LETTER FROM MOSCOW
Are you one of those who write “professor” more willingly than ” teacher “ ? Do you say “farmer” rather than” farmer “, without even thinking about it… You are on a dangerous slope, which leads straight to extremism and, from there, to prison. The High School of Economics, one of the main universities in Moscow, on Tuesday January 23, banned its students from using any feminized noun in their written communications.
This caution is one of the many consequences of the Russian Supreme Court’s decision to classify as “extremist” a hypothetical international LGBT civil movement ». This judgment, which dates back to November 30, 2023, left jurists perplexed, struggling to know what structure the Court could be referring to, and what its motivations could be.
Now the decision, which until then remained secret, has just been published, on the occasion of the first prosecutions for “extremism” launched in the Saratov region, against a young woman accused of having published a rainbow flag -ciel on Instagram, a month before the Court’s decision. Obtained by the defendant’s lawyers, this 19 page text was then published by a local site in Saratov before being more widely taken up. Although full of borrowings from Wikipedia, it offers a rich insight into the worldview of the hierarchs of the Russian regime.
For judge Oleg Nefedovwho signs this text, “the international LGBT movement” was born in the 1960s in the United States, both as “foreign policy instrument” and like “means of limiting birth rates and harming traditional family values”. This movement, described as“ideology of destruction”would then have established itself in Russia in 1984. If this dating is not explained, the Court is very precise on the extent of this presence: in 2024, according to it, the “LGBT movement” is active “in sixty regions” of the Russian Federation.
“A threat to the country’s demographics”
“The supporters of the movement have common characteristicsstill writes the Court, in a style which smacks of the anthropology of the end of the 19th centurye century. They share certain customs and traditions (for example gay prides), a way of life (notably in the particular choice of their sexual partners), specific interests and a specific language (the use of feminized nouns, such as leader , director or author). »
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