Documentary special: fighting for the right to fight, gay and lesbian Russians reflect on 2013

Updated January 01, 2014 06:57:00

The past year has seen a series of moves by the government in Russia that target and undermine gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights. The most prominent is the propaganda of homosexuality law, passed in June, that has led to an increase in homophobia and sparked international disapproval. But LGBT groups in Russia continue their patient and passionate mission to change the hearts and minds of people in their country, and see an end to discrimination.

Source: PM | Duration: 24min 59sec

Topics: gays-and-lesbians, russian-federation



Many countries, including Australia, are taking positive steps towards eliminating discrimination against gays and lesbians, especially in the area of marriage equality. Yet in Russia, events are taking a decidedly different turn.

In June, the Russian government passed a law that banned the communication of information about homosexuality to minors, effectively making it illegal to present gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people as equal to heterosexuals.

Maisie Cohen with this report.

(Protesters chanting in Russian)


SASHA SEMENOVA: At some point you get to the point where you can understand that there is nothing wrong with you, there is something wrong with the country, and something wrong with the people who are surrounding you.

POLINA: It's very important for us to keep building the movement, to mobilise, to empower LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) people, to get them involved in defending their rights.


KSENIIA KHRABRYKH: We need to speak not only about rights for LGBT people, rights for other minority groups, we need to speak about rights for everyone.


ANDRE PETRANIN: It's about xenophobia. It's something that they don't know or they think it don't exist in our country.


IGOR IASINE: In Russia now, LGBT people even have to fight even for the right to fight.


MAISIE COHEN: The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community in Russia is incensed but not particularly surprised by the Parliament's move in June 2013 to introduce legislation that criminalises the promotion of same-sex relationships to children.

And they're not alone. A quick search on YouTube, and you can find footage of protest rallies, public events and private messages of support from all over the world.

EXCERPT FROM YOUTUBE VIDEO: If Mr Putin hadn't done what he's done, we would all be sitting at home doing absolutely nothing about the homophobic laws that exist throughout the world today.

EXCERPT FROM YOUTUBE VIDEO 2: To show that love to Mr Putin and his friends, we will share one minute kiss (laughter), come on, one minute, we will do two.

MAISIE COHEN: But the legislation passed in June is just one in a series of moves that directly targets gay and lesbian groups.

POLINA: In March this year, there was a massive wave of inspections of NGOs (non government organisations) in Russia. These were illegal inspections, they came without warning, took documents.

MAISIE COHEN: Polina works with advocacy group Coming Out in St Petersburg.

EXCERPT FROM PROMOTIONAL VIDEO: Dear friends around the world. If I say gay is okay out in the streets, my government can call me a criminal. If I'm raising a kid with my girlfriend, I'm breaking the law every day.

POLINA: A law has been passed to force NGOs that receive foreign funding to register in a special registry as foreign agents. Foreign agents in Russian language, in Russian mentality, is very close to spy so it's quite a degrading label.

Two organisations have been charged with violating foreign agents laws. It's Coming Out and also LGBT film festival Side by Side that were charged. The city court judge dismissed all case against us.

But again, it's important to understand the case was dismissed purely on technical grounds. There was not a judgment carried out that we were actually not guilty of being foreign agents.

What that means to us is that that the prosecution can come back with a case against us, a new case. Basically we can find ourselves in the same situation again.

MAISIE COHEN: There's also been discussion of a bill in parliament that would seek to deprive LGBT couples of their parental rights over adopted children.

POLINA: It was a proposed amendment to the existing family code. This particular law lists the reasons for which they can take children away from parents. And there are reasons like alcoholism, sexual abuse, drug abuse and so forth. And this proposal, added as the last reason on the list, allowing for non-traditional sexual relations.

This is the exact wording, I'm not exaggerating. That means anybody - not just people who are suspected to be homosexual, but even people who would openly and publicly speak up for LGBT rights could fall victim under this law.

And if a measure like that is passed I would say that same sex families with children are no longer safe in this country and they should just leave.

MAISIE COHEN: The proposed changes were withdrawn, but there are fears they could be reintroduced after the Sochi Olympics, as the international focus on Russia dies down.

But Polina says one of the most concerning developments is the general increase in homophobic attacks.

POLINA: Violence is growing tremendously against LGBT people, it's organised violence, and the perpetrators actually refer to the propaganda of homosexuality law when they are justifying their actions.

So sometimes you see nationalists together with Orthodox priests, wearing black clothing and blessing, you know, blessing those around them who are there to attack. You even see, you know, our politicians sometimes joining these crowds.

