Since rape and sexual harassment are regulated by criminal law in Russia, the post-Soviet revisions of the Russian criminal and the criminal procedure codes are the most likely location for reform.24 Expressing global feminist concern, Russian activists leveled two critiques of the rape laws in both the Soviet-period and draft codes.25 First, they argued that the law excluded what the activists identified as psychological coercion, such as threatening to discontinue economic support or threatening to hurt the victim’s children.26 Second, these activist leaders criticized the law’s lack of specificity about body parts or the act of penetration.27 Feminist activists were similarly critical of the law on sexual compulsion for its limited understanding of coercion, arguing that it did not cover the now commonplace situations in which women were promised better work conditions or salary if they complied with their boss’s demands for sexd8
Speaking these concerns to power was the Russian feminists’ goal of the 1995 conference on sexual harassment. The foreign funding and attention attracted some key policymakers and legal experts, but the resistance to their feminist understandings of gender violence was unmistakable. For example, in contrast to the activists’ call for a broader construction of sexual harassment, Aleksei Ignatov, a professor of criminal law and member of the advisory council for drafting the new criminal code, lectured that the understanding of sexual harassment in the Russian body of law is much narrower, not covering verbal jokes or even touching (Ignatov 1996, 45). Confused by the activists’ use of the term “sexual overtures”— which also refers to the criminal code article—he seemed baffled by any discussion of hostile-environment harassment. Ignatov also disagreed with the feminists on rape. In contrast to their aspiration to include psychological coercion, he authoritatively explained that, for rape, there must be “physical threats” (Ignatov 1996, 45). He said that rape is distinguishable from other forms of sexual violence because rape is “intercourse between the sexes, intended for reproduction, that can cause a woman to become pregnant. All of the rest are different ways to satisfy sexual needs, but they are not sexual intercourse. . . if it’s not sexual intercourse, that means it’s not rape” (Ignatov 1996). In other words, Ignatov took great pains to distinguish penile-vaginal rape from other forms of sexual violence because, for him, the possibility of getting pregnant was very significant, evoking historical concerns about paternity. Ignatov also understood rape as connected to a woman’s “morality” rather than human rights or other forms of violence. Resistance came even from those most likely to be the crisis center movement’s allies, for example, Liudmila Zavadskaia, a member of the Women of Russia faction and the chair of the parliamentary subcommittee on the rights of the individual within the committee charged with reforming the criminal-legal system. Even though she was an advocate for socioeconomic issues relating to women, at the conference she explained that she did not consider sexual harassment a women’s issue.
With these failures to persuade, it was not surprising that the new Russian criminal code, passed in 1996, reflected none of the feminist hopes. Although broadening the Soviet law on sexual compulsion, the revision moved it further away from being about quid pro quo sexual harassment.29 The new article (133), with no new language about power in the workplace, included other types of sexual assault and other types of coercion, and incorporated conditions other than workplace or material dependence.30 It also appears to be limited to supervisor — employee harassment, not coworkers, and excludes the giving of benefits in exchange for sexual favors (Naumov 1997, Art. 133, comments 6—7). This suggests that while the demand for sex with a threat of negative employment action is a crime, the demand for sex with a promise of positive employment action is not. Disregarding feminist claims that sexual harassment is about power, this commentary clarifies that intent is required and that the motive of this crime is “the satisfaction of sexual passion.” The revised article also decreased the punishment from imprisonment to fines. There were no meaningful changes to the rape law.31 The only unquestionably progressive reform of the sexual assault articles was the decriminalization of male homosexuality, a result of pressure from human rights and rule-of-law advocates who had focused their attention on this issue. Other changes reflected odd compromises between what lawmakers understood as progressive and unreformed attitudes about sex. For example, new laws criminalizing forced sodomy and “forced lesbianism” as well as reckless HIV transmission were left so ambiguous as to allow for the prosecution of individuals for homosexual acts (Essig 1999, 14).