Russia’s Feminist Movement, Driven Underground, Radicalizing, Activists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 13 – Putin has worked to suppress Russia’s feminist movement because of its opposition to his war in Ukraine and his imposition of “traditional” and often anti-woman values. Activists say he has succeeded in reducing their public protests but that they are finding new and effective ways to push their broadening agenda.

            Reporting on these trends, Leyla Latypova of The Moscow Times says that because so many Russian men are now absent having been sent to Ukraine, Russian women simultaneously recognize they must act on their own and that they must also work to influence those men still in Russia (themoscowtimes.com/2026/10/13/forced-underground-russias-feminists-find-new-ways-to-keep-working-a93962).

            Because of repression, Russia’s feminists are working privately and offline, thus remaining below the radar screen of Moscow’s siloviki, doing things like driving women who need abortions from places where such operations are banned to places where the procedure is still available.

            Activists say that feminists are also helping survivors of domestic and reproductive violence as well as refuges, migrants and homeless women, groups that they are now doing far more for than they did earlier because as one feminist put it, “people’s needs now aren’t about information but rather about money, medication and logistics.”

            Some Russian feminists have been radicalized to the point that they no longer want to have anything to do with men, but others see the current situation as one where they can gain allies with men who also have been harmed by the war in Ukraine and by other Putin regime policies.

            According to one activist, Dasha Yakovleva, in Russia today, “feminism offers a way to connect the immediate needs [of women and families] with bigger picture questions about the problems Russian society now faces,” including decolonization, a radical traditionalist agenda that seeks to throw all Russians back into the past, and radical income inequality.

            “For me,” she says, “feminism is a very good response at a time of multiple crises, including in the global context because of Russia’s efforts to export its version of traditionalism far beyond the borders of the country.”

Putin’s Maternal Capital Program has Failed to Boost the Birthrate in Russia, Two HSE Scholars Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 13 – Vladimir Putin’s effort to boost birthrates in Russia by making payments to women who give birth has lowered the age of those who do slightly but it has not increased the number of births per woman by a statistically significant amount, Pavel Kishenin and Angelina Atamenenko say.

            The two graduate students at the Higher School of Economics have presented their findings for the years 2007 to 2023 in a detailed 51-page paper published in the current issue of Demograficheskoye obozreniye (“The Effectiveness of Pronatalist Policy in Russia, 2007 to 2023” (in Russian), Demografcheskoye obozreniye 13(3) (2026): 29-80 at demreview.hse.ru/en/article/view/43132/33566).

            The two show that the maternal capital program has the effect over these 16 years of increasing the number of children by woman in Russia by 0.0288, a miniscule figure within the margin of error and one that will do little to raise the Russian fertility rate of 1.4 to the 2.1 figure needed just to maintain the population at its current levels.

            Despite scholarly research showing that the maternal capital program is not working, the Putin regime continues to believe it will and is continuing to raise subsidies to women who give birth rather than considering other options that might work. (On that pattern, see club-rf.ru/theme/741.)

            Kishenin and Atamanenko also point out that material capital programs, even those far better financed than Russia’s, have also failed to boost fertility rates, a warning that even if Putin continues to raise the amounts of money his government is offering, there is little hope that such a move will do much to increase birthrates.

KPRF Deputy Calls for ‘Burdens of War’ to Be Shared Equally by All Russians

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 13 – In contrast to World War II, when even the children of Stalin and the senior elite fought at the front, Putin has allowed those who are closest to him to avoid doing so and created whole classes of people who are treated better or worse than the average.

            Stalin’s approach was one of his most effective tools in generating support for his war; Putin’s  failure to proceed along the same line is a major reason why he hasn’t been able to achieve the same degree of support or mobilization because Russians now know all too well that some of them will pay far more than others.

            Now, Anatoly Lokot, a KPRF Duma deputy, has elevated this frustration and anger to a political level by pointedly argue that the government’s budget must be changed so that “the burdens of the war” will be spread far more evenly across the population (agents.media/kommunisty-v-gosdume-zayavili-o-neobhodimosti-rasprostranit-tyazhest-vojny-na-vseh/).

            He did not specify precisely how the burdens are not now shared equally, but it is widely recognized that poorer predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays and non-Russian republics have suffered far more casualties than Muscovites and those from wealthier Russian federal subjects.

             Raising the issue of unequal treatment in a Duma debate presents some serious problems for the Putin regime given widespread evidence that Russians are troubled by policies that produce inequality. KPRF voters will of course support the expression of such concerns, but they will not be the only ones. 

Since 1991, More than 20,000 Russian Cities, Towns and Villages have Lost Air Links to Regional Centers

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 13 – Having one of the lowest densities of highways and railways plier square kilometer of any country in the world, Russia is far more dependent on air travel to link communities together, to bring medical help, and to fight fires and other natural disasters, a reality that multiplies the losses when these links are disrupted or cancelled. (On that pattern, especially east of the Urals, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/sixty-percent-of-population-points-in.html. )

At the end of Soviet times, there were slightly more than 1500 airports; but since then, their number has fallen to 226, the victims of privatization, rising prices, and predatory realtors who have taken over the land on which the airports were located, Anatoly Zhurin of Svobodnaya Pressa says (svpressa.ru/economy/article/535881/).

            Despite Moscow’s promises that 75 of these will be modernized over the next five years, the prospects are that many of the smaller airports will close, given the absence of planes, passengers and flights. The result will be a tragedy: ever more Russians will be cut off from one another with little prospect that the situation will change for the better anytime soon.

