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Transforming Power
Saves a Russian Town from Violence
Hit across the cheek? Hold the hand that tries to hit back
Every one
of us has the right to live in harmony with ourselves and those
around us. We do not have to go all the way to Tibet to discover
the secret of how to do this. All we have to do is examine our own
souls and we will find the strength to listen to the ‘voice of peace’.
This voice, which in situations of conflict suggests means of resolving
the problem without aggression, is known in accordance with AVP
philosophy as ‘transforming power.’ The task of AVP trainers, or
facilitators, is to teach us how to identify this transforming power
within ourselves. AVP workshops have been held in Dzerzhinsk since
1999 as a long-term project of the youth organisation Little Prince.
 Society
today is very aggressive. In our provincial town – Dzerzhinsk –
not far distant from Moscow, the heart of our vast state, people
are no better or worse than anywhere else. They offend one another
with an ill-chosen word or careless action wherever they are - on
the neat tree-lined streets, in the noisy courtyards and in the
shops and bars on the ground floors of residential apartment blocks.
A decade ago Dzerzhinsk was renowned as the centre of chemical industry
in Russia. Today many of the industrial plants stand inactive. There
are not enough jobs left in the factories and people here are mostly
poor. The forced inactivity breeds violence.
Violence
is not peculiar to time or place. The same violence encountered
by the disadvantaged resident of Dzerzhinsk is also to be found
in foggy London, the buoyant streets of Paris and ancient Rome.
Nobody anywhere needs to search hard to find examples of violence.
You are
in a hurry and are walking quickly along the street when someone
knocks your shoulder as they pass. There is virtually no physical
sense of pain at all but it leaves you with a feeling of resentment,
particularly if the person in question does not apologise but on
the contrary turns to you with a verbal attack ‘Oh for ***’s sake!’
Violence has entered your life. The violence inflicted upon you
is the most difficult to eradicate – psychological violence.
What do
you do in such a situation? You could elbow him back, more strongly
than he jostled you. You could bury the feeling of discomfort in
a sub-conscious place but the wound would still not be healed and
could well begin to ache again later. In fact, the best course of
action would be to stop the aggressive passer-by and say to him
‘Is there anything wrong? Why are you trying to offend me? Is there
anything I can do to help?’
We should
all agree that there is something of good in everyone. AVP facilitators,
who have undergone special training in this area, work to draw out
fellow sympathy in the hearts of victims of physical and psychological
violence in the same way as a skilled fisherman draws a fish out
of a dark pond. At these workshops hundreds of people have re-evaluated
their life experiences and discovered with astonishment that there
is nothing shameful in striving to reach a compromise.
There is
only one thing that is shameful and that is to inflict violence
on others. The youth organisation Little Prince and AVP facilitators
are engaged in fighting violence inflicted by adults on children
and teenagers.
Out of the
Frying Pan and Into the Fire
In Russia
fifty percent of children fall victim to physical or psychological
violence at some point in their lives. Parents do not have to be
alcoholics or suffer from mental health conditions to be violent
towards their children. The following scenario is more common: someone
quarrels with their boss at work and on the way home a cashier is
rude to them or someone treads on their foot on the bus. They return
home to their family. They vent their anger on someone more defenceless:
a son or a daughter. In this situation it is difficult to say which
is worse – the parent hitting the child or exposing him or her to
chastisement and humiliation. Both can leave the child psychologically
scarred.
The story
of six-year old Ruslan occurred in an ordinary primary school in
Dzerzhinsk. On the day Ruslan met his future adoptive parents for
the first time he could not believe his eyes. His new mother and
father were kind and smiling. With a sad smile they said to him
‘We don’t have children of our own. How would you like to be our
son?’ How could the boy who had grown up in an orphanage not be
delighted at this prospect?
‘Can it
really be true that this beautiful lady and smiling man have chosen
me for their son?’ Ruslan wondered, unable to believe that this
miracle could be real. It was only when the director of the orphanage
took him by the hand and led him across to his adoptive parents
that his doubts left him. The documents for Ruslan’s adoption were
prepared and signed very quickly, after all where was the sense
in delaying it? His parents had never been alcoholics, had no criminal
charges and moreover they had a comfortable income.
 And
then the day Ruslan had long been waiting for finally arrived -
his first day at school. And what was more, he went into the school
not with the orphanage nurse as he had expected, but hand in hand
with a new mother and father. Everything about this day, from his
new school briefcase and neat school uniform to the desks and chairs
in the sunlit classroom, made him happy. Ruslan thoroughly enjoyed
school: he answered all his teacher’s questions correctly, made
friends with the other children in his class and became happy and
full of life.
Not a year
later, Ruslan learned that he was soon to have a little sister.
As soon as their daughter was born Ruslan’s mother and father forgot
about their adoptive son from the orphanage. Ruslan understood that
his mother was much busier now that she had a baby to look after
but he did not understand why his every word and movement seemed
to aggravate her. His father ceased talking to him altogether. They
did not sit together in the lounge to watch television as they used
to do. Ruslan now had no one to listen to him recount his achievements
at school and what he and his friends had been up to that day.
