The influence of the ‘gay-propaganda’ law on violence against LGBTIQ people in Russia: Evidence from criminal court rulings
| Author | Alexander Kondakov |
| Published date | 01 November 2021 |
| Date | 01 November 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819887511 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819887511
European Journal of Criminology
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370819887511
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The influence of the
‘gay-propaganda’ law on
violence against LGBTIQ
people in Russia: Evidence
from criminal court rulings
Alexander Kondakov
University of Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
This article presents the results of a study of the victimization of queer people in Russia before
and after the ‘gay-propaganda’ bill was signed into law in 2013. Despite the development of
hate crime legislation, few violent incidents against LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
intersex, and questioning) individuals are recorded in the Russian legal system. An original method
of court rulings analysis is put forward in order to move towards an actual number of criminal
offences against these groups. All court decisions that mention non-heterosexual victims are
reviewed to identify whether these cases could have been considered hate crimes. As a result,
267 first-instance criminal court rulings dealing with 297 LGBTIQ victims are identified in 2011–
16. Descriptive statistical analysis demonstrates that the number of victims grew substantially
after 2013.
Keywords
hate crime, Russia, LGBTIQ, violence, queer, gay-propaganda
Introduction
Russia has become a focal point of attention regarding its policies on sexuality earlier in
this decade. In 2013, it adopted the ‘propaganda’ bill, which banned public access to
information about ‘non-traditional sexual relations’ (Administrative Code of the Russian
Federation, 2001: Art. 6.21). As the Supreme Court of Russia (2012) explained earlier
when it considered cases citing similar regional legislation, ‘non-traditional sexuality’
included male homosexuality, bisexuality, lesbian and transgender experiences. The law
Corresponding author:
Alexander Kondakov, Aleksanteri Institute – Finnish Centre for Russian and East European Studies,
University of Helsinki, Yliopistonkatu 3, office 555, Helsinki, 00014, Finland.
Email: alexander.kondakov@helsinki.fi
887511EUC0010.1177/1477370819887511European Journal of CriminologyKondakov
research-article2019
Article
2021, Vol. 18(6) 940–959
was officially justified by references to protection of children from ‘harmful informa-
tion’: it was assumed that once they accessed texts and films about queer sexuality or
once they were exposed to an LGBTIQ rally, they would start to consider becoming gay.
This logic of prejudice demonstrates the actual ignorance and homophobia of the legisla-
tors who believe that LGBTIQ people1 are a threat to the children of Russia and, conse-
quently, must be stopped with the power of the law.
Legal texts are very influential enunciations of power that make people do things or
stop them from doing something (Butler, 1997; Sarat, 2010). Yet the actual effects of
legal texts are not obvious from the texts themselves (Erlanger et al., 2005). In other
words, written legal norms produce social phenomena beyond the purposes for which
they have been written. Thus, direct prohibitions may indeed result in preventing the
prohibited from appearing publicly, but they may have a variety of other unexpected
outcomes. This article starts with the assumption that the law on ‘propaganda of non-
traditional sexual relations’ is a message of hatred towards LGBTIQ people in Russia
and as such it influenced the level of prejudice-motivated violence against queer people
in the country. However, my aim is not to acquire proofs of the direct influence of the law
on the level of violence. After all, people’s behaviour is a complex matter that can hardly
be explained by only one condition for action. What I want is to collect reliable data on
crimes committed against LGBTIQ people in Russia before and after the adoption of the
‘propaganda’ bill in order to suggest its possible indirect influence on criminal activities
against queer people.
Different countries approach violence against their LGBTIQ citizens in different ways.
The European Union, for example, views implementation of hate crime legislation with
references to the victim’s gender and sexuality as an urgent issue (Ayoub, 2016: 58), but
relevant laws vary significantly across the EU (Viggiani and Godzisz, 2018). Thus, some
criminal codes include well-developed hate crime legislation, whereas others remain
silent, leading researchers to the conclusion that ‘the protection offered by hate crime
legislation is illusory or ineffective, but for some notable exceptions such as the United
Kingdom or Belgium, and that sexual characteristics or intersex status is not often treated
as a protected ground’ (Viggiani and Godzisz, 2018: 21). In the USA, specific legislation
regulating hate crimes committed because of the victim’s perceived sexual orientation or
gender identity (Hall et al., 2014; Wickes et al., 2016) exist hand in hand with laws pro-
hibiting transgender people from entering the restroom of their choice (Kogan, 2017).
Where hate crime legislation is in place, it sets procedures and punishments that distin-
guish these crimes from other felonies. It also instructs law enforcement authorities to
gather and generalize statistics on hate crime. Russia is not a bad example in this context:
it has quite developed hate crime law (though it is ambivalent about sexual orientation)
and makes occasional contributions to statistical data on hate crime at the European level.
Yet I will show why these official ways of obtaining reliable information about violence
against LGBTIQ people is not a reasonable way to proceed in the research.
Instead of using existing official statistics, in this research I produce unique data on
hate-motivated crimes on Russian territory. This article presents the results of a study of
official sources on violence against LGBTIQ people in Russia, unofficially gathered and
generalized. I demonstrate how the available sources of criminal court sentences can be
used to study violence against queer people. Thus, I primarily deal with court decisions
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Kondakov
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