by Yelena Chakiridi The way things turned out, I work far away from my home. You get to hear just about everything in a bus full of people, which takes a whole half-hour to reach the metro!

[A conversation conducted by Valentina Kazakova] While Alla Georgievna was on the telephone patiently explaining to a certain slow-witted officer the basics of patrolling a teenage disco, I kept casting sidelong glances, with a mixture of admiration and horror, at the corner of her office where a partially-opened wardrobe stood. In general, there were two things in her office that interested me - the applique work on the wall and that particular wardrobe.

interview by Valentina Kazakova On a quiet little street in the heart of Saratov is a modest house with no signs or other visible identification. It is the headquarters of a small firm, AKVITAL-M, which is thus far known abroad only in business circles of Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, America and England, Turkey, Denmark and, of course, Russia, or more precisely, in Saratov and Moscow. It is a firm of men except for its director, Ludmila Grigorievna Tkachenko.

by Irina Kagan, teacher at the Harmony Institute of Psychotherapy and Victor Kagan, professor, and vice president of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia [This is a brief summary of the third part of their article.] There are three possible approaches to helping people who survive stress. The first is to improve medical assistance overall: the search for new drugs, the organization of special clinics, consulting rooms, rehabilitation centers, and so forth.

For many women in Russia, as abroad, the first half of summer l998 brought warmth and long awaited vacations, and more. It was a time for summing up results, for conferences, symposiums and open discussions on both the national and international levels.

by Colette Shulman "I think we need to talk more about men. How to raise boys. What values to give the. What mothers can do to help them be happy and free from stereotypical outlooks." This was a comment from a reader and in response, this article was written in June l998 to give our readers a glimpse of the research and thinking in the US about boys and their development.

Transplanted onto Russian Soil by Natalia Art Since childhood I dreamed of marrying a handsome courageous man like my cousin, the sailor. When he and I walked along the streets women gazed at us enviously, in spite of my then young age. My man did look good in his white trousers, blue sailor-shirt and -- oh joy, joy and terror -- his real dagger.

by Olya Cherentsova [Olya Cherentsova grew up in Moscow, married an American and moved to the USA in l98l at the age of 30. She is an artist and lives in Texas.] When Chris lay in my arms newborn and helpless, and looked up at me with remarkably knowing eyes, we both understood that we are linked for life by that just severed umbilical cord. I also realized that my need for Chris is no less than his for me. His growth would simultaneously be my own personal development.

an interview by Valentina Yurieva This is not a new thought, and moreover not of today's origin. It was painful to see that during the publishing boom [post-Soviet], the first to suffer were books for children. But Saratov's young ones were fortunate, because in this city the "Children's Book" publishing house headed by Valentina Grigorievna Fatyeeva has existed for already six years. -- Valentina Grigorievna, how long overall have you been working in publishing?

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.

So Thinks The Regional Press by Irina Makarova After careful analysis of the coverage of women's issues in the regional press I have to report a sad fact. In the four newspapers I looked at, the woman's theme is not a regular one. There are no sections or columns pulling together the material on this subject, there is no strategy for covering it. Most of the material seems to be there accidentally, a one-time occurrence, as though the theme just got lucky for once.

by Anna Dunaevskaia . [this is a summary] Nadia Kuznetsova learned to catch fish when she was six years old. No one taught her how to do it; she was just extremely jealous of the boys from the kolkhoz [collective farm], who would sit silently, out on the bank of the local stream, and fish in the early mornings. One morning she couldn't hold back and tore off three meters of white thread from a spool to make a fishing line, used a paper clip for a hook, and set to work.

(Guest Editor: Valentina Kazakova) WOMEN'S PARLIAMENT: A COMMUNITY OF THE LIKE-MINDED by Anna Dunaevskaia The idea of creating a women's parliament arose in May of 1995, in Saratov, where an international conference called "Women and the Law" took place, concerning legal issues within the women's movement of the Russian Federation.

by Colette Shulman Margaret Sanger would be astonished to learn that her grandson Alex, whom she last saw when he was a teenager, has dedicated his life to furthering her mission. Alexander Sanger is now the President of Planned Parenthood of New York City and The Margaret Sanger Center International. "My grandmother left big shoes to fill, " he says. "I often think of how difficult it must have been for her when she first opened her clinic in Brooklyn in l9l6.

BOOKSHELF, with notations on the following recent publications: l. The Rights of Women in Russia, Laws and Practice, No. 1, Moscow, l998, a journal sponsored by the Women's Information Network, editor Tatiana Troinova, published with financial assistance from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. 2.