The Russians as the “Christian Savior of the World”? Russia, the World Congress of Families, and the Export of Illiberal Family Values

The Russians as the “Christian Savior of the World”? Russia, the World Congress of Families, and the Export of Illiberal Family Values

Pål Kolstø

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Keywords: Moral conservatism, culture wars, Russia, Russian Orthodox Church, World Congress of Families

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“Culture wars” is a Western or, more specifically, an American concept, but it represents a global phenomenon. It has been exported to the rest of the world, and outside of the West it builds upon, and gets mixed up with, other cultural battles. Many non-Western countries have been less affected by secularization and modernization, and American moral conservatives see them as opportunities for missionary work, where their message of (neo)traditional values may fall on fertile soil.

An important battlefield in the global culture wars is Russia.[1] Since around 2012–13, there has been a marked shift in the ideology of the Putin regime toward “conservative” or “(neo)traditionalist” values.[2] After the massive anti-regime demonstrations in Moscow and other Russian cities in the winter of 2011–12, the Kremlin leadership clearly perceived that they had lost the trust and support of the liberal intelligentsia in the cities, which until then had been one of its support bases, and decided to appeal to what can be called the “moral majority” (to use a concept from the American culture wars). This new conservative program, which celebrates “traditional family values,” patriotism, and (Orthodox) religion, has grown stronger over the last decade and a half, and many of these ideas were also enshrined in the amended Russian Constitution that was adopted in July 2020. In 2023 the Kremlin even issued a decree listing 17 official “Russian traditional spiritual-moral values.”[3]

Some generations ago, the historically strong denominational differences between various Protestant churches in the West started gradually fading away as ecumenical collaboration between them increased. However, new divides among Christians came to the fore, which did not follow traditional theological lines, emerging rather between “mainstream” churches and “evangelicals.” Evangelicals tend to be more conservative both morally and politically, and on the basis of a common conservative orientation, they may gloss over dogmatic disagreements between churches and find a common language with morality stalwarts from other denominations.[4] Over time, they reached out also to like-minded traditionalist activists in the Roman Catholic Church and finally to conservative Orthodox believers. Since the 1990s, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has strongly resisted the activities of American Protestant missionaries when they have attempted to establish congregations in Russia,[5] and these activities have essentially stopped. In the new cultural climate under Putin, however, activists from the ROC have found a common agenda of moral conservatism with like-minded activists from other churches in Western countries, with whom they collaborate in various international organizations in a new kind of morality ecumenism.[6] Kristina Stoeckl maintains that “Right-wing and conservative groups are increasingly connected across national and denominational borders.”[7] For many years the most prominent among these organizations was the World Congress of Families (WCF), on which I will focus in this article.

In their book The Moralist International: Russia in the Global Culture Wars, Stoeckl and Uzlaner document the strong foreign links of Russian moral conservatives, in particular in the United States. They point out a paradox of Russian conservatism: It “thrives on the demonization of ‘foreign agents’ that are allegedly manipulated by the West to destroy Russia.” But at the same time, “One can hardly find a single issue of contemporary Russian moral conservatism that does not bear the marks of transnational influences.”[8] For instance, Stoeckl and Uzlaner see the strong emphasis on combating abortion in the ROC as a cultural import from America. In the 1990s, they claim, the ROC had no clear vision on abortion; it was not on the Church’s agenda.[9] Stoeckl also pointed to the pivotal role of Alexei Komov, who served as the WCF’s regional representative for Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). He and some others in the younger generation of Russian social conservatives had studied in the United States; they know Western languages, culture, and politics, and they have adopted the habitus of American Christian conservatives. “Now they are importing the American culture wars into their home countries,” Stoeckl argues.[10] In her contribution to The Christian Right in Europe: Movements, Networks, and Denominations (2023), written together with Gionathan Lo Mascolo, Stoeckl contends that “Russia’s traditionalist turn was not entirely homegrown. Russian Christian Right actors borrowed ideas, institutional forms, and strategies from American Christian Right groups with which they interacted frequently over many years.”[11]

