Women Fight to be Heard In Chechen War Dialogue

Excerpts from a paper by Marina Liborakina

Coverage of the war in Chechnya has been a grim toll of bombings, terrorist attacks, civilians killed, Russian soldiers dead. Very little attention has been paid to the role of women's groups that have become prominent peacemakers in the region, mainly because public discourse has shaped perception of the war as an exclusively male affair. Members of the Women of Russia party were not allowed to go to Chechnya as members of a parliamentary peacemaking delegation, because "to include women in the delegation would be useless. Chechens never listen to women," according to party member Ekaterina Lakhova. Women have been turned into objects needing defense. "We must stay for our wives and children, for our women and homes," a federal serviceman says in a TV show. And as in the former Yugoslavia, the female body has become a battlefield, with terrorists in Pervomaisk consciously taking pregnant women hostage to display their power over the "Russian enemies."

While the State Duma might provide an open tribune for women politicians to speak out and change the perception of the war as men's business, women in parliament have failed to seize this opportunity. By establishing their position as defenders of social protection and security, the Women of Russia party achieved unexpected success in the December 1993 elections. Many people expected them to lead an anti-war coalition, or at least to put social issues and a demand to provide for civilian security on the Chechnya agenda. That did not happen. The Women of Russia followed the policy of President Yeltsin and did not speak out against the war. Due to increasing civic indignation against the war, the Women of Russia later shifted their position, but it was too late. The perception that they "voted for Chechnya" had been formed, and they lost their image as "mothers" and defenders of the poor together with their seats in the Duma. Women parliamentarians from other parties also failed to become anti-war leaders, and voted with their male colleagues.

On the contrary, in the civic anti-war movement, women are leaders. The soldiers' mothers movement has been the most prominent in anti-war activities in Russia. The movement includes the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers (CSM), the Mother's Right Foundation and other public associations and groups. The maternal agenda and the idea of protecting grown-up sons may look like a strange "Russian phenomenon" to an outsider, but the movement has become a campaign for human rights, peace and military reform.

Russian mothers have always cried when sending their sons off to the army, because military service meant poor nutrition, chronic hunger, poor health care, serious diseases, beatings and various kinds of humiliation by older soldiers (dedovschina). Last year several soldiers were officially reported dead of hunger in a military camp on an isolated island in the Far East. Before perestroika, speaking of deaths in the army, or any mention of bullying or poor living conditions in the military was forbidden. That is why soldiers' mothers speak out about the protection of their children as a mother's right and stress the human rights dimension of their activity.

Since the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers was founded in 1989, women have been challenging government policy and its militarist mentality, and demanding military reform. When CSM spokeswoman Valentina Melnikova was asked about the main success of the soldiers' mothers movement, she responded, "The colossal change is that specific people-mothers, fathers, children-have realized they have rights, they can fight for their rights using the court."

With the beginning of the war in Chechnya, the soldiers' mothers movement expanded their activities and drew new women to the movement. CSM, with headquarters in about 50 cities, has become a place where mothers receive attention and assistance. CSM has organized dozens of rallies against the war, the militarization of society and human rights violations in the armed conflicts and in the military itself. One of the most well-known was the Moscow to Grozny March of Maternal Compassion for Life. [See Surviving Together, Summer 1995.]

One of CSM's achievements is that fresh recruits are not being sent now to Chechnya. Additionally, the Chechens have agreed to pass captured or dead soldiers only to soldiers' mothers, not to military officials. Now CSM is working in coalition with human rights activists and other women's organizations.

Other feminist activities against the war have included public campaigning and demonstrations, dissemination of information through women's networks, reports at women's and other national conferences, and assistance to refugees, former soldiers and their families. Women's NGOs have joined other nonprofits in weekly picketing in Moscow.

These successes have come despite government attempts to silence women's voices. One example was a speech by Prime Minister Chernomyrdin at the First National Congress on Women a few days after the beginning of the war. He proposed measures to improve the status of women then asked women "to correctly understand" the government policy toward Chechnya. Feminists, who had forced the government to recognize discrimination against women in the country, rejected this "exchange."

NGO representatives, including Lubov Shtyleva of the Congress of Women from Kola and Eleanora Ivanova of the Women and Military Conversion Association, spoke out against the war at the Congress. Feminists did not succeed in including an anti-war proposal in the Congressional resolution, and had to gather in the hall after the Congress to make their own statement. I was the first one representing independent NGOs to be given the floor, and I still remember how the Congress was terrified by my "disobedience." Nobody knew what the reaction of the officials would be; only later were the first public disagreements made by well-known politicians and human rights activists shown on TV.

The women's anti-war movement has challenged not only the authorities, but the entire "Hero's Mother" myth so popular in Soviet culture. Mothers of soldiers killed in Afghanistan were encouraged to deliver speeches on international solidarity, and not be seen in tears in public. The "hero's mother" rhetoric did not leave space for natural human feelings of sorrow, grief or anger. Now that women are free to publicly express these emotions, they have used this power to push the anti-war movement from its early narrow focus on maternal rights to a broad call for human rights, military reform and peace.

Marina Liborakina is the head of the feminist research department at the Russian Institute for Cultural Research.