Welcome to the "One Million Empowered Russian Women" project!

My name is Diana Soline, and I stand for the empowerment of women all over the world. In particular, I stand for helping women to reconnect with their sexuality, their erotic nature - as a source of wisdom, intuition and power. I stand for helping women to heal the rift between their sexuality and their spirituality, a connection that has been broken by patriarchic society. I stand for helping women to find again the deep joy and power of living in the feminine body.

Millions of women all over the world are disconnected from their feminine power, their erotic essence. Many learned that their sexuality is something to bargain with or something to be ashamed of, rather then a divine source of deep feminine empowerment.

The idea of reaching One Million Russian women has partially been inspired by Jean Bolen, a women’s empowerment movement writer and teacher. In her book “The Millionth Circle” she writes: “The Millionth Circle, depends upon a simple hypothesis, whose mechanism has already been proposed and observed, and is one that can be intuitively and immediately grasped: when a critical number of people change how they think and behave, the culture will also, and a new era begins.”

It is my deep belief that a new era will begin in Russia -an era of balance and harmony, mutual respect and collaboration between men and women, between mankind and nature. That new era will begin when a critical number of Russian women heal the wounds of deeply engrained patriarchy.

Therefore reaching One Million Russian Women is a concrete goal and it is also a vision –a vision of bringing to reality that point in time at which the balance between masculine and feminine power in the country will tip from being patriarchic (in the hands of men) to being truly balanced between women and men.

Why Russian Women?

I was born and raised in Russia. My experiences growing up in Russia, including the sexual abuse I suffered there, made me deeply aware of how little consciousness Russian culture has when it comes to child abuse, sexual abuse, women’s rights, or women’s issues. When I was growing up, there were no rape hotlines, no shelters for battered women. Society did not provide any agencies or organizations for a woman to turn to if she was abused physically or sexually. Even though laws against rape existed, in reality the police ignored such cases even when reported, often putting blame on the victims. In fact, the official government policy was: “In Soviet Union we do not have rape.”

Till very recently, the issue of women's sexuality had not been addressed in the culture at all. The deeply prudish Soviet Government censored sex education materials. Such materials were considered pornography, possession of which was punishable by imprisonment. There was no sex education available for men or women in schools or anywhere else. One could not buy nor borrow books, films nor other information on the subject of sexuality, let alone women’s sexuality. As a result many, if not most women lived through their lives not knowing what a female orgasm is.

In addition, many women suffered from the way birth control was handled in Soviet society. The government made the decisions for what items were available for purchase, and as a result of the sex-negative attitudes, the pill and condoms were not generally available. As a result, for young women, the most common birth control method besides withdrawal and abstinence was abortion, and it was not unusual for a woman to have had several abortions by the time she was in her mid-twenties.

As someone who spent half of her life in Russia and half in the US, I have a unique perspective on the substantial progress that the U.S. has made on women’s issues and sexual healing. I was lucky to come to this country at 17 and take advantage of many modalities of healing that are available here. As I was healing myself, I realized that it is my path to continue to spread this work and help other women find their power. Since 2000 I have been teaching women’s sexuality workshops in the U.S., and since 2005 in Russia as well.

Generations of Women in Russia

Growing up in Russia I received many gifts and also many wounds from that beautiful country. Two of the greatest gifts were my grandmothers. They are survivors of World War II, of Stalin’s murderous regime and of the neglect and disrespect for humanity of 75 years of Soviet rule. Their courage and strength inspires me, reminding me of what women can endure. But for them, like most Soviet women, “surviving” was the theme of their lives, leaving them little energy for healing the wounds that their times inflicted so frequently.

As much as my mother and my grandmothers loved me, they could not give me what they didn’t have. They could not give me knowledge about and respect for my feminine body and my sexuality. They had been wounded by the culture themselves and did not have access to the help and information they needed.

After moving to the U.S. and years of searching, I came across a sacred sexuality workshop where I was introduced to a circle of wise, erotically empowered women. It is the wise women of this country who took me into their arms and helped me to heal. They taught me about my body, about my life force energy. They modeled for me the sexually empowered mothers and grandmothers that I never had. They helped me find my voice, my power, my passion.

With deep gratitude I keep transforming the wounds that I received into gifts that I offer to others. The people of this country have shown me incredible generosity of spirit. And my dream now is very simple: to give back what I have received.

I led the first workshop for women in Moscow in 2005. Eventually my dream is to build a Women's Temple center in Moscow.