Russian security forces have raided gay clubs and bars across Moscow less than 48 hours after the country’s top court banned what it called the “global LGBTQ+ movement” as an extremist organization.
Yeah I wonder what would happen to the people with the loss of communist ideology and letting liberalism run rampant in your country (which still hasn’t been purged and are going strong!). The 90s was such a horror show that it’s going to take generations to heal this trauma.
Given the general trend, at least in the West, of increasing numbers of non-religious people, it’s kinda fascinatingly disturbing to see the opposite occurring. Really shows how these things are actually governed by measurable social and economic factors and can’t be explained by mere vibes-based explanations like “Well, as society is becoming more rational and scientific…” One wonders if we’ll see a resurgence in religiosity in the West as conditions deteriorate.
I could see it as lense people adopt to make sense of an awful world. As conditions deteriorate and revolutionary thought is suppressed, religion is the only thing people can grasp to as an explanation for why things are happening and death almost being something to look forward to because it’ll be better in the afterlife.
I don’t see it exactly the same as Hakim’s recent post about Islam and the people of Palestine, but I think it rhymes. People living in such awful conditions need something to grasp, especially when family and friends aren’t a certainty day to day
I think also in times of hardship joining a religion is an easy way to find community and mutual aid networks. Also a good way to avoid persecution and have an advantage if the state favours a certain religion.
Yep. There is a strong history of immigrant communities organizing around their shared religion or even physically inside their houses of worship like the Irish catholics in the 1900s.
What the fuck. Don’t get me wrong the Russian empire was awful about LGBT (no surprises there) until lenin came along and decriminalized it (but iirc there wasn’t much if any proactive/institutional work to secure rights, it just wasn’t a priority and I can’t really blame them). Then came stalin and specifically fucked it up (many such cases).
and legislatively everything kept being fucked (despite the best efforts of civil society) right up to the fall of the Soviet Union. Even after the fall, we only decriminalized it to appease the capitalists when we joined the council of Europe in 1993.
So yeah in terms of rights, capitalism/the 90s was the best thing that happened to the Russian LGBT community in recent history. And even then there it wasn’t applied retroactively, people who were previously sentenced stayed imprisoned. However culturally there was definitely a shift in perception. The peak was probably sending a couple (not really) lesbians to perform in Eurovision 2003 (to date iirc they’re still the most popular Russian band among foreigners).
And going into the 2000s the government grew more and more allergic of civil society / activism of literally any kind including LGBT rights. That’s when the whole ‘foreign agent’ thing started too. Until they just outlawed activism/‘propaganda’ in 2013. The only saving grace is the shitty patchwork enforcement. But if the government does decide to get on your case, you’re fucked. Culturally however I don’t think young people who use the internet are much more homophobic than on average in eastern europe (lol). The state sponsored TV watching boomers (who hold power in the government) are another story tho, it’s as bad as fox news watchers in the west.
Yeah I wonder what would happen to the people with the loss of communist ideology and letting liberalism run rampant in your country (which still hasn’t been purged and are going strong!). The 90s was such a horror show that it’s going to take generations to heal this trauma.
Given the general trend, at least in the West, of increasing numbers of non-religious people, it’s kinda fascinatingly disturbing to see the opposite occurring. Really shows how these things are actually governed by measurable social and economic factors and can’t be explained by mere vibes-based explanations like “Well, as society is becoming more rational and scientific…” One wonders if we’ll see a resurgence in religiosity in the West as conditions deteriorate.
I could see it as lense people adopt to make sense of an awful world. As conditions deteriorate and revolutionary thought is suppressed, religion is the only thing people can grasp to as an explanation for why things are happening and death almost being something to look forward to because it’ll be better in the afterlife.
I don’t see it exactly the same as Hakim’s recent post about Islam and the people of Palestine, but I think it rhymes. People living in such awful conditions need something to grasp, especially when family and friends aren’t a certainty day to day
I think also in times of hardship joining a religion is an easy way to find community and mutual aid networks. Also a good way to avoid persecution and have an advantage if the state favours a certain religion.
Yep. There is a strong history of immigrant communities organizing around their shared religion or even physically inside their houses of worship like the Irish catholics in the 1900s.
If you ask me, the 90s in Russia were anything but хорошо
Cyrillic text that reads like a dnb drop.
What the fuck. Don’t get me wrong the Russian empire was awful about LGBT (no surprises there) until lenin came along and decriminalized it (but iirc there wasn’t much if any proactive/institutional work to secure rights, it just wasn’t a priority and I can’t really blame them). Then came stalin and specifically fucked it up (many such cases).
and legislatively everything kept being fucked (despite the best efforts of civil society) right up to the fall of the Soviet Union. Even after the fall, we only decriminalized it to appease the capitalists when we joined the council of Europe in 1993.
So yeah in terms of rights, capitalism/the 90s was the best thing that happened to the Russian LGBT community in recent history. And even then there it wasn’t applied retroactively, people who were previously sentenced stayed imprisoned. However culturally there was definitely a shift in perception. The peak was probably sending a couple (not really) lesbians to perform in Eurovision 2003 (to date iirc they’re still the most popular Russian band among foreigners).
And going into the 2000s the government grew more and more allergic of civil society / activism of literally any kind including LGBT rights. That’s when the whole ‘foreign agent’ thing started too. Until they just outlawed activism/‘propaganda’ in 2013. The only saving grace is the shitty patchwork enforcement. But if the government does decide to get on your case, you’re fucked. Culturally however I don’t think young people who use the internet are much more homophobic than on average in eastern europe (lol). The state sponsored TV watching boomers (who hold power in the government) are another story tho, it’s as bad as fox news watchers in the west.