In recent years, the Kremlin has intensified its campaign against Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) minorities, identifying them as Western propaganda. However, this rhetoric has an old origin that started with the criminalisation of “sodomy” done by Iosif Stalin. Recently, tactics of attacking the LGBTQ+ community have evolved into designating it as Western propaganda. This has led to an increasing criminalisation of the community, which has become a systematic technique that involves all the elites and powers of the Russian state from Putin to Kirill and running through the judicial system. Moreover, this propaganda has spread outside the country's borders, with anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation being spread in the former Soviet space and globally, reproducing similar anti-Western rhetoric. In this environment, the condition of SOGI minorities in Russia is worrying, and the situation will likely become worse in the future.
By Andrea Di Marcoberardino
Introduction
In the past years, the Kremlin has been increasingly attacking Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) minorities, pointing them out as elements of “Western propaganda” with the intention of undermining Russian culture and identity. At the end of 2023, the Russian Supreme Court issued a ruling which equated LGBTQ+ organisations with terrorist groups, allowing the persecution of human rights activists as terrorists as well as anyone who supports the LGBTQ+ community. [1] In 2022, the Duma (the Russian Congress) approved another Anti-LGBTQ+ law that was signed the same year by President Putin, which extended the prohibition of “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” to all of Russia, while a previous law from 2012 banned it “only” for minors. [2] The long legacy of obscurantist anti-LGBTQ+ laws that have characterised the last two decades of Russian politics is, however, nothing new. The campaign against SOGI minorities began with Stalin in 1933-34 when he reintroduced the criminalisation of sodomy. [3] As Edenborg noted, this helped to create a stigmatised framework that still exists today. This framework views homosexuality and any deviation from heterosexual cisgender norms as an attack on national identity from the Western world. [4] For instance, prominent religious and political leaders in Russia have used these ideals to justify the Russian aggression on Ukraine.
History of Anti-LGBTQ+ Campaigns in Russia and The USSR
Understanding the historical role of the homophobic Stalinist rhetoric that was built in the past century is instrumental in analysing the Russian propaganda against the LGBTQ+ community. During the Soviet era, homosexuality was treated as a crime. In the case of both men and women, it was considered a psychiatric condition, and they were treated as psychiatric patients with gender dysphoria. [5] Things changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1993. The different countries of the former Soviet space started to adopt different legislation, and Russia decriminalised same-sex sexual activities. With Putin in charge from the early 2000s, anti-Western rhetoric returned, and with it, the idea of “traditional values” and the attacks against SOGI minorities.
Although Putin's government was conservative from its start, the administration in 2003 and 2006 blocked the drafts of Aleksander Chuev, a Duma Representative for “Just Russia'': an opposition party that is nevertheless sympathetic to Putin. [6] The drafts tried to criminalise “homosexual living style” in public, and by blocking them, Putin ensured that his government would not appear to be limiting SOGI minorities directly. However, the shift from the post-Soviet more liberal period to a regression in terms of LGBTQ+ rights and intense propaganda against SOGI minorities started in 2013 with the approval of the “Gay Propaganda Law”, an amendment to a previous law: “Russian law On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development”. The amendment introduced:
The prohibition of spreading propaganda that endorses "non-traditional" sexual relationships to minors, defined as individuals under eighteen.
The possibility for authorities to safeguard minors from specific forms of propaganda.
The possibility to impose penalties, such as fines or deportation for foreign nationals, for disseminating propaganda that supports "non-traditional" sexual relationships. [7]
In 2022, this law was extended from children to the entire Russian population, allowing any ban and limits to queer activism, art and expression and enabling the rule of the Russian Supreme Court that required LGBTQ+ activist organisations and sympathisers to terrorist and terrorist groups. It is no coincidence that significant limitations on LGBTQ+ rights have consistently coincided with Russian aggressions and violations of international public law. For instance, the gay propaganda law was enacted in 2013, just one year before the attack on Crimea, and in 2022, the law was extended shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. This pattern seems to be part of a deliberate strategy of promoting the idea that non-hetero, cis-normative SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) individuals are products of "Western propaganda" that undermine Russian and Soviet culture. As a result, the LGBTQ+ community has become a convenient target to justify Russia’s actions and to portray themselves as victims of the Western world.
