"I AM HAPPY WITH MY LIFE "

Ludmila Ivanovna Yevtiukova is president of the club "Woman." She was born in l935 in a village in the Kondopozhski region where her parents also grew up. She is Karelian by nationality and a biologist and geographer by education. Tell us about your childhood and youth. I was a very lively child. Someone once said to my parents: you wanted a boy and got a girl, and what an energetic one! I don't recall having dolls as a child, I only remember horses, live ones, since we were always helping the grownups outdoors. We children played war and I was the instigator of the boys. In school we were always putting on concerts plays, organizing everything ourselves. I badly wanted to become a geologist, and at one time a girlfriend and I wanted to run away to Kandalasha to the geology tekhnikum (specialized secondary school -- editor). Instead I studied in the pedagogical institute in the faculty of natural science and geography. In l957, when a student, I was sent to the Moscow International Youth Festival as a reward for good extracurricular work in the institute. What made you decide to concentrate on civic-community work? It's in my genes, and school really developed this side of us. My first job was as a school geography teacher in Medvezhegorsk, and there I was secretary of the Komsomol and was always chosen to do civic work even when I didn't want to. That led to my becoming second and then first secretary of the district Komsomol. In l960 a city girls club was created of which I was the leader, and in l96l I was the region's delegate to the first congress of women of Karelia. In l962 I represented our city at the Helsinki Youth Festival. In l963 they transferred me to work in the regional committee of the Komsomol. I welcomed glasnost and perestroika, but sadly it is hard for me to believe that Russia can create a government based on human rights and a legal order. True, there are more rights for the people who have money, while the rest of us keep knocking at the door and can't get through to anyone. Your attitude to the women's movement? Women are the majority of the population. Women's organizations appeared because women felt themselves defenseless. Now we have to learn to stand up for ourselves, to speak about ourselves -- no one else will do it. These days many women are abandoned, as it were, so we veterans of the women's movement have joined forces. We meet monthly and our purpose is to help one another in word and deed, in particular, families with many children, invalids, and a lot of other people. We group women by interests, we look into how and where they could earn something, and mainly we socialize. We won't let the women's movement in our city die out. We've existed for three years and carried out two major initiatives: collecting things for refugees from Chechnya, and again for invalids and poor families. But we have failed to unite all the women's organizations under the Union of Women of Karelia. Your future plans? To help create new women's organizations, work with them, and together resolve our problems. We need to revive the "house committees." At a seminar organized by a British NGO, they told us how in England community work is done in the place where one lives. This used to be the case in our country, only more so, and from the housing projects we would bring forth talented people for this work. Now we have lost this, many people feel unwanted, cultural centers are closing, and hospitals too. It's a good thing that small community organizations are reviving. My young relatives are studying in the state university in Petrozavodsk and I see that they don't take part in community activities. In former times we would organize competitions and celebrations -- I remember an evening ball for the girls of the city of which I was somehow the hostess, and they searched all over for a suitable dress for me. Nowadays my girl students know nothing of such extracurricular activities, so the community organizations should step in to fill the void. We have to help the young. I have no regrets about how I lived my life. We had lots of mentors and they helped me. My eyes shine when I walk about community work. My life has been like a fairy tale. Interview by Larisa Boichenko