LGBTQ rights in Russia

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  LGBTQ rights in Russia have traveled a long and turbulent arc, from a brief moment of legal tolerance after the October Revolution to a present in which the Supreme Court has designated "the international LGBT public movement" an extremist organization. By 2024, Russia ranked last out of 49 European countries surveyed for the status of LGBTQ rights, behind Turkey in 47th and Azerbaijan in 48th. How a country that was among the first in the world to decriminalize male same-sex relations arrived at that position is a story of repeated reversal, state-sponsored fear, and ordinary people paying an extraordinary price. It involves tsars, Stalinist decrees, a charismatic filmmaker imprisoned under a Soviet law, concentration camp allegations in Chechnya, and a propaganda statute that generated more enforcement cases in 2023 alone than in all of the previous nine years combined. The questions worth sitting with are these: what forces keep driving Russia back toward restriction, who has resisted them at personal cost, and what does daily life look like for LGBTQ people inside those borders today?

• 2. From Tsars to Stalin

  ›

  Tsar Peter the Great recorded the first legal prohibition on male homosexuality in Russia in 1716, confining the ban to sodomy in the military and stopping short of applying it to the general population. Tsar Nicholas I went further in 1832, banning sodomy for everyone and making it punishable by exile to Siberia for four to five years. Those laws held until the October Revolution changed the country's legal foundations almost overnight. The Bolsheviks rewrote two criminal codes, in 1922 and 1926, and each time left out any article prohibiting homosexual sex. For a brief period Russia stood as one of the first nations on earth to have removed criminal penalties for male same-sex relations, though homosexuals were still persecuted in practice and often lost their jobs or faced violence. That opening closed under Joseph Stalin. A decree signed in 1933 criminalized homosexuality again through a new provision, Article 154-a. The article punished sexual relations between men with three to five years' imprisonment and led immediately to raids and arrests. Female homosexuals were often sent to psychiatric institutions instead. The Soviet government framed the campaign as a strike against pedophiles, fascists, and the nobility. The criminal code revision of 1961 relocated the prohibition to Article 121 and set a maximum of five years for consensual sex between men. Western observers estimated that between 800 and 1,000 men were imprisoned per year under that article during the Soviet era. Among those imprisoned under Article 121 were the celebrated film director Sergei Paradjanov and the poet Gennady Trifonov.

• 3. A Brief Opening

  ›

  Following Stalin's death, attitudes inside the Soviet Union shifted somewhat, but Article 121 remained in force. The late 1980s brought a more significant change: under Mikhail Gorbachev's administration, the first gay organization in Russia came into existence. The Moscow Gay and Lesbian Alliance was headed by Yevgeniya Debryanskaya and Roman Kalinin, who went on to edit Tema, the first officially registered gay newspaper in the country. When the Soviet Union dissolved, President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree in 1992 repealing Article 121, and homosexual acts between consenting males were formally re-legalized in 1993. Women had never been criminalized under the law. One important caveat shadowed the repeal: those previously convicted under Article 121 received no official amnesty. Russia then adopted the International Classification of Diseases standard, ICD-10, in 1999, formally removing homosexuality from the national registry of recognized illnesses. Gay publications and theatrical productions appeared in this period. On the 16th of April 2008, Health Minister Tatyana Golikova issued an order lifting a standing ban on blood donation by men who have sex with men; it came into force on the 23rd of May. Human Rights First later connected this period of relative openness to the decriminalization itself, arguing that as LGBTQ people began to live more openly, homophobia and anti-gay hate crime remained serious problems even as formal legal persecution receded.

• 4. The Propaganda Law

  ›

  Federal laws passed on the 29th of June 2013 banned the distribution of what the Russian government called "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships" among minors. Yelena Mizulina, chair of the Duma's Committee on Family, Women, and Children and one of the statute's authors, told lawmakers that traditional sexual relations needed "special protection," citing a poll showing 88% public support. Critics argued that the law's broad wording amounted to a complete ban on the gay rights movement and any public expression of LGBTQ culture, making it effectively illegal to hold demonstrations in favor of gay rights, speak in defense of those rights, or state publicly that same-sex relationships are equal to heterosexual ones. The law subjects individual Russian citizens found guilty to fines of up to 5,000 rubles, public officials to fines of up to 50,000 rubles, and organizations or businesses to fines of up to 1 million rubles plus forced suspension of operations for up to 90 days. Foreigners can be detained for up to 15 days and deported. Enforcement started slowly after 2013, but by the late 2010s authorities were targeting not just activists but journalists, websites, and businesses. In one 2023 case, a woman was fined over $10,000 for sharing scenes from a film and music video depicting same-sex romance. In December 2022, President Putin signed an amendment extending the prohibition to all age groups. In 2023 alone there were more than 180 enforcement cases, a number greater than all cases from 2013 to 2022 combined, with fines totaling around 26 million rubles compared to 7 million rubles over the previous nine years. In February 2023, the Russian government introduced an AI program called Oculus to scan the internet for illegal content, including what it classified as LGBT propaganda.

