A darker time for women and minorities.

Russian women have been thrown into a separate nightmare. Unemployment and poverty have made them victims of more domestic violence and sexual harassment, according to a 1995 report by Human Rights Watch. The hUman-rights group says Russian authorities not only tolerate but encourage sexual discrimination and violent abuse of women by their employers and husbands.

With high unemployment, the report says, women are the first to be fired when jobs are reduced. Those who are left in the workplace endure harassment and sexual assault by their employers. Sometimes, they are employed only on condition that they perform "intimate services" for their bosses. The report says government and private employers openly express their preference for hiring men, advertise job vacancies for men only. and deny positions to women because of their sex. This is particularly true of women who have children or become pregnant. The closing of day-care centres and preschools only adds to the problem.

Domestic violence is largely unreported because police either ignore assaults or add to them with further harassment.

Minority groups are also suffering more. Dark-skinned minorities, mostly from Southern Russia, are regularly subjected to police harassment, arrests, and beatings in Russian cities. The police maintain they are simply doing their job of making sure everyone has residency permits. Minorities say they are abused even when their papers are in order. As one victim says. "The police act on the principle that it's easier to catch a dark-haired person than a bandit."

In Siberia and the Russian Far East, it's the country's indigenous people who are living in hopeless poverty.

A group of Canadian aboriginal leaders who visited Russian indigenous communities in July 1997 described the situation as cultural genocide. Stripped of their ancestral land -- by resource projects such as oil and gas developments, and logging -- about 200,000 Native people live in Northern Russia, often without electricity or medical services.

The Canadians estimated that the Russian aboriginal people are 30 or 40 years behind their Canadian counterparts in terms of living conditions and political organization.

The Canadians were sent to Russia as part of a $2.1 million aid project for Russian indigenous people. They plan to train Russian aboriginal leaders to help them learn how to lobby, organize, develop legislation, and improve their communications technology.