LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Hello there, It's not often that I pick up a feminist magazine and I liked your last issue on politics. Reading about new approaches by women, I thought about my contemporaries for whom it is so hard to break through into the upper reaches of power.

I look intently into the face of a neighbor from my entryway. He's thin, his face is gray, his jacket is worn. But see how many friends he has and they're all cackling with joy. And this other one? On his face, an inward-looking gaze, and he hardly ever says anything. And that one with hands all tattooed? A 15 year-old girl loitering around the discotheque and with melancholic boredom observing everyone going in the door? A girl who finished middle school two years ago and is now taking on "clients" at this very disco?

I think I'm beginning to distrust everybody. I'm getting disgusted with myself. Recently I learned that in our small town (total population just over 10,000), ten people have AIDS. It is said that the ratio of those openly suffering from AIDS to those in whom the illness is present but latent is 1:10. This means about one hundred young people from 15 -27 are infected with this deadly virus. It's terrible even to think about this - of course some of my acquaintances are among them.

How did this disaster come to a quiet provincial town? Probably it's the same answer as for the big city. From drug syringes, from casual liaisons. These things were always part of big city life but not of my town which is like a village where everybody knows one another. It's clear that drug addiction, crime, prostitution are social problems and that you can't fight them with the usual medical means (inoculations, quarantine, lecturing people).

My mother - she's a deputy of the district assembly - picked up some information about ways people get infected. She told me that one woman who had lost her job in Tarusa (it's true, there are no jobs to be had other than selling on the street) went to Moscow to find work. Since there was no one to leave her son with, she took him along. In Moscow she stood for days by herself in the outdoor market [where people come to sell whatever they can], and her boy was left on his own. Suddenly, when she saw needle marks on his arms, she came to her senses and they returned home to Tarusa. He got sick and had a blood test, and it revealed something much more terrible than the usual. There are two HIV infected brothers in town - they are not in school and they have no jobs.

Sometimes at home we talk about what goes on at those district assembly meetings. The budget, various authorizing acts about taxes and collecting them, problems of public services and utilities. It always seemed dull and uninteresting until one day I thought to myself, what does all this have to do with me. Politics and youth - concepts that are absolutely incompatible for some of my acquaintances. The basic "political" theme for the young is criticism, either of the Americans or the Jews or of those ethnic groups from the Caucasus region. In other words, our problems are caused by everyone else but us.

I think that if young people took an active part in political life (providing no one shut them up), there would be far fewer problems for youth, and for adults too. Right now alcoholism, drug addiction and unemployment are very big among youth. So what to do? Young people need to feel themselves essential and full-fledged members of society, they need to be drawn into resolving painful problems. That way you kill two rabbits at once - the young wouldn't have time to fool around, and in the future the country would be led not by muddleheads and seniles, but by politically literate, intelligent and healthy people.

There is a simple way to bring youth into politics on the local level. On decisions affecting youngsters from 15-18 - sports, culture, health matters, appropriations for school restoration, environmental and public service issues, development plans (development most of all affects the young) - they should invite, say, tenth and eleventh graders, members of the school council. Let them observe and listen to district assembly meetings, let them work as volunteers on the deputy commissions, and travel around the district to see what's going on. Then, once they're out of school, they won't feel like uninvited guests in their own district who most of all just want to get out of there.

True, no matter how far I push my imagination, I can't imagine who would invite us to the district assembly.

Somewhere I read that in other countries they start from early childhood preparing children for later political life. The most privileged schools and colleges are focused on this, with special programs on economics and on forming a certain world-view. But that's over there, while we so far are just wasting time, the most precious thing we have. There is an expression, "Begin with yourself." What is I were simply to show up at a meeting of the district assembly? Interesting, what would they say to me, in a polite way. Maybe they would just twist a finger to the temple, meaning there's something not normal about me. I can hear the whispers, "Moreover, she's a girl…and it seems, not a stupid one."

By the way, I actually am a member of my school council. Dina Anishina, 11th grader, Tarusa, in Kaluga region