Regime looks under the Russians’ blankets

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Lerato Khumalo

Russia is waging war, Vladimir Putin needs people and soldiers. Now even the beds of its citizens are not sacred to the regime, says Vladimir Kaminer.

Never since the beginning of the war has the number of casualties at the front been as high as in these summer months, independent observers report. Despite all the efforts of the Russian Central Bank, inflation cannot be stopped, and the new friends India and China are making an incredible amount of money because the West is boycotting Russia. This is causing additional price increases in Russia.

But it is not the war against Ukraine, the tense economic situation or inflation that concerns the Russian leadership, but rather the fight against so-called LGBT propaganda, the alleged protection of mothers and the birth rate. While parliament is constantly writing new drafts to ban abortions in Russia by law, the president is speaking out against such bans.

(Source: Frank May)

Vladimir Kaminer is a writer and columnist. He was born in Moscow in 1967 and has lived in Germany for more than 30 years. His best known works include “Russian disco“. His current book “Instructions for use for Neighbors” (with Martin Hyun) was released in March 2024.

“A woman must want to give birth,” says Putin. She should not only see it as a duty imposed by nature and society, but also as the meaning of life. The president likes to talk about the important role of the family, about traditional values ​​that should reveal to women the meaning of their existence: “We should not approach this issue with prohibitions, but motivate women materially and morally.” Only psychologists can provide a reasonable explanation for the president’s fixation on birth rates.

They say that it is a common phenomenon of human nature that single men in their seventies are generally very interested in having children, give advice and would like to show women how to do it properly. But because they cannot do this, they still try to express their advice and wishes in the form of threats, insults or – as in our case – in the form of laws and regulations. Now the Russian parliament has threatened not only LGBT propaganda but also the Childfree movement – i.e. voluntary childlessness – with punishment.

Club life in the big cities is also being closely monitored. Party-goers have to fear being visited by a gang of thugs, a veterans’ club or a special police unit that is looking out for the state of traditional values ​​in the club in question. Sometimes they all come together. The church is, of course, at the forefront of the campaign to increase the birth rate.

The Russian Patriarch had denounced pornography as the work of the devil. Who told him that such a thing existed? The seed of the people is being wasted! The Patriarch was so upset on television that he saw it as treason (which carries a penalty of up to twenty years in prison).

Toxic masculine, patriarchal and homophobic, always fixated on child production, the Russian state makes itself comfortable in the bedrooms of its disenfranchised and confused citizens and wants to look under every blanket, see every hand. Is the people’s sexual energy being wasted? But as well as the whip, there is also the carrot. In Russian talk shows, men in their seventies – some in uniforms, others with white beards – tell women when and how they should give birth, preferably at a very young age. To hell with studies.

According to the new decision to increase the birth rate, female students under 25 will receive 100,000 rubles when they have a child. The money is intended to make it easier for them to take a break from their studies. At the same time, the recruitment of mercenaries for the front entered a new phase, with the slogan now being used: “Bring your boyfriend to the recruiting office and collect 100,000 rubles.” This way, female students under 25 can, if they want, collect money in multiple ways: have a child with their boyfriend, take the boyfriend to the recruiting office and then, as a single mother, apply for Putin’s maternity allowance.

But seriously: Russia had a demographic problem even before Putin, men died on average much earlier than women and few children were born. Russia’s demographic change, shown graphically, resembles a broken Christmas tree that has been lying in a corner at the Christmas market for too long, with all its branches missing and the tree bare at the top and bottom.

The Second World War was followed by a few childless years, after which the Soviet Union had a few children, but not enough, and later in the 1990s, which are now known as the “Wild Nineties”, people were more concerned with surviving than having children. And now there is a shortage of soldiers. But even if the Russians drop everything and devote themselves to having children full-time, these children will not be fit for military service for another twenty years, if at all. By that time there will be no Putins left and the country will have other priorities than waging war with its neighbors.