(Sound of protesters)

MAISIE COHEN: Moscow-based activist Igor Iasine says several school teachers have been the victims of increasing intolerance.

In this video from September, Igor is among those holding placards and protesting in a city square.

(Igor Iasine speaking Russian)

Igor tells a police officer, "We came here to protest against homophobic bullying of children and teachers at schools. We know about some teachers who were already fired or were forced to leave the school."

(Igor Iasine speaking Russian)

The police accuse the group of not having a permit. Some eggs are thrown at the protesters, and the authorities do nothing.

(Russian protesters chanting)

Things begin to heat up, as more members of the public gather.

One onlooker says "Do you understand that lightning might kill you all right now?" An activist replies, "Okay, let's have a deal. If the lighting strikes now and kills all of us, then we will accept that you are right."

Needless to say, the lightning never came.

This scene is typical of those that confront gay and lesbian groups who are willing to speak out, and sometimes, they can be much worse.

Igor Iasine.

IGOR IASINE: Yes, we always expect attacks from different far right groups and even from the police. We have been thinking about how to deal with this problem.

MAISIE COHEN: Andre Petranin is a 31-year-old freelance illustrator from Moscow. He's worried about the impacts of the new law on Russia's gay and lesbian youth.

ANDRE PETRANIN: I don't feel myself that it affects me but I am very worried about young people, teenagers, who realise that they are gay and they can't speak to anyone and I remember myself at that age, it was quite difficult, it was in ex-Soviet time or post-Soviet time. With this new law, elder people can't say to a teenager that it's okay, like he or she is not something that's horrible person or something un-normal.

POLINA: There is some statistics that every fifth LGBT youth tries to commit suicide and of course when people are discovering their homosexuality, gender identity, they need information, they need to know that they're not alone, that there are other people like them, that it's normal.

MAISIE COHEN: What do you think yourself of the politicians who've succeeded in bringing this law in?

POLINA: (laughs) Ah well it's a good question. I don't know whether they actually believe sincerely in what they are saying because what they're saying is that homosexuals are perverted, they are a danger to children, they are second class citizens, they are not equal to heterosexuals. That's the discourse.

I don't know if they actually believe it, but definitely this is right now the beneficial discourse to be supporting if you're a politician in Russia.

MAISIE COHEN: Susannah Garden is an English teacher who's been living in Moscow for six years. She suspects the reason Vladimir Putin signed the gay propaganda law was to appeal to large blocs of voters in the provinces.

SUSANNAH GARDEN: He has to present himself as a religious conservative who's in touch with the working class. He does a lot of visiting factories, you know, everybody round the world knows he does a lot of posing topless on horses and finding ancient Greek vases, I mean it's all just spin. If you've got the majority of the people who don't live in Moscow against you then it's political suicide.

MAISIE COHEN: So is this the government's agenda, or are they simply pandering to a public widely intolerant of sexual difference?

Andre Petranin.

ANDRE PETRANIN: It's quite difficult question. My opinion is that majority of people, maybe they are not aggressive or negative to gay people but you know it's about xenophobia. It's something that they don't know or they think it don't exist in our country.

IGOR IASINE: I don't think that the Russian society is more homophobic than any other society at certain stage of their history.

MAISIE COHEN: Igor Iasine says despite general support for the new law, many people don't actually think it will have any effect.

IGOR IASINE: Some time ago we had different polls. People were asked if they really believed so-called gay propaganda or promotion of untraditional sexual relations could change their sexuality, and surprisingly just something like 6 per cent of these people said that they actually believe that gay propaganda can change their sexuality. So it means that they don't really believe this law is actually needed.

MAISIE COHEN: Susannah Garden says there is evidence of accepting attitudes towards gay and lesbian couples who show their sexual orientation in public.

SUSANNAH GARDEN: There was an experiment done in St Petersburg. They had different same-sex couples travelling on the metro sort of hugging and spooning each other or, you know, showing affection but not really, really in your face. And they did an experiment to see what would happen and nothing really dramatic happened actually.

MAISIE COHEN: LGBT activists agree that a lack of education on sexual issues drives much of the homophobia that does exist in Russian society.

POLINA: Russian public is extremely ignorant about questions of human sexuality and gender identity in general, because there is no sex education in schools, the government has no educational programs or programs that promote tolerance.

People do believe that homosexuality and paedophilia are the same phenomenon. It's very easy to make people believe anything.

MAISIE COHEN: David Tuller is an American journalist, and author of Cracks in the Iron Closet. He spent time getting to know gay and lesbian Russians in the early '90s.

