102 Time March 15/March 22, 2021
in the media, including on state-run TV.
In the face of government resistance
during the pandemic, nonprofits have
stepped up. In June, ANNA extended
its hotline to operate 24/7 and set up
a chatbot for women who might not
be able to speak by phone; Nasiliu.net
also offers volunteers to accompany
women to police. Pisklakova-Parker
and Rivina worked with hotels and
volunteers who offered rooms in their
homes to take in women and children
and organized transport and food pack-
ages. “We basically took over everything
the state should have been doing,” says
Pisklakova- Parker.
Activists are also using social media
and digital campaigns to change Rus-
sian minds about domestic abuse.
Katulska, 39, says violence at home was
seen as normal when she was growing
up, shrugged off with the attitude of “if
he beats you, it means he loves you.”
Many Russians still hold that view. The
ad agency Room 485 launched an Insta-
gram campaign in 2020 with the hashtag
“if he beats you it doesn’t mean he loves
you” and is developing another Insta-
gram campaign to raise awareness on
how to deal with abuse in relationships.
Since 2018, Nasiliu.net volunteers
have created social media campaigns
featuring video clips of famous
Russian men saying it’s unacceptable
to hit women. Last year, more than
100 volunteers attended a Nasiliu.net
program that pairs volunteers with
victims who need someone to speak on
their behalf to lawyers and other third
parties. “The majority of people who
have been through domestic violence
are not ready to struggle for themselves,”
Rivina says. The 30-year-old has become
so well known for her activism that some
visitors to Nasiliu.net will speak only
with her.
Still, one of Rivina’s biggest chal-
lenges is convincing the government
that organizations like hers are not the
enemy. “We are the ones standing for
family values,” she says, “by trying to
make a home the safest place.” □The average number
of women killed by
a family member
worldwide each dayThe increase in
calls to the ANNA
hotline from
2019 to 2020The domestic-
violence
crisis in
NUMBERSopen letter to Putin asking him to block the law, claiming it was
the work of a “radical feminist ideology”; the church also said
it had an “antifamily” focus. The bill didn’t pass.
“If you don’t support conservative radical values, then you
basically don’t fit into any policy,” says Pisklakova-Parker,
who established ANNA in 1993 and created the nation’s first
domestic- violence help line. She says she has been the subject
of a smear campaign by ultraconservative groups that claim she
works for the U.S. government. The Kremlin has effectively cast
groups fighting domestic violence as “traitors” and requires
those that receive foreign funding and engage in “ political ac-
tivity” to declare themselves “foreign agents,” a derogatory
Soviet-era term for political dissidents. State funding for these
groups has been slashed: in 2020, Putin’s annual grants pro-
gram gave only $26,968 to organizations protecting victims of
domestic violence, an 88% drop from 2019, according to the
investigative news outlet OpenMedia. All but one of an esti-
mated dozen domestic- violence crisis centers and legal-aid or-
ganizations were denied funding for 2021.
Despite government hostility, public opinion appears
to be increasingly on the side of women. According to state-run
polls, in January 2017, 59% of Russians supported decriminal-
izing domestic violence, but by August 2019, that figure fell to
26%. In December 2019, 70% of Russians supported a law to
help protect women against domestic violence. When Nasiliu.net
was close to shutting down in 2019 because of a lack of funds,
donors gave Rivina enough money to expand the organization.
Businesses have also started to take a stand. In 2019,
one of Russia’s largest banks, Alfa Capital, fired a top man-
ager after his wife accused him of beating her. When TV pre-
senter Regina Todorenko suggested in April that women
are to blame for being abused, brands dropped her as their
spokesperson; she later apologized and donated $28,000 to
Nasiliu.net. And survivors are becoming more visible: Margar-
ita Gracheva, whose husband chopped off her hands with an
ax in 2017, has become a household name, regularly appearing
SPECIAL REPORT
WOMEN and the PANDEMIC
PETER KOVALEV—TASS/GETTY IMAGES
137
40%
● An art performance, Quarrel With
Me, in St. Petersburg in May
addresses the topic of domestic
violence during Russia’s lockdownProportion of
Russian women
who consider
domestic violence
a serious problem,
compared with 45%
of Russian men