Hello there - Veronika speaking. Things are going to get a little egocentric so bare with - swear down there’s some important stuff in here. Maybe. First of all, speaking on the behalf of the BYK, I hope today has been kind to you all (and if not, at the very least that it hasn’t completely sucked ass). I figured if I didn’t do this right now, it’d never be done. Simply put, the Baba Yaga Kollektif was originally intended to be a platform for me to just complain and rant about politics. In the greater scheme of things, I was (and am?) considering studying political journalism so the plan was to curate a portfolio. It was the lovely Claire who suggested that a portfolio would be a good advantage to have. However, after a few weeks of dreaming and fantasising about my own blog, I was faced with a problem: I’m deadass the poster child for procrastination. As a measure of how bad I am for it, for all those who went to university or have ever had a hefty deadline of any sort - you know when you’re advised not to leave your dissertation to the night before? Well, your gal here went ahead and did just that. Basically, what I’m getting at is, there wasn’t and isn’t a single chance in hell that I’d have enough self-discipline or motivation to write on a regular basis. I spoke to Claire again and asked if she wanted to maybe write a blog together? Because why not? We studied at university together and had several assignments that included blog posting and it had been pretty fun for me (don’t know about you, Claire, but you’re here now - enjoy it while it lasts).

This inspired the idea that maybe some other folk might be interested? Fast forward a considerable amount of time (because, like I said, mega-procrastinator over here) and I’m having dinner with the fabulous Rhona and Sara. Ideas start to snowball, what we’d write about and so on (and oh boy, do we have a lot we want to write about). When it came to naming the blog, I was certain I just wanted to go with the Kollektif. It legit just means ‘collective’ but written in romanised Russian. But then…Sara mentions Baba Yaga and it seemed only natural to put the two together. To provide you with a highly-condensed, possibly inaccurate (depending on where you get your facts from) version of the folktale, Baba Yaga was perceived to be an evil hag. She lived in the forrest in this like, one-chicken legged house that hopped about places and you should pray for anyone who had the misfortune to cross her path. But, as Sara pointed out, powerful and wise women throughout time and history have often been stained as villainous, as dangerous, as something to avoid. Real talk, Baba Yaga was just a wise old gal who was in tune with nature and herself. And there’s nothing wrong with that. 

*the term ‘women’ in the BYK context is inclusive to all those who identify with this category and it's also inclusive to those who don’t identify.