Another expert on Russian moral conservatism, Christopher Stroop, offers a slightly different perspective, that the currents of conservative moral influences flow just as much, or more so, from Russia as to the country. Stroop maintains that “We will not be able to grasp Russia’s role in the global culture wars if we persist in treating Russia as essentially a recipient of America’s exported culture wars, and not as an independent actor, and even exporter, in its own right.”[12] Below, I assess the relative merits of these two perspectives by taking Russian involvement in the WCF as a case. This article is a spin-off from my book Family, Sex, and Faith: The Biopolitics of the Russian Orthodox Church.[13] The analysis is based on a close reading of documents from WCF, as well as from the Russian Orthodox Church and other Russian primary sources. The evidence shows that Russian participants in the WCF, without any false modesty, present their contribution to this organization as crucial, and this seems to have been the view of several American WCF leaders as well. I argue that the Russian actors—both individuals and organizations—have played a more active role in the establishment and development of this organization than is sometimes appreciated.

Both Stoeckl and Stroophave pointed to the WCF as one of the most important arenas for the new collaboration among conservative cultural warriors across continents and denominations. Among a cluster of similar U.S.-led organizations, the WCF seems to have had the most wide-ranging networks, spanning the globe.[14] The WCF “brings together Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians in the name of anti-genderism or shared conservative values.”[15] Stroop believes that Russia’s engagement in the WCF shows that the country has played an “outsized role” in the global culture wars.[16]

Below, I first describe how the WCF was launched as a joint Russian-American endeavor in the mid-1990s, before briefly describing its ideology. WCF does not publish minutes from its many congresses, so the best sources of its thinking and aspirations are books, articles, and interviews by leading WCF activists. Next, I assess the scope of the involvement of the ROC in the WCF and discuss whether the Russians have participated in this movement primarily as producers or as recipients of moral conservative ideas and the impulses guiding them. Finally, I look at the possible reasons for why after 2022 the Russians have for all practical purposes left the WCF.

A Note on Terminology

In the literature, some scholars have referred to the conservative side of the culture wars as “social conservativism,” others as “moral conservatism.” In this article I will use the expression “moral conservatism.” Both terms refer to ideas about how people ought to live their private lives and, in particular, a defense of the nuclear heterosexual family with children—often also patriarchal, with the father in authority—as the ethically superior lifestyle. The Russian conservatives often prefer the concept of “traditionalism” or “traditional values.” While “moral conservatism” and the promotion of “traditional values” basically refer to the same ethical program, “traditional values” is a more propagandistic concept. Researchers and other outside observers often add the prefix “neo”—e.g., “neo-traditionalism”—to highlight that this allegedly traditional lifestyle is a modern invention. To attempt to follow ethical precepts that possibly dominated societal mores in some premodern societies is inevitably very different when you live in thoroughly modern settings.

Most moral conservatives are not satisfied with merely implementing a traditional lifestyle in their own lives; they want to shape society in their mold. This is why they establish organizations and movements to spread their message and influence policies in their countries. To propagate a particular lifestyle is not in itself illiberal, but when moral conservatives attempt to restrict the possibilities for others to organize their lives as they see fit, their messaging and activities cross over into illiberalism. Moral conservativism becomes illiberal when its propagators (try to) impose their values on others through authoritarian methods, such as pressuring state authorities to legislate a specific lifestyle.

The Russian-American Origins of the World Congress of Families

Even if the WCF is regularly referred to as an “American” organization, it was in fact conceived on Russian soil, and the first initiative came from a Russian scholar. In 1995 Anatoly Antonov, a professor of sociology at Moscow State University, reached out to an American pro-life activist, Allan Carlson of the Howard Centre for Family, Religion and Society in Rockford, Illinois, and suggested that they should collaborate.[17] Antonov was deeply concerned about the low birth rates in Russia, which, he feared, in a worst-case scenario could lead to a creeping extinction of the Russian nation.

The wide spread of single-child families, the decline in registered marriages and the rise of cohabitation, the steady rise in divorce, the deprivation of parents and children, the expansion of single-parent families and pseudo-marriages. All these processes continue to be understood by most demographers as “progressive rationalization” of social structures, supposedly offering families a range of new opportunities for “rational choice.”[18]

In Antonov’s view, Russia, along with the rest of the world, was facing not a shrinking population but total depopulation, indeed, extinction. He believed the solution for both nations and humankind had to be found in social ethics. People’s mentality had to be changed.

