The Duma has decided to table a bill that proposed harsher penalties for disorderly conduct and new punishments for using foul language in the home. The fact that consideration of the bill has been postponed means that Russians don’t have to face imprisonment every time they stub a toe and let loose a swear word. But the bill represents the Kremlin’s project of institutionalizing a moral framework in Russian society, and it’s worth discussing regardless of whether it’s adopted.
The very potential of the law is significant because it would impact not only how Russians behave in public, but also limit permissible forms of interaction with families and friends, essentially demanding a degree of self-censorship in citizens’ personal as well as public lives. This is representative of the Kremlin’s use of a discourse of morality, a project that has both aimed to influence domestic opinion by emphasizing traditional values and limited permissible behaviors by targeting dissenting voices.
Expanding legislation into the realms of language and the home represents a new level of this strategy. The government will both emphasize and legislate its view of morality to deter the spread of ideas that may threaten its authority.
Watch your mouth or go to jail
Proposed by deputies from United Russia including Valentina Tereshkova, Dmitry Vyatkin, Alexander Sidyakin, and Alexander Chekalin, the bill proposes to tighten penalties for disorderly conduct—a broad classification that includes contempt, profanity, property damage, and harassment—by increasing the fine to 1,000-2,000 rubles (more for repeat offenders) and introducing up to 80 hours of community service or a 15-day jail term. Most controversially, the bill proposes removing the stipulation on public spaces from the existing law.
The bill raises many questions: first and foremost, how will it be enforced? Will entryway cameras pick up instances of swearing and send the footage to police stations? If you drop a plate and an expletive pops out, are you a criminal? More likely is that neighbors who overhear loud swearing in a nearby apartment report the disturbance to authorities.
Still, it is not so much the letter of the law as the intent behind it that is unnerving. In its proposed revision of the article on hooliganism in the Code of Administrative Offenses, the bill suggests increased penalties for “abusive harassment of citizens, foul language, or other intentional action that expresses clear disrespect for the individual or society or violates public order or the tranquility of citizens.”
Most alarming are the words “disrespect for the individual or society”; almost anything could be interpreted as such and punished accordingly. In this sense, the bill fits a recent trend in Russian lawmaking.
Crimes for scapegoats
In Russia, the role of the law is not just to prevent certain behaviors, but also to suggest a specific idea of right vs. wrong and produce public scapegoats to show the consequences of acting out of line. This tendency has increased in recent years, but is by no means new.
Perhaps the most famous such instance is the conviction of members of Pussy Riot for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” a ruling that elided their central message of criticizing President Putin.
Similarly, the Yarovaya Laws, introduced in July 2016, were adopted to target terrorism, but have been used to punish individuals for allegedly “extremist activities.” Those can include belonging to independent churches such as Jehovah’s Witnesses and even posting on social media, if the posts could be interpreted as inflammatory in anyway. That includes complaining about a problem, as a kindergarten teacher learned when she posted a video of child abuse to raise awareness and found herself convicted of “distributing child pornography.”
The result: Russians now know that certain ideas are no longer permissible in the public sphere. The anxiety of being caught or misinterpreted will make people think before they post: could their words be seen as extremism, incitement, or offense?
The initiative on foul language provides yet another legal avenue for prosecuting people whose speech or behavior is at odds with the state. Imagine the possibilities: an anti-corruption activist tweets about Medvedev’s alleged duck house and happens to drop in an obscenity; he’s guilty of indecency, even harassment. Or, in a private apartment, a group casually discusses planning a demonstration. If profanity is part of their vocabulary, why would they watch their mouths? Unless someone overhears and they’re charged with contempt or foul language. The possibilities are limitless.
Legislating morality
Laws that enforce state definitions of morality are one way of ensuring cooperation. They are also a method for persuading citizens that support for the state is support for their own beliefs.
The explanatory note accompanying the anti-profanity bill demonstrates that traditional Russian values and morals are at the core of the legal project:
“Disturbances of public order and the tranquility of citizens, which can occur in many forms, reduce law-abiding citizens’ quality of life; have a negative impact on moral relations and the education of minors; and create tense circumstances in citizens’ residences and places of lodging, causing them a sense of insecurity.”
The explicit references to morality, children’s upbringing, and lack of security capitalizes on beliefs held by many Russians, as well as prevalent fears about the future of society and lack of safety at home and on the street. It does not matter that most Russians are unlikely to read the actual memorandum. What is important is the advent of another piece of legislation to cement the Kremlin’s discourse of moral uprightness as one of the government’s key means of legitimization to domestic audiences.
It is striking that disorderly conduct in the home would include swearing, according to this new bill, but not domestic violence, punishments for which were reduced by a law adopted in February. The logic of the domestic violence law is that fighting between a couple is exactly that: between a couple. There is no rational explanation for the apparent contradiction in expanding disorderly conduct to residences while slashing protection for women injured by their partners at home. As long as neither partner uses profanities, apparently the “family values” of keeping women subordinate takes precedence over the “moral values” of disorderly conduct.
Orwell, are you listening?
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden referred to the Yarovaya laws as the “Big Brother laws” because of the heightened surveillance and censorship they entail. Banning the use of profanity would be yet another step in this Orwellian direction.
In categorizing swearing with more violent forms of disorderly conduct—sometimes but by no means always the case—the bill presents foul language as dangerous and immoral, and adds yet another taboo to Russian life, and one more nail in the coffin of freedom of expression in Russia.
Consideration of the bill has been postponed—though not for long, head of the recommending committee Pavel Krasheninnikov asserts. The bill may seem too outlandish to become a law, and public opinion against it may prevent its passage. Still, the proposal is an attempt to insert traditional and moral values into the home and the realm of language with the aim of influencing not only how citizens act, but also how they speak and even think. The resulting self-censorship would starkly diminish the range of conversations it is possible to have in Russia.
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