DAVID TULLER: Everybody had a secret life, unless they were totally committed communists, everybody had a secret life of some sort.

MAISIE COHEN: He says he observed an entire culture that was resistant to divulging personal information as a reaction against a history of state intrusion into people's lives.

DAVID TULLER: And so the idea that you had a secret sexual life was not such a strange thing.

I think Americans tended to go over there and think, oh Russians should all come out, you know like that was a big thing in the US, everybody had to come out.

Well a lot of cases in Russia it's not appropriate to come out. People are private for lots of different reasons that have nothing to do with their sexuality.

MAISIE COHEN: Coming out can be especially fraught for gay and lesbian parents. Many tell their children not to talk about their family situation at school.

SASHA SEMENOVA: The situation is especially bad for children who are raised in same sex families, because their families are not only unrepresented, but you have to be silent about your family, you have to hide this situation you're living in.

MAISIE COHEN: Sasha Semenova works with gay and lesbian parents at support group Coming Out.

SASHA SEMENOVA: This rhetoric about traditional families being the only value of the Russian society started several years ago. This so-called traditional family is a heterosexual family, with two or better three children, and grandfathers and grandmothers living all together in one house.

MAISIE COHEN: She's taken pen to paper and written a children's book called (Un) usual Families Around Me.

SASHA SEMENOVA: Together with our friends, we thought that this is not the kind of family that our children are seeing around pretty often.

In the book we included children who are living with single parents and parents with disabilities and of course children from homosexual families.

(Child reading a book in Russian)

He used to tell that his mothers were afraid to tell other people about their family, because some people can take it as too unusual. The people can destroy what they don't like.

(Child reading a book in Russian)

Here the girl is talking to her father and they are figuring out what a family is.

"Family are the people who take care of you. The people who give you food, home and love. Your family cannot always buy you anything you want". "Is that because sometimes we run out of money?" "Yes, but we never run out of love. A family are the people that you feel comfortable and quiet with. These are the people who teach you something and learn something from you."

(Child reading a book in Russian)

We truly believe that all things can be spoken and you can explain anything to a child if you use the language they can understand.

MAISIE COHEN: Is it the first book of its kind in Russia?

SASHA SEMENOVA: This is the first book of this kind in Russia, yes.

MAISIE COHEN: Do you get the feeling that there'll be many people outside the LGBT community who will want to use the book in schools?

SASHA SEMENOVA: (laughs) No, people won't use it at schools that's for sure, because teachers are being fired from schools right now just for posting messages against homophobia on their personal web pages.

MAISIE COHEN: How do you respond to people who might say, well I don't object to people being homosexual but I don't think they should have children?

SASHA SEMENOVA: I would say that it's not up to anyone else to decide whether a person should have children or not, because sexual orientation does not influence any other qualities of a person.

MAISIE COHEN: What have been some of the biggest challenges for you being in a same-sex relationship with a child in Russia?

SASHA SEMENOVA: This is the feeling that you are never safe. I think that every person who have children, they want to be good parents. As many people, I'm trying to do best for my son, and I'm trying to give him love and care and support and do the homework with him, but I am constantly living with a feeling that no matter how hard I try, I am not good enough just because I'm not heterosexual.

Any person, it can be a teacher or a doctor or just a passerby in the street, can come up to me and say that I have no right to take care of the child because of my homosexuality. It's a constant pressure of people either, like, openly or silently asking you questions - do you really have the right to be the mother?

And when you're feeling this pressure every day for several months and several years, finally at some point when you are weak and tired and stressed, you start to ask these questions to yourself. Like was it really a good choice to have children here in this country?

MAISIE COHEN: Lea Kirgetova is the author of two successful novels about same-sex relationships. She was curious how her 13-year-old daughter Dasha felt about her relationships with women.

She asked Dasha about it in a web chat, which was later published online.

(Sound of keyboard typing)

(Extract from a web chat)

LEA KIRGETOVA: Would you prefer it if we had a more traditional family?

DASHA: No, I like it how it is now. I guess I've gotten used to it.

LEA KIRGETOVA: Does the word "lesbian" worry you?

DASHA: No. I don't hear it much. I don't talk about it to anybody.

LEA KIRGETOVA: Did it ever occur to you, looking at my life, that you might imitate me and have the same type of relationships later in your life?

DASHA: Yeah I've thought about it, but it doesn't scare me. If it happens then it happens, if it doesn't happen then that's fine too.

When I was younger you used to tell me there are some girls with the souls of boys, and there are boys with the souls of girls. You put it in a simple, clever way, and the idea you were in a relationship with a girl wasn't too weird.

