Weaponizing The Family Unit
A March 8th reflection on how the Kremlin is militarizing women’s bodies and social reproduction to address a demographic crisis.
Editor’s Note:
Hello there! It’s Aron, DOXA’s weekly English newsletter editor, here to bring you all things Russian—in English.
Today is International Women’s Day—a day when, across Russia and much of the post-Soviet world, men rush to florists to buy bouquets for their mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives. The holiday began in the early 20th century as a radical socialist call for women’s rights, workers’ solidarity, and suffrage. But as today’s newsletter contributor, exiled Russian feminist scholar Sasha Talaver, argues, it was long ago repackaged into a state-sanctioned ritual that celebrates women not as political actors but as mothers and caretakers, reinforcing traditional gender roles under the guise of adoration.
The holiday is so deeply ingrained in Soviet and post-Soviet culture that even my father, who emigrated from the USSR to the U.S., still dutifully buys flowers for my mother and grandmother every March 8—halfway across the world in California.
But sometimes, holidays—especially those co-opted by the state in times of war and repression—demand somber reflection. Marking this day with a stark and unsparing piece, Talaver examines how the Russian state has fused militarization with demographic policy, weaponizing reproduction—turning not just soldiers but families, women’s bodies, and even schoolchildren into instruments of its imperial ambitions.
On February 8, 2024, DOXA was added to Russia’s list of “undesirable organizations.”If you are in Russia or plan to travel there, you are prohibited from sharing our materials on social media, citing them, or reposting excerpts.
By Sasha Talaver
In Russia, March 8 is a national holiday—a holiday I disliked growing up.
International Women’s Day began as a socialist holiday celebrating women’s rights and suffrage. In 1965, the Soviet state made it a official, citing its role in the "building of communism" and honoring women's contributions to the defeat of fascism in the Second World War.
But in practice, it has long been less about equality and more about aesthetics. As a teenage goth, I resented the way the holiday was framed: a day to celebrate women as symbols of beauty and spring renewal. I certainly did not embody such archetypes.
As I grew older, my peers and I reclaimed the holiday, organizing feminist festivals, events, and demonstrations. Even as Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism and conservative forces tightened their grip on the country, those were hopeful times—we believed that if we organized well enough, we could still change things.
Fast forward to 2025. This is the darkest March 8 of my lifetime. And it’s not just the familiar frustration of “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit.” It’s something worse—I can’t even find the words for what I should be protesting now.
Patriarchy, militarism, imperialism, autocracy, violence. Sure—and then what? I feel like a hollowed-out squat in Berlin, the city where I now live in exile. Antifascist logos scrawled across my walls, a biting mural on my facade declaring: Kein Gott, kein Staat, kein Patriarchat—No God, no state, no patriarchy. Standing at a crossroads in Friedrichshain, defiant, inspiring. I wish I were that building.
But I’m a feminist from Russia. We know a lot about so-called “traditional values.”
The Kremlin has long styled itself as a global champion of moral conservatism, portraying Russia as a refuge for those who reject Western liberalism. Since the 1990s, Russian clerics, oligarchs, and political actors have worked to pitch Russia as “a stronghold of traditional values” to to both domestic and international audiences, and in the past decade, they have reached some success.
Starting in 2012, when Putin began his third term and the UN Human Rights Council adopted Russia’s draft resolution, “Encouraging Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms Through a Deeper Understanding of Traditional Values,” questions of sexuality took on a central role in the national security agenda. This rhetoric served as justification for both domestic repression and Russia’s broader moral crusade on the international stage. Russian oligarchs have long funded numerous far-right groups, and more recently, we have seen the export of Russia’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws to neighboring countries like Hungary, Bulgaria, and Georgia.
Within Russia, legislation surrounding women’s rights and sexuality has emerged as one of the few arenas where politicians can shape their public personas. By positioning themselves as defenders of “traditional values” and advocating for the repression of women’s bodies, they can score points with conservative constituencies. Prohibition costs nothing—unlike investment in social provisions.
