Lessons in Courage

When Galina, chatting with SMM monitoring officers in a second-hand charity shop in Selidove in Donetsk region, looks back at her life, she has little doubt in her mind that she is exactly where she ought to be.

Born in the middle of World War II which claimed the lives of millions, among them her father who never returned, Galina and her mother were left alone to face an often harsh and traumatized society. Post-war economic hardship, exacerbated by growing up in a one-parent family, forged in her a burning desire to undo wrong and heal wounds.

Galina went on to become a history and philosophy teacher at the Technical Secondary School in Selidove, but it was her own personal and family history that would mound her and shape her responses her entire life. “One must choose one of two paths in life,” she says. “The path of violence or the path of peace.” She chose the latter.

In the late 1980s, Galina was appointed head of the Selidove Union of Women of Ukraine, leading to over 30 years of active social engagement at a community level, countering violence in all forms and healing wounds caused by it. Among her achievements are a women’s crisis centre and various publications on “Children of War” for those of her generation who lost one or both parents to violence. With her son sent to fight in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the father she never met was never far from her mind. “We want the children to stop dying,” she tells the SMM.

The latest conflict has typically not gone without a response from Galina and the other women in the union. They provide humanitarian assistance, in particular clothes and toys to those displaced by the fighting closer to the contact line. Acutely aware of the emotional and psychological toll of conflict, they have also tried to provide an outlet, arranging to print a collection of poetry written by local people.

As a teacher, Galina has seen many students go through her hands but it is outside the classroom that her lessons are most fondly remembered, inspiring and motivating a new generation in Selidove to engagement rather than passivity. “I remember when she was my teacher, but it turned out that she would become my lifelong teacher,” one former student and current social activist told the SMM. “She taught me courage.”