Though some had been informally helping women since the late 1980s, Russian activists founded the first women’s organizations dedicated to addressing violence against women between 1993 and 1995 in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia’s two major cities. Moscow-based ANNA (an acronym for the No to Violence Association) began informally in 1993 as a one-person hotline, held a training for new hotline counselors in 1994, and in 1995 was officially registered with the Russian government (see map 1). Almost simultaneously, other activists founded a second Moscow crisis center, Syostri (Sisters), but whereas ANNA focused more on domestic violence, Syostri focused on sexual assault. The St. Petersburg Crisis Center began providing some services in 1991, officially opened in 1994, and began a regular hotline in 1995 (Liapounova and Drachova 2004). Although these centers’ primary activity was the hotline and other crisis counseling, all centers also began broader feminist advocacy projects, including research and enlistment of journalists to write on gender violence.
Interest quickly expanded to the regional capitals in Western Russia and even beyond (Pashina 2004). For example, in 1994, in Saratov, a one-million-person city on the Volga, activists established the Interregional Association of Women Lawyers to facilitate lawyers in providing legal aid to victims of sexual violence as part of their legal practice.4 Even though they required a fee—there was no tradition of pro bono work in Russia—the lawyers were providing a new service for victims, who play a substantial role in Russian criminal trials. This Saratov association also established a hotline, created a support group for young women, and
table 3.1.
Development of the Women’s Crisis Center Movement in Russia, 1993—2004
|
time period |
estimates of numbers of women’s crisis centers* |
description of the period |
intervention |
|
|
Conservative |
Generous |
|||
|
1993-1994 |
7 |
10 |
founding organizations |
global feminist ideas, transnational feminist networking |
|
1995-Е997 |
8 |
24 |
institutionalization of the crisis center model (services + advocacy — shelter) |
|
|
1998-2001 |
40 |
120 |
proliferation of crisis centers, NGO-ization |
funding women’s rights advocacy through feminist alliances with donors |
|
2002-2004 |
47 |
121 (229 if include antitrafficking orgs) |
transformation: more fragmentation, tenuous survival for feminist organizations |
antitrafficking initiatives, European partnerships |
Note: *The lower number includes only those organizations that both are robust and more closely resemble the crisis center model. The generous estimate includes other organizations that work against gender violence. For the sake of simplicity, I call them all crisis centers.
produced a television program on violence against women as part of the global feminist campaign, the 16 Days against Gender Violence.
In October 1994, ANNA leaders founded an informal network, the Russian Association of Crisis Centers for Women (RACCW), to link the new organizations in order to coordinate campaigns to raise public awareness of the issue and to advocate for legislative reform (Henderson 2001).5 Founding members were located in Moscow, the region surrounding Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Tagil, Ekaterinburg, and distant Kamchatka.6 Within just a few short years of founding, there were seven to ten women’s crisis centers in Russia.
 |
 |
 |
MAP 1. Cities with robust gender violence activism and the women’s organizations highlighted in this study. Map created by Olga Kirsanova.