by Natalya Krasavtseva In the summer of l997 in the Medvezhegorsk region of Karelia, there was a folklore festival with the title "Her Homeland is Zaonezhye." It was dedicated to the l70th birthday of the folk poet, storyteller and professional mourner Irina Andreyevna Fedosova. The creative legacy of this incredibly gifted peasant woman has been and is being studied by folklorists, literary scholars, writers and artists. For example, Kirill Vasilievich Chistov, a St.

by Olga Golubeva, a school girl Rusalochka, the little mermaid, and her six sisters lived in a palace in the depths of the Black Sea. The mistress of this kingdom was the mermaids' grandmother, the Sea Queen, who was proud that her ancestors went way back to the mermaids in Andersen's tales. Babushka (grandmother) adored her granddaughters and never scolded, even if they swam up into oil spills.

by Victor and Irina Kagan At the conference on "Women for Life without War and Violence," Professor Kagan gave a brilliant talk on stress and conducted a workshop on the subject. Our magazine asked him to prepare something like a practical manual to help people to cope in stressful situations. Below is a brief summary of the first of four articles by Kagan and his wife Irina, a psychologist.

by Heather Jones It's Madison Square Garden; the New York Liberty is playing my home team, the L.A. Sparks. The Liberty's Rebecca Lobo is shooting her free throw, and just as she's about to take the shot., I said "BOOOOOOOOOO!" Since we were in New York, everybody looked at me because they were all from New York and for The Liberty team, but I don't mind because I feel strongly about rooting for my home team. My name is Heather Jones, I'm 11 years old and I live in California.

by Natalya Krasavtseva Lidia Vasilievna Suvorova is a Karelian government consultant on social issues and works with women's organizations. She was born in l946 in northern Kazakhstan. Her father was in the military and the family moved from one place to another (Central Asia, the Caucases, the Far North). She is Russian by nationality and a historian by profession. Tell us about your childhood and youth.

by Antonina Kyabeleva, staff correspondent of the newspaper "Observer" Svetlana Suvorova is a psychologist and the director of a club for job seekers under the Karelian Ministry of Labor, and she is convinced that what hinders most job seekers is their psychological unpreparedness for the changing economic realities. Svetlana Leonidovna, I gather the club does not gather and give information on job vacancies. How then can it help the jobless?

by Valentina Fedorovna Khoteeva, a veteran of the women's movement I remember listening with interest to my l5 year-old grandson, Victor, when he returned from America where he had been for a month with a school group in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. His impressions of what he had seen in the USA, of wonderful encounters with his peers, and especially the warmth and sincerity and hospitality of the family where he lived touched me deeply.

by Valentina Kazakova (This is an editor's summary of a long article) Ludmila Galkina broke the seven meter barrier in the long jump at the Olympic summer games in Athens and won Russia's only gold medal. It was a surprise to everyone including the Russian team trainer who thought Galkina would be the last to get one.

by Mariam Chamberlain, Founding President of the National Council for Research on Women The Background and Evolution of Women's Studies Women's studies as an identifiable area of teaching and research emerged in the United States in the late l960's, although the intellectual antecedents go back much further.

Have things changed much since the days of Nekrasov? by Svetlana Bestuzheva-Lada I agree that the title is strange, to say the least. What has it got to do with an animal, be it even a noble one, if we are discussing mankind's better half? Moreover, it is my personal view and profound conviction that our Russian women (formerly Soviet) did not come from apes at all, and were not even created from the very best male rib. They are tenderhearted, a cross between a horse and Prszewalski.

Ludmila Ivanovna Yevtiukova is president of the club "Woman." She was born in l935 in a village in the Kondopozhski region where her parents also grew up. She is Karelian by nationality and a biologist and geographer by education. Tell us about your childhood and youth. I was a very lively child. Someone once said to my parents: you wanted a boy and got a girl, and what an energetic one!

by Anna Alchuk, Artist and Critic (This article is accompanied by a four-page color spread reproducing the art of eight Moscow women artists.) At the metro station "Baumanskaya" there stands a sculpture of a woman just slightly less than human size. She is coming forward out of a red marble alcove in a billowing quilted jacket, a holster is belted around her. There is a revolver in the holster. Her eyes are burning with surreal hatred.

by Nadezhda Azhgikhina In Russia the first holiday of the spring is March 8. Many of my countrymen and women have long since forgotten that it began many years ago as the day of international solidarity among women workers, and was celebrated by street parades and demonstrations demanding equal pay for equal work, humane working conditions, and political rights.

Let's admit it, we don't often pay one another compliments. We even forget to say thank you -- no time or we put it off. I propose using the magazine to thank each other for good deeds and warm words and I want to do this now. I picked up the last issue of the magazine at a moment when nothing was going right and everything seemed gloomy.

Girls Request Your Attention is a magazine for young people which is published in Naberezhnye Chelny, Tatarstan (part of the Russian Federation -- editor) by a group of young women activists and students in the Femina Club, led by Elena Mashkova.