Last October, a feminist group called Korzina in Izhevsk, the capital of Russia’s central Udmurtia region, organized Matka Fest, a series of events on the theme of menstruation. The festival featured lectures by gynecologists, psychologists, journalists, and others, as well as concerts and stand-up comedy.
“We got a ton of positive feedback,” said Korzina co-founders Yara Germanova and Zhanna Nerinovskaya in a written interview with RFE/RL. “But the festival was also denounced for ‘extremism.’ One local cultural figure wrote to the city administration…. He also wrote threats under a social media post by a group that was sympathetic to us. In the end, they took the post down and now that group is afraid to cooperate with us. We even heard that they were investigated for ‘publishing extremist materials.’ But overall, the festival went smoothly.”
Feminists and women’s rights advocates have never had it easy in Russia, where the government and the dominant Russian Orthodox Church are in many ways patriarchal and socially conservative.
But now, with the country’s grinding full-scale war against Ukraine approaching its second anniversary as President Vladimir Putin’s administration implements the harsh repression of dissent and pushes an ideological cocktail of patriotism, militarism, unity, and what it claims are “traditional values,” feminist activists in Russia’s regions fear worse is on the horizon.
We need a law against domestic violence so that women’s partners and husbands will stop killing them.... This is the work the government should be doing.”-- Activist Aisyn Gaisina
In November 2022, Putin signed a decree reaffirming a 2021 document on Russia’s “traditional spiritual-moral values,” including “service to the fatherland,” “strong families,” and “the priority of the spiritual over the material.”
Recent steps to restrict access to abortions on the local and national level and the government’s decision to declare the nonexistent “international LGBT+ movement” as an “extremist organization” have sounded alarm bells among Russian women’s rights activists.
And with many of the country’s most prominent liberals and feminists having been imprisoned or forced out of Russia, remaining activists in the regions are combatting feelings of isolation by reaching out to one another.
“Women these days need mutual support and empathy in this dangerous environment,” said Tatarstan feminist activist Aida Gusmanova with the informal group FemKyzlyar. “And we want to do our part to give them this. In whatever form is still possible.”
'The Function Of A Woman'
In March, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, is scheduled to consider a bill that would forbid private clinics from carrying out abortions. Although the Duma’s Health Committee has come out against the bill, which is currently being reviewed by various legislative committees, the government, and the presidential administration, such initiatives have the backing of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill and other prominent figures.
Over the last year, private clinics in the Kursk, Chelyabinsk, and Lipetsk regions, as well as in Tatarstan, have largely stopped performing abortions. In Mordovia and the Tver and Kaliningrad regions, laws have been adopted imposing fines for “inducement to abortion.” The government of Udmurtia has also begun working on possible proposals aimed at reducing the number of abortions.
In the eyes of the state, “the function of a woman is to have babies to fill the ranks of soldiers that this regime needs,” activist Alyona Popova told RFE/RL’s Russian Service in a July 2023 interview. “This is how the government has been thinking publicly for 10 years…. Our system will try to destroy women’s freedom of thought and leave them only one function, which the head of state is constantly talking about.”
Gusmanova said her group is concerned about the “attack on the reproductive rights of Russian women” and “the ban on so-called ‘propaganda of abortion’ in many regions,” including “a ban on information about living child-free.”
However, she noted that public has generally opposed such restrictions.
“Many ordinary people and media outlets have spoken out against limiting access to abortions,” Gusmanova said. “Our colleagues in other cities – feminist initiatives – continue their work, hold events that still attract good audiences. And there has been a good response to our work, maybe even more than last year.”
Gusmanova’s colleague, Dina Nurm, added that it is important to bear in mind that “there is no law now banning abortions.”
“We distribute information about reproductive health and rights and have produced several videos about the morning-after pill,” Nurm said. “A lot of people are panicking over the reports of one ban or another, and it is important to dispel myths both from the medical perspective and the legal.”
Under Russia’s laws against extremism, those convicted of participating in or supporting a designated extremist organization could get five years or more in prison.
Nurm added that “under pressure from the [regional] Culture Ministry,” the Tatarstan National Library, which began hosting FemKyzlar events in 2021, has stopped doing so.
“Many topics are now banned,” she noted. “We had to delete some of our content, but we think it is important to keep working.”
'A Big Game Of Roulette'
The December 2023 Russian Supreme Court decision affirming the designation of the so-called “international LGBT+ movement” as an “extremist organization” has also sent shock waves through feminist circles across Russia. Last month, the outlet Mediazona published what it said were excerpts from the court’s decision that described this purported movement as “a loose network of unregistered organizations, communities, and individuals” whose “ultimate goal is to gain state recognition and dismantle traditional views on sexuality.”
It is, according to the court, “a destructive ideological mechanism…that threatens the demographic situation in the country, contributes to the creation of conditions or the self-destruction of society, weakening of family ties, causes harm to the moral health of people, and imposes ideas that imply the denial of human dignity and the value of human life.”
Among the more specific claims the court made was the notion that supposed movement participants use “specific language” that includes “feminine gender-specific words” such as grammatically feminine forms of the Russian words for leader, director, or author. Such words, known as feminitives, are used by many feminists in Russia and elsewhere to “make women visible in the public space, acknowledge their expertise and work on a par with men’s.”
Under Russia’s laws against extremism, those convicted of participating in or supporting a designated extremist organization could get five years or more in prison.
“The point about the feminitives expands the circle of people who might suffer from this designation,” said Aisyn Gaisina, a feminist activist in the Bashkortostan capital, Ufa. “Russia’s repressive laws are targeted, but it’s a big game of roulette. You never know if the ball will fall on your number. Repressive laws have been adopted to scare us, make us limit ourselves. That is why everything now depends on how prepared each feminist is to fight against her fear.
“Self-censorship is increasing,” she added. “People have to think about what they can write and what they can’t. Such self-censorship amounts to choosing safety or liberty.
“If there are fines or other unwanted attention from the security forces, we’ll have to find new ways to resist,” Gaisina said. “Such as using absurd forms that make clear our disagreement with the ban on feminitives.”
She added that she already sees indications that the assault on feminitives could be having the effect of convincing previously skeptical people to reconsider the issue.
“As often happens, whatever they try to ban suddenly becomes interesting,” she said.
The Ufa group devotes much of its time and energy to supporting female “political prisoners,” including Lilia Chanysheva, who is serving a 7 1/2-year term for “creating an extremist community” for her work as the Bashkortostan coordinator for imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny; Ramila Saitova, who faces up to five years in prison for online posts against the invasion of Ukraine; and Ufa activist Olga Komleva, who has been fined millions of rubles for her anti-war statements and protests.
“As feminist activists, we have to push the notion that we must be concerned about women whose circumstances are currently objectively worse than ours,” Gaisina argued.
She lamented that the government was focusing on such issues when it should be taking steps to help women.
“We need a law against domestic violence so that women’s partners and husbands will stop killing them,” Gaisina said. “We need them to be given proper punishments instead of fines or just a couple of years in prison. We need the ability to get restraining orders so that such men can’t get near women who have been subjected to violence. We need the opportunity to provide such women with safe houses…. This is the work the government should be doing.”
Instead, she said, “the government is doing everything it can so that women would see clearly that they live in a male state.”