• 5. Chechnya's Purges

  ›

  Allegations of a systematic anti-LGBTQ purge in the Chechen Republic were first reported on the 1st of April 2017 in Novaya Gazeta, a Russian-language opposition newspaper. Citing sources in the Chechen special services, the paper reported that since February 2017 over 100 men had been detained and tortured and at least three had died in extrajudicial killings. The paper called the wave of detentions a "prophylactic sweep." The journalist who first broke the story went into hiding, and calls for reprisals against other reporters followed. Human rights groups and eyewitnesses described what they called concentration camps; an unknown number of men died after being held there. Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov denied not only any persecution but the very existence of gay men in Chechnya, adding that such people would be killed by their own families. Russian and international activists scrambled to evacuate survivors but faced significant difficulty obtaining visas. A UN Human Rights Council panel of five expert advisors formally condemned the torture and killings on the 13th of April 2017. In December 2018, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe released a report confirming that persecution had taken place and had been ignored by authorities. On the 11th of January 2019, reports emerged of a second wave of detentions that had begun in December 2018; the Russian LGBT Network believed approximately 40 persons were detained and two killed. In March 2021, Reuters reported that the European Union imposed economic sanctions on two Chechen officials accused of involvement in the persecution.

• 6. Declared an Extremist Movement

  ›

  In November 2023, the Supreme Court of Russia issued a ruling declaring "the international LGBT movement" an extremist organization, following a Ministry of Justice lawsuit. The hearing was closed-door, with no defendants present. On the 22nd of March 2024, the movement and its structural units were formally added to Russia's unified list of terrorist and extremist organizations. Under Russian law, leading, participating in, financing, or repeatedly displaying the symbols of an extremist organization is a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment. Amnesty International described the ruling as "shameful and absurd." A group of Russian LGBTQ activists, including Russian LGBT Network founder Igor Kochetkov, formed an organization literally named "International LGBT Movement" specifically to argue for a defense in court. Since the ruling, gay club owners have been arrested for violating anti-extremist provisions of the criminal code; at least one died in custody as of April 2025. Karèn Shainyan, a prominent LGBTQ rights activist, was added to the extremist and terrorist list in July 2023, four months before the Ministry of Justice filed the corresponding lawsuit. He was eventually sentenced to five years in prison in absentia. Individuals have been fined or jailed for displaying the rainbow flag or even items decorated with its colors, including in one case a pair of earrings. Between March and May 2026, Russian city courts outlawed nine LGBTQ organizations as extremist under the ruling, among them Centre T, Coming Out, the Russian LGBT Network, and T9 NSK, and convicted their founders for leading an extremist organization.

• 7. Transgender Restrictions

  ›

  Sex reassignment surgeries were first attempted in Soviet Russia during the 1920s, then prohibited until the 1960s, when they resumed under endocrinologist Irina Golubeva, authorized by psychiatrist Aron Belkin, described as the strongest Soviet advocate for transgender people until his death in 2003. In 2018, the Ministry of Health developed a draft medical certificate allowing transgender people to confirm their gender identity for legal documents; the Ministry of Justice approved it on the 19th of January 2018. Under that framework, a certificate of gender change required a medical commission of a psychiatrist, a sexologist, and a medical psychologist, with no surgery or hormone therapy required. On the 31st of May 2023, a bill was introduced in the State Duma to ban gender-affirming surgery and legal gender recognition outright. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin cited statistics about gender reassignment surgeries in the United States, calling such trends "the path leading to the degradation of a nation." The bill passed all three required readings on the 19th of July, was unanimously approved by the upper house the same day, and was signed into law by President Putin on the 24th of July 2023. The legislation prevents doctors from offering gender-affirming healthcare or surgery to any person regardless of age, bars changes to gender markers on official documents, prohibits people with gender dysphoria from adopting children, and voids marriages between a trans individual and someone who shares their birth sex. In January 2024, Meduza reported that Russia's MVD had begun bringing transgender people in for questioning, with at least one subject told he would be forcibly detransitioned if his approval certificate was found invalid.

• 8. Hate Crimes and Public Opinion

  ›

  Russia does not officially record hate crimes against LGBTQ people, and the government does not designate sexual orientation or gender identity as aggravating factors in sentencing. Researchers estimated a total of 1,056 hate crimes committed against 853 individuals between 2010 and 2020, with 365 fatalities. The number of annual crimes tripled between 2010 and 2015, from 46 to 138, with elevated levels persisting through the decade. One of the most active hate groups, Occupy Pedophilia, was launched by Maxim Martsinkevich, known as Tesak, and at its peak was present in 40 regions of Russia. The group's ideology appeared in Tesak's 2012 book Restrukt, which argued that homosexuality "cannot be cured" and therefore needs to be exterminated. In the most notorious incidents, hate groups used dating apps to lure gay men and filmed the attacks, often sharing footage online. On the 20th of January 2013, six LGBTQ activists demonstrating in Voronezh were attacked by over 500 people; at least three activists, including women, were hospitalized. On the same day, the author of a Petersburg anti-gay law posted on social media that "Voronezh is great." Public opinion data tracks alongside the legal restrictions. A 2022 survey found that 74% of Russians said homosexuality should not be accepted by society, up from 60% in 2002. A May 2019 Levada Center survey had found that 47% of respondents agreed that gay and lesbian people should enjoy the same rights as other citizens, the highest level recorded since 2005, but a September 2021 survey showed that figure had fallen back to 33%. The legal and social trajectory since 2013 appears to have reinforced rather than softened those attitudes, with a 2019 poll finding that only 2% of respondents would show interest in communicating with a homosexual couple as a neighbor.