Russian Cultural Conservatism Critiqued: Translating the Tropes of ‘Gayropa’ and ‘Juvenile Justice’ in Everyday Life

Abstract

Framing the ‘conservative turn’ in Russia as a ‘culture war’ casts ordinary Russians as an amorphous reactionary mass, willingly following political entrepreneurs’ cues of intolerance. This essay rejects that interpretation and seeks to restore agency to ordinary Russians. Based on ethnographic encounters discussing homophobia and heteronormative gender and family attitudes, the essay argues that vernacular social conservatism re-appropriates official discourses to express Russians’ feelings towards their own state. Intolerance is less fuelled by elite cues but rather reflects domestic resentment towards, and fear of, the punitive power of the state, along with nostalgia for an idealised version of moral socialisation under socialism.

Notes

1 The title of the law is ‘O merakh vozdeistviyakh na lits, prichastnykh k narusheniyam osnovopolagayushchikh prav i svobod cheloveka, prav i svobod grazhdan Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, signed 28 December 2012, available at: http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/17233, accessed 11 November 2020. The title of the so-called ‘anti-gay propaganda law’ is an amendment to Article Five of the Federal law ‘O zashchite detei ot informatsii, prichinyayushchei vred ikh zdorov’yu i razvitiyu’, and a separate legislative act ‘v tselyakh zashchity detei ot informatsii, propagandiruyushchei otritsanie traditsionnykh semeinykh tsennostei’, signed 30 June 2013, available at: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/18423, accessed 11 November 2020.

2 Masha Garibyan conducted some interviews alone or took the lead in conducting joint interviews, arranging interviews with new and existing participants, and reviewing and coding interviews along with Jeremy Morris. In approximately 70% of the interviews Masha took the lead. The research participants were familiar with her via previous research conducted by Jeremy and Masha. Some conversations were initiated by the respondents themselves, who were very interested in what was happening in the ‘West’.

3 People were motivated to discuss homosexuality with the researchers because one of us was a ‘foreigner’. This applies equally to the discussion about ‘juvenile justice’. Indeed, this interest among research participants partly prompted this project. However, rather than conclude that this increased interest was evidence of Gayropa’s salience among ordinary people, we argue that media narratives merely served to sensitise ordinary people to issues in the manner of a ‘structure of feeling’, as discussed later.

4 Pidor literally translates as ‘pedo’. In Russian it also preserves a deliberate mispronunciation of the original ‘pederast’, presumably because of the distance from ordinary speech of the foreign medical/historical term, and its taboo history as a subject of general discourse. It indicates the (un)easy association between forms of sexual deviance as well as a sense of unmasculine contempt, perhaps better approximating the use in English of the term ‘motherfucker’ or ‘bastard’, terms which in English have no implications of effeminacy. As with North American English uses of the word ‘faggot’, but perhaps even more readily, usage may easily slide between literal and figurative use (‘repellent male’, ‘useless person’). The degree to which this has developed in the last few decades in Russia can be illustrated by the extent to which, even in public discourse, those using the word can be observed to say ‘pidor, in a good sense’, meaning ‘gay’, and ‘pidor, in a bad sense’, meaning ‘motherfucker’. See for example ‘Ukrainskaya elita—“pidory” ili “der’mo”? Mnenie izvestnogo analitika’, Polit.ru, 24 January 2005, available at: https://polit.ru/news/2005/01/24/pidary/, accessed 11 November 2020. Additionally, similar to the usage of the term ‘faggot’, the pejorative gendering implications of the term pidor may be more important than its implications of homosexuality (Pascoe 2007).

5 The conflation of homosexual identity with prison sexual relations and army hazing (‘dedovshchina’) is a major cause of negative attitudes towards homosexuality and the accompanying view of homosexuality as coercive or externally imposed in Russia.

6 Official, legal and ideological homophobia as a political tool has a long history in Russia (Healy 2017). While there is general fear and disgust of homosexuality, overall attitudes towards ‘non-normative’ identities and lifestyles are improving (Fabrykant & Magun 2014) and it is important to look through short-term fluctuations. More recently, scholars have pointed out that Russia is at the ‘medium-high’ end of traditional-normative values in comparison to other European countries (Fabrykant & Magun 2018, p. 82). They base this evaluation on the work of Viktoriia Sakevich (2014), who analysed Pew Research Center data on ‘moral’ values. When findings are broken down, Russia differs little from Western European countries on issues such as extra-marital and premarital sex, divorce, abortion and contraception. In some cases—for example relating to extra-marital sex and abortion—Russia is more ‘liberal’ than both some Northern European, North American, and some Southern or Eastern European countries. Homosexuality is the outlier, with Russia more similar to Asian and African countries. However, we should again exercise caution because so much depends on how questions are phrased. If we return to the important question of nature/nurture and homosexuality, Russians do not look so much like outliers. A recent UK poll, for example, records 34% of respondents as believing that gays are not born, but made, with much internal variation in the sample (YouGov 2017). As recently as 1998, a majority (62%) of British people thought homosexuality was ‘wrong’ (Clements & Field 2014). One could even argue that based on attitudes towards adoption of children by homosexuals, British and Russian people are quite similar when it comes to the question of equal rights: British people are strongly against gay men adopting (Clements & Field 2014).

7 Stenning et al. (2010, p. 59) highlight how ‘household social reproduction’ in postsocialist spaces is about more than how families sustain themselves economically. Social and emotional values as well as networks are important. In other words, the way a state enables or impedes people’s thriving and flourishing are key categories of reflection for our interlocutors.

8 A reference to the 2016 boating accident in Karelia in which 14 children died. Astakhov subsequently made insensitive comments to survivors. See Shchetko (2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeremy Morris

Jeremy Morris, Global Studies, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 7 1467-325, Aarhus 8000, Denmark. Email: [email protected]

Masha Garibyan

Masha Garibyan, Aston University Business School, Birmingham, B4 7EQ, UK. Email: [email protected]