Consider this: hockey in Russia is very political and Ovechkin would probably not have a career if he didn’t say something in Putin’s favor. Putin is very involved with the hockey team and hockey stars there and uses them for political statements and to ease the tension. They are his pawns and we don’t know how willing they are or aren’t in doing what they do
Also consider: you’re not Russian so you don’t know what it’s like to live over there. You and I have freedom to speak out against the people in power. People in Russia do not. Everything there is regulated.
Russian politics are way more complicated than any of us realize and I’m not excusing the piece of shit Putin’s policies at all because he’s fucking garbage.
But also consider: you came to the wrong blog to hate on Ovi for anything.
also, somewhat unrelated, but worth mentioning:
if you’re into documentaries, i really suggest watching icarus directed by bryan fogel (it won an oscar, and is available on netflix – x, x). essentially, it started off as a lance-armstrong-inspired investigation of how easy it is to get away with taking performance-enhancing drugs in the world of cycling, but ended up focusing on grigory rodchenkov – the scientist fogel befriended on behalf of the documentary – as it was revealed that the russian government was running a covert doping program for a number of their olympic athletes for well over a decade (including during the sochi olympics), and rodchenkov was coerced into overseeing all of it.
something i took away from icarus is that the russian government – yes, that totally includes putin – does not fuck around when it comes to sports, and that bad shit can happen to you if you’re the reason why things don’t go their way.
according to rodchenkov’s testimony:
fsb agents (the fsb being the equally shady and terrifying successor to the kgb) were regularly present in labs to make sure technicians who were involved with the doping program carried out orders, and they played an integral role in swapping out the urine samples of “dirty” russian olympians during the sochi olympics (x).
when news of the scandal broke and investigation began, rodchenkov told fogel that there were two fsb agents stationed at his house, and that he believed that “they’re going to kill him,” since he was the one with all the knowledge of how to program was carried out, and thus the biggest liability (x, x).
additionally, two former senior officials involved in the scandal died unexpectedly under suspicious circumstances within weeks of news of the scandal becoming public (x), and the honorary president of russia’s olympic committee straight-up said that rodchenkov deserved to be executed for whistleblowing (x).
despite russia’s attempts to press fabricated charges against rodchenkov, attempts to manipulate him by threatening his family, and get him extradited back to them, he was put into witness protection briefly after fleeing to america (x).
BASICALLY, what i’m trying to get at is this: putin’s a bad fucking dude, and so are a lot of the guys in the russian government. so, whenever ovechkin or any other russian athlete or sports-related official smiles and jokes and meets requests made by putin, yeah, they’re supporting an absolute monster of a human being, and they could be doing it because they have shitty morals, or just prefer turn a blind eye to russian politics, but i get that high calibre russian athletes could get in trouble for doing anything else.
i’m an american who watched a documentary on netflix, and maybe it’s not this deep, but if someone can guarantee safety for themselves and their family by smiling and waving next to a evil bastard, well –
As someone who is a Russian Linguistics and Culture Major, all of the above is so true that it hurts. For years any high profile Russian who has spoken out against the current government of Russia (which by the way only exists because the government rigged the polls) have wound up in a myriad of awful situations, and it isn’t just athletes. One of the big things that’s been done pretty regularly since the fall of the USSR is the assassination of media reporters who try to expose the corruption of the Russian government and it’s so bad we literally have a list of reporters and a Wikipedia page about those who have died under mysterious circumstances while in Russia. And don’t forget about the recent nerve gas attack on Skripal and his daughter in the UK which was directly linked to Russia because Skripal worked against the Russians during the 1990s and 2000s. It isn’t just athletes, but any Russian who expresses a position against the government is targeted.
Russia also has a pretty bad track record with athletes in general, like @doitfortheboys said, they’re basically used as puppets in the Russian government. People like Evgeni Plushenko have been appointed to government positions just so that they can be used as propaganda machines and are typically forced to remain in country except for competitions or games. They don’t have the option of saying ‘sounds cool, but no thanks’ because it’s quite literally a death scentance for the person who declines and/or their families. Also, Russia has attempted to keep athletes from competing internationally for a very long time. Evgeni Malkin had to sneakout of the country and hid out in Finland before escaping to the States, he’s incredibly lucky that he and his family are safe at the moment (though Metallurg Magnitogorsk had a lot to do with it as well not just Russia).
The gist is, Russia is not a place that celebrates diversity the way we do. Many Russians are encouraged to submit to the homogeneous regime Putin has set in place and anyone who disagrees is at a high risk of having something awful to happen to them or to their family.
