The Secret Police vs. Women's Lib

Moscow expels a trio of underground feminists

When the U.S.S.R.'s first feminist magazine, The Woman and Russia, called Soviet men irresponsible drunkards, the authorities were dismayed. When the underground publication went on to declare that Soviet society "degrades women to the status of a work animal, a sex object and a breeding machine," they became alarmed. Finally, when the feminists called upon wives and mothers to persuade men not to fight in Afghanistan, the KGB felt compelled to move in on the fledgling women's liberation movement. Secret police agents swooped down on the Leningrad apartments of three editors of the magazine and gave them 24 hours to get out of the Soviet Union or face prison sentences. When the women chose exile, the authorities quickly stripped them of their Soviet citizenship.

The trio of feminists arrived in Vienna last week via a special Aeroflot flight. Though dazed by their expulsion, they still showed defiance. Said Tatyana Goricheva: "For 60 years Soviet women had remained silent. With the double workload --jobs and housework--they had no time to open their mouths. But now the women's movement is gaining ground." Goricheva, 32, told how the KGB harassed their magazine from its inception. The editors were repeatedly summoned by the KGB for interrogation and followed wherever they went. Their homes were searched in an effort to find the first typewritten issue, of which only ten copies had been produced. The police finally discovered and seized five copies. The handsomely illustrated magazine carried articles and poems about an array of Soviet women's problems, from the abuse of women in Soviet prisons to the unhygienic conditions in maternity hospitals and abortion clinics. One typical article described how working mothers are obliged to leave their small children at state day care centers that are run by staff members who often water their charges' milk and steal much of their food.

Undeterred, the women extended their underground activities. An organization was formed in Leningrad last March with 20 active members and several hundred supporters. They produced three more issues of their underground magazine, renaming it Maria. Early on, Maria made the intriguing ideological argument that Marxism was dead and that the only viable alternative was feminism. It went on to say that women should persuade men to burn their draft orders rather than serve in Afghanistan--a crime that would cost the draft resisters long terms in prison. The second issue declared the group's solidarity with Afghan women fighting with their men for the liberation of their country. The latest issue appealed to world public opinion to demand withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Wrote the women: "We are ashamed to belong to a people in whose name the freedom and independence of other nations are being shot down."

Artist Tatyana Mamonova, 35, the original editor of The Woman and Russia, hopes to revive the magazine in the West to help create a "psychological revolution" in the awareness of women, a worldwide protest against war. The third expelled feminist, Writer Natalya Malakhovskaya, 33, believes that "there are no purely feminist issues, only issues in which women should be involved. In the Soviet Union, everybody is a slave, but women are slaves of the slaves." At week's end, Malakhovskaya was in Copenhagen attempting to address the U.N. World Conference on Women. Her goal: to denounce the head of the official Soviet delegation, Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, as a "false symbol of women's emancipation in the Soviet Union." She was ejected from the conference hall by police.

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