This conservative turn has created political opportunities for new actors, such as the pro-life group Women for Life, which operates across the country to push anti-abortion policies funded by presidential grants. The group proudly details on its website that it delivers packages of milk and oats to what the government considers a demographic goal: families with many children. Many of these families, however, live below the poverty line.
As it stands, these policies have already severely restricted women’s rights in Russia: gender-affirming surgeries and any expression of non-heterosexual sexuality are strictly prohibited; access to abortion is increasingly limited; and even discussing the challenges of motherhood can result in hefty fines.
Despite immense pressure and the constant threat of repression., the feminist movement in Russia and in exile remains resilient, continually inventing new forms of activism and organizing. The Feminist Anti-War Resistance—a movement I belong to, now labeled “undesirable” in Russia—is one example.
In recent years, women have played an increasingly prominent role in Russian civil society and the opposition. Politician Ekaterina Duntsova, branded a “foreign agent” in Russia, attempted to run in the 2024 presidential election, building her own political party and gaining relative popularity before the state barred her candidacy.
Exiled human rights lawyer Anastasia Burakova, also a “foreign agent,” founded the NGO Kovcheg to support anti-war Russian exiles, providing shelter and psychological aid. Wives of mobilized soldiers have organized movements to prevent their husbands from being sent to the frontlines. After Alexei Navalny’s death in prison in 2023, his widow, Yulia, assumed a leadership role in the Russian opposition.
According to Memorial, a storied human rights organization, roughly 1,000 Russian women are behind bars as political prisoners.
If only Russia were like its Western counterparts—countries where right-wingers still have elections to lose, would-be autocrats face courts and other branches of government that can restrain them, and neighboring countries can push back against damaging foreign policies with economic force. In the West, street mobilization is still possible, where peaceful protesters are more or less immune to extreme police brutality, imprisonment, and torture. That is not the case in my former homeland.
The similarities between the Kremlin and the White House’s rhetoric—particularly their shared emphasis on promoting family values and stigmatizing sexual minorities—should not mislead us. Beneath this surface similarity, Putin’s policies aim to fundamentally transform reproduction and gender roles through militarization.
As I previously wrote in an article for Jacobin, Russia’s war in Ukraine and the ongoing militarization of reproductive efforts paradoxically aim to address the country’s demographic crisis. Death, displacement, and economic instability exacerbate demographic crises, yet the Russian government has framed its invasion of Ukraine as a demographic gain.
Through forced passportization in occupied Ukrainian territories, the Kremlin claims to have integrated millions of new “citizens.” Russian officials boast exaggerated figures, suggesting that over 5.3 million Ukrainians, including 738,000 children, have been “welcomed” into Russia. This strategy follows a pattern of imperialist accumulation by dispossession. By forcibly relocating Ukrainians, Russia expropriates not just their land and labor, but also the reproductive labor that sustains future generations.
Using the state of exception—a concept originally articulated by philosopher Carl Schmitt, who went on to become a member of the Nazi Party, in which a government suspends normal legal frameworks under the pretext of an emergency—the Kremlin promotes a new social contract that criminalizes non-heteronormative sexuality and militarizes social reproduction. The most striking example of this is the school system. Each week begins with the raising of the Russian flag and the singing of the national anthem at school gatherings, followed by a class on patriotic education. While some students, parents, and, notably, teachers resist this routine, their actions remain largely hidden from public view.
State schools are now required to register up to 90 percent of their students on a new platform for the military-patriotic game Zarnitsa 2.0, launched in 2022 as part of the youth movement Dvizhenie Pervykh (Movement of the First). School visits by soldiers—who regale students with stories from the frontlines— have become routine. Sending packages and letters to soldiers has similarly become commonplace.
The war is inescapable within Russian schools, but what will this entrenchment of militarism do to the way these children view the world as they grow older?
The payment granted to a Russian male for signing a contract with the Ministry of Defense, along with compensation in the event of injury or death, exceeds the maternal capital payment by at least twice. Volunteer soldiers also benefit from discounted mortgage programs, credit holidays, and loan forgiveness in case of death. Yet we know very little about the demographics of those fighting on Russia’s side: How many of them have families? How many people are now dependent on the possibility of killing Ukrainians or being injured—or even killed—on the battlefield?
