When Violence Becomes “Tradition”: Conservative Narratives in Russian Domestic Violence Debates

Public debates over domestic violence legislation in Russia have become a key arena in which broader struggles over gender, family, and national identity unfold. While activists and human rights advocates have pushed for comprehensive legal protection against domestic abuse, conservative actors have framed such initiatives as threats to the traditional family and to Russia’s cultural sovereignty. This talk examines how domestic violence is reframed within these debates through narratives that present certain forms of family discipline and male authority as elements of cultural tradition.

Drawing on discourse analysis of parliamentary debates, media commentary, advocacy campaigns, and statements by religious and pro-family organizations, the presentation explores how conservative narratives reinterpret domestic violence through the language of “traditional values,” parental rights, and national identity. In these narratives, legal interventions against domestic violence are often portrayed as foreign imports linked to Western liberalism or “gender ideology,” while established gender hierarchies and practices of authority within the family are defended as historically rooted and culturally authentic.

The talk argues that these discursive strategies do more than oppose specific legal reforms: they contribute to the normalization and depoliticization of violence within the private sphere by embedding it within broader projects of cultural preservation and nationalist politics. By situating domestic violence debates within Russia’s contemporary conservative turn, the presentation highlights how appeals to tradition can function as powerful tools for redefining the boundaries between acceptable family authority and punishable violence.

The discussion contributes to ongoing scholarship on gender politics, law, and the politics of “traditional values” in Russia and the wider Eurasian region, showing how struggles over domestic violence legislation reveal deeper contests over gender order, state authority, and cultural identity.

Marianna Muravyeva is a Professor of Law at the University of Helsinki. Her research is interdisciplinary bringing together history, social sciences and law to examine long-term trends and patterns in social development with a special focus on normativity, gender and violence. Some of her most recent projects focus on human rights of women, conservative jurisprudence, violence against women, and family violence (violence against parents and domestic violence). Professor Muravyeva has published extensively, including recent books Foundations of Russian Law (Hart, 2023); Parricide and Violence against Parents: A Cross-Cultural View across the Past and Present (London, New York: Routledge, 2021); edited volumes Domestic Disturbances, Patriarchal Values: Violence, Family and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe(New York: Routledge, 2015); Women’s History in Russia: (Re)Establishing the Field (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014); Gender in Late medieval and Early Modern Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 2013).