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BECOME A CANDIDATE!
By Galina Skorokhodova
When you lose an election, no matter what the circumstances, you cannot stop yourself from continually going back over it and analyzing to death everything you and those around you did. But time passes, and less important factors fade into the background, and over time it becomes clear what exactly made the difference in the elections. This knowledge suddenly becomes precious to you because it represents difficulties you have overcome, and these difficulties become just a part of your past. For a candidate, the pre-election campaign, more than anything else, is a time for interaction with the press, a time for resourcefulness, and it is always a peculiar period of one’s life. It seems a shame to me that many representatives of the women’s movement in Russia never give themselves a chance to go through this phase.
Prehistory
My path to the elections began a long time ago in my childhood in a village of the Belugino Tulskaya region. My mother, a brigadier in the women’s brigade (all the men were at the front) was elected as a deputy to the local Soviet [council]. This all felt like a holiday to me. At six in the morning girls singing ditties with an accordion walked through the streets of the village awaking voters. Such was the custom. The voters raced to be the first to vote. Mother was elected a second time in the city of Kashir, to which we and all our family had moved at the end of the war. She was elected to the local Soviet located on the very street where we lived. She set herself the task of bringing gas to the street. The project was a complicated and drawn-out process, but in the end gas lines were installed, and wood no longer had to be used. I was left with the distinct feeling that what was most important was helping people in concrete ways, and that if this was what you wanted to do, you could accomplish it.
My First Attempt. Tomsk
In terms of my own personal development, my participation in the Second Independent Women’s Forum in Dubna [in the early 1990s] was a very formative moment. It is not surprising that the first announcement about participation in the upcoming elections—as though to carry on the work of the Independent Forum in Dubna—took place in the Gender Center in Moscow and was quite unambiguous. I remember that once the decision had been made, we came to the conclusion that we were completely unprepared, but had to start somewhere to gain experience.
I decided then and there to participate in the upcoming elections. Nevertheless, I was at first negative about Tatiana Frolova’s proposal that I should straight off be the Tomsk city candidate to the highest, the national legislature It was only after long discussions with Tatiana, in which we weighed all the pluses and minuses, that we decided to give it a try. You have to gain some experience.
The women’s movement is quite widespread in Tomsk, and there are many military-industrial plants. I have worked my whole life in the defense industry in Moscow, and I had become vice-president of the association “Conversion and Women” [meaning the conversion of defense plants to civilian production, and women's part in this process]. These factors had to work in my favor.
Women in Moscow collected money for my journey. Three days later I had flew to Tomsk and from the outset felt myself part of an interesting project-experiment.
I went to Tatiana Frolova’s apartment in Tomsk at midnight, straight from the airport. The apartment was full of women waiting for me. We made the traditional round of introductions. Tatiana opened by saying, “Now Galina Skorokhodova is going to tell us about herself. Feel free to ask questions. Galina! We will support you in your campaign to become Tomsk’s representative to the legislature if we like your answers to our questions. We need to get to know you.”
By morning, after numerous pots of tea and a full round of questions and answers, a decision was made in my favor. I was already set to appear before the city Cossacks and also to speak at a defense factory.
A lot of things made a strong impression on me at that time. The head honchos of the defense industry welcomed us and even gave us use of their auditorium. Local radio gave us free airtime. Mothers-of-many-children, Cossacks of Tomsk and even representatives of other political parties volunteered to gather signatures for me. Local pensioners offered me places to stay.
When I left for Moscow, I took with me not only my own list of signatures, but also lists for two other associations supporting candidates, as well as an envelope containing money for someone’s daughter. At the airport in Moscow there were people holding up signs saying whom they were waiting for. The possibility did not occur to a single one of us that ahead there might be "dirty business," such as destroying someone’s packet of signatures or other things of that sort.
In the end we couldn't go on with the “Tomsk Election” project. We needed more money, and we did not have it.
Moscow, Babushkinsky District, 1995
In the 1995 elections to the State Duma I ran as an independent for Babushkinsky electoral district, number 192. I was supported by the Women’s Center, which I organized in NIIA, and the women there assured me that they would work for me on a volunteer basis.
