Personal Narratives of Women's Leadership and Community Activism in Cherkasy Oblast
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2011 Personal Narratives of Women's Leadership and Community Activism in Cherkasy Oblast Martha Kichorowska Kebalo The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1950 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF WOMEN‘S LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN CHERKASY OBLAST by MARTHA KICHOROWSKA KEBALO A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2011 ii © 2011 MARTHA KICHOROWSKA KEBALO All Rights Reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Gerald W. Creed Date Chair of Examining Committee Gerald W. Creed Date Executive Officer Jane C. Schneider Kate Crehan Catherine K. Wanner Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract WOMEN‘S PERSONAL NARRATIVES OF LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN CHERKASY OBLAST by Martha Kichorowska Kebalo Adviser: Professor Gerald W. Creed ABSTRACT Ukraine‘s women‘s movement is part of a complex social field characteristic of formerly Soviet countries, but it also emerges from its own specific political history. Post-Soviet period, (neo-) nationalism, feminism and (neo-) socialism are significant forces shaping women‘s collective behavior. Their activism resonates with the pre-Soviet liberation struggle while it is shaped also by practices from the recent Soviet past. It also is sensitive to external pressures, including the agendas of Western aid and the Ukrainian diaspora. This study accepts the emergence of non-state women‘s organizations as indicative of an incipient movement and examines this field of social activism in Cherkasy, a largely rural province of central Ukraine. The inquiry proceeds from the heterogeneity of women‘s responses to Ukraine‘s post-Soviet transition, and from the premise that their various life experiences bear on their engagement in activism and choice of organizational commitment. The analysis probes issues of differential recruitment, personal presentations of self as activist, and ideological motivation for participation in projects often melding feminist, nationalist, and/or socialist goals. The spectrum of activism mirrors Ukraine‘s post-Soviet nation building crisis, and includes both conservative and transformational aspects. An optimistic trend is discerned in the practices of self-directed activist groups seeking affiliation with independent national women‘s v federations and working outside of the para-statal structure that is heir to the Soviet women‘s councils. Personal narratives of activism reflect positions on gender and nation and suggest a Ukrainian feminist standpoint that is simultaneously supportive of both women‘s parity and post- Soviet national integrity. vi Preface An ethnographic inquiry into the emergence of a broad variety of women‘s organizations in central Ukraine during the first decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union serves as the basis for this dissertation. The focus of this work is on the gestation and the institutional foundations of gender-based collective action in a largely rural province of central Ukraine, but it also begins to address a lacuna in literature on the countries of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) regarding diaspora influence on homeland developments through transnational organizations and the mobilization of resources, both material and symbolic. The Ukrainian context for the women‘s movement is complex: the form and structure are related to the recent Soviet past, while the movement‘s content is informed by Ukraine‘s recent encounter with Western feminism as well as Ukraine‘s historical liberation struggle. My specific approach to understanding the post-Soviet women‘s movement in Ukraine is based on the perspective of the women activists themselves. Thus, my investigation sought ground in both anthropological and feminist theory as self-consciously political as well as intellectual systems of thought (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe 2000:19). What follows explores the evolution and interaction of socialist, nationalist, and feminist informed practices among Ukraine‘s women‘s organizations and demonstrates how these ideological orientations are reflected and integrated in women‘s personal narratives of leadership and community activism. Narratives of the post-Soviet period of transition in Ukraine have generally neglected to recognize the role of women; their organized life, if treated, has been presented as a separate sphere—a chronic problem (Scott 1996:12). The basic fact that women constitute more than half of Ukraine‘s population, of its workforce and of its electorate, indicates that women form a critical mass in terms of their collective and cumulative behaviors. Women‘s own accounts vii depart from other transition narratives by suggesting that powerful actions taken by women significantly influenced certain outcomes in Ukraine‘s recent history. For example, it was Soviet Ukrainian women, banding together in the late 1980s, who organized the return of their sons conscripted into the Soviet army to serve in their home republic, Ukraine. These women created the groundwork for a separate Ukrainian military, an important component of political independence (Pyskir 1994:79). Post 1991, the cumulative effect of the work of women‘s organizations is also an underappreciated and neglected factor of the transition. Women‘s groups and networks have provided the continuity of social welfare provision in post-Soviet Ukraine. Women have filled the ranks of Ukraine‘s regional state administration. Women have been important to the waging of opposition politics in the post-Soviet period, both in the regrouping of Ukraine‘s anti-nationalists under the banner of the political left and pro- sovereignty activists under the banner of a national democratic right. Hindsight situates the months of my Ukraine-based field work as a precursor to the 2004 Orange Revolution and compels me to assert that the increased outreach of national democratic post-Soviet women activists into the rural areas of the provinces was a factor in the electoral behavior of central Ukrainian rural voters in 2004. Analyzing the dramatic outcome of the 2004 presidential elections, Dominique Arel (2005) asserts that it was central Ukraine that ultimately secured victory for Victor Yushchenko and his Our Ukraine Party: the rural residents of this largely agricultural region who had supported leftist (socialist-communist) candidates in 1994 and then the non-party affiliated Leonid Kuchma in 1999, voted mostly Orange in 2004. Arel‘s argument rests on the fact that central Ukraine is a historically ethnic Ukrainian territory (in contrast to Ukraine‘s East and South with large populations of Russians that supported Kuchma‘s candidate, Victor Yanukovych, also the preferred candidate of Russia‘s leaders) and viii explains the voting patterns in central Ukraine by linking electoral behavior to differences in personal commitment to Ukrainian identity and nationalism. The social mechanism by which the peasantry ―became orange‖ is not known, pending ―serious fieldwork‖ (Arel 2005:3). My fieldwork suggests, however, that loyalty to an ethnic identity would not offer, as Arel would surely agree, a full explanation. Among the possible factors that need to be considered and have been overlooked is the activism of women‘s organizations. Although women‘s organizations were not prominent actors in the final demonstrations of Ukraine‘s Orange Revolution of 2004, I suggest that they played a significant, yet unrecognized role in its success. Although dramatic differences in worldview between the socialist left and reform- capitalist right prevented easy coalitions during the 2000-2001 Kuchmagate period (Woronowycz 2001), women at both ends of Ukraine‘s political spectrum were starting to find common ground in their anti-corruption stance against the rule of the party of power (Zvyglyanych 1999). Many of these organizations (explicitly or implicitly) promoted Ukrainian identity; but, more significantly, I observed their grassroots civic work to have a healthy effect on both urban and rural communities. Their work is part of a wide effort involving many actors, representing both domestic and external non-governmental entities, to stimulate national solidarity, civic participation, and democratic self-government in the local communities. Independent Ukraine is by constitutional design a pluralistic society, committed to the protection of the rights of its diverse citizenry. By virtue of historical developments, independent Ukraine is a divided society, multi-ethnic but predominately Ukrainian with a large Russian minority. Ukraine is decidedly bi-lingual with Russian language dominating the non- traditional spaces of print media and popular culture. It is also multi-confessional with a prevalence of Orthodox Christians most of whom affiliate with the Ukrainian Orthodox ix Churches of either the Kyivan or Moscow Patriarchates. Most regrettably, Ukraine appears to