(End of extract)

MAISIE COHEN: Lea says her books have been banned, and during a recital of her work in a lesbian club, a group smashed up the venue and assaulted the girls who were reading.

She says if the law depriving gay parents of their rights was adopted, she'd have no choice but to seek political asylum in another country.


Apart from agitating for political change, shifting social attitudes towards homosexuality is a major goal among activist groups.

(Music, woman singing in Russian)

Polina says creative art forms like music, literature and filmmaking are some of the most effective tools at their disposal.

POLINA: Yes, yes especially in Russia. Political activism doesn't have that much place in Russia in the strict sense of the word. We are not oriented towards policy change as much as we are oriented towards changing hearts and minds of people.

(Woman singing in Russian)

MAISIE COHEN: Queerfest in St Petersburg is Russia's largest LGBT focused arts festival. This year's event marked 20 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the country.

POLINA: It's akin to pride festivals of the West. I think it has the same mission. It just doesn't have the street march. We always try to have a concert at the end of the festival and invite a well-known star, and this person would perform and speak from stage about the importance of tolerance. This year it was Alexander Bard.

ALEXANDER BARD: In a modern country it's absolutely necessary to tolerate people that are different from yourself.

The right to love another human being is a human right. It's got nothing to do with homosexual propaganda, it's a human right. And don't show this to anybody who's below 18 years old in Russia, it's illegal.


KSENIIA KHRABRYKH: My name is Kseniia Khrabrykh. I am young filmmaker, documentary filmmaker.

MAISIE COHEN: Kseniia is one young artist using her creative talents to document and analyse the struggle of LGBT Russians, both past and present.

She's working on a documentary that follows the lives of three generations of Russian lesbians.

KSENIIA KHRABRYKH: Oh, it look like detective story. If we discuss '90s, there was little information about sexual identity, about gender identity, about women's sexuality, but it was more democratic time. Okay, with social chaos, but also with social freedom. Seventies, it's time about hidden stories, it's also time when women's sexuality, okay, we speak about men's sexuality in '70s.

MAISIE COHEN: Over the last two years, Kseniia's shot over 100 hours of footage, documenting arts events, gay parties and parliament hearings, street rallies and the everyday life of the community.

MAISIE COHEN: Is art a form of activism for you?

KSENIIA KHRABRYKH: For me it's a really interesting question. When for example an artist try to create art object, he or she try to create a message, create idea. Really look like activism, especially when you work with difficult issues. Both of them want to change the world.

MAISIE COHEN: Kseniia hopes her art practice can go some way to repatriating the lost and long hidden histories of homosexuality in Russia.

KSENIIA KHRABRYKH: We need to understand the history. We need to collect the evidence. I am not great fighter but I am an artist and I want to use my art opportunities for this.

MAISIE COHEN: After a year of major disappointments and small triumphs in the struggle for equality in Russia, opinion is divided on what the years ahead will bring.

But a sense of positivity and hope remain.

Sasha Semenova says the world will be watching Russia keenly in 2014.

SASHA SEMENOVA: There will be an important year for Russia, because in 2014, Khodorkovsky will be released, after 10 years of imprisonment and Pussy Riot will be free, and this Sochi Olympics and after Sochi Olympics period will be very important one for both the people and for the government.

MAISIE COHEN: Andre Petranin.

ANDRE PETRANIN: In our country, never knows what to expect. I hope that there will be better changes in the level of government and law and also some changes in people's heads. But I don't know.

MAISIE COHEN: Susannah Garden.

SUSANNAH GARDEN: Countries have radically different mentalities, they have radically different histories. You can't really snap your fingers and hope that every country in the world is suddenly going to operate exactly like a Western country does.

People's attitudes are sort of starting to change. But my main question is whether this will kind of reach the rest of the country or whether we'll get this even more marked difference between the big cities and the smaller areas.


POLINA: Sometimes you feel nothing is changing and you are up against a solid wall and then all of a sudden, a year, two, five passes and things suddenly change because some critical mass has been reached.

MAISIE COHEN: And Igor Iasine believes internal resistance in Russia can set an example to other countries that are considering adopting similar laws.

IGOR IASINE: For example in Armenia they already stepped back I think because they saw all this campaign around homophobic law in Russia and internationally. Our struggle in Russia is important not just for LGBT in Russia, but also it's important to stop this homophobic campaign from spreading in different, other countries.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: That report from Maisie Cohen and you've been listening to a Radio Current Affairs documentary.