The media coverage and public reaction to two high-profile events illustrate how Soviet-period skepticism toward sexual assault has lingered. The first is the story of Aleksandra Ivannikova, who, following a common practice, flagged down a car in Moscow in 2003 to ask for a ride home in exchange for a small fee. According to Ivannikova, the driver, Sergei Bagdasaryan, agreed, but then stopped
the car in a secluded space, dropped his pants, and threatened rape. Ivannikova stabbed him in the thigh, hitting an artery, and then ran for help. By the time the police arrive, Bagdasaryan had died. In 2005 when Ivannikova’s case was going to trial, the case exploded onto the Russian blogs, newspapers, and then television media, becoming a frequent topic of conversation among Moscovites. After a two-year investigation by the prosecutor, Ivannikova received a suspended sentence of a conviction for a form of involuntary manslaughter and was levied a fine to be paid to Bagdasaryan’s parents.
Various groups rallied to her side. Some surrounded the court building with signs declaring, “Save the nursing mother.” Human rights groups wanted to draw attention to the lack of exoneration for self-defense in Russia. Nationalist and ultranationalists came to her defense, both because Bagdasaryan was an ethnic Armenian from Azerbaijan and because they wanted to use her to justify the right to bear arms. One radical group, the Movement against Illegal Immigration, despite the fact that Bagdasaryan was a legal resident, even raised money to give to Ivannikova’s husband to pay for court costs. For these groups, she was variously a deserving mother, a damsel in distress, and a nationalist hero. (For the few against her, she was, in the words of one brash Internet commentator, a “homicidal bitch from hell.”) The confluence of pressure led the city court to take the unusual step of canceling the verdict and later, the prosecutor to drop the charges.
This high-profile case shows how some cases of rape, even an attempted rape, continue to capture the Russian public, and how, in certain circumstances, people rally behind the (almost raped) victim (Johnson 2004). Ivannikova, ethnically Russian, married and, by the time of the trial, mothering a baby, was seen by most as a proper Russian woman. Her account of resistance and her attempt to get help were backed up by police and ambulance workers. Carrying on early post-Soviet practice, certain types of rape are seen as real, as in this case, especially those of the racially dominant women by disadvantaged males (because non-consent can be inferred). However, the case also illustrates how very little of the reaction reflected a new recognition of women’s rights. Such an understanding of rape would have meant serious consideration of the reason Ivannikova was carrying the kitchen knife, reportedly a rape when she was sixteen, and the state’s previous failure to assist her. According to an opinion piece in the Moscow News (June 15, 2005), the police had refused to accept her complaint of this earlier incident. The absence of the feminist discourse was exacerbated by the exclusion of Russian activists from the discussion.23
The second event is a sexual harassment case in the relatively poor southwestern Siberian region of Altai that brought national attention to the issue. In 2000, the local women’s crisis center, the Women’s Alliance in Barnaul, supported a group of women claiming a form of quid pro quo sexual harassment against director of the hospital, the primary place of employment in a small rural town. Jurists working at the center helped the women try various avenues, including appeals to local government and the labor unions and legal claims of moral harm, violation of the labor code, and sexual violence under the criminal article of sexual compulsion (Art. 133). After meeting much resistance, partially because the director was well-connected, the women, with the support of the Women’s Alliance, convinced the trade union to review the case and dismiss him from his directorship (but not from the hospital).
This was a remarkable success for the women and the women’s crisis center, so remarkable that a popular TV news magazine, Russkie gorki c Mikhailom Taratu — toi [Russian hills with Mikhail Taratuta], decided to do a segment on the case. The segment began with a shot of a roller coaster to illustrate the rise and falls in a person’s fate, and the women—what Americans might see as babushkas—were represented lined up on a bench against a wall. The segment framed the story as a “struggle against their boss. . . for all his sins” and suggested that the women were part of the (American and Western European) feminist movement. The events were construed as a “sex scandal” that these women had won, and the closing thought was that perhaps these were “just free [or loose] women.” Recalling this case, a 2004 article in the national newspaper Vedomosti summarized the response: “The public opinion was unanimous: the ladies paid too much attention to American feminists and used that pretext to exact revenge on the boss who was only trying to bring the hospital into order.”
Like rape, sexual harassment stories can titillate, but as in Ivannikova story, the Altai sexual harassment coverage reveals no support for feminist understandings of sexual assault. Here, feminism was discussed explicitly, but also derisively, as if it had been ridiculous for the women to complain and for officials to take their side (to the extent that they did). Neither the women nor the women’s crisis center was given a voice in the segment. The specific allegations (which were quite veiled even in the affidavits) were taboo. There was also no discussion of the power the hospital director wielded in this poor town where state institutions, such as the hospital, were practically the only place of employment.
All in all, despite international and local feminist attention, there appears to be little global feminist consciousness of sexual assault in Russia. Instead, the public discourse suggests that the attention provoked a backlash against global feminist ideas against sexual assault.