The role of the church, information operations and effects of the laws
Russia has been promoting this rhetoric and storytelling with information operations in the former Soviet space and worldwide. A report commissioned by the European Union has reported 31 cases of disinformation on sexual orientation and gender identity, with at least half of them coming from Russia. [8] The targeted communities were mainly the Ukrainian and German communities and were usually in proximity to specific events or celebrative moments for the LGBTQ+ community. In many cases, the messages referred to the word Gayrope (uniting the words “gay” and “Europe '') and used materials that falsified official documents of prominent, reliable international institutions and NGOs. [9] This demonstrates once again a systemic, organised and specific plan to fuse the persecution of SOGI minorities with anti-Western propaganda.
This homophobic discourse is also ignited by the Orthodox Russian church, which has shown strong support for both the law approved in 2022 and the rule of the Supreme Court. At the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, declared that the war in Ukraine was to be blamed on gay pride: “In the Donbas, there is rejection, a fundamental rejection of the so-called values that are offered today by those who claim world power. Today, there is such a test for the loyalty of this government, a kind of pass to that “happy” world, the world of excess consumption, the world of visible “freedom”. Do you know what this test is? The test is straightforward and, at the same time, terrible – this is a gay parade”. [10] This demonstrates that all the powers inside Russia are indeed in cohesion in this attack against LGBTQ+ individuals, creating a system of persecution and discrimination aimed to give the Russian population a scapegoat for the condition of the country, allowing in this way systemic discrimination towards SOGI Minorities without having to worry about public opinion.
The effect of the Supreme Court rule has already been seen with the first people condemned and treated as terrorists. In early January 2024, a court in the region of Volgograd condemned a man for “displaying the symbols of an extremist organisation”: he allegedly posted an LGBTQ+ flag; a woman in Nizhny Novgorod was condemned for wearing frog-shaped earrings with a rainbow flag, and in Saratov, a photographer was put on trial for posting a rainbow flag on Instagram. [11] Shortly, more and more cases like this will likely be revealed, and the types of punishment will become more violent as SOGI minorities have no institutional allies and LGBTQ+ activist movements are criminalised and treated like terrorist groups.
Conclusion
While laws and institutions in Russia become increasingly violent and discriminatory against the LGBTQ+ community, the institutional anti-Western rhetoric grows more popular among the Russian population thanks to the use of even more radical rhetoric by the country's Orthodox church. In this context, SOGI minorities are entirely alone, with LGBTQ+ activist groups and single individuals forced to work in the shadows to avoid being criminalised. The security and safety of queer people in Russia is concerning, with institutional persecution posing a threat to their daily lives and their human rights. [12] The future is worrying, and more international awareness must be raised on the topic to fight dangerous propaganda and actions that undermine the freedom of LGBTQ+ people.
References
[1] Solcyré Burga, “Russia’s Court Ban of the ‘LGBTQ Movement’ Is the Latest Global Move Against Inclusion,” 2023.
[2] Radzhana Buyantueva, “Russia’s Authoritarian Conservatism and LGBT+ Rights,” Russian Analytic Digest, 2023, https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000631043.
[3] Emil Edenborg, “Russian LGBT Politics and Rights,” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics (Oxford University Press, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.1262.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Sean T Skillings, “Anti-LGBT Backlash and the Shifting Public Opinion on LGBT Anti-LGBT Backlash and the Shifting Public Opinion on LGBT Rights in Contemporary Russia: A Case Study,” 2019, http://library.ucf.edu.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Javier Caballero, “‘Gayrope’: This Is How Russia Uses Disinformation against the LGBTQ+ Community to Attack Democracies,” 2023, https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-12-03/gayrope-this-is-how-russia-uses-disinformation-against-the-lgbtq-community-to-attack-democr.
[9]Ibid
[10] Orthodox Times, “Patriarch of Moscow: Gay Pride Parades Are to Blame for the War in Ukraine,” 2022, https://orthodoxtimes.com/patriarch-of-moscow-gay-pride-parades-are-to-blame-for-the-war-in-ukraine/.
[11] The Guardian, “Russia Hands out First Convictions in Connection with Anti-LGBT Law LGBTQ+ Rights,” 2024.
[12] United Nations, “LGBTQI+ Free and Equal NOT Criminalized.”.