in response to the crisis going on in chechnya right now, i wanted to underline how important it is to understand the complexity of russian homophobia, which has proven to be distinct from many western strains of homophobia due to historical circumstances. historically, same-sex attraction has been seen as non-russian due to its connection to bourgeois decadence of the west (which opposed proletarian values), as well as long-term invisibility of the LGBT+ community under stalin and its sudden reemergence in the 90s (when the soviet union collapsed) which shapes much of contemporary homophobia. there are also other factors, such as promotion of hypermasculinity within the soviet union after WWII and the generally sexphobic culture prevalent under the regime. while biological arguments (”it’s unnatural”) and religion have also played a role in modern russian homophobia, it is the association of LGBT+ existence with the west that has causes the most retaliation against LGBT+ activism. (we can see this most evidently with sochi olympics and now with the chechnya crisis; external activist efforts are rejected because ‘the west is trying to meddle with russian politics/values’ and internal efforts are rejected because ‘they’re brainwashed by the west’)
since i just finished my massive research paper on russian lgbt+ history, here are a few sources that i would highly recommend for learning more about how russia came to be so homophobic:
DAN HEALEY (aka the champion of russian LGBT+ history):
Book: Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent– excellent and meticulously detailed overview of the complexities of russian LGBT+ lives at the beginning of the 20th century; discusses both progressiveness of lenin’s regime and the violent repression and erasure of LGBT+ identity under stalin, as well as so much more
Journal: HOMOSEXUAL EXISTENCE AND EXISTING SOCIALISM: New Light on the Repression of Male Homosexuality in Stalin’s Russia; a more brief overview than the book; may be more easily accessible. strongly recommend if you’re interested in history and want a starting point for learning about early soviet politics and how they affected LGBT+ lives
BRIAN BAER:
Book: Other Russias: Homosexuality and the Crisis of Post-Soviet Identity; excellent examination in the role that invisibility of the LGBT+ community (due to stalin’s repression and sudden reappearance in the 80s and 90s after gorbachev’s reforms) has played in making russians believe that same-sex attraction is a product of western infiltration into russian society. offers excellent criticisms of discourse surrounding russian LGBT+ issues by western scholars.
DAVID TULLER:
Book: Cracks in the Iron Closet: Travels in Gay and Lesbian Russia; offers a more accessible insight into russian LGBT+ society through recounting the author’s travels. over all a good book, but is not as far reaching or deeply analytical as some of the other sources. there’s a preview on google books, so you can easily skim through it.
MULTIPLE AUTHORS:
Book: Out of the Blue: Russia’s Hidden Gay Literature; An Anthology (ed. Kevin Moss); a wonderful read revealing numerous hidden gay/LGBT+ figures throughout russian literary scene. you’ll be surprised to find how many of the famous russian authors and poets were not straight.
Book: Gender in Russian History and Culture (ed. Edmondson); features a chapter by my man Healey discussing lesbianism and the medical/endocrinological discoveries of the 1910s-1920s that shaped russian discourse on homosexuality later on, as well as many interesting discussions about womanhood in russian and early soviet society.
if you went to discuss anything with me or have any questions about russian LGBT+ history, homophobia, or things about my personal experience as a same-gender attracted russian & ukrainian woman, my inbox/IM is available (just keep in mind that this is a highly sensitive subject for me and there may be some things i’m not comfortable disclosing)
Yes, i have a question. Why is the west always to blame for everything in the eyes of non-western countries? And why is homosexuality associated with the west in non-western countries?
Ok I cannot speak for yelyzaveta’s situation but since you are talking about non-western countries in general:
1. It’s not true everyone in non-western countries blames the west for everything. There is plenty of acknowledgement that the problems we face are complex and that inasmuch as we were affected by Western imperialism, we too had agency and it is not as simple.
2. HOWEVER, that rhetoric has at times been weaponised by certain politicians who wish to appeal to the notion that being LGBT+ is inherently foreign and alien, against our ‘traditional culture’ and therefore justifiably rejected. This is what I have encountered as an East & SEAsian. This is of course not true; same gender relationships are well-documented in Chinese history even as far back as the Han dynasty, for example. But it is a cheap and easy rhetoric to use in countries that either had a) a prior experience of Western imperialism/colonialism b) are in some ways seeing themselves opposed to some concept of ‘the West.’ The reason for this opposition differs depending on the country of course, but some sense of opposing Western-ness in general can feed this mentality. Unfortunately, as I’ve seen in my own family, a number of people fall for it.
3. One common reason they see it as emanating from ‘Western’ culture because for example, if I compare UK and Malaysia, the UK is a lot more progressive on LGBT+ rights today. These things are associated with Western-ness. The fact that many major human rights organisations that criticise these abuses are headquartered in Western countries feeds their claim that it is ‘cultural imperialism’ (as a side note, this is why it is extremely important to give visibility and awareness to the many non-western human rights and LGBT+ activists from those very countries). This, I must emphasise, is not only erasure of history but exceedingly ironic, and not only because LGBT+ people have existed in our societies throughout history. Because the UK in the past used to treat same gender attraction as either criminal or a mental illness. It has changed today because of the efforts of activists. But many of our countries that used to be part of the British Empire actually still have the homophobic colonial-era laws enacted by colonial governments in the books. Like section 377. Our societies were not necessarily utopian or totally accepting of LGBT+ people before that, but those British colonial laws are in fact used to oppress people today and did play a role in institutionalising homophobia as it exists in the present day. But that colonial origin is often conveniently forgotten by people who claim LGBT+ rights are ‘western’, and instead we get a reductive idea that LGBT+ rights is a ‘Western’ idea because of the modern situation.
I will underscore that the exact nuances of this narrative that ‘LGBT+ rights = foreign Western idea that should be rejected’ also takes on different nuances and contours, depending on the society in question.
just moving along like everyone else 