On top of the barriers

I did not get to the independent women's forum in Dubna, I was these days in America, participated in the first Russian-American round table about modern Russian culture. How many disputes, discoveries, surprise from the unequal approaches and the joy of recognition of a genuine like -minded people! Meetings with American researchers, young scientists who immeasurably expanded previously familiar to us, then Soviet critics and teachers, the boundaries of the world of professional and the world as a whole. This dialogue stretched for many years, grew into friendship, perennial joint projects, publications, training courses, books ... I must say that I could not meet all new acquaintances that fall and New York. The Journalist of Neishn Katrina Vanden Huvel, whose interview was published shortly before that in Ogok, where I worked and another journalist, Kolett Schulman, just at that time left for Russia, in Dubna Moscow Region. The forum of women, the first independent meeting of women of many countries that discover the new world - the Universe of Female Solidarity, the joint development of new knowledge, practices, joint transformation of reality - also went down in the history of the early 90s, has become a kind of sign of that incredibly energetic period, inseparable from new hopes, faith in ambulances and beneficial changes, from personal selflessness of participants.

Remembering today these amazing years, which exploded the hardened framework of time, reinforced concrete structures of stereotypes and dogmas, crumbling before our eyes along with the main symbol of the “Cold War” of the Berlin STY - the unprecedented creature of the destroyers themselves cannot be noted. They destroyed in order to build again. Unfortunately, as you can see today, sometimes without analyzing whether it is worthwhile to sink everything “to the basis”.

But they certainly wanted to build - and together.

It is very important that on the wreckage of the Cold War, over the stones of the Berlin monster, people of different countries, intellectuals and the most ordinary citizens stretched out to meet each other. And their human impulse was perhaps the most valuable, most important point in overcoming the past.

The magazine "You and We", which arose just after the forum in Dubna is one of the sprouts of that impulse. Those who held the first issues in their hands remember well that they were different from modern ones. Only a few pages, several articles and interviews, but with what excitement they were read, passed on to each other, copied in order to send new friends to other cities!

The magazine in Russian for women is an improper, free from all ideology, except for the ideology of female equality and solidarity, the American Katrina Vanden Huvel and Kolette Shulman decided to release. And the magazine came out for the first years in the United States. It was on his pages that the first Russian translations of the most famous feminist texts appeared, information about the books that became iconic for women of the West - the “mysticism of femininity” Betty Fradin, the “second field” of Simona de Bovoir, “sexual politicians” Kate Millett ... and the emergence of Betty Fridan’s book “with the altered name - a riddle Femininity ”), as well as the books“ About us and our body (Puritan publishers, and here they corrected the headline, calling the encyclopedia “About you and your body”) - our readers are obliged directly to Katrina Vanden Huvel.

How many people were united by the idea of ​​creating a magazine! Among them were Western businessmen who transported boxes with the next number on the ocean liner to Russia, and dozens of women who meet these boxes in the port, transporting copies to cities and villages of the entire former CCCP. The energetic Martina Vandenberg, the leader of the consortium of female non -governmental organizations in Russia and the United States, led enthusiasts - couriers from the regions of Russia.

The feminist periodicals in Russia have a rather long -standing one, although