Olga Belogrivtseva credits her daughter for leading her to Nonviolent Communication, saying, “I know that I’m not the only parent who’s grateful to her children for finding NVC.” In her earlier work as a parenting consultant, Olga applied the language of NVC to help parents navigate relationships with their children. She is now part of a social-change movement to build a global NVC community of Russian speakers who share nonviolence as a way of life. And, she looks at difficult concepts, such as the dilemmas of power, through the lens of NVC.

A Young Parent Finding NVC

Smiling, Olga recalls that she came into NVC in “stages and phases.” Born in Russia, she moved with her husband from Moscow to the island nation of Cyprus in 2006. Disillusioned with her legal career, she shifted her interest to the study of psychology. “And then I gave birth to my daughter,” she reflects. “It was really a time of questioning, trying to understand what my life is for, finding meaning. Then, when my daughter started to grow, looking for ways to bring her up.” She pauses, then emphasizes, “Not the way I was brought up.”

With a deep investment in “another way” of parenting, “instead of what we knew, the way of just demanding orders, getting angry and shouting,” Olga wanted to create space for new mothers, to give them the “opportunity to share with each other and receive support during this difficult but joyful period.” As her daughter grew, she developed more parenting courses.

When it came time for her daughter to attend school, Olga started to explore education and found the Lighthouse Progressive School, which at the time had only nine students. “It was so small. I so much wanted to support this school,” she recalls. She became one of three school managers.

One day, another school manager, an educational psychologist, asked Olga, “Do you know there is this wonderful method, which is called Nonviolent Communication? Why don’t we use it as our way to communicate in our team, between the three of us?” Olga watched a video of NVC founder, Marshall Rosenberg, recalling with a laugh, “Okay, I thought, I know everything. Off we go.” The team worked at NVC for the next year, building a relationship. And while the team eventually moved on to other pursuits, the school has since grown to 150 students.

And for Olga, this introduction to NVC planted a seed that would grow and enrich her life.

NVC: A Matter of Urgency for Russian Speakers

When Olga returned to Moscow for about a year, she made meaningful NVC connections and wanted to continue those relationships upon her return to Cyprus. Thus sparked an idea. “We started the project with a small team, mostly working online,” she says. Quickly, they realized the possibilities of building connections among Russian speakers “all over the world.”

Today, their growing community includes Russian speakers living in Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Italy, Australia, Germany, Israel, and more. One soon-to-be-certified trainer comes to the group from Korea. Olga calls their community “not huge, but a strong social network.”

With Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine, she sees the work of this group as a matter of urgency, with the need to focus on proactive actions, reaching out and trying to have an influence. She admits this is a challenge.

But amid the challenge, Olga believes that “We need to keep going. We need to just spread NVC. So that when there is an opportunity, when we see that there is a hole in this cage — which is getting tighter and tighter — when we see that, we know we have strength and knowledge to get through and change the culture.”

Connect

The Russian-speaking NVC community is at work developing a system supporting spreading NVC. Meanwhile, Olga invites you to learn more about her and connect through her website, Проект “Слушать откровеННО,” Теория и практика ненасильственного общения.