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Women's rights worker on how her organization has been instrumental in gaining visibility for women's rights in Russia

At the same time as the United States was drafting its Violence Against Women Act, which would only see the country open its Office on the Violence Against Women at the end of 1994, Marina Pisklakova-Parker was engineering her own solution and support for women who were victims of domestic violence. The difference? She was setting up a telephone support line in Russia, where she worked tirelessly on her own for six months. Pisklakova still concentrates all her efforts into making people understand the scale of the crisis, which was an invisible tormentor in the 1990s.

“Everything was from ground zero. There was no system of reference or mandatory response and it’s ‘93 and I realise I cannot count on the police as any reliable partner because the system is not prepared to respond to violence. Worse, for example, I would call the police because I have a case where a woman has been beaten and she has a nine-month-old baby, and her husband is threatening to kill her.

“But then what the police officer does, he calls her husband and says, 'If you beat your wife, beat her quietly. Why do I have NGOs calling me about that?'”

Pisklakova realized there was no support mechanism in place in order to protect women and ensure they had a safe refuge. Many people refused to talk about the issue and believed that Pisklakova was agitating otherwise normal situations. Her work in the prevention of violence really stumbled in these early years, when there was little understanding from support groups.

“The most surprising thing for me was that, unless I asked them, I would never have guessed. But then I got involved helping these women like any other human being. One of them called me when she was assaulted by her husband and I called the police, social services, medical; everybody said it was a private matter, we don’t intervene. And that was really something I couldn’t comprehend. She was injured, humiliated and there was no where she could go. For me, that is probably the moment where I found most of my drive, and where I thought that has to change.”

Pisklakova realized that marriage was in fact a trap for many women, having to juggle the responsibilities of work and motherhood, without any solace from violent partners, upon whom the women were dependent for housing and financial stability. The first time she asked a wife why she didn’t leave her husband, the simple response was harrowing, and stopped her in her tracks: “'Where would I go?' she said, and I realized that they were invisible.”

This instigated the need for the ANNA Center, which today, based from Moscow, operates a network of over 170 crisis centers across the former Soviet Union, aiming to combat the unprecedented levels of violence against women.

“The director of the city crisis center for women in Sweden came to Moscow and trained me. We had no funding. All of that was volunteering. She came on her own money to Moscow, and trained me in how to deal with telephone counselling, case work, and then in 1993, the Director of the [Russian Academy of Science] Institute gave me a small room and telephone number, and we announced the helpline for battered women.

“I didn’t get a salary for me at that time, but I was able to hire some professional people like psychologists, legal counselling and we also rented an apartment as a semi-shelter. It was a small apartment but women could stay there a while.”

In a country where it is estimated that a staggering one in four women are abused through some form of violence, Pisklakova’s phone was a lifeline in the dark. She was inundated with calls, including angry husbands trying to figure out what the line was, and why their wives were repeatedly ringing the number, helping to save lives at considerable risk to her own.

One of the most striking post-Soviet trends was that women’s rights started to decrease in popularity and importance. A traditional sentimentality has swept through Russia, as a seeming identity crisis pervades local communities. “When the Soviet system started fading away, there were no new values and Russia was very isolated for a long time. Some institutions started bringing in pre-revolution values. One of them was a 14th century tradition, based on the household. These were household rules of the 14 and 15th century where women were totally under control of the man as the master of the household. There were sections on how to punish a wife, physical punishment, all these things. Someone published a similar book at the beginning of the 90s and people referred to it as tradition.”

Throughout Russia, this led to a passive apathy when people talked about beating. It was something that was accepted as a norm. “We had a saying 'He beats you; therefore he loves you'. And when I would call a police officer for example about a case, I often heard, 'Well these women just enjoy being beaten.' And I was really curious; I started talking to them about that. I would ask 'Do you really believe what you say?' One police officer said: 'It is the best explanation I have, because they always take their complaint back.' Police officers couldn’t understand why women would retract their complaints. Their best explanation was that if women were beaten by their husband, it meant love. That helped us to design our national education and outreach campaign.

“One of the first posters was 'He beats you; therefore he loves you. Does it really mean love?'”

Thanks to her campaigning efforts, authorities have started tracking and monitoring violence levels in Russia. While the statistics have been partially reduced, it is still estimated that over 10,000 women are killed and almost 50,000 are hospitalized as a result of their injuries. But conservative estimates believe that only one fifth of all beaten women receive any form of medical attention. To curb the problem further, Pisklakova believes there needs to be legislative change.

“Legislation is that it is still private prosecution to a certain point and women have to file complaints and prove that they have been abused and we all know that it is impossible in cases of domestic violence. It has led to our training program where we developed lots of materials for different groups. We started with police, prosecutors, social services, medical doctors and judges and now I can tell you today police officers will not say this is a private matter. They will try to convince women to go ahead with charges.”

However, Pisklakova is a firm believer in tackling root issues of the problems. Although she looks at feminist movements with some applaud, she believes that connecting on the community level is vital in reaching the most challenging regions and changing their perspectives. “In order to develop a more efficient system of response, we need to go to the local level of community and work with communities in order to change attitudes there so communities realize they don’t want violence. There will be no healthy families if there is violence in the communities. Work at this level has proven to be very effective because we have addressed issues such as early marriages, and women trafficking.”

Pisklakova believes that work at this level will gradually introduce ideas about equality in ways that members of the community can understand and appreciate on a personal level. She is concerned that whilst larger women’s movements are achieving commendable goals, pushing too far too soon will call the whole idea of Russian civil society into question. “In evaluating what is happening in Russia, it’s actually an evaluation of the government. I think it is dangerous to push people to protest that can become a revolution. And I think Russia needs its own way of internal revolution.

“Russia is coming from a different place. The best memory Russian people have to relate to before the Russia Revolution is a Russian Empire and Russian Tsar that was killed unjustly. So we have a different system of reference and it has to be taken into account. With the entire historical context, after this Russian Empire, the Soviet mentality, and for many years the system, was basically disabling people from even thinking about rights. And within 20 years we cannot expect a quick transition to a democracy as we understand it now.”

Pisklokova has overcome working in isolation, threatening messages, losing her husband, raising her children alone and social resistance to her initiative, to go on to be awarded the Human Rights Global Leadership Award in 2004. Her mission is just starting to take center stage: “Change is still happening and we see results, and have already achieved a significant shift. But that women are considered equal and it’s totally changed? No. Statistics regarding pay, for example, show women are paid, I believe, 64% of the male equivalent for the same position. Although in the constitution on the paper, women are announced to be equal, the reality is still there is a long way to go.

“Yes, it has been difficult, but without those challenges, I don’t think I would have achieved a lot of the things I have.”

Marina Pisklokova-Parker was a speaker at Session 531, "Russian Civil Society Symposium: Building Bridges to the Future", sponsored by the Yeltsin Foundation. For more information and interviews with other participants, please visit the session page: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/531