Contentious gender politics in non-democracies: Russia and domestic violence

Over the last decade, the Russian regime has increasingly framed its gender politics in opposition to the European Union, both responding to and spearheading the continent’s anti-gender movement. But, even in this authoritarian regime, there continues to be contentious politics around the issue of domestic violence. A small and brief progressive reform was passed by the legislature and signed by Putin in 2016, only to be reversed six months later when the first instance of battery between close persons was moved from the criminal to the administrative code in response to the mobilization of Russian Orthodox-church related groups. Surprisingly, after several high-profile incidents and censure from the CEDAW committee and the European Court of Human Rights, activists got domestic violence back on the policy agenda in the Fall of 2019 with a new comprehensive bill on domestic violence put up for formal discussion. While this too received much anti-gender resistance and the process got waylaid by the COVID crisis and LGBTQ-phobic constitutional reform, these gender-related politics continue to simmer, as both sides remain unsatisfied, and 97% of the population agree that a husband beating his wife/girlfriend cannot be justified (LegitRuss survey Spring 2021). The Orthodox Church’s coalition--while stating its disapproval of violence between spouses--has upped its critique of any legislation to address the problem by branding advocates of reform as “foreign agents” and linking them to “LGBT projects.” At the same time, gender studies and feminism in Russia, under attack by the state, have mushroomed through online self-education projects and new forms of activism, creating a broader base of support in Russia than ever before. Following up on my decades of analyzing domestic violence politics, I propose to systematically examine the politics following the 2017 partial decriminalization of domestic violence. As Andrea Krizsán and Conny Roggeband argue (Social Politics Fall 2021), we must re-theorize “state-movement relations in the context of de-democratization” to consider the alliances between the state and anti-gender movements and new forms of non-state focused feminist activism. Outside of EU governance and authoritarian, Russia is a crucial case study of how gender politics is evolving in Europe. Building upon feminist political science’s new focus on informal politics, my study uses process tracing of the politics within the Duma and Federation Council, virtual participant observation of the new feminist resistance, and analysis of the Russian news to do an intersectionally-informed analysis of Russia’s current gender politics. Stretching from before and during (hopefully after?) the COVID crisis, it also considers the role of pandemic politics in re-shaping gender politics in postcommunist Europe. Amidst these shifts in our collective public and private lives, I argue that this is a time for grounded theorizing and innovative methods.