A more focused push for financial support met with positive results: the Union of Realists promised their help.============ In my district 22 people were fighting for one deputy position. Five of them were women. Most of the men were “new Russians” [i.e. wealthy businessmen] who spared no expense. A couple of the candidates were quite well-known: T. K. Gdlian and V. I. Novodvorskaya.
Practically from the very beginning, my campaign turned into a detective novel. Danger was waiting me, it seemed, in the most unlikely places, and I would not walk around my district alone. I was in no way prepared for the incidents that took place, incredible stories, and there were plenty of them.
For example:
--A prostitute working for dollars came up onstage during one of my meetings with voters and tried to engage me in conversation, as though we were good friends.
--A strange woman with a red book in hand showed up at some of my meetings and told voters she was an investigator, and I was under investigation.
--Unidentified persons raided the apartment of my designated campaign representative, M. I. Belyakova, who was safeguarding for me the sheets of signatures, and this happened just 3 days before the sheets were to be officially handed in to the committee. She refused to open the door, but after that it was necessary to hide the sheets in a safe in the enterprise where I worked.
And there were lots of other such surprises.
Finally the day came (and it was about a week before the election) when I woke up one morning and said to my husband, “Something’s happened, but I’m not scared to go out on the street.” “Just as well,” he said. “Something has definitely happened, and you’re not going to be in the Duma.” He turned out to be right.
Third Attempt
Time passed, and I could not get rid of my feelings of guilt before my voters, before the Union of Realists movement that had given me such timely and good-willed help, before the women of the Women’s Center of the NIIA, and my family.
For that very reason after intense self-searching I once again actively joined an election campaign in 1999. I became part of the Russian Movement for Political Centralism (RDPTs). Starting in May I led the work of the women’s section of the Slavic Assembly around the theme “Women, Power, Elections.” As the leader of the women’s project of the RDPTs, I was to organize the women’s section for the Program Assembly for the Russian Movement for Political Centralism. I tried to form a “Coalition of Women Helping Women Gain Leadership,” as a parallel to the “Coalition of Women Supervising Elections 1999.” I took part in reworking the RDPTs program, and participated in the First Interregional Conference of Siberian Women in Irkutsk, and in the “Glinskie readings” in the town of Sergei-Posad.
In the Government Duma, the RDPTs intended to protect the interests of domestic industry as a whole, and of medium and small producers. As a representative of the defense industry, this means a lot to me.
The work was incredibly interesting. Our working meetings were almost always constructive. It was in one of these very meetings that I realized these educated young people know practically nothing about the women’s movement in Russia.
My lecture on the contemporary women’s movement was a great success, with many questions and a full house. The “Handbook of Women’s and Non-Governmental Organizations in Russian and the SNG," published in Moscow in 1998 -- thanks to the authors! -- was also a sucess with the audience. Here was a real document, proof of the existence of a many-faceted women’s movement.
Work in the RDPTs was interesting and well-organized. But it lasted for a very short a time. And we did not make it to the elections.
What Is To Be Done? The upcoming elections are soon upon us. Based upon my own experience and all that I have learned along the way, I can come to only one conclusion: we women should step forward as candidates to become deputies.
Our positive resources:
--The women’s movement exists, and it exists all over Russia as a wide-flung network of organizations. Progressive women, as a rule, are in dialogue with women’s organizations or are leading them. These organizations boast many high-level women professionals who are well equipped as decision-makers. This is a resource that women have both for legislative and executive power.
--The women’s movement has worked out a “common language” for discussing problems and has prepared legislative proposals.
--We women have accumulated considerable experience of participation in elections, and there are no longer many contradictions in our strategies and tactics for the future.
--The quota mechanism [adopting a set quota of women candidates] is well known and elaborated, and introducing it can asssure the success that we expect. We have worked out a list of accompanying measures to be undertaken.
--Our population does not trust politicians and deputies -- basically, they are men.
Our Negatives:
--"The Olympic Syndrome" (defined by the author in a footnote as an illness, especially of women leaders, the symptoms of which are: "I am the best," "I am the most intelligent," "I am the most this, the most that." And envy. All this expresses itself in actions that turn away the most talented and capable people in one's own organization, or lead to a determination not to coalesce with other organizations. The "I am tsarina in my own kingdom" attitude.)
--The absence of money.
That's all?!