Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in Russia face severe challenges and discrimination not experienced by non-LGBTQ people. Although sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex is legal, homosexuality is disapproved of by much of the population, and same-sex couples and households headed by same-sex couples are ineligible for the legal protections available to opposite-sex couples. Russia provides no anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people and does not have a designation for hate crimes based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Transgender people are not allowed to change their legal gender, and gender-affirming care is banned. It is illegal to distribute materials that promote "non-traditional" sexual relationships or make minors interested in gender transition, and the "international LGBT public movement" has been designated as an extremist group.
In December 1917, after the October Revolution, the Russian Soviet Republic (later the Russian SFSR) decriminalised homosexuality.[Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. E.H. Carr. 1994] However, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin would later recriminalise sex between men in March 1934 with the addition of Article 154-a to the Soviet Criminal Code, which punished consensual sexual activity between men with three to five years' imprisonment. The revised criminal code of 1961 continued to classify sexual relations between men as a crime, relocating it to Article 121 and providing for only a maximum of five years' imprisonment for consensual sex. Western observers estimated that, during the Soviet era, between 800 and 1000 men were imprisoned per year under Article 121. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, homosexual acts between consenting males were re-legalised in 1993 (they had not been criminalised for women), removing Article 121 from the RSFSR Penal Code.
Russia has long held strongly conservative views regarding homosexuality, and anti-LGBTQ sentiment and policies intensified under president Vladimir Putin. In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights fined Russia for discriminating against the LGBTQ community, after local governments systemically refused to issue permits to pride parades. In 2013, Russia passed a law criminalising the distribution of "propaganda" promoting "non-traditional sexual relationships" among minors; the law was met with condemnation from international politicians, LGBT rights activists, and human rights activists, and has been credited with fuelling a significant increase in homophobic hate crimes in the country over the course of the decade. In a report issued on 13 April 2017, a panel of five expert advisors to the United Nations Human Rights Council condemned the wave of torture and killings of gay men in Chechnya.Sewell Chan, U.N. Experts Condemn Killing and Torture of Gay Men in Chechnya , New York Times (13 April 2017).End abuse and detention of gay men in Chechnya, UN human rights experts tell Russia , Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (April 13, 2017).
Amid the Russo-Ukrainian war, Russia intensified its anti-LGBTQ policies, particularly against transgender people: in 2022, the "propaganda" law was expanded to apply to anyone regardless of age group, and to also prohibit the distribution of materials that make minors interested in gender transitions. In 2023, Russian passed a bill gender-affirming care and legal gender changes, and in 2024 passed a law banning the adoption of Russian children by citizens or permanent residents of countries that allow gender transitions. In November 2023, the Supreme Court issued a ruling designating "the international LGBT public movement" as an extremist group, making it illegal to participate in LGBT activism; the ruling has led to the arrests of gay bar owners, as well as people who display symbols such as the rainbow flag, by Russian authorities on charges of promoting extremism.
In 2016, Russia was rated the second least LGBTQ-friendly nation in Europe by ILGA-Europe. In 2024, the status of LGBTQ rights in Russia was ranked the worst out of the 49 countries surveyed within Europe, followed by Turkey in 47th and Azerbaijan in 48th.
History
The first recorded legal bans on male homosexuality were passed in 1716 under Tsar Peter the Great as part of his efforts to Westernize and modernize the Russian Empire. This consisted of a ban on sodomy in the military, but he failed to extend these restrictions to the general population.Healey, Daniel (2004). «Russia». An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. In 1832, Tsar Nicholas I banned sodomy, which was punishable by exile to Siberia for four to five years.
Soviet Russia In the wake of the October Revolution, Russia underwent a sexual revolution and became one of the first countries to decriminalise male same-sex relations. The Bolsheviks rewrote the constitution and "produced two Criminal Codes – in 1922 and 1926 – and an article prohibiting homosexual sex was left off both." The new Communist Party government removed the old laws regarding sexual relations, effectively legalising homosexual intercourse within Russia, although it remained illegal in other territories of the Soviet Union, and homosexuals in Russia were still persecuted and often sacked from their jobs or faced violence.
Under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union recriminalised homosexuality in a decree signed in 1933. The new Article 154-a, later relocated to Article 121 in 1961, punished sexual relations between men with between three and five years' imprisonment and led to several raids and arrests. Female homosexuals were also often sent to mental institutions. The decree was part of a broader campaign against "deviant" behaviour and "Western degeneracy". Homosexuality was portrayed in society as an area of activity for pedophiles, fascists and nobility.
