The issue of sexual violence was raised in 1991 at the very beginning of the postSoviet women’s movement in Russia. It was one of the issues of violence against women that was unscheduled, but added to the agenda of the watershed event in the Russian women’s movement, the First Independent Women’s Forum in 1991 (Nechemias 2001). Already by the mid 1990s, several women’s organizations— especially Moscow-based FALTA and Syostri as well as Saratov-based Interregional
Association of Women Lawyers (IAWL)—were working to bring more attention to the issue among the broader public. They were, respectively, running their own consciousness-raising groups and translating Western theory on related problems into Russian; holding workshops for young people, healthcare personnel, and law enforcement officers while creating public service announcements; and producing a regional television program as part of a local (1995) “16 Days without Violence” campaign with local law enforcement organs. As do other anti-rape campaigns around the world, all sought to create awareness of forms and aspects of sexual violence, such as date rape and incest, that were previously taboo.
For the leaders of these organizations, initial interest in addressing sexual violence arose locally. In some cases, they had experience with sexual violence, against either themselves or someone close to them, that led them to imagine creating an organization. One Syostri founder, who first began assisting women in 1989, was encouraged by over 1,500 letters she received from rape victims in response to articles she published. In the words of another leading activist at the center, “it was through her work and correspondence with survivors that she developed a vision of an independent crisis center staffed by professional psychologists and trained volunteers” (Zabelina 1995, 266).
Nonetheless, from the onset of anti-rape activism, their campaigns were linked with the transnational feminist movement. Even before the Soviet collapse, participants at the First Independent Women’s Forum included feminists from the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and India who broached the issues of sexuality and violence. A 1993 seminar on “women, youth, violence” brought several Canadian lawyers to the Russian crisis centers to discuss Russian experience and the history of North American anti-rape movements, leading at least one Russian activist to analyze sexual violence using ideas modeled on North American feminism.4 In those years, Westerners collaborated with Russians to translate Western feminist texts to Russian, producing scores of booklets, articles in the Russian women’s movement’s new journals, and books on sexual health and violence. Although these projects sometimes included discussion of the differing Russian situation, almost always the texts were translated and reproduced uncritically. The Russian anti-rape campaigns even modeled themselves on Western anti-rape campaigns. For example, Moscow-based crisis center Syostri—in pamphlets, workshops, articles, and interviews—confronted “myths” about sexual violence in Russian society with the “facts.”5 In one adaptation to the Russian society and culture, activists frequently linked the blaming of women to Russia’s particular taboo about discussing sexuality.6
These kinds of transnational feminist interventions tended to be viewed positively by Russian leaders who viewed themselves as transnational feminists. As explained by one leader, she was “feminist by birth,” but Western feminist theory and practice gave her new ways of understanding and responding to sexual violence.7 Although critical of the impact of foreign assistance on feminist organizations, she spoke uncritically of Western feminist ideas and models and the global campaign against gender violence. She understood this stage of activism as one during which “Russia was integrated into the [global] war against violence against women.”
By 1999, the global norm framing gender violence in terms of human rights had entered into the campaigns and rhetoric of organizations and activists. In collaboration with other crisis centers and the gender program at the Moscow affiliate of the American Bar Association Central and Eastern European Law Initiative (ABA-CEELI), Syostri produced a series of brochures called the “Rainbow of Rights.” 8 These brochures linked sexual violence to Russia’s international rights obligations under CEDAW and the European Convention on Human Rights. Syostri’s website (http://www. owl. ru/syostri/) then added an extensive section on rights, including reproducing the U. N. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and parts of the Beijing Platform for Action.
Feminist entrepreneurs and venues for transnational conversations were essential to the process of localizing activism. In the early 1990s, the frequent trips by Western feminists to the region brought Western feminist ideas about sexual vio — lence.9 American entrepreneur Martina Vandenberg not only provided startup resources for Syostri, but also shaped their activism “based on her experience as a rape crisis counselor in California and England” (Zabelina 1995). American Dianne Post at ABA-CEELI was the driving force behind the “Rainbow of Rights” brochures. Other interactions occurred at transnational conferences, workshops, and trainings, and then congealed into collaborative publications and websites.10 To a lesser degree, there were exchanges in which Russian leaders traveled to visit U. S.-based crisis centers.