It Takes a Village

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State Duma drafting law that would prohibit the promotion of childlessness

The State Duma is drafting a law that would prohibit the “promotion of childlessness,” according to an RIA Novosti interview with Irina Filatova, a member of the Duma’s cross-party working group on the defense of traditional values. The MP emphasized that the draft law does not touch on the personal beliefs of individuals, explaining that it specifically targets destructive propaganda in the information space. In the autumn of 2022, lawmakers in Bashkortostan introduced a similar draft law. The bill’s author described the consciously childless lifestyle as a “foreign ideology” and accused its supporters of causing population decline. They argued that it degraded public institutions and eroded traditional values. At the time, the authorities had decided to investigate why, despite financial subsidies and campaigns to prohibit the “propagation of the childfree ideology,” Russians were unwilling to have children.

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Russians will be taught to resist western influence beginning in kindergarten

The Federation Council’s committee on the defense of state sovereignty held a hearing on countering interference in Russia’s internal affairs “through youth policy.” The senators [sic] came to a unanimous decision about the need to give the younger generation a “vaccination” against foreign influence from an early age. Alexei Chesnakov, the head of the research council at the Center for the Political Climate, proposed creating a “registry of negative phenomena” and incorporating sovereignty protection into “children’s political education programs.”

Source: Moscow Times Russian Service, daily newsletter, 12 December 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader