Yet unease and distaste, more than overt hostility, have governed public attitudes. Soviet-era doublethink about sex is compounded by the role of male rape in prison culture, and the stigma attached to its victims: opushenny, “made low” or debased, for life. Russia is socially liberal on adultery, abortion and divorce, but attitudes to homosexuality resemble those in the West of a generation ago.
Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, a think-tank, says the Kremlin has sought to “isolate and stigmatise” such people, while creating a myth of a new Russian identity from a hotchpotch of Orthodox piety, traditional values and provincial distrust of urban elites. It is easiest to define those codes by what they are not: Western, liberal, modern.
A deputy from the pro-Kremlin United Russia party speaks of protecting the country against the “destruction of its fundamental cultural codes”. As with other recent moves, such as the ban on adoptions by Americans and the criminalisation of blasphemy, the motive seems more political than moral.
