Original Material
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS
Dear Editors of the magazine, Women's Dialogue
I am writing you for the first time, although it is not the first year that I have been reading your magazine. I am Ludmila Bondarenko, a docent of Tomsk State University where I work in the department of sociology. For two years I've been giving a course both for students of sociology and social workers on "Women and Society," and this year I added another one on "The Sociology of Gender." Moreover, I and my students who are interested in gender issues have been carrying out researches on the theme of women in science, in business, and in the power structure. The students write course and diploma papers on gender problems. In the future we want to create a student laboratory for gender research. The materials in your magazine help us a lot in our work and research. They enable us to perceive what women are doing and what issues concern them in various parts of our country and in other countries.
Ludmila Bondarenko, Tomsk
Dear Editors,
Many thanks for publishing in issue 23 a range of articles on my beloved Armenia. My friends live there, and I went there many many times in former days when things were not so difficult. Now I get news from them only rarely and we haven't seen one another for a long time - none of us has money for travel. From what their letters tell me, life in Armenia is very hard for people. So it is all the more gratifying to read that in Yerevan and other cities there are women who haven't given up, who are doing interesting things and helping others.
Respectfully,
Nonna Petrovna, Tula
Dear Colleagues,
I read with great interest the articles by Elena Kochkina and Andrei Sirelnikov. Very serious articles sketching out new approaches to important questions of principle. It is true, the globalization of world processes forces one to think about gender problems, even if they seem exotic to many people. I hope our economists and ideologists of reform will read these articles, which no doubt will be useful to them.
Victor Sergeevich Kuper
Dear Editors,
My family is an example of necessary migration undertaken voluntarily. My husband is Russian and has come back to his homeland. To hold the family together I was obliged to leave my birthplace and follow him. That was five years ago, five years of hard experience. Unquestionably, it is women who shoulder the many unexpected difficulties of restoring the family's moral-spiritual environment, of making new contacts and creating a friendly community attitude toward the family in these new conditions where many other people, indeed all of them, are also having a hard time. Many doors opened to us precisely because from the start I showed great respect for people and their traditions. Only through that special womanly courtesy and kindness can one receive people's benevolence in a new environment. Respecting the traditions there, we began by enlarging our knowledge of the history and culture of the area we had come to. This had psychological significance as well, saying to others that what is dear to you has value for us as well. Unfortunately not everyone interprets this positively. In spite of my experience in museum work, I remember how jealously the staff of theNovocherkassk city library's local area research section viewed my efforts to publicize the section's work - they considered that their monopoly. It was hard for them to accept a new person. For a long time they wanted to ignore the experience, the initiative and the desire.
Looking with a fresh eye I found many things of cultural value in the city, which will soon have its 200th birthday. Thus I wrote articles on the sculpture of Razin and on the museum of paleontology, whose collection is over 200 years old. My first article on the historical museum of the Polytechnical Institute helped me get some new creative work in the university library. In my situation of newcomer, one has to work harder. I knew this long ago from watching a film on Armenian emigrants after the l9l5 genocide,
Each time the next obstacle came, I recalled that refugees have more inner resources that even they realize. I remember particularly warmly, when I was writing some notes about an anthology of Novocherkassk poets, how I found a man who is now a very esteemed person for me - Ara Rafikovich Arsenyan. The anthology opens with some information about the sponsors of the book. At the time of its publication, when the book was being presented in various institutions of culture and education, it didn't occur to anyone to invite the sponsors. With a copy in hand, I went to A. Arsenyan. He was glad to know the book had come out and that it gave credit to sponsors, and it pleased me as a popularizer of culture that I could dignify a worthy person. Now I owe a lot to Arsenyan. Two years later when I was offered a post as the responsible official in the Armenian Center, it seems they took into consideration that I can locate people who do good deeds quietly without especially promoting themselves. Let others do this publicizing enlightening work, paying tribute to worthy people in appropriate circumstances. I want to add that in emigration it's essential to feel very grateful. In one's old haunts it happens that things are done for you in tribute to your ancestors, but in emigration as a refugee you have not only to work a lot and be very obliging, but be thankful as well. It is not easy. I remember how pleasing it was to the head of the dormitory where we lived at first, G. G. Konakhoku, when we expressed our thanks for his help to us, a family with two children, in handling many everyday problems. I thanked with pleasure people who helped my children get on with their education, who didn't put up obstacles because we lacked some official document. I especially warmly remember the Russian language teacher, N.G. Krupnova, who understood how hard it is for children coming from an Armenian school to go into a Russian one.
Yes, a feeling of respect and gratefulness is particularly necessary for an immigrant in his or her not easy life.
Margarita Giulnazaryan
Union of Women of the Don,
Novocherkassk