Privatizing gender violence

As Soviet rule waned in the late 1980s, even this haphazard parafeminist approach to women and gender violence became suspect. Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost meant not just more freedom of speech, but less authority to intervene in people’s lives. His reforms also unintentionally eroded the legitimacy of com­munist institutions, including many that had helped women, eventually leading to the dissolution of the Soviet system in 1991. This last Soviet leader restructured the economy, allowing more market-like mechanisms and the establishment of cooperatives, and inadvertently strengthened the underground economy. Follow­ing the collapse, the new Russian leader Boris Yeltsin (1991—99) expanded these reforms. His more chaotic rule was followed by the presidency of Vladimir Putin, who claimed a mandate to reinstate order even at the expense of fledgling demo­cratic and market mechanisms. The following section, divided by issue, details the post-Soviet changes in law enforcement response and the legal thinking on gender violence as well as provides some background on the extent of the prob­lems. This is the postcommunist baseline.