The fate of individual nations and humanity as a whole depends on their ability to restore the lost value of family and children to the concept of human well-being. Due to its instrumental nature, the relentless pursuit of rising living standards, consumer wealth, and elevated social status excludes from the concept of well-being the true values of human existence—family and children.[19]

A national demographic catastrophe could be averted only by radically shifting the value system of the Russian population. Antonov asserted: “A family with one child is not a family. A family with two children is a ‘borderline,’ ‘marginal’ case. To avoid a serious demographic crisis at least 50 percent of families must have three or four children.”[20]

While Antonov believed that the Russian state ought to support families with many children much more actively than it did, that alone would not be enough to avert the catastrophe. In his view, the demographic problem of Russia could not be resolved without a massive moral rearmament of the population:

Behind the decrease in the number of children and the size of the family, and the growth of divorces and unmarried couples living together, we must be able to see qualitative, value-based changes. We familyists consider the child-free movement to be vicious and deviant, because voluntary childlessness means crossing out the value of life, the value of children, and finally, love for people. A family without children is nonsense; it is not a family at all, but sexual cohabitation for a certain time. And why does the share of such cohabitations increase? In a period of family crisis, it is not the family roles of father/mother or husband/wife that come to the fore, but gender and sexual roles. Sexuality oriented toward pleasure and enjoyment leads to easily switching partners.[21]

Antonov had read one of Allan Carlson’s books and concluded that they shared many of the same ideas. Therefore, he invited him to Russia in 1995 and introduced him to some of his friends and colleagues. During this visit, they decided to organize a family congress, and they were very satisfied with the results. They therefore agreed to make it a regular event under the auspices of a new organization, the World Congress of Families, which was formally established in 1997.[22] The WCF would be based in the United States and dominated by Americans in all leadership positions. In its heyday, between 2012 and 2019, it organized regular global congresses, always in a new city, which were attended by many thousands of participants.[23] The last one to date, in Mexico City in 2022, according to the organizers, attracted more than 8,000 people.[24] In addition, numerous regional WCF events have taken place, several of them in Russia. In 2011 the Moscow Demographic Summit: Family and the Future of Humankind took place at the Russian State Social University. The next year the International Ulyanovsk Demographic Summit: Enhancing the Regional Dimension of Family Policy was held with the support of the government of the Ulyanovsk Region. The IV Safe Internet Forum, held in Moscow on February 7, 2013, also marked a WCF regional event.[25]

The Ideology of the WCF

Sara Kalm and Anna Meeuwisse regard WCF founder Allan Carlson as one of the “key norm entrepreneurs” in the moral conservative movement, wielding considerable influence.[26] His books provide a good introduction to the worldview of the WCF. In Conjugal America: On the Public Purposes of Marriage (2007), Carlson mustered an array of arguments as to why the nuclear, heterosexual, lifelong marriage should be restored to its former prominence in Western societies and beyond. He asserted that it is “natural” in the sense of being biologically grounded, and universal since it is found in every “healthy” human society. Furthermore, Carlson stated that children need the stable framework of living in a nuclear (or as the pro-family activists prefer to call it, “natural”) family in order to grow up as healthy individuals. The family household rooted in marriage remains the most reliable source for sustaining a society with “orderly liberty.” As proof, Carlson claims that U.S. prisons are filled with young men who grew up in unstable homes, usually without fathers.[27]

Although Carlson professes to champion liberty, the consequences he draws from his social model do not always appear very “liberal” in the common understanding of this word. For instance, he deplores the fact that virtually all U.S. states grant couples divorce without first establishing guilt.[28] Marriage should be larger than the will and emotions of the spouses, he believes. Therefore, “The public interest dictates that ‘fault’ be determined before society would relinquish its claim on the couple’s vow.”[29] Marriage is a social institution, and only society can proclaim it terminated.

