When I learned that the Russian State Duma had passed a bill banning what it calls the “propaganda of childfree ideology,” I immediately thought of my friend Anna in Moscow. Frank about her lack of maternal instincts, she would often joke that one of her biggest accomplishments to date was somehow managing to remain childless. According to the new legislation, this kind of talk could now result in a fine of up to 400,000 rubles, the equivalent of £3,200.
The news hardly comes as a surprise. This law’s twin brother, which bans LGBT “propaganda,” has been in place for over a decade. Since Russia invaded Ukraine again in 2022, a series of laws have made it punishable by years in prison to speak out against the war, or even to say the word “war.” The space in the private lives of Russian citizens where the government has not stuck its long nose has now shrunk to a frighteningly small size.
I called Anna to see what she thought of it all. Here in Paris I can laugh at how ridiculous this is, but she will now have to live with the consequences.
“Well, if someone wanted to snitch on me, I doubt they’d choose my jokes about not having kids,” she laughed.
She pointed out that between her participation in protests and her open anti-war stance, it was hardly her childfree lifestyle that was most likely to attract the authorities’ attention.
“If you want people to have children, how about giving them a bit more assurance about the future by, I don’t know, stopping the war?” she said.
With the cost of living now so high, many Russians can’t afford to have children. And those who can hesitate, knowing that their country considers half of the planet enemies. God forbid you have a son. Will he grow up only to be sent off to fight in yet another senseless war? And if you have a daughter and raise her right, who’s to say she won’t get arrested for saying something dangerously sensible?
Or your kids might even get you arrested. This was the case for the recently released Alexei Moskalev, who spent almost two years in a Russian penal colony after his teenage daughter drew an anti-war picture in her art class. “Honestly, I didn’t think I would make it out alive,” said Alexei in his first interview after his release.
It’s hard to imagine the feelings of parents whose children have ended up behind bars. Arseni Turbin was 16 when he was sentenced to five years for dropping leaflets criticising Vladimir Putin into his neighbours’ mailboxes. His mother said he lost 17kg in prison, where he was severely beaten by cellmates.
Egor Balazeikin was 17 when he was sentenced to six years in prison for throwing a Molotov cocktail that didn’t ignite. She fears that any further imprisonment would be a death sentence for her son, who suffers from an autoimmune disease. Balazeikin, whose uncle and best friend died after joining the Russian forces in Ukraine, was trying to set fire to a military recruitment office.
Meanwhile, one in three state-funded kindergartens in Russia forces Kremlin war propaganda on toddlers before they even learn to read and write. Children are made to sing military songs and march dressed in military attire. One especially zealous teacher recently made her class line up to spell the word “Putin” to wish the president a happy birthday.
“We feel trapped,” my friend Anna sighed. “Having kids in Russia is out of the question. And with all the restrictions introduced by the west – blocked bank cards and all that – so is moving away and starting a family abroad.”
Russian deputies have now suggested introducing a tax on childlessness. This time, even the president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov expressed some scepticism, noting that the Soviet experience showed that the tax was “unlikely to have had any impact on the demographic situation.”
Reading all this news every day, I can’t help but think that if you love children and happen to live in Russia, the kindest thing you could do would be not to have any.
Svetlana Lazareva is an independent multilingual journalist based in Paris
