Patriotism, sentiment, and male hysteria: Putin’s masculinity politics and the persecution of non-heterosexual Russians

ABSTRACT

A contributing factor to the current persecution of Russian non-heterosexual individuals is Vladimir Putin’s overcompensating masculinist wish to claim Russia’s role as a global powerhouse. While most scholars tend to define Putin’s performance of masculinity as a confident and charismatic leader, a James Bond type of a super hero action man, such dazzling façade of (hyper)masculine bravado belies deep anxieties and vulnerabilities resulting in political overcompensation. The discourse analysis of the speech acts in two of Putin’s public national addresses – the 1999 Millennium Manifesto and the 2013 Valdai Address – uncovers the signs of masculinity in crisis, or, as Pussy Riot has put it, ‘male hysteria’. Putin’s visions of Russian national identity and the use of emotional rhetoric visible in his ‘paternalistically sentimental’ statements helped justify discriminatory antigay legislation. Borrowing from Ahmed, non-heterosexual Russians have become for Putin the ideal ‘displaced object’ of national bad feeling: borne out of his insecurities and projected onto the nation’s cultural and historic identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Vladimir Putin
• affective speech acts
• masculinity crisis
• national identity crisis
• non-heterosexuality
• Russia
• ideology
• propaganda

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Janet Elise Johnson, Jeffrey Santa Ana, Kadji Amin, Rachel Corbman, and Allyse Knox-Russell, as well as two anonymous reviewers and the editors of the journal for their invaluable comments and suggestions. The author is also grateful to Izabela Kalinowska-Blackwood and the members and the audience of the panel ‘Gender and Sexuality in the Old and New Narratives of the Cold War’, Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies, Washington DC, 18 November 2016.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on the contributor

Alexandra Novitskaya is a doctoral student in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Stony Brook University, SUNY. Her research interests are in the intersections of sexuality, national identity, migration studies, and queer theory. In her doctoral dissertation, she explores the experiences of non-heterosexual Russian emigres in the United States.

Notes

1 A few words on words, or why names are important: non-heterosexual individuals in Russia have and can be referred to by many names, and their practices of self-identification show that within the last decade alone, the preference for one name or another has been changing rapidly (Amico, 2014). While it has been a common practice to use ‘queer’ as a nearly universal signifier for non-heterosexual sexualities in various geographical and historical contexts, when it comes to Russia, taken out of its historical context, ‘queer’ becomes a problematic if not empty word (for more, see Baer, 2002; Essig, 1999, pp. ix–x; Sozaev, 2010, 2015). As it is my priority to avoid discursive colonisation and be respectful to the people whose lives and experiences I ultimately wish to support by this work, I follow the tradition established by Kondakov (2014) and Stella (2014) and choose to use ‘non-heterosexual’ or ‘alternative sexualities’ as the most neutral words. However, when it comes to citing or paraphrasing other people’s words, I keep the terms used in the sources such as ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, ‘LGBTQ’, etc. Also, I have resolved to continuing to use ‘state-sponsored homophobia’ as a shorthand for the various forms the persecution of non-normative sexuality takes in Russia.

2 During the live broadcast of a talk show, Dmitri Kisilev, a Deputy General Director of the Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, stated the following:

I think that just imposing fines on gays for homosexual propaganda among teenagers is not enough. They should be banned from donating blood, sperm. And their hearts, in case of the automobile accident, should be buried in the ground or burned as unsuitable for the continuation of life. (Aravosis, 2013)

At the same time, the Russian ministry of culture refused to fund a biographical film about Pyotr Tchaikovsky, as the script contained references to the composer’s sexuality (Rabota nad filmom o Tchaikovskom otlozhena iz-za finansovykh problem, 2013).

3 Vladimir Putin is famous for a series of staged encounters with wildlife. They include episodes of his rescuing a team of journalists from a tiger, borrowed from a zoo and sedated well in advance; his putting a collar on a polar bear – also captured days ahead and kept under heavy sedation; and his entering a snow leopard’s cage at the Sochi wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre in order to pet the sedated animal. For more on Putin’s public stunts, interpreted by scholars as uber-masculine (Foxall, 2013; Goscilo, 2013; Mikhailova, 2013), see Gessen, The man without a face: The unlikely rise of Vladimir Putin (2012).

4 Goscilo’s attempt to find the ‘Bond connection’ (2013, p. 192) in the media representations of Putin’s masculinity might appear too Western-centred as Putin, with his KGB (English transliteration of ‘Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti’ (Committee for State Security), the major security service in the Soviet Union) background, should be Bond’s opposite. Yet, she reviews Russian-made computer games and bus stop posters in which his head is sometimes attached to James Bond’s body, and the bulk of these visuals points out, perhaps, the crucial difference between the Soviet secret service agents Putin’s masculinity ‘ought to’ be modelled after, and the glamorous Western spy image his PR team has endeavoured to imitate. The Soviet secret agent, such as the protagonist of the cult 1970s TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring Maxim Isaev alias Stirlitz completely lacks sex appeal. Unlike the ‘cyborg-aristocrat’ Bond, whose superiority is enhanced by technology and sexual irresistibility (Goscilo, 2013, p. 191), Stirlitz ‘shuns gadgets, guns, and girls’ (Lucas, 2012, p. 13), ending up an embodiment of a bland desexualised Soviet patriot. In contemporary Russia, Stirlitz would not represent the ideal man every woman should desire and every man should want to be like.