In 2007 Carlson coauthored (with WCF Executive Vice President Paul Mero) a manifesto, The Natural Family. The authors claim that men and women exhibit “profound biological and psychological differences,”[30] which predispose the husband to the role of breadwinner; however, they shy away from defining the role of the wife exclusively as being in the home. With regard to methods of child-rearing, they state that neither society nor the pro-family movement should formulate any rules about how parents ought to raise their children, although they add that there are “a few obvious exceptions” to this, without spelling them out.[31] This view might conceivably open the door for martinets and domestic tyrants.

The WCF has adopted three declarations: the Geneva Declaration in 1999, the Mexico City Declaration in 2004, and the Sydney Declaration in 2013.[32] The purpose of the WCF, the Mexico City Declaration stated, is to “protect and promote the family and to direct public policy with a family perspective.” The family is said to be confronted with challenges to its very legitimacy as an institution, including “extreme individualism, easy divorce, radical homosexual activism, irresponsible sexual behavior, and the reinterpretation and misapplication of human rights.”

The Sydney Declaration asserts that there are strong links between moral conservatism and Western-style capitalism. Economic liberalism is regarded as both a cause and an effect of healthy families: Children born into strong, loving families have the best chance of becoming the most productive and active citizens and are least likely to need assistance from the welfare state. One of the main causes of hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation is said to be the breakdown of the “natural” family.[33]

The WCF and the Russian Orthodox Church

There is considerable evidence that American moral conservatives, in the case of the WCF, have indeed had an impact on Russian discourse on family policy and minority rights; however, there are also substantiated claims that Russians, and in particular the ROC, have used the WCF as an instrument to spread their message to Western countries.

Initially, the ROC did not play a role in the import of the WCF to Russia. Antonov was primarily a scholar, not acting on behalf of the ROC. If he has a religious faith, he has kept it to himself. Born in 1936, Antonov saw his role in the WCF diminish over time. He participated in WCF congresses in the 1990s, for example, in Prague in 1997 and in Geneva in 1999, but appears to have become less active after 2000.[34] The links between the ROC and the WCF were established only after a younger generation of activists took over from Antonov as the lynchpin in this liaison, in particular Alexei Komov and Pavel Parfent’ev. They had connections with the Patriarchal Commission for Family, Motherhood, and Children, headed by archpriest Dmitry Smirnov until his death by COVID in 2020.[35]

Archpriest Dmitry represented the ROC at several WCF congresses and addressed the audience in agitated, often hyperbolical language.[36] Here is one excerpt:

Russians know Fedor Dostoevsky’s proverb: The devil fights with Christ in the heart of a person. And the last stronghold in this battle is the family, because without a family a person is still not a person… [The devil’s] first idea was the diabolical plan to separate the woman from her family, to turn her into a workhorse, and the presence of children complicated this. Therefore, feminism appeared as the woman’s rebellion against herself… this is complete dehumanization.[37]

This hyperbolic rhetoric is rather different from what we can find in, for instance, Carlson’s more down-to-earth writing.

Sometime around 2010, Komov and Parfent’ev established the Analytical Center for Family Policy (ACFP), which from the beginning collaborated with the WCF. According to its website, the ACFP is “an independent information and analytical center (think tank) created by several leading nongovernmental organizations active in the field of family, motherhood, fatherhood, and childhood protection, to help the Russian state and society protect, preserve, and strengthen the institution of the family.”[38] Parfent’ev, an intellectual, provided much of the theoretical underpinnings for the ROC’s struggle against so-called juvenile justice, which in the terminology of the moral crusaders means the right of the state to interfere in the lives of families and in relations between parents and children.[39] He has served as an adviser to the WCF on international human rights issues and a WCF representative in Europe.[40] For instance, after the adoption of the “antigay law” in Russia in 2013,[41] he traveled to Kyiv to lobby Ukrainian parliamentarians to adopt similar legislation.[42]

Komov, the son of a Soviet diplomat, spent many years of his youth in Western countries. He later worked for some time for the so-called “Orthodox oligarch” Konstantin Malofeev, who is assumed to have been a major funder of the WCF and might have been the one who recruited Komov to the WCF.[43] As a PhD student at Moscow State University, Komov wrote his thesis on the “ideological roots of the anti-family worldview,” with Antonov as his supervisor.[44] Fluent in English and other Western languages, Komov served as the WCF representative to the United Nations, in which the WCF has observer status, and also as the organization’s representative in Russia and the CIS.[45]

