Unpacking Traditional Values in Russia’s Conservative Turn: Gender, Sexuality, and the Soviet Legacy

Abstract

In the decade before Russia’s most recent invasion of Ukraine, scholars had been marking a conservative turn in Russian policy and practice through the lens of gender and sexuality. In a recent project, Valerie Sperling, Alexandra Novitkskaya, Janet Elise Johnson, and Lisa Sundstrom examined these dynamics in two decades of Putin’s annual speeches to domestic audiences and original Russian public opinion data from 2021, finding differing degrees of sexism and LGBTQ-phobia among Russia’s state leader and the public. We identify a somewhat conservative trend regarding women’s rights, and a far more conservative one on LGBTQ+ issues. We find that Putin’s speeches and public opinion on these topics echo Soviet approaches, suggesting that the conservative “turn” amounts more to a “return” than to a novel development under Putin. In this talk, we will also discuss how Putin’s shift toward conservatism, most marked in 2021, can inform our understanding of his decision to launch a full-scale war against Ukraine.