EDITORS' NOTES

December l998 marked the 90th anniversary of the first national women's congress in Russia. This event held in St. Petersburg was the outcome of a long struggle within the emerging women's movement in the Russian Empire, and it demonstrated to women and to the whole world the importance and effectiveness of women's solidarity. Today, shamefully little is known about these heroines and activists (nearly a thousand took part in the congress) and about the decisions and actions of that gathering. To this subject is dedicated the present issue of our magazine. Our agenda in l998 has many of the same questions that agitated our forebears at the start of the century - equal rights and opportunities to get an education, protecting working women, and creating possibilities for women to hold important government posts. Even though we have come a long way in 90 years and the accent has shifted from rights (which in theory all of us have) to opportunities, the problem of discrimination is alive to this day in one or another form in our homeland, and there is still a strong tendency to try and solve the country's difficulties at the expense of women. It is symptomatic that the problem of women's solidarity, which worried many participants in the work of the congress, is still a problem today. Now as in l908, there is no powerful consolidated women's movement capable of clearly expressing its political will. Probably this is in part a rejection of Soviet-style "solidarity," and perhaps such is the case with all truly democratic movements in Russia. Today we see several definite movements, each with its supporters and agendas, and this seems to be both positive and promising. It means that the conversation about the situation of women can be conducted on various planes and can reach the broadest sectors of the electorate, at least in the electoral campaign period; it means there is a chance of seeing brilliant new women leaders emerge. At least one really hopes this will be so. The anniversary of that first congress was celebrated in several major events, from a national conference held in St. Petersburg to readings both scholarly and activist-oriented to small gatherings held in Moscow and other cities. The anniversary period coincided with a new Russian holiday since l998, Mother's Day, on the last Sunday in November. Not long before that was the first Russian-American government-sponsored conference on "Preventing Domestic Violence Against Women," to which Naina Yeltsin and Hillary Clinton sent messages. It was the first time in Russia that this theme of violence within the family was acknowledged and discussed on such a high level, thereby raising hopes of more energetic government actions against this evil. The very subject itself clearly demonstrates that the attitude in Russian society to "the woman question" has begun to change for the better, slowly but surely. More on this in a subsequent issue of the magazine. For now, we congratulate our readers, authors, and friends on the occasion of the anniversary, well worth celebrating and giving us food for thought.

Nadezhda Azhgikhina

It is my view that if there is good cause for celebration, one should celebrate with a capital C - especially in hard times. I remember reading many years ago about the emergence of "the woman question" in Russia in the l860's and the admiration I felt for the courage of those early women activists. At first, they were gentry feminists (though they didn't call themselves such) who started with charity work and then pressured the authorities to establish higher education courses for women, a big achievement of the l870's. There were the women nihilists, who did not achieve much, but in choosing cropped hair and plain dress over curls and crinolines signaled their desire to be taken seriously. There were the women radicals who "went to the people" and founded short-lived artels and workshops for women as experiments in community living. And then, at the turn of the century, came the suffragists calling for equal rights and the socialists of various persuasions, with factory women beginning to participate. Such were the several streams that came together in the First All-Russian Women's Congress of l908, of which I first learned from the writings of American scholars some 25-30 years ago. Reading about this congress, one can almost hear the passionate often angry speeches and exchanges between women with very divergent views who could not agree on any common strategy. Still, they are cause for celebration, that in the late l9th and early 20th centuries Russia had a women's movement which astonished people in Western Europe who exclaimed, "How is it that Russia, which by no means occupies the foremost rank in European civilization, is first in the matter of women's emancipation?" What lessons, I wonder, will you draw from this rich history, and from the subsequent 70 years of communism, and from ten years of the revival of independent citizen groups? Will you now reach out to larger numbers of women and younger women in Russia and those from other strata of the population, to make your movement broader and more diverse? Will you seek more effective ways of gaining public and government attention, so as to achieve some of your goals? Will more of you find fulfillment in working together in coalitions, and not just individually and separately in your own small endeavors? These are some of the questions that really interest me. They are questions we Americans ask ourselves. Many of us have felt discouraged about trends in our country. Yet even as I write, there is one small bit of good news: the results of our November l998 elections to the Congress and the state governorships seem to show that women's votes made a difference in electing candidates with moderate sensible views over those holding extremist conservative and religious fundamentalist positions on Social issues. Plenty of work lies ahead to get our own people reinvolved in public life and actively supporting policies that are good for women, families, and society as a whole. But now I raise my glass to you, dear colleagues and friends who are celebrating the achievements of Russia's women over more than a century.

Colette Shulman