Komov’s worldview is rather conspiratorial. He insists, for instance, that “The ‘sex education’ that is now being imposed by the United Nations and the International Family Planning Association is pure Marxism.” It is aimed at “the decomposition of society and the promotion of world revolution.”[46] He claims that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller family, George Soros, and other philanthropists seek to reduce the world’s population in order to fight “an artificially inflated ‘global warming’”: “Under the guise of family planning, [along with the] spread of contraception and abortion, they promote misconceived rights of the LGBT community and juvenile justice, the legalization of drugs, prostitution, and, eventually, pedophilia.”[47]

Russia: Importer or Exporter of Moral Conservatism?

In discussions about the international connections of Russian anti-LGBT activists and pro-life defenders, one encounters two claims that seem to be at odds with each other. On the one hand, it is frequently asserted that Russia is at the receiving end, learning moral conservatism from foreign activists and lobby groups; on the other hand, Western media and academic publications often underscore that moral conservatism has deep roots in Russia and that Russia’s current leadership is actively attempting to spread their views to other countries. According to the latter view, Russian society does not need guidance from abroad to be morally conservative.

Writing for Political Research Associates, Cole Parke has asked: “When it comes to the culture wars, who’s exporting and who’s importing?”[48] Newsweek quoted him as saying that the WCF “has opened the door for other evangelical and anti-LGBT activists seeking to spread their message in Europe. The WCF is especially gaining influence in Eastern Europe, and in that role they are ushering in other U.S. influences.”[49] Hanna Levintova writes that the WCF has lent its support to antigay politics elsewhere in Eastern Europe—like Serbia, Lithuania, and Romania—“but it has had its biggest and most notable successes in Russia.”[50]

As Stoeckl and her collaborators have documented, Russia has undoubtedly been learning from the West, and in particular from the United States, especially in the late 1990s and the first years of the 21st century.[51] Stoeckl points to the pivotal role of Komov and some others in the younger generation of Russian moral conservatives who helped import the American culture wars into their home countries.[52] However, Komov himself certainly does not see his activity as a conduit for American cultural influences in Russia.[53] He participated in the IX WCF Congress in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 2015, in his speech touting Russia’s leadership in the global “pro-family” movement. He claimed that his nation’s communist past had given Russians a taste of the dangers supposedly inherent in secularism, which “more naïve” Westerners might miss. As a result, Komov maintained, “Eastern Europe can really help our brothers in the West to resist the ‘new totalitarianism’ associated with ‘political correctness’ and the sexual revolution.”[54]

In an interview that Komov gave to the leading Russian Orthodox website Pravoslavie.ru in 2019, he insisted that Western societies are in danger of sinking into a deeply immoral culture, while “Russia is considered one of the most powerful supporters of traditional values in the international arena.” Thus, “A very powerful alliance has emerged on the basis of the WCF, which is very dangerous for liberal globalists,” he claimed:

I myself have been building this alliance for 10 years now, because I have long had a dream of creating a truly strong union of conservative Christians who are resisting the current gender madness all over the world (just think about it: there are now 50 types of gender!), the imposition of gay parades, transhumanism, all these crazy ideas that they are trying to force-feed to new generations. And indeed, we have managed to gain many important allies and create a very powerful movement. At the same time, the Russian direction is very strong, because our people are mostly conservative. So Russia plays an important role in this movement.[55]

Moreover, many of Komov’s Western partners single out the Russian contribution in the global culture wars as crucial. The WCF’s managing director, Larry Jacobs, opined that Russia has become “a leader in the promotion of [moral conservative] values in the international arena.”[56] In even stronger language, Jacobs has suggested that “The Russians might be the Christian savior of the world.”[57]

In 2014 Jacobs gave an interview to Pravoslavie.ru in which he profusely praised Russia’s contribution to the moral conservative movement. He insisted that “Russia has much to teach the world about protecting the family, and that is why the [next] World Congress of Families will be held in Moscow.”[58] He pointed out that the organizing committee for the Moscow congress included many influential Russian politicians and businessmen, such as Vladimir Yakunin, chairman of the board of trustees of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation, as well as Malofeev, head of the St. Basil the Great Foundation. The Moscow Patriarchate was represented by Father Dmitry (Smirnov), with Jacobs noting his position as head of the Patriarchal Commission on Family, Motherhood, and Children. He claimed that:

