russians. For me the trips to the Ukraine are always trips back in time and not only in geography. Ukrainian women themselves do not know that in the first years of this century their great grandmothers established wo men’s community organizations very much like the ones that are emerging today. But women have not written their history in that part of the world, and ironically listen to the story being told by me, an American, who got it from meticulously kept archives of the Tsarist police, with the permission of the Party bureaucracy that has rarely been granted to Soviet Ukrainians. The present and history are curiously intertwined in this latest attempt of the Eastern Europeans to shake off the shackles of bureaucratic totalitarianism, economic stagnation, cultural Russification, and exploitative milit arism. Awareness of women’s rights and of patriarchal control is emerging slowly, but it is emerging. The reason history plays such an important part in the contemporary liberation movements in Eastern Eu rope was that historical considerations were consciously manipulated by the parties in power to justify and en force control. At every opportunity they had, people of Eastern Europe wanted to find out what really happened at the critical periods of history: 1939, 1945, 1953, and so on. With the disintegration of ideology, the historical past — real or potential — comes to perform the legitim izing function that ideology never could perform. Women, too, are interested in their past, and keen to learn about this new and quite untranslatable discipline — women’s studies. But more than anything else they want to know what women in the West are doing and how we manage. Feminism, in the sense of assertion of women’s rights and of self-liberation is not easily understood in Ukraine, where the woman even more than a man is raised in the tradition of service and self-dedication to others or to an ideal. Pursuit of individual happiness is not a cultural trait there, nor is it a valid goal for an individual. Women’s concerns are still very much community oriented: i.e. women as a group want to play an auto nomous but visible role in the reshaping society. The goal is not emancipation or liberation, but rather, as had been the goal of early American women activists the happiness of their community, making life better for others. A noble goal, and one that will eventually lead to
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