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WOMEN AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF EASTERN EUROPE Continuation A major problem for Russian liberals was contact with the common people. Literature on the alienation of the Russian intelligentsia is extensive, and the issue remains volatile. That, however, did not seem to plague the national minorities. The Poles, the Lithuanians, the Jews, and other non-Russians felt one with the popula tion which they addressed in their own language. In terestingly, the Russian Tsarist police, which kept de tailed information on virtually anyone who engaged in even the most limited public activity (including opening up a coffee-shop), also came to that conclusion. Police analysts repeatedly blocked the formation of any organi zation that seemed to have a local national component because they were concerned that these organizations established effective contact with the local population. The non-Russians, who shared the liberal aspirations of the Russian democrats in that they too wanted to restructure the Empire along more liberal lines, could not understand how the Russian liberals did not re cognize that national rights of non-Russians should be an essential component of the reform movement. Women within the liberal camp — educated, middle and upper class, used to making up their own minds within the sphere of their activity — founded the Union of Equality for Women (Soiuz Ravnoupravleniia Zhensh- chin) in which they quickly learned the basics of political and public work. The Union sought legal equality for women, argued the disbanding of communal agricultural holdings in favor of equal land allotments for men and women, and presumed that women would be included in the legislation, expanding the vote. What is most interesting is the manner in which Russian liberal women handled the emerging nation alities issue. They were as surprised as the men when, at the first congress of the union held a few weeks before the first major congress of the liberals in May, 1905,14 Belorussian, Jewish, Lithuanian, Polish and Ukrainian women put forward the demand for national autonomy. These women, representing local branches, declared that they would not join the All-Imperial Union unless it supported national autonomy and recognized the right of all nationalities to cultural and national self- determination. The Russian women considered the demand for nationality rights extraneous, divisive, and at best ill-timed. But the non-Russians argued per suasively and the women — new to the business of developing programmatic statements and building coal itions — decided that the argument made sense. The Congress, with four abstentions and no opposition “acknowledged the right of the different nationalities which are part of Russia to political autonomy and national self determination.”15 The issue plagued these women and they continued to debate it at subsequent congresses. At its third congress, held from October 8 to 12 1905, they agreed after a spirited debate that “the liberation of women is inseparably tied to the attainment for their native land (rodnoi krai) and its liberation from the yoke of Russification.”16 Women had actually grasped the political importance of nationalist demands before Lenin came to the same conclusion. They were quite proud of their perspicacity. "This question had barely emerged in Russian society, and our association was one of the first to solve it in a positive fashion,” the association president boasted.17 The liberals proved to be as shortsighted about the “woman question” as they were on the nationalities. They felt that the needs of both groups were ill-timed and ill-conceived, and they did not see women as an important ally. At the same time they did not even as a formality admit to restructuring the Empire along natio nal lines.18 The disregard of women by emerging political parties is understandable. Less understandable is that the non-Russians, who were hungry for any recognition, should have been equally blind to the farsightedness of the Russian women in 1905. Women, fresh to the political arena, sensed the importance of nationalism. They also noted that the satisfaction of national aspirations did not necessarily mean the complete dissolution of the existing political structure. Avoiding programmatic statements, they tried to organize societies directed toward limited goals of ameliorating some readily discernable societal ills. But they both failed to have themselves taken seriously and to contextualize their position. Since they were not heard, they were not taken to be representative. It that really the case? In Tsarist Russia women stumbled upon two de velopments that eighty years and untold bloodshed later still plague that vast area — the recognition that national rights are an expression of human rights and that the autonomous growth of any group that wants it as a precondition for the functioning of a unitary whole is a conditio sine qua non for the rooting of any democracy in the state. The Russian feminists could not substantiate the argument persuasively, but they, unlike the Russian liberals, saw the necessity of accepting it in their organization.19 It seems that given half the chance the population of East Europe, in the broad understanding 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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