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of including Russian borderlands, has been striving for that goal also. The integration of women into the consciousness of society predicates acceptance of the notion of the other. Women, by their very existence, force the possibility of the other as valid in itself. This is an essential precondi tion for toleration, the recognition that the other may have not only the right to equal existence, but also a just claim to an alternative formulation of truth. Demo cracy depends on toleration and not exclusively on majority rule. The attempt to fit women into the picture forces rethinking of issues which in turn promote accep tance of toleration and of heterogeneity. Furthermore, when we study women’s organizations we are confronted with the limitations inherent in accepted definitions of political ideologies and move ments. In a movement such as liberalism one expects a certain fuzziness of concepts and broad spectrum of adherents. In the East European context liberal organi zations reflect the multiplicity of societal layers which do not demand exclusive choices of its practitioners. Women’s organizations are good examples of this type of liberalism. Ill Along with liberalism the women grappled with nationalism. Here the language of political discourse is geared toward exclusive identity that does not reflect the layers of identity with which women enveloped themselves. While most men (and some of the women active within the male organizations) used their chosen ideologies to polish a clearly delineated identity, many women drew comfort from a multiplicity of identities, a practice most men derided as sloppy and ignorant. Women were less prone to ideological thinking and their organizations appear to have been less exclusive than ideologically determined political parties. Women seemed to be able to function in a number of spheres simultaneously. Since they generally identified them selves relationally towards others, the many layers of existence appeared natural to them.20 Life in East Europe by its very nature demands a series of interlocking spheres. The historic archeology of the area has, even after forcible relocations, left a patchwork quilt of national groups with claims to the same territory. Eth nic, religious, and social differences are as complex here as they are in the Near East. Modern ideologies in East Europe, both Marxism and various varieties of nationalism, impose an exclusive identity that women find uncomfortable. Let me illustrate by a women’s organization in Kiev, the historic capital of Ukraine and a major city in the Russian Empire. At the turn of the century Kiev had a large Russian, Polish, and Jewish as well as a Ukrainian population. At that time women in Kiev established organizations that fostered tolerance and active co operation among national and religious groups, de monstrating their ability to work with each other for the welfare of needy women, and to practice the art of the possible in their relations with the police. Best do cumented is the Kiev branch of the Society for the Protection of Women.21 Its toleration, practicality, and lack of bombastic rhetoric belies the stereotype image of East Europeans. Of equal importance is the insight the women’s dimension gives us to the study of nationalism, which is generally considered an ideological movement strongly grounded in a particular version of the past and a highly intellectual philosophical system, a type of secular religion, usually irrational and intolerant of others. Whenever practitioners of nationalism write about it or about themselves, they stress the selfless nature of the creed and the pristine love of land and love of people that motivated the writer in the first place to become an adherent of nationalism. Moreover, nationalists generall not the strength and popularity of the movement, but the difficulties they faced in implementing their ideas. Even in territories where a particular nationalism spread quickly, the leaders tend to stress the difficulties of the movement. Why should that be the case? Christian saints and biographers of saints also inflated the evil committed prior to conversion to illustrate the strength of God’s grace in transforming the sinner into a saint: the greater the sinner, the greater the power of God in bringing about convertion. In a similar vein, those who wrote about their implementation of nationalism seemed to have been motivated by the desire to stress the power of their work and the force of nationalism. To be able to do so effectively, they had to exaggerate the difficulties that had to be overcome. But I submit that the motivation described in the memoirs of nationalists is not necessarily true. Not that the writers prevaricate. Rather, they do not delve into the motives for their actions. We notice, when analyzing the writings of women how readily women slip into the language in which they were educated and raised.22 The nationalists did likewise. East Europeans tend not to value individual ambition, open pursuit of a better life, individual escape from poverty, self-promotion, a striving for a more comfortable existence. Materialism as such is generally considered crass and low, the truly great will be motivated by ideas and ideals, by service to others, by a yearning for the absolute or by the love of the soil that nourished them. Nationalism is presented in those terms and never as a means of escaping the poverty and hopelessness of the village, the lack of educational opportunity, the perpetual curse of class. We, on the other hand, do not see nationalism as a practical approach to community issues which it fre quently was. Let me just focus upon one example — Ukrainians in Western Ukrainian territories, which in the
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