[Why does the anti-war movement in Russia have a female face? To
answer this question, we need to turn to the development of Russian
feminism over the past ten years. Feminism in Russia has gone through
a rebirth.] [[link removed]]

FEMALE FACE OF RUSSIAN ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT: WHY WOMEN PROTEST?  
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Ella Rossman
April 25, 2022
Left East
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_ Why does the anti-war movement in Russia have a female face? To
answer this question, we need to turn to the development of Russian
feminism over the past ten years. Feminism in Russia has gone through
a rebirth. _

, Telegram

 

Since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine and the following
establishment of de facto martial law in Russia, Russians have been
protesting against the war. Though this protest is weak and fragmented
and exposed to government repression, it is ongoing in many cities and
towns of Russia. It includes not only street demonstrations and
pickets but also invisible forms of resistance, like sabotage at work
or different ways of distribution of information about the war,
fighting the strict censorship.

After more than a month of this protest, it is already evident that
women are very active in the protest movement.  One of the first
Russian anti-war groups, which appeared on the second day of the war,
was organised by feminists — it’s Feminist Anti-War Resistance,
which I am happy to be a part of. Currently, the FAR coordinating
telegram channel [[link removed]] unites more than 29 000
activists all over Russia and from abroad. The FAR action on
International Women’s Day, organised in remembrance of the
Ukrainians killed in the war, united 112 cities, towns and villages in
Russia and other countries. 

It’s not only feminist activists who are protesting. Women of all
political views take part in demonstrations and pickets. The women
representatives in local authorities became notable opponents of the
war. On March 16, Helga Pirogova, the liberal oppositional politician
and the Deputy of the City Assembly in Novosibirsk, came to work in
the wreath and _vyshyvanka_ shirt in the colours of the Ukrainian
flag. This small gesture caused a big scandal in the Assembly –
other deputies started verbally assaulting Pirogova and proposed to
withdraw her mandate. Nina Belyaeva, the Deputy of the Semiluksky
District Council of the Voronezh Region, condemned
[[link removed]] the war at a district
council meeting on March 22. She publicly called the actions of the
Russian authorities a ‘war crime’. Belyaeva was immediately
expelled from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and now
the local prosecutor’s office is considering a complaint against
her. There are many other examples like these, and they appear every
day.

Why does the anti-war movement in Russia have a female face? To answer
this question, I’ll need to turn to the development of Russian
feminism over the past ten years. In these years, feminism in Russia
has gone through a rebirth. From a local and relatively marginal
movement concentrated in narrow circles, feminism has turned into a
widely discussed subject or even into some kind of fashion. It has led
to the extensive growth of the number of feminist groups and created a
new type of female political agency in Russia. 

Paris anti-war demonstration. Source: Telegram
[[link removed]]

RUSSIAN FEMINISM IN THE POST-SOVIET ERA

Russian feminism and feminist thought have a long history with their
ups and downs. It started in the middle of the 19th century in the
context of the liberal reforms of the Russian emperor Alexander II.
The crucial point that predetermined all its further development was
the year 1930 when Josef Stalin himself proclaimed that ‘women’s
question’ was ‘solved’ by the Soviet authorities, and there was
no need for independent women’s organisations any longer. All the
grassroots feminist groups in USSR were demolished. Only at the end of
the 1970s and in the 1980s did they start to pop up again — in the
dissident and intellectual circles. These were small groups with very
limited influence, but even so, they faced massive persecution from
the state authorities and special services. For example, almost all
the leading creators of the feminist samizdat almanac ‘Woman and
Russia’ (1979) had to leave the USSR under pressure from the KGB. 

After 1991, a new chapter of the history of the Russian women’s
movement started. It began with two significant events — Independent
Women’s Forums of 1991 and 1992, held in Dubna city. Russia was
undergoing large-scale transformations, both economic and political.
‘Democracy without women is not democracy’ was the slogan of the
Forums. Its participants hoped that women would become essential
agents of democratisation in post-Soviet Russia. 

Unfortunately, this happened only partially. Transitioning to a market
economy created new gendered problems in post-communist societies. It
reinforced work inequality, justified the commercialisation of
women’s bodies, and caused the decline in social services, which
primarily affected women and vulnerable groups. Despite all these
problems, the feminist agenda remained relatively marginal, wrote
[[link removed]] Anastasia Posadskaya,
one of the first gender scholars in post-Soviet Russia. According to
Posadskaya, in the 1990s, the elites and the general public identified
women’s emancipation with Soviet ideology, which had exploited this
topic on both internal and international levels. They were oriented
toward new nationalistic political values with quite a traditionalist
view of gender roles. That’s why feminism did not become widespread;
only the small circles considered the gender agenda seriously. New
feminists and gender studies gained a limited influence.

The situation changed drastically in the 2010s, and there might be
many reasons for that shift. One of them lies in the specifics of the
conservative turn in internal and external Russian policy. In the
early 2010s, the authorities and the governmental media started
actively promoting the idea of ‘traditional values’. They praised
the ideal of a ‘traditional Russian family’ — heterosexual,
multigenerational, with three and more kids. ‘Traditional family’
became the reflection of the idea of a sovereign Russian state – in
propaganda, they both were depicted in opposition to all ‘West’.
State speakers and media placed NATO and UN politics in one line with
the LGBTQ+ movements, gay marriages and human rights. Any external
influence started to be described as a danger to Russian independence
and way of life, including its families. 

Russia stopped collaborating with international organisations on
gender issues. For example, the Russian side refused to ratify the
2011 Istanbul Convention (Council of Europe Convention on preventing
and combating violence against women and domestic violence). In 2013
Russian authorities adopted a law prohibiting the ‘promotion of
non-traditional family relationships’ among minors. The
‘non-traditional family relationships’ mostly mean LGBTQ+
families, but the term is vague and open for further interpretation.

