Sixty years after Lenin's boast, the first Soviet free journal for appeared in the cradle of the Bolshevik Revolution, Leningrad. Printed clandestinely (the first issue consisted of ten copies, carefully handlettered and typed), the journal proclaimed support for the forgotten cause of women's liberation. Entitled Woman and Russia: An Almanac for About Women, it included poetry, art, and essays covering a range of subjects, from patriarchy to prisons, from matriarchy to marriage, from theology to abortion. The editors of Woman and solicited contributions from their readers, stating their intention to examine the position of women in the family, at work, in hospitals and maternity homes, the lives our children lead, and the question of women's moral rights. 2 Although Woman and managed to circulate samizdat fashion, from hand to hand, Soviet authorities quickly seized most of the copies (some had already been smuggled to the West) and warned Tatiana Mamonova, initiator of the project, against any further activity. But they refrained from more drastic action, perhaps unsure about what to do. The feminists did not cease their activity. By the spring of 1980, they had divided into two groups, Woman and Russia, led by Mamonova, and the Club Maria (after the Virgin Mary). The official formation of the Club Maria was scheduled for March 8, the international socialist women's holiday and an official holiday that with its ritual speeches, flowers, and meals prepared by husbands or children has become the Soviet equivalent of Mothers' Day. The KGB intervened, however, and on the night of February 29 searched several apartments and seized a camera-ready copy of the first issue of the club's journal, Maria. The feminists responded by immediately announcing the creation of the Club Maria and issuing an Appeal to Mothers against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The appeal urged Women of Russia to join protest actions, burn draft papers, and by any means possible persuade their husbands and sons against joining the war effort.3 The KGB did not act decisively until the summer of 1980. Then, on the eve of the Moscow Olympics, three feminist activists were bundled onto a special Aeroflot flight and expelled from the Soviet Union. Since that time, other feminist activists have been harassed, searched, jailed, or have died suspiciously. This has not stopped the flow of material to the West, or the publication of subsequent editions of Woman and and Maria, the two Soviet feminist journals.4 What accounts for the emergence of an independent women's movement in the U.S.S.R. so many years after Lenin proclaimed the complete emancipation of Soviet