We know little about the microeconomics of this militarization. A report published by the Public Sociology Lab, an independent research group, sheds light on women who are attempting to resist the forced conscription of their loved ones. Based on 25 interviews with women who sought assistance from NGOs defending soldiers' rights in Russia, the report underscores that, for these women, financial incentives and payments were far less significant than the lives of those they held dear.
Since the full-scale invasion began, the state has elevated the mothers and wives of soldiers as the primary recipients of praise on March 8. In a bizarre and cruel twist, the ruling party recently gifted meat grinders to the mothers of the fallen.
Сertain incentives for joining the army suggest that, in fact, the currency of this militarization is the future of the family. For instance, the children of veterans, as well as the veterans themselves, are granted special access to university admissions, with a quota that accounts for up to 10 percent of all state-funded places. I have heard stories of children proudly proclaiming at school that they no longer need to worry about their final exams because their father is on the frontlines.
One can only imagine the relief such assurances must bring—and how many teenagers, secretly resenting their parents, might quietly wish that their father, too, would make the same sacrifice, trading his life for their brighter future. This is particularly poignant given that, according to official data, approximately 30 percent of all families in Russia are headed by single mothers, and fathers are notorious for failing to pay child support. It is telling, then, that an internet search for “how to get alimony from a participant in the special military operation [the Kremlin’s euphemism for the war in Ukraine]” ranks among the top queries on the topic of child support.
In contrast to the findings of the Public Sociology Lab, I can offer anecdotal evidence drawn from the observations of friends still in Russia.
Take the story of a man who had been slowly drinking himself to death while working as a security guard. Divorced and abandoned, he received a conscription notice and decided to head to the frontlines. Upon returning home for a brief leave, he brought with him significant savings. He remarried his ex-wife and worked diligently to conceive another child. He left his credit card with her, then returned to the frontlines, ready to die, secure in the belief that his family’s future would be more stable. How many of the 740,000 contract soldiers have wives, children, and relatives to support? And importantly, where they will work to provide as much in case of ceasefire?
I conclude with a troubling question about the prospects for demilitarizing Russian society, even in the event of a ceasefire. Observing the current situation, I am skeptical that the government would be willing to pursue such a path, especially given resistance from the Russian Orthodox Church, which has found new political opportunities in this crisis.
Once hopeful about Trump’s return, some Orthodox activists are now rejecting any negotiated peace, framing the war as a religious struggle and calling for the “de-schisming” of Ukraine. Russian propaganda has even echoed claims—amplified by Tucker Carlson in a recent interview—that the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine is an artificial creation of USAID and the U.S. State Department. This rhetoric not only tries to justify continued aggression but also deepens the militarization of Russian society under the guise of a spiritual mission.
We are now seeing European leaders push for militarization as a necessary response to Putin’s aggression. This shift is widely perceived as coming at the expense of social welfare, a trade-off that understandably would not sit well with the broader European left and feminist movement (but must increased defense always mean diminished social investment, and is this truly the only possible path?).
While remaining critical of Europe’s militarization, I hope our European comrades can shape their opposition in ways that do not undermine the anti-Putin resistance, either politically or on the ground.
We must seek realistic prospects for resisting the deeply militarized, imperialist, and authoritarian state that Putin has built—one that regularly initiates wars against its neighbors, intervenes in civil conflicts abroad for profit (i.e. Syria and Sudan), tortures and kills dissenters in its prisons. As much as I long for peace, I do not see it arriving anytime soon. What I do see, however, is the Kremlin’s relentless investment in militarization.
Sasha Talaver is a Ph.D. candidate (Gender Studies, CEU, Vienna), currently based in Berlin, currently works as a project manager and a researcher at CISR e.V.. She is one of the coordinators of the Feminist Anti-war Resistance, a Russian movement in exile.
 |
|