The Silenced Citizens of Russia
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663913505315 |
| Published date | 01 June 2014 |
| Date | 01 June 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Social & Legal Studies
2014, Vol. 23(2) 151–174
The Silenced Citizens
ª The Author(s) 2013
Reprints and permission:
of Russia: Exclusion of
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0964663913505315
Non-heterosexual
sls.sagepub.com
Subjects From
Rights-Based Citizenship
Alexander Kondakov
The Centre for Independent Social Research, Russian Federation
Abstract
This article draws attention to how citizenship, informed by heteronormativity, is repre-
sented in politics, judiciary and public social practices in Russia. I argue that the observed
discursive reality affects construction of heteronormative citizenship that restricts full
inclusion of lesbians and gay men via silencing. The ideas of the article are taken from
literature on citizenship and two empirical research studies that I conducted in 2010 and
2011–2012. The first is dedicated to the uncovering of discursive effects of political argu-
mentation in Russia. The second study centres on the accounts of lesbians and gay men
themselves regarding their citizenship rights. Both studies give rise to concerns about Soviet
legacy in contemporary Russian debates on homosexuality. This idea is supported by an
analysis of that historical context that may be grasped from empirical studies of the Soviet.
Keywords
Heteronormative citizenship, lesbians and gay men, Russia, Soviet legacy
Introduction
After the Great October Revolution of 1917, the government of the Soviet Union based
its politics on relatively nouvelle social justice arguments. The Constitution of the Union
Corresponding author:
Alexander Kondakov, The Centre for Independent Social Research, Ligovsky prospect 87, Office 301,
St Petersburg 191040, Russian Federation.
Email: kondakov@cisr.ru
152
Social & Legal Studies 23(2)
of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) therefore announced that the new socialist political
order was to be characterised by freedom and equality and that social injustice would no
longer exist (Konstitutsya, 1924). Instead, universal peaceful and just cohabitation were
guaranteed. This was also one of the first examples in European history of a state
introducing clearly articulated social rights into the official political agenda. It was an
initiative that entailed particular effects on Soviet society in the attempt to reconfigure
class relations and gender structures, articulate ethnicity and redistribute power through
constitutional law. In this article, I draw on social science theories of citizenship to
analyse how the history of this project influenced the regime of sexual citizenship in
contemporary Russia. The socialist period is regarded as oppressive, and the version
developed by the Soviet government overshadows the whole idea of socialism. However,
as my discussion will show, over a period of 70 years, the history of the USSR was not
monolithic. Further, I will argue that contemporary Russia is marked by the legacy of the
Soviet period: oppressive trends that stem from this past persist despite the rhetorical
commitment to liberal democratic values.
The structure of the article is as follows: the first section highlights those theoretical
approaches to citizenship which have influenced my methodology and which inform my
subsequent discussion. In the second section, based on analysis of secondary sources, I
narrate the changing story of Soviet sexual citizenship. This section describes the context
of homosexual experiences in the USSR and underscores those features that persisted
after the fall of the socialist state. The third section presents an analysis of law, court
decisions and political speeches that relate to homosexuality in contemporary Russia.
It reveals those tendencies that characterise the contemporary regime of sexual citizen-
ship. The final section is based on the analysis of the empirical data gathered through
interviews I conducted with Russian homosexuals. I draw on this data to uncover those
particular effects of governmental discourses that are articulated in these interviews.
Theorising Regimes of Citizenship
To operationalise the notion of citizenship in this empirical study, it is necessary to high-
light those theoretical approaches and ideas about citizenship that can illuminate the
Russian proclivities in its negotiations of the relationship between the people and the
state and citizen status. State bureaucracy is crucial in this process as it controls the basic
dimensions of citizenship (Turner, 2001: 190). However, it is also ‘important to put a
particular emphasis on the notion of social struggles as the central motor of the drive for
citizenship’ (Turner, 2001: 193). Hence, my research into citizenship is a study of the
tensions between the state and the people’s claim for inclusion in the system of rights
redistribution that the state controls. In this regard, it is necessary to focus on the effects
and consequences of this struggle. Inclusion into the state’s welfare does not ensure
social justice per se but may rather entail the generation of new forms of inequality
(Cossman, 2007: 3). Hence, as Cooper puts it, citizenship is ‘the process of inclusion and
exclusion, either in terms of membership of the public realm or as rights and responsi-
bilities vis-a`-vis the state’ (Cooper, 1993: 155).
