By the 1990s, police were also ignoring cases of domestic violence (Human Rights Watch 1995; Human Rights Watch 1997; Johnson 2001). Entering the home and prosecuting domestic violence under the pretense of “hooliganism” became less justifiable, and more people lived in private (as in privately owned or noncommunal) apartments. Despite the fact that there were many criminal articles, such as those regarding assault, that would still apply/9 more than under Soviet rule, police were reluctant to act in response to domestic violence calls or to initiate a criminal inquiry. The 1995 Human Rights Watch report cited as typical cases in which women said that even though they had complained to the police for months or years, the police never spoke to the abuser, never wrote out a formal complaint, or never initiated a case. The Russian Association of Crisis Centers for Women reported that 70 percent of women calling hotlines claim that the police refused to help them. In one case, a woman repeatedly went to the police, who offered the suggestion to sleep with the former partner currently stalking her. Growing tired of her persistence, they offered her the phone number of a hit man.
Once again, this negligence was not simply a result of corruption or low morale of the police. The police and officials at the Ministry of Internal Affairs recognized and justified their failure to respond to woman battery, claiming that it is not their responsibility. Surprisingly, given the widespread neglect of the laws they were charged to enforce, police claimed that the Russian Constitution established a right to privacy that proscribes their involvement in domestic violence.20 In other cases, they justified their disregard for domestic violence using Soviet — period criminal procedure in new ways. They insisted that domestic violence, regardless of the severity, only constituted the type of crime that was privately prosecutable, a particular category of crime for which a victim must investigate and bring charges herself (Human Rights Watch 1995, 21; Human Rights 1997)^1 Judges, socialized in a system with virtually no urban private property, suddenly began to enforce abusive men’s rights to their apartment regardless of the consequences for their partners (Human Rights Watch 1997, 48).22
Although couched in the new (gender neutral) language of protecting rights, their response reflected the current legal thinking on domestic violence. While communist theorists had explained domestic violence as a problem of a bourgeois family, Gorbachev’s reforms signaled the need for new explanations. One important new theorist instead blamed the inclusion of women into the workforce, which both took them away from their homes and created financial independence (G. G. Moshak in Attwood 1997). Domestic violence was a result of this disruption of the “natural” order of things, leading husbands to see “physical punishment as morally acceptable.” Extending arguments about women’s “provocation,” the suggestion is that women could lessen their chances of experiencing violence if they returned to their “natural” roles as selfless mothers with restrained behaviors (not smoking or drinking) and gave in to their husbands. Another contemporary theorist, after interviewing men who had murdered their wives, argued that such violence was a result of men’s dissatisfaction with women’s emancipation (D. A. Shestakov in Attwood 1997, 107-108). He pointed to the general unhappiness of such families, found by sociologists, in which women are insufficiently feminine (by earning more money or being too authoritarian). This thinking meant that domestic violence, even femicide, was represented as “an extreme but not unjustified response to the erosion of traditional patriarchal gender roles.” Police, prosecutors, and judges made these theories concrete when they refused to intervene because, they asserted, women provoked their violence by a wide variety of behaviors such as earning too much money, wearing the wrong clothes, being unfaithful, taunting the abuser, nagging, and complaining about bad behavior. (When the batterer is drunk, almost anything can be considered provocation.)23
At the same time as the communist justifications for criminal justice system intervention were being eroded, the state welfare system that had provided at least some indirect assistance to women was collapsing. Problems dated back some two decades before Gorbachev, leading to the necessity of bribes for medical services, but by the early 1990s, the social service system was in chronic disrepair. Experts on domestic violence estimated that the social service system could meet only 7 percent of demand due to lack of funding and staff. Other communist institutions that helped shame perpetrators completely vanished, while the restrictive residential permit system remained (although the rich could now buy apartments).
In this context, the incidence of domestic violence has risen sharply. Official data from the 1990s reveal that men commit almost 90 percent of the most vicious interpersonal violence, what the Russians call grave harm, hooliganism, and murder (Johnson 2005). These data also show an overall rise, throughout the period, in male-perpetrated interpersonal violence, peaking in 1994—95. Since divorce rates have risen and families have been generally seen to be in crisis (Lyon 2003, ch. 2), this increase suggests that domestic violence in particular has probably increased. By the late 1990s, despite the prevalence of images of Russian mafia violence on Western media, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs admitted that some 80 percent of violent crimes take place in the home (e. g., U. S. Department of State 1997). Of the violent offenses between spouses conducted in the home, the ministry found that wives are the victims in four of five cases (Zabelina et al. 2007, 10).
There have also been several surveys conducted by activists and researchers that suggest the extent of the problem. According to a small 1996 survey in Moscow, one-fourth of wives and one-third of divorced women experienced physical abuse in their relationships; in the more rural regions of Pskov and Saratov the proportions were even higher (Vannoy et al. 1999). A larger survey conducted in 2001 and 2002 of men and women found that while the most extreme physical and sexual assaults were fairly rare (in 2—4% of relationships), respondents reported that emotionally abusive behaviors—such as cruel joking (36%) and scolding and rebuking (58%)—were common to many relationships (Zabelina 2002, 57). A followup survey conducted in 2006 suggests that these latter problems have increased (Zabelina et al. 2007, 81). Another survey found that half of the women respondents reported at least one incident of physical violence (e. g., striking, pushing, shaking, arm-twisting) from their present husbands (41% had been struck at least once, 26% more than once, 3% at least once a month; over 13% had been struck while pregnant, breastfeeding, sick, in distress, or in a similarly vulnerable state) (Gorshkova and Shurygina 2003). Some 57 percent of surveyed Russians estimate that women are the primary victims of violence in the family (36% thought children were and only 3% pointed to men; Zabelina et al. 2007, 30). In the Northern Caucuses, resistance to Russian rule and the post-Soviet Chechen wars have reinvigorated violent traditions, including bride abduction, forced marriages, blood feuds, and honor killings (Open Society Institute 2007, 17).
Since the mid 1990s, Russian activists, researchers, and more recently, even the government assert that some 12,000—15,000 women die every year from femicide in Russia (for example, see Zabelina 1995; Russian Federation 1999; Amnesty International 2005), but unfortunately, credible data is not available (Johnson 2005). As part of its negligence, the Russian government does not keep track of the relationship between the murdered and murder victim. As late as 2007, the state had not released any documented and detailed indicators of the extent of the problem (Open Society Institute 2007, 49). In general, violent mortality rates in Russia are three times the world average (Bobylev and Alexandrova 2005, 66).