Following Stalin's death, there was a liberalisation of attitudes toward sexual issues in the Soviet Union, but homosexual acts remained illegal. Discrimination against LGBTQ individuals persisted in the Soviet era, and homosexuality was not officially declassified as a mental illness until 1999.
Soviet Article 121 was often commonly used to extend prison sentences and to control dissidents. Among those imprisoned were the well-known film director Sergei Paradjanov and the poet Gennady Trifonov. Under Mikhail Gorbachev's administration in the late 1980s, the first gay organisation came into being. The Moscow Gay & Lesbian Alliance was headed by Yevgeniya Debryanskaya and Roman Kalinin, who became the editor of the first officially registered gay newspaper, Tema.
Russian Federation The fall of the USSR accelerated the progress of the gay movement in Russia. Gay publications and plays appeared. In 1992, President Boris Yeltsin issued a decree repealing Article 121; however, those previously convicted under this article were not officially amnestied. In 1999, Russia adopted the ICD-10 standards, thereby removing homosexuality from the national registry of recognised diseases.
In 2004, Russian State Duma member introduced a bill to ban "homosexual propaganda", but the Prime Minister's office opposed the bill, noting that it would violate the Russian Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. There were attempts to ban "homosexual propaganda" in Russia in 2003, 2004, and 2006, each opposed by government. Human Rights First attributes these events to the decriminalisation of homosexuality and growing personal freedom in Russia, as a result of which LGBTQ people desired to live more openly; however, "homophobia and antigay hate crime remained serious problems".
In April 2007, LGBTQ activists sent a letter to the Ministry of Health, demanding that the ban on blood donation by homosexual men be lifted, calling such a ban "discriminatory and destructive not only for homosexuals", and that the Ministry of Health's order of 14 September 2001 be revised. On 16 April 2008, the Minister of Health Tatyana Golikova issued the order "On Amending the Order of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation of 14 September 2001 No. 364 "On Approval of the Procedure for Medical Examination of a Blood Donor and its Components," thereby lifting the ban on blood donation by men who have sex with men. The order was registered with the Ministry of Justice on 13 May 2008 and came into force on 23 May.
In 2007, Human Rights Watch and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association noted that there was an attack on the civil rights of LGBTQ people in Russia, a shrinking space for discussing homosexuality, censorship in the media, and persecution of dissidents.
According to Human Rights Watch, public statements by the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church show signs of inciting hatred towards LGBTQ people. In June 2011, the ROC presented to the Council of Europe a report by Russian lawyers, "On the Right to Critical Evaluation of Homosexuality and on Legal Restrictions on the Imposition of Homosexuality", the essence of which, according to the Moscow Helsinki Group, is an attack on LGBTQ rights using homophobic arguments.
In 2013, following the adoption of the federal law against "propaganda of homosexuality", attacks on LGBTQ events intensified. British human rights activist Peter Tatchell noted that there is a tendency for homophobic repression to escalate in Russia, including criminal liability for freedom of expression, a ban on adoption of children by foreign homosexual couples, and the designation of LGBTQ organisations that receive grants from abroad as "foreign agents". Human Rights First links the persecution of dissenters, including the persecution of LGBTQ citizens, to the response to the 2011–2013 Russian protests. In its opinion, Putin began to actively oppose LGBTQ rights in order to strengthen his influence within the country and distract attention from other problems.
In May 2019, ILGA-Europe placed Russia in 46th place among 49 European countries in terms of homophobia.
Current situation The age of consent currently stands at 16 since 2003, regardless of sexual orientation. Homosexuality was officially removed from the Russian list of mental illnesses in 1999 (after the endorsement of the World Health Organization's ICD-10 classifications). However, there is a movement within Russia to bring it back. The Russian government introduced new laws on 1 July 2023 to effectively reinstate the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness. Single persons living within Russia, regardless of their sexual orientation, can adopt children. Russian children can be adopted by a single person who lives in a foreign country provided that country neither recognise same-sex marriage nor gender transition. A couple can adopt children together, as a couple, only if they are a married heterosexual couple. The Russian constitution guarantees the right of peaceful association. Nevertheless, organs of authority in Russia refuse to register LGBTQ organisations, and pro-LGBTQ advocacy groups have been declared extremist organisations and therefore prohibited from operating within Russian territory.
Same-sex unions