One day
Ruslan went into his sister’s room, keen to have a closer look at
the little girl. Following him into the room and seeing him close
to her daughter’s cot, his mother became enraged. At school the
next day, Ruslan’s teacher noticed a bruise on her pupil’s neck
and asked him what had happened. The seven-year old hurriedly pulled
up the collar of his shirt to cover the mark on his neck and muttered
‘I fell.’ After that first incident he began to ‘fall’ more and
more often.
Ruslan’s
parents refused to respond to the urgent requests from his teacher
that they come in to the school to talk to her. Finally the school
administration officially gave evidence that the young boy was coming
into school covered in bruises and took the matter to court. In
court Ruslan’s mother fiercely denied all charges, maintaining that
her adoptive son had made everything up. The court delayed passing
a final verdict on the case.
The Bitter
but Unavoidable Truth
What became
of Ruslan and his adoptive family after the court hearing?
It was clear that after such a traumatic experience the young boy
would need psychological support from a professional. Specialists
from the Municipal Centre of Psychology and Pedagogy, with the help
of facilitators from the Alternatives to Violence Project, put together
a special programme for Ruslan. He is gradually recovering from
the trauma – he is now less frightened of adults and tries to smile.
Ruslan’s
adoptive parents, who still retain custody of Ruslan, attended a
basic level Alternatives to Violence workshop, in which facilitators
helped the young couple to identify the underlying motivations for
their aggressive behaviour towards their child. For a long time
the couple could not understand why these workshops were necessary.
In the supportive and understanding environment of the AVP workshops
they found it much more difficult to communicate than they had in
the confrontational setting of the courtroom.
‘I now understand
why, after my daughter was born, my feelings towards Ruslan changed.’
Marina admitted. ‘The AVP trainers helped me to understand myself
better: there was not enough space in my heart for both my birth
daughter and my adoptive son at the same time. I am trying to find
the strength in myself to change the way both I and my husband respond
to the situation and most of all to change our relationship with
Ruslan.’
 Unfortunately
our mental stereotypes cannot be broken that easily. Although the
family’s psychologists and AVP facilitators do not want it, they
have not ruled out the possibility of Ruslan returning to the orphanage.
‘We are
not allowed to comment on the situation or the behaviour of the
participants in this conflict,’ said Natalya, an AVP facilitator
working with the family. ‘But speaking from a purely personal point
of view the bitter truth is preferable to lies. Even though the
parents have examined the reasons for their cruel treatment of their
son, continuing to live with the same family when the parents are
in that state of mind could do permanent damage to the child’s psychology.
Let the couple not be afraid to acknowledge: no, we won’t be able
to live as a family of four any more, but we’ve learned our lesson
from this experience.
‘Our workshops
are by no means the final stage in this process. Marina and her
husband, I am sure, will listen to their hearts much more carefully
from now on.
‘We have done everything we can to ensure that when Ruslan grows
up he will not feel inclined to take his feelings out on his adoptive
parents in the same way as they were accustomed to taking their
feelings out on him. We do not want the young boy to harbour violence
in his soul and continue the vicious cycle of violence of which
he himself was a victim.’
In the first
story we described how violence already being committed was to a
certain degree assuaged through Alternatives to Violence workshops.
The next story, recounted by a young woman who works as a teacher
of senior pupils at a local secondary school, deals with slightly
different circumstances: using AVP workshops to avert a potentially
destructive conflict.
‘I’ve got
one boy in my class, Dima, who I can say straight away, is a difficult
pupil,’ Elena told us. ‘He’s not stupid but he’s just not interested
in working. You know, students like that always bring out the worst
in their teachers. He doesn’t do his homework and thinks up all
number of foolish reasons for not responding in class and he takes
a disrespectful tone with his teachers.
‘One day
Dima overstepped the line: we were doing individual study and everybody
had been given a separate assignment to do and had settled down
to work. Dima stood up demonstratively and announced ‘I’m not doing
anything!’ He then left his usual seat and sat down at the back
of the room with an insolent expression.’
Elena had
been attending AVP workshops since the start of the AVP Season in
Dzerzhinsk. Even before participating in AVP she had not been one
to act impulsively in a conflict or to get wound up by a single
offensive remark. Then, as always, she did not allow herself to
raise ‘a storm in a teacup.’
‘I could
have given Dima a two, that’s to say, the lowest mark in the Russian
grading system, and left it at that. I would have liked to have
done just that. I thought to myself: ‘I’ll tell him right now that
I’m going to give him the two he deserves, maybe then he’ll start
to do the work properly.’
‘It’s remarkable
how the Alternatives to Violence workshops influence personality,
not least the personality of a teacher! Often the school routine
wears us out and we don’t have time to stop and analyse the inner
life of an individual pupil or our own for that matter. Although
I’d been attending workshops for a while, I hadn’t noticed the effect
they had had on me until then. It seems that, without knowing it,
the process of analysing my emotions and resisting giving way to
the first surge of emotion had become almost intuitive to me.
 ‘Looking
at Dima the thought suddenly struck me: yes he hardly ever does
his homework, he’s undisciplined and rude. But today he spoke to
me not only rudely but with a tone of despair. What if something
has happened to him? That was the moment when I realised that I
was starting to see the world from Dima’s perspective.’
Having handed round work to the other pupils Elena approached the
problem pupil. He was sitting with his back to the class gazing
out of the window and chewing on a stick of gum with a resolute
look on his face.
‘Are you
feeling tired?’ asked Elena ‘If you’re tired you may have a rest
for a while. But individual study is very important so it would
be best if you nevertheless did it when you’re feeling better.’
Dima seemed
not to hear his teacher. He sat in that attitude all lesson, turned
towards the window in silence. But in the break when there was no-one
else left in the class he went up to Elena of his own accord and
apologised for his behaviour for the first time in a very long time.
He also told Elena that the previous evening his father had been
taken to hospital and that the family had had no news about his
condition.
‘I expect
that, had I not felt the need to understand Dima but had forcibly
tried to make him do the work or given him a two, the situation
would have spiralled out of control,’ Elena reflected. ‘In that
frame of mind Dima would have been capable of being still ruder
to me and I might not then have been able to restrain myself. It
seems to me that we were half a step away from an aggressive conflict.
‘Now, thanks
to the reflex of containing my emotions and driving all hostility
and animosity from my heart (I acquired this reflex at AVP workshops),
I have found the key to this headstrong pupil. After that first
conversation Dima and I have started to understand each other much
better and this has affected the atmosphere in the class as a whole.’
Expect the
best!
How can we
reduce the number of children who suffer violence at the hands of
adults? How can we train adults in the ways of good instead of the
ways of violence? One answer is the Alternatives to Violence Project.
It is well known that there are some issues which we must talk about
at the top of our collective voice so that all around us hear the
message. AVP is that collective voice.
 Natalya,
an AVP facilitator, explains, ‘We, the participants in the programme,
are beginning to see that there is an alternative to solving disputes
using violence and that is compromise. The ability to reach a compromise
is a skill that needs to be learnt, just like learning to speak
a foreign language, knit or drive a car. Admittedly the skills I’ve
just listed are physical and mental skills only. When we talk about
compromise we are talking about a skill which relies on the heart
and the soul.’
Why not give
it a try? Why not look more deeply into your heart? In what colours
is it painted: warm or cold? The heart of an opponent of violence
is warm. Why? Because this heart is not influenced by external violence,
just as a thousand candles cannot be extinguished by a single gust
of wind. A heart which listens to the voice of compromise is connected
to other warm hearts which share in this mutual desire, while violence,
by its very nature, stands alone, because it does not find fellow
sympathy with anyone or anything.
Participants
in Dzerzhinsk workshops agree:
Maria (student):
‘I think that these kinds of workshop are particularly relevant
to us in Dzerzhinsk. Almost every day I hear about another child
being found sleeping in an open cellar off the street. These children
are forced to go out and beg for a pittance for their parents to
spend on alcohol. If they don’t bring back enough, their parents
beat them.
‘In workshops
we discuss cases like these and search for practicable ways of saving
such children and the adults as well. All of them are victims of
violence and my friends and I are opponents of violence in all its
forms.’
Tatiana Vasilievna
(deputy director of the Dzerzhinsk Pedagogical College): ‘There’s
no question that we need to study the problem of violence. We frequently
try to close our eyes to the injustice, rudeness, injury and pain
around us. But it is our wilful blindness that keeps violence alive.
The only solution I believe is compromise and belief in the best.’
Tatiana (workshop
participant): ‘I’m glad to have taken part in the AVP workshops.
The facilitators and other participants have helped me to view many
things in a new light. I won’t say that I changed straight away.
But I began to take a more sombre view of many manifestations of
violence, which previously I hadn’t considered as violence. It turned
out not to be so difficult to put myself in someone else’s position
and to try to think like them.’
Natalya
(workshop organiser): ‘I think we are engaged in an important task.
We help a person to see the truth. Compromise and ability to understand
the other person is exactly what is lacking very often in all spheres
of human interaction, be it between parents and their children or
managers and their staff. And I believe that within each person
is his or her own peculiar energy, which is capable of making manifest
that person’s best qualities.’
 Facilitators
and participants could have even greater opportunity to sever violence
at its roots. Sadly, in striving to overcome hate and discomfort
they frequently run into difficulties themselves: there are not
always the funds to organise workshops as facilitators need money
for stationary and teaching aids. Facilitators would like to make
their workshops more visible and would be extremely grateful if
people from Russia and abroad, having read this article about their
working life, could assist with advice or perhaps with actions.
For as long
as it lives inside us, violence will not disappear. But we can choose
a different path and we in Dzerzhinsk have chosen it. We say ‘No’
to violence! Join us!
Oxana Belyanskaya
and Natalya Shvetsova
Dzerzhinsk Youth Organisation Little Prince
Dzerzhinsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
Translated
by Claire Jewkes
Friends House Moscow
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