Russia is one of the only postcommunist countries not to have passed some kind of national legislation against domestic violence in the last decade and a half. However, Russia has taken some meaningful small steps—most notably in the establishment of 100s of municipal crisis centers for women and children—which may end up being more effective than Russia’s draft legislation and some of the laws passed in other postcommunist countries. Based on long term research in Russia and part of an in-progress book, I begin by mapping and assessing the changes in the state response to domestic violence since 2000, as Russia became more authoritarian under Putin. Using the lenses of informal politics and feminist institutionalism, the paper shows how the prominence of male-dominated informal elite networks substituting for political parties and legislators makes “speaking in code”--casting domestic violence under family-centered programs designed to increase the birthrate—and using “secret handshakes” with patrons more effective than “naming the problem” and pursuing official laws. In these ways, the paper challenges the application of central assertions about feminist policymaking to hybrid regimes like Russia.