            One sign pointing to that outcome, the Svobodnaya Pressa journalist says, is that some of the existing airports have been shuttered in the names of “repair” and to provide places where aircraft can be serviced rather than passengers served. If so, Russia may soon have lost 90 percent of the airports it had four decades ago.

            For background and more details about the disappearance of airports in Russia, see  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/05/civil-aviation-most-of-russia-relies-on.html,  windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/02/moscows-failure-to-subsidize-more-seats.html and .windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/05/moscow-closes-44-more-airports-in-north.html .

Passing of Printed Newspapers in Russia Makes Falsification of History Far Easier, Merkacheva Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 13 – Over the past two years alone, more than 5,000 printed newspapers have gone out of business, and in some regions, there is now not a little newspaper still coming out, Eva Merkacheva says. Many people aren’t concerned and believe that digital sources fully replace them; but those who think that way are wrong.

            There are four reasons why supporting the continued appearance of printed newspapers is important, the rights activist says. First of all, she says, newspapers and other printed materials are “the material witnesses of their times” (mk.ru/editions/daily/2026/10/13/v-nekotorykh-rossiyskikh-regionakh-polnostyu-ischezli-gazety-chem-eto-opasno.html).

            Second, Merkacheva continues, “digital information can be changed, replaced or deleted.” Doing the same things with paper originals “especially when newspapers were issued in large print runs,” and that provides “some insurance against the falsification of history at all times.”

            Third, “electronic archives depend on electricity, equipment,  programs and servers.” These can easily be compromised by “cyberattacks, accidents, wars and other catastrophes … Paper archives are also vulnerable, but when information is stored in different ways, the probability of its total loss is much lower.”

            And fourth, “to read an old newspaper, you don’t need a computer; but will we be able  to read all modern digital formats 200 years from now without special equipment and programs? Technology is constantly changing, so it is important to keep information in that form independent of technological development.”

            There is now a kind of underground in Russia that is trying to save as many newspaper print runs as possible so that people will have a chance to read newspapers from many places and long into the future. That is important work and deserves to be supported by all.

‘The Soviet Union Collapsed but Did Not End,’ Kulbaka Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 12 – In 1991, “the Soviet Union collapsed,” but the Soviet system “did not end” because while institutions were renamed, most of those working in them remained the same; and they not continued to act as they always had but passed on their approaches to the younger people who joined these institutions, Nikolay Kulbaka says.

            As a result, while many institutions were renamed and seemed to be something new, they in fact remained much of what they had been and still worse ensured that that would continue for another generation, the émigré Russian scholar says (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/totalitarizm-bez-ideologii-pochemu-sovetsky-sojuz-ruhnul-no-ne-zakonchilsja).

            The consequence of this was that the old system replicated itself in the new people who by the time they rose up the career ladders of their professions were far more like the old Soviet officials who had been in charge than the reformers they themselves were only a few years earlier.

            Only where entirely new institutions were created was there a chance for the reformers to remain reformers, but these institutions lost out to the much more numerous and powerful older institutions. They showed that Russians could in fact reform but only if those who had been Soviet in culture were removed from the scene or at least significantly reduced in number.

            Kulbaka says that there are good reasons to think that this process can be avoided in the future “when the window of institutional changes arises again.” Russians today know far more about the outside world than they did; and fewer of them will continue to defer to those who want to continue to live in an archaic system.

            He sums up: “People have already seen other institutions, worked in them, studied in them, created them - and created themselves in the process. If Rome is destroyed, the roads really for some time will continue to lead to where they led before. They can survive the state that built them, and people who are accustomed to considering it eternal.”

“But,” he says, “the roads themselves do not choose the new Rome and do not decide where to go now. They can be connected differently – if there are people and institutions which can agree on a direction.”

These observations make Kulbaka’s article extremely important, but his article is even more useful because he cites a variety of studies showing how the Soviet system continued to live after 1991 and made Putinism possible – and thus what needs to be done to ensure that system won’t continue. 

New Public Group Emerges in Russian Far East to Promote Democratization and Regional Identity

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 13 – A group of activists has formed the Far Eastern Territory public organization to promote democratization there along with a collective regional identity of a place often treated by others as a part of Siberia or simply a reserve of natural resources and people to serve Moscow and Russia west of the Urals.

            The group, announced by its organizers earlier this month, calls itself in letters to potential members “the Far Eastern Territory Interregional Public Organization for Promoting Interregional Communication, Cooperation and Civic Initiatives, according to one of its backers, Far Eastern political scientist Georgy Kulakov (region.expert/far-east-organization/).

            (On Kulakov’s own views about how recent developments in the Far East and in relations between Russia and China brought on by Putin’s war in Ukraine, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/russian-officials-openly-calling.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/07/moscows-colonial-approach-to-russian.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2021/06/strong-local-patriotism-may-become-even.html.)

            The new group is less than a political party – regional parties have long been illegal in the Russian Federation – but more than just a talk shop as it consists of people who oppose radical nationalism of all kinds and who support democracy, both needed, its organizers say, to prevent it from becoming “merely part of some ‘Parade of Sovereignties 2.0.’”

            How the group will develop remains to be seen, but even its announcement suggests that it may play an important role in deciding, in the words of Kulakov, whether the Far East will move “from being ‘not quite Russia’ to being ‘not Russia at all’” as the tectonic shifts sparked by Putin’s war in Ukraine and turn to the East play out.

            It certainly merits the closest possible attention.