The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

Russia is facing a serious challenge to its identity. This issue has aspects of both morality and foreign policy. We can see many EuroAtlantic countries rejecting their own roots, including Christian values, which form the foundation of Western civilization. They reject their own moral foundations as well as all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious, and even gender. They pursue policies that place large families on an equal footing with same-sex partnerships, and faith in god with satan worship. An excess of political correctness has led to the point that there is talk of registering political parties that promote pedophilia. In many European countries people are ashamed and frightened to talk about their religious affiliation. . . . And this is the model that is being aggressively forced onto the entire world. I am convinced that this is the road to degradation and primitivization, a deep

demographic and moral crisis.²²

Satan, pedophilia, American aggression, the death of the Christian civilization, and, of course, a demographic threat: it was all about the gays now.

The following September, it had been announced, the Kremlin and the Church together would host the World Congress of Families, the organization founded at the sociology department back in 1995. Its headquarters were in Illinois, and its meetings had been held in Europe, the United States, and Australia. In the United States, people who monitored far-right organizations perceived it as an American political export.²³ But Russians, with their money and the high stature afforded their cause by the state, were taking leadership roles in the organization,²⁴ which would now be coming home in high style. Congress sessions were slated to be held in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, inside the fortress walls, and a small distance away, at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the country's largest—where Pussy Riot had staged their "Punk Prayer" in 2012.²⁵

lyosha was in new york when the law passed. He and Ilya were on vacation together. They had been seeing each other for more than half a year. It was still the most companionable relationship Lyosha had ever had. Ilya was a bit immature, but he knew his limitations, and both of these traits made him a perfect weekend-and-holiday partner. That, the distance, and the splendor of New York kept Lyosha from spending too much time thinking about the passage of the law.

Teaching began again in September. Budget cuts had led to some changes in the department. When Lyosha was an undergraduate, all students had been required to take a set of core courses common to the given area of specialization in all Russian universities—this was called the "federal curriculum"—and at least one elective a semester, out of a small number on offer: the "regional curriculum." Now the regional curriculum had been cut down to two courses, and in September each student was asked to pick one. The course chosen by more than half the students would be the only one offered—an elective in the sense that there had been an election of sorts. All the students in a particular specialty would be required to take it that semester.

This was how Lyosha ended up with two groups of more than twenty students in his Gender Approaches in Politics course. He was teaching it twice a week, once to international relations majors and once to political science majors (he was also teaching a "federal" course, Political Processes in Contemporary Russia, which met twice a week). The political scientists were a joy, but some of the international relations students made it clear that they did not want to be there. One student rose and left the room every time the subject

of sex came up—as when Lyosha had them discuss The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, the classic feminist essay by the American Anne Koedt. Then there were two young men, both of them straight-A students, who always sat together and took turns standing up to object every time Lyosha made reference to the patriarchy.

"It has been proven historically that men are the stronger sex," one would say. "What you are saying now harms the institution of family."

Lyosha would calmly try to steer them back to the text under discussion.

"But those are Western studies that you are citing," the other would get up and say. "They are always trying to foist their values on us."

Lyosha had the class watch and write about The Times of Harvey Milk, a 1984 documentary about the openly gay San Francisco city supervisor who was assassinated by another legislator. One of the two young men in the class turned in a paper arguing that gays, not being real men, could not be politicians. The paper dripped with homophobia, but unlike the comments the same student left on the gender studies center's VK page, it contained no obscenities. Lyosha gave the student an A: within its framework, the paper was well argued.

later in the fall Lyosha got a text message from Darya.