Women learn the lessons of democracy
On February 23 the PoDiya ( podiya means event, and diya means deed, which means that these ladies want to make events happen — Ed.) school of female sociopolitical leadership marked its five-month jubilee, by inviting the first president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, as a guest teacher.
“Ten years is too short a term to turn around such colossal things as consciousness, culture, and mentality,” Mr. Kravchuk said. “In this, I don’t mean to justify some well-known things brought about by the subjective factor, that is, our narrow political culture, inadequate spiritual power of the individual, or inability to exercise leadership in general. For if someone sticks his nose into somebody else’s business, he only torments himself and others, bringing woe to one and all. But this is a subjective factor. Of course, nationwide democratic development needs time, experience, and traditions our history has really never had. Ukraine’s history is difficult, tragic, and, let us say, undemocratic... But it would be wrong to say that nothing has changed in our state. We have a multiparty system (a hundred or so parties), with 20 presidential and 35 parliamentary candidates running for office. Is this not movement toward democracy?.. Looking at my family, I see that my son thinks and assesses the situation in a new way, although he cut his teeth on the Communist Party and Communist Youth League; Andriy is different, though he knows about Lenin, while the 13-year-old Mariyka does not know about Lenin, thinks in an entirely different way, and I find it difficult to get used to these twists. When Mariyka’s generation comes to power, everything will be completely different, for they will no longer be burdened with the problems we have on our shoulders, whether we like it or not.”
The school always invites as teachers well-known political and public figures, journalists, authoritative specialists, academics from Ukraine’s leading educational and research institutions, and foreign experts. Project coordinator Liudmyla Lebedieva says, “In Soviet times, there was a distinct system of training the political elite, including the Higher Party School, Institute of Marxism- Leninism, etc. That system trained high-quality cadres, but it collapsed for reasons we all know, leaving an empty space. Our school teaches 55 women of various walks of life from all parts of Ukraine. They learn how to live a full-fledged life in and improve our still imperfect society. The women of today badly need to grow intellectually be able to exert a positive influence on the developments in this country. You never know: perhaps one of our students will some time become the president of our country.”
