The Network of East-West Women (NEWW), now based in Gdansk, has been one of the best-known regional actors working on women's issues in the former Soviet influence area. Informally set up in the United States in the aftermath of the Cold War, the NEWW kept growing over the last 20 years and it became an important player in the global feminist arenas, as indicated by its numerous projects and institutional cooperation with more than a hundred human rights and feminist national and international organizations. Numerous women's groups in Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union have been benefitting from its support: grants and fellowships, know-how, technical assistance, library and teaching resources. Meetings with NEWW's members and taking part in its activities appear as crucial developments in published accounts about the legitimization of feminist issues and the establishment of gender studies as a new field of academic inquiry in the ex-socialist countries. This contribution considers the first years of the NEWW, the organizing work and the issues dealt with over the 1990s. NEWW's early history is as a paradigmatic case of feminist internationalism practice and it allows discussing classical and also sensitive aspects of feminism thinking and organizing, such as formalization of activism and solidarity beyond cultural differences and economic inequalities.