Сontrary to expectations of the authorities, the obsessive propaganda
of ‘traditional values’ did not evoke that much sympathy – many
people recognised it as a desire to interfere in their personal
affairs like it was in the Soviet times. Other factors also stimulated
interest in the feminist agenda, for example, the Pussy Riot’s
well-known performance inside the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in
2012 or the rise of social media and the spread of feminist online
campaigns like #metoo. The beginning of the 2010s also was the time of
massive oppositional protests and political mobilisation across
Russia. The opposition groups of the time were often as sexist and
hierarchical as the pro-state ones
[[link removed]].
However, the rise of public interest in politics affected women. Many
of them got involved in politics and, at the same time, started
reflecting on the hierarchies in political circles.

As a result, in the last decade Russian feminist movement has been
growing — despite the repressions that followed the 2011-2013
protests and all the attendant factors. The feminist agenda has spread
beyond local groups and hit the media, including lifestyle and
political outlets that have never written about these topics before.
Events on feminism and gender studies became an inescapable part of
the cultural and intellectual life in many cities and towns. 

Interestingly, the authorities for some time did not see women’s
rights as dangerous as other political topics. Moreover, feminist
politics remained invisible, as the state and the secret services were
more interested in the activities of prominent male politicians like
Alexey Navalny. In contrast to other oppositional groups in Russia,
feminism developed as a horizontal movement without strict hierarchies
and individual leaders. It seems like the authorities for some time
did not consider it revolutionary enough. It also was not seen as
dangerous for the ‘traditional values’ as, for example, gay
rights. Therefore, feminist events could take part even in state
institutions such as libraries, museums and art galleries. I
personally was one of the organisers of a feminist festival in one of
the biggest Moscow state libraries in 2017. Feminist activists, gender
scholars and sex bloggers took part in this event, and we faced no
pressure from the library administration or city authorities. 

TWO EFFECTS OF THE SPREAD OF FEMINISM IN THE 2010S

The spread of the feminist agenda in Russia had two main effects.
First is the growth of the number of grass-root feminist
organisations. According to my own monitoring, I am doing since 2019,
the number of grass-roots feminist groups in the last years was
growing. By the beginning of the war, more than 45 these groups
functioned across the country. I say ‘more than 45 groups’, as I
know that there are several such groups in the North Caucasus. They
work secretly as it’s life-threatening for their members to reveal
their identities, and I don’t have safety protocols to try to reach
them for details. Many feminist groups are based in Moscow and St.
Petersburg, but they are not concentrating only in these cities.
Active feminist groups also work in Novosibirsk and Kaliningrad,
Krasnodar and Khabarovsk, Murmansk and Ulan-Ude — and many other
places. 

The second effect is more complex and needs more comprehensive
research. I suppose that the spread of the feminist agenda created a
new understanding of women’s political agency in modern Russia.
Although Russia has a substantial history of women’s participation
in social and political life, both in Soviet and post-Soviet times,
women did not obtain adequate representation at the highest levels of
state administration. We know only isolated cases of women who became
ministers or occupied other high decision-making positions. For a long
time, politics and especially military affairs were a ‘nonwomen’s
business’ (‘неженское дело’) for many Russians and
women themselves. 

Source: Telegram [[link removed]]

The feminist agenda turned out a powerful tool for the politicisation
of women and reached out even those who initially had little interest
in politics. In general, Russians have a negative attitude towards any
collectivity, associating it with the violent politicisation of the
Soviet times. The Russian authorities successfully used this
individualism for years, demonstrating again and again that the
‘average person’ can change nothing and should stay away from the
‘dirty business’ of politics. The regime has been on the apathy
and indifference of the population. Therefore, it is not surprising
that in Russia, the opinion that it’s impossible to influence the
state is quite common – people believe that the circle of family
members and closest friends is the most one can affect. Feminism, with
its ‘personal is political’ formula, became a game-changer in
these circumstances. Many feminist activists I know came to feminism
to find answers to questions about their bodies or domestic issues,
and later on, these questions led them to discussions about
representative democracy and dictatorship and reconsideration of
politics and protest, and their place in it. As a result, today we
see women on the streets and women organising resistance, and these
women show absolute confidence that their voice is important and must
be considered seriously. They do not hesitate to come together, stand
their ground, and criticise other political activists and journalists
if they ignore or underestimate them. Unfortunately, many of these
women are in great danger. The threat comes not only from the Russian
state, which represses citizens protesting against the war or
revealing the truth about it. Even before the war Russian feminists
and politically active women were getting hundreds of death threats
from ordinary Russians, angry that even just saying out loud about
gender stereotypes or gendered violence or participating in politics,
these women violated the tacit patriarchal order. Public speakers were
dehumanising feminists, calling them ‘demons’ and ‘animals’
or comparing them with Nazis
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I am afraid that Russian soldiers who sooner or later return from
Ukraine will share this attitude when they find out that many Russian
women do not see them as heroes and saviours but curse and call them
war criminals. These men, who perpetrated real atrocities in the Kyiv
Oblast, will not tolerate these voices, – they might revenge on
those who revealed the truth, and I am not sure if the Russian general
public, accustomed to violence and mostly still hostile to feminists,
will confront them.

_Ella Rossman is a PhD-student at UCL SSEES, specializing in the
gender history of the late USSR, and a feminist activist._

_LeftEast [[link removed]] is a place where various voices,
efforts and groups from around the region, broadly understood, come
together in a sustained analytical and political effort. This is a
platform where our common struggles and political commitments come
together beyond the national borders or the straightjacket of national
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it is explicitly left-wing in orientation, that is, left of the
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* Anti-War Movement (3425)
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* Soviet Union [[link removed]]

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