Over the past few years, the Russian government has embraced conservative values as a overarching ideology and a national project, in part due to the supposed erosion of the nation’s 'moral and cultural' values by 'western forces'. Key to this ‘conservative turn’ has been the (re)normalization of the heterosexual family as a site of societal organization and surveillance, against the backdrop of an insidious ‘queer threat’ to Russian children. Utilizing a Foucauldian biopolitical framework, I address how the demographic crisis dovetails with a new project of nation-building to legitimize governmental interventions into the sexual and familial lives of Russia’s citizens. Firstly, I investigate the tactics of power that ‘strengthen’ the patriarchal family unit, from the decriminalization of domestic violence to changes in adoption legislation. As well as techniques of normalization that construct specific models of motherhood, relationships, and family as legitimate and render others as deviant. Secondly, I analyze how the heteronormative family is deployed as a tool to solve various moral and demographic crises, including the HIV/AIDs epidemic and the declining birthrate. Finally, I examine the restrictions placed on queer visibility, which are rationalized as ‘protecting the family’ and in protecting the moral and spiritual health of the nation, while in practice have little to do with either.
