11 12 2000
Valentina Konstantinova: re: (Translation from Russian)


Dear Andrea and Jana!
Dear fellow country women!

Excuse me that I am staying silent, although I am receiving all your letters.
I changed my address, but the old one is still working. The new one: svlskonst@online.ru
I've stayed silent because of two reasons:
1. I am really ill, as someone of you wrote. I have been in hospital. They discharged me for the holidays (for three days), the 13th of December I am returning to hell (a treatment by chemotherapy of the lymphs, cancer of lymphs). A conflicting situation with the doctors began, as I refused the treatment, which they suggested (the second course). I've read a lot about the treatment in the internet, what, of course, bothers the doctors.
2. I am not sure wether my contribution could be very useful in this discussion.
I am no intellectual, rather a practitioner of the women's movement, probably from the beginning of its foundation at perestroyka time.
For the first time I have heard about cyberfeminism, when our german friends introduced it to me. I wanted to read on the sites, where they have sent me, but as I was installing a new programm (not successfully), the letter by A. and J. got lost, apart from the fact that the computer did not work for more than a month.
I would be interested in sharing my thoughts about the movement, about how the IDEA is changing what hierarchies and power are in women's groups etc.
Now I am reflecting (I am finding some spare time) the sense of my life in the last ten and more years (I have in mind my mindless active life after perestroyka and my thoughtlessness until up to it). Often these are sad thoughts.
But I am not promising to astonish you with intellectual notions. Apart from that, chemotherapy is influencing my brain, my emotions.
And maybe I cannot do anything.
I am reading you with great interest, but hastily.

Valentina Konstantinova,
52 years, divorced, daughter (30 years), grandson (11), mother (77).
We all live together in Moscow. I was born at the Ural in a little town.When I was five we moved to Sverdlovsk. I finished the pedagogical institue in Moscow (english department). I worked as a referent-translator at the party High school, defended my dissertation on the feminist movement of Great Britain (1989), member of LOTOS (1987), of ARIADNA fond, of the Moscow Center of gender studies since 1990. There I am just being counted as a number for the last two years. My collegues have (secretely) driven me out of the new project at a time when I most needed (financial) support. That's feminism in practice, so to say.

But I haven't lost my optimism concerning feminism after all.

--- Original Message -----
From: <brat@zedat.fu-berlin.de>
To: <svlskonst@glasnet.ru>; <mcgs@glasnet.ru>; <mcgs@glas.apc.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2000 3:55 PM
Subject: looking for valentina konstantinova > Dear Valentina Konstantinova
> from the 20th of November on we are discussing with other cyber- and feminists
> (Irina Aristarkhova, Irina Aktuganova, and Larissa Lissjutkina). but we do not know anything about you.
> maybe we are writing to a wrong address: svlskonst@glasnet.ru ?
> have you been receiving our letters?
> you can find the discussion in Russian at:
> http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~brat/russkij/ru.html (link: discussion)
>
> i hope that everything is fine with you!
> with best regards, Jana Korb
>
> (in the case that Valentina Konstantinova does not use these adresses, does
> anybody know, how to reach her?)
>
> -
> brat ist andrea jana korb ist +49 30 4227034


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