Russia has taken significant steps to protect the natural family and family values, both nationally and internationally. We highly value the efforts of Russian public organizations that champion the spiritual and moral values of human society, promote the primacy of family and marriage, and fight for the rights of parents and children to live in a natural family with a father and a mother. You in Russia are doing much in this area, and we must work together. We are convinced that Russia plays and should play a very significant role in protecting the family and moral values globally. Russia has become a leader in this field internationally. You have much to teach the world.[59]

Jacobs admitted that he found it much easier to collaborate with Orthodox Christians than with Catholics. If he went to Rome, cardinals and bishops in the Vatican would allegedly look at him and say, “He is a Protestant, so we won’t work with him.” Jacobs stated: “I’m very glad that in Russia, so many representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church are working on family issues; without them, such a forum [as the 2014 Moscow WCF Congress] would be impossible. The Orthodox Church in Russia is our greatest ally in our fight for the family.”[60]

As mentioned above, the Putin regime took a sharp turn to the right when it faced massive popular protests among the urban and educated strata of Russian society in response to the fraudulent parliamentary election of 2011. Seeking support from other social groups, such as the elderly and less educated, as well as people living outside of the big cities, the Russian leadership began to cater to the conservative sentiments that they expected to be held by those groups. This strategy paid off domestically and, as it turned out, could also be used as a commodity for export, to win new friends abroad.[61]

As we saw above, Komov argues that the main reason why Russia plays a prominent role in the international movement of moral conservatives is that Russians are “mostly conservative.” This, however, is largely wishful thinking. Despite his and other Russian cultural warriors’ claims, Russians are not particularly conservative with regard to social and ethical issues. Russia is a postindustrial, secular society, where religion’s primary role is that of a national identifier, but not of a moral compass.[62] Divorce rates are high and the rate of abortion per live birth, even as it has gone down considerably over recent decades, is still among the highest in Europe.[63] In a 2021 large-scale survey of several thousand respondents in Russia, commissioned by my research team, 56% believed that premarital sex could be justified, while 69% condoned divorce, in sharp contrast to the position of the ROC.[64] Some moral conservatives in the ROC characterize Russian society as a “moral desert.”[65] Church attendance is low—not more than approximately 5% of our respondents attend church at least once a week—and Patriarch Kirill has acknowledged that, for most Russians, Orthodoxy is “a form of cultural identity.”[66] It is not massive support from a socially conservative Russian population that secured Russian cultural warriors a leading role in “the moralist international”[67]—instead, it was the backing of a large and strong state.

The International Impact of Moral Conservatism in Russian Politics

Pat Buchanan, a leading light for American (paleo)conservatives, who twice unsuccessfully ran for the Republican presidential nomination, was among the first Americans to respond enthusiastically to Putin’s conservative overtures. In 2014, shortly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Buchanan declared that Putin was “tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a hedonistic secular and social revolution coming out of the West. In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity.”[68]

Buchanan was not alone. A small but not negligible trickle of American conservatives, reacting to the same “hedonistic Western secularism,” even converted to Russian Orthodoxy.[69] Social anthropologist Sarah Riccardi-Swartz lived with some of them in Appalachia for some time. She witnessed how most of these new believers converted not only spiritually and religiously but also ideologically, seeing Putin’s Russia as a politically safe space for the preservation of conservative family values.[70] Nonetheless, even if these conversions may possibly be seen as an indication of new trends in Western cultural politics, they remain a fringe phenomenon.

One important arena for this activity has been the United Nations, or more specifically the UN Human Rights Council.[71] It turned out to be a useful tool to influence smaller countries in the region around Russia. Georgian activist Natalia Antelava maintains that campaigns to protect “family values” that attack LGBTQ+ rights in her country represent a “blueprint” taken from Russian legislation: “The most powerful connections happened through the World Congress of Families, where links between Russian Orthodox activists and American evangelical groups were forged.”[72] In 2016 the WCF organized a congress in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.[73] Such meetings “created pathways for rhetoric and policies