The forms that citizenship takes in different contexts are a matter of concern in this
study. Turner depicts different models of citizenship which correspond to various
Kondakov
153
political configurations of a nation state. In his classic study, he distinguishes between
passive and active types of citizenship, depending on whether it is based upon
prescriptive state ideologies or whether those ideologies are challenged by citizens
(Turner, 1990: 206–207). Passive citizenship presupposes that the people are waiting for
the state to distribute recognition and rights among them. Active citizenship is based on
empowered activist citizens (Isin, 2008: 37) who contest existing inequalities and call on
the state to guarantee rights and justice for injured groups. The specific configuration of
citizenship that produces effects (whether satisfaction or contestation) I call a ‘regime of
citizenship’. Citizenship is never monolithic and is always contingent; hence, an analysis
that is informed by an historical perspective has to deal with various regimes and has to
address the changes.
As many scholars argue, citizenship is always sexualised and thus citizens’ statuses
may be questioned, based on their sexuality (Bell and Binnie, 2000: 10; Halperin,
1993: 418). It is commonplace that a ‘citizen is discursively constructed as heterosexual’
(Johnson, 2002: 319). So long as citizenship is (hetero)sexualised, ‘those whose sexual
proclivities are adjudged suspect, dangerous or undesirable may find their civil and
welfare rights curtailed as politicians and policy makers seek to redefine the moral
boundaries of the nation’ (Hubbard, 2001: 52). Weeks (2007: 11–12) reminds us that,
historically, citizenship has been restricted for many different groups of people,
including lesbians and gay men, but, at the same time, steps towards full citizenship for
homosexuals have been made in many jurisdictions all over the world. Hence, it is
important to address a particular disposition of sexuality in a citizenship regime.
When sexuality is an issue of analysis, another tension related to citizenship comes
into play: the tension between the public and the private, which is one of the central con-
cerns of citizenship studies. In some citizenship regimes, the state is regarded as ‘the
only source of public authority’ (Turner, 1990: 207), whereas, in others, the public
sphere might be a rich ‘arena of political action’ for a variety of actors (Turner, 1990:
207). Walby’s pessimistic conceptualisation of gendered citizenship as ensuring a ‘tran-
sition from private to public patriarchy’ (1994: 392) largely means that citizenship is
always gendered and sexualised so that whatever the regime, heterosexual privilege and
the heteronormative gender order are maintained. Thus, the private/public tension in
relation to homosexuality and citizenship is a question of the limits of accepted sexually
expressive behaviour in public: lesbians and gay men are tolerated so long as ‘they
remain in the private sphere and do not seek public recognition or membership in the
political community’ (Richardson, 1998: 89).
Authoritarian states monopolise the public sphere and eject anything considered ‘devi-
ant’ into the private sphere, which offers a fragile shelter from the arbitrariness of the
authorities (Turner, 1990: 201). The boundaries of the two spheres are therefore the result
of whichever group controls the state. A passive regime of citizenship entails hiding one’s
‘deviance’ in the private sphere, away from the oppressive government, whereas an active
citizenship means making one’s private political and, therefore, public. In this article, I
want to address how these notions help us to understand the Soviet situation where the pub-
lic/private divide was in many senses eliminated both infrastructurally and rhetorically.
In capitalist countries, the private sphere may also be organised through the market,
based on facilitating participation in consumption and the satisfaction of consumers’
154
Social & Legal Studies 23(2)
desires (Turner, 2001: 194). In this form of citizenship, hegemonic now as a result of
neo-liberalism (Bauman, 1993), the market offers a substitute for citizenship rights
through its commodification: a sense of inclusion or welfare services are...
To continue reading
Request your trial