FEEDBACK -- LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

It seems to me that your magazine has entered a new phase. I call it, "the tour of Russian regions." The last two issues suggest that "the journal within a journal" is not accidental but a well thought out development. And I like this. There is virtually no information about women's lives across the great expanses of Russia. So it is interesting to read all these articles -- both the more successful ones and the less. The Karelian "journal within a journal" seems to me better shaped, reflecting the role of "guest editors" trying to show the growth of the women's movement in the republic. The narrative about the Kola Peninsula is more disconnected and at the same time more varied. It is my guess that Nadezhda Khlebnikova does not consider herself as convinced a feminist as do Larisa Boichenko and Natalya Krasavtseva. In any case, it was interesting to compare these two issues of the magazine. I await new ones. I recommend that in the future you focus not only on the northern European part of Russia, but also on Siberia. It is a very rich area, not just in useful minerals, strikes and social conflicts, but also in leaders, bright talents among whom are quite a few women. By the way, there are almost no women leaders of Russia's independent trade unions. Is that also the case in the USA and in other countries? I would like to know.

Respectfully, Vyacheslav Cherepakhov

Dear Editors!

First of all, thank you for interesting articles and interviews. I read every issue from cover to cover -- my granddaughter brings them to me. The most intriguing thing to me is that I have even begun to understand her better after reading what both our own and foreign scholars, experts and writers have to say. Unfortunately, a conversation with readers such as you have in your pages, is almost not to be found in today's periodicals (I regularly read several including the "women's"). I take the liberty of proposing that you tell us in greater detail about the lives of women on pension, women seniors, in various countries. Mrs. Pogrebin (interesting -- does she have Russian roots?) wrote very well about the meaning of being older, about how life does not end with the coming of old age, it just becomes different and no less significant. This problem troubles me. It seems to me that in our country women pensioners feel themselves to be on the periphery of life, and often it is only in their capacities as unpaid nannies for their grandchildren that their existence is justified in the eyes of others. My friends and I don't agree with this. We regularly talk on the telephone, go to concerts and festive evening events, in our apartment building club we started a group for lovers of Russian romantic songs and recently we gave a concert (which the men, by the way. also took to heart) and afterwards we had a small banquet -- for this, our thanks to the Zodiac Club leadership. I could say a lot about our cares and concerns, but the point is that among my contemporaries (I will soon be 70) there are quite a few educated cultivated outstanding women who are active by nature and ready to do good for people. Alas the men of our age are fewer and fewer. I won't go on and on, but simply say that your reporting about the lives of women over 50 would be gratefully received by many of your readers and it would give us great support.

With best wishes, Evgenia Kozhemiakova, Moscow

Dear Editors!

In your third issue of l998 I read several articles on "Women in Prison" and my whole day went askew, so deeply was I affected by this theme. Russians have a saying, "You can't swear off prison or poverty." My grandfather, a Greek by nationality, spent l8 and a half years in prison here from 1937 until 1955 when he was rehabilitated. He came back nearly dead, and with great reluctance told mama about those terrible years. From his narrative one understood that the worst fate in the camps fell to women, who experienced violence not only from the administrators but also from the men prisoners. In my youth I worked with a girl who gave birth in such a camp, the father being a criminal, and she died from leukemia before the age of 30.

No matter how much you pretty up a prison and its conditions, unfreedom is UNFREEDOM, whether the prison be Norwegian or American. About Russian prisons I would like to know more. Many years ago in a prison colony near Vladimir they organized a workshop branch of big industrial plants and I well remember that there was no differentiation of prisoners according to the crimes they had committed. You'll agree that in this UNFREEDOM, it is wrong to throw together drug addicts, thieves, and those violating traffic regulations. Unfortunate circumstances led one of the latter to the unpremeditated killing of a pedestrian. He or she was in despair, and right alongside in prison was a drug addict, and it wouldn't be wise to acquire that vice. The same goes for thievery and embezzlement. It would be interesting to know how this problem is being dealt with now. Or are the prisons so full that there is no room for such "refinements"?

What can one say about the articles by Colette Shulman and Svetlana Svistunova -- one can only sigh and grieve. Once I read an article about a Dutch prison which I seem to recall was titled "I want to be in a Dutch prison." The living conditions there were better than those of our military families, our refugees, and several other segments of the population.

Still and all, even if such conditions existed in Russia, I hardly think anyone would wish for this barbed wire heaven.

Ekaterina Ivanovna Sokolova, teacher, Verkhnyi Volochek