June 01, 2023

Russia To Ban Gender Reassignment?

The Duma has drafted a law forbidding gender transition in Russia. The legislation focuses on prohibiting gender-affirming surgery but also bans gender changes in official documents, such as passports. This action is just the latest state-sponsored anti-LGBT action.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, anti-LGBT laws were loosened, but then the course reversed when Vladimi Putin became president in 2000. According to journalist Masha Gessen, who is non-binary, the Kremlin's goal has been "to establish Russia as 'the "family values capital' of the world." Laws were passed to take kids away from non-straight and transgender parents, label LGBT Russians as "foreign agents," and ban "LGBT propaganda." As well, homophobic groups have threatened and murdered activists, including advocate Yelena Grigorieva.

In 1997, Russian law allowed citizens to change their gender on national documents. In 2020, however, a law was proposed that reverted the stated sex of transgender people in their birth certificates to the one they were assigned at birth, but it did not pass. Today, to access gender-affirming care such as surgeries or hormone therapy, Russians must obtain a certificate from a doctor of "transsexualism." This word is both incorrect and stigmatizing in English and Russian.

Access to gender-affirming care is vital since, according to the Sage Neuroscience Center, it lowers the risk of suicide by 75 percent and increases an individual's overall quality of life.

Tags: health duma social issues human rights lgbt

May 26, 2023

Dance Floor Dissent

A video of people singing pro-Ukraine lyrics prompted government intervention.

May 24, 2023

FSB To Seize Passports

The State Duma is going to give the FSB the right to take away passports at the border.

April 22, 2023

Violence Comes Home, Too

A man from Nizhny Novgorod fought in Ukraine. When he returned to Russia, he killed his wife.

August 30, 2022

Homophobia Codified

The Russian state is preparing to pass new laws banning "gay propaganda" after a recent book led to public outrage.

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Some of our Books

May 01, 2013

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.

Fiction

January 09, 2017

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.

History War Nonfiction

June 01, 2021

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.

Fiction

November 01, 2010

Frogs Who Begged...

This edition of 62 of Krylov’s tales presents them side-by-side in English and Russian. The wonderfully lyrical translations are accompanied by original, whimsical color illustrations by Katya Korobkina.

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How Russia Got That Way

A fast-paced crash course in Russian history, from Norsemen to Navalny, that explores the ways the Kremlin uses history to achieve its ends.

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A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.

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July 01, 2014

Fearful Majesty

This acclaimed biography of one of Russia’s most important and tyrannical rulers is not only a rich, readable biography, it is also surprisingly timely, revealing how many of the issues Russia faces today have their roots in Ivan’s reign.

Nonfiction

July 01, 2015

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...

Literature Fiction

October 15, 2015

Red Star Tales: A Century of Russian and Soviet Science Fiction

For over 100 years, most of the science fiction produced by the world’s largest country has been beyond the reach of Western readers. This new collection changes that, bringing a large body of influential works into the English orbit.

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June 01, 2016

Driving Down Russia's Spine

The story of the epic Spine of Russia trip, intertwining fascinating subject profiles with digressions into historical and cultural themes relevant to understanding modern Russia.