Skip to content
Call Us Today! 212-533-4646 | MON-FRI 12PM - 4PM (EST)
DONATE
SUBSCRIBE
Search for:
About Us
Publications
FAQ
Annual Report 2023
Annual Report 2022
Annual Report 2021
Initiatives
Advocate
Educate
Cultivate
Care
News
Newsletters
Sign Up For Our Newsletter
Join UNWLA
Become a Member
Volunteer With Us
Donate to UNWLA
Members Portal
Calendar
Shop to Support Ukraine
Search for:
Print
Print Page
Download
Download Page
Download Right Page
Open
1
2-3
4-5
6-7
8-9
10-11
12-13
14-15
16-17
18-19
20-21
22-23
24-25
26-27
28-29
30-31
32-33
34-35
36-37
38-39
40
later we also study opposition movements to the state, and try to see why they failed. States in Eastern Europe rarely reflected societies, and almost never had the interests — let alone the welfare — of its populations at heart. A focus upon ideology — be it religion, or auto cracy, or Marxism — is not only center-oriented but by definition must deal with the articulate elite or the oppositional intelligentsia, even if ostensibly the topic is the common people. An attempt to move beyond the small circle of the intelligentsia confronts us again with the similarity of the issues of the entire area. Traditional political history divorces the public from the personal even in areas where some degree of partic ipatory politics is possible. Traditional historical approa ches, moreover, tend to stress the systematic rational or reasoned articulated explanation or paradigm for a ser ies of events, not necessarily the events themselves, thus favoring a generalized, potentially ideological approach. The attempt to explain or systematize phen omena to some even organizational scheme may obfus cate the story by its very desire for clarity. Systemiza- tion, so necessary in any coherent presentation, can nevertheless shroud reality by endowing it with a philo sophical transcendence. That in turn makes reality more difficult to change — or in the case of contemporary Eastern Europe, even more difficult to understand the changes and the alacrity with which they came. Focus upon community work is not the same as upon social history, or upon indicators of social unrest. Nor is it a study of nationalism. By restudying the history of community organizations, which often have a major women’s component, we are able to see the roots of society, the patterns of public activity, indicators of the nature of the given society. Church, cultural, and espe cially self-help organizations constitute good sources for such a study. We use tools of intellectual history, but look at its unrecorded and often inarticulate and unar ticulated side. Women constitute a convenient place to begin that study. Community interests in Eastern Europe developed often in opposition to the state, rather than being coopted by it. Political changes and economic dislocations resulted in an archeology of social and ethnic layers that further contribute toward the hete rogeneity of the population and toward the mutual dis trust of the government of its own citizens, and vice versa. In short, the development of civil society — for one reason or another — does not occur. There was also a failure of integration of social and economic ele ments in their socio-political structure. Patterns of behavior and thought among women, their participation in community activities can illuminate aspects of the whole society. While it is both impossible and premature to make definitive generalizations about the women in Eastern Europe, some similarities among them in the role they play in their societies can be made. In one sense Lenin was right — participation of women is critical for the success of the revolution. It is also critical for implementing social and political chan ges in society that foster the rooting of democratic insti tutions. Women in Eastern Europe avoided referring to themselves as feminists. Rather, as other women of preindustriaiized societies, they tended to transfer their autonomous status to community activities without a particular stress upon women’s liberation. Even the few university educated and middle and upper class women of the area conscious of women’s second rate status dwelled not so much on the liberation of the sex, as on the liberation of the whole society or of the nation, depending upon whether they were members of the dominant nationality or of a so-called minority. In this respect Eastern European women presaged the similar stress of the women of the so-called third world who deferred women’s equality to the liberation of the land. There is an unstated linkage between ethnic stu dies, or studies of the non-dominant groups, since they are often not the minority in the area although they are often referred to as minorities, and women’s studies. The linkage surfaces in the most unlikely sources: Thus the executive director of the National Women’s Studies Assocation (USA), Caryn McTighe Musil, when asked in the Fall of 1990 to participate in the discussion of cur ricular development and the structure of the academic major at a meeting of the Association of American Col leges, became, in her words ’’very aware of the stunning absence of an ethnic studies program” in the discus sion .10 Faculty members at Smith College, in setting up the Women’s Study Major “hope that their ...majors come away from the program with an understanding of the complex interrelationships between gender, ethnic ity, and cultural expectations .”11 In the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century the scholars who wrote works about women, either their history or the history of the mores of the times, or the stories about exceptional women, also did some work on the so-called minorities. The manner in which governments control the pop ulation reflects the unstated coda of the control family and society exercised over women: limitation of mobil ity, lack of opportunity for education, denigration of the autonomous self-worth of the individual, and stress upon reflexive self-definition. We should include here also periodic symbolic praise (weddings, statements of the power of the proletariat, March 8 celebrations) and den igration (impurity and weakness of women, politicial recantation). The governments in Eastern Europe often treated their own populations as little children. As for the women, the most dramatic example in the nine teenth century was the Austro-Hungarian law that specif ically barred minors, criminally insane, and women from voting. II Women both accept labels devised by others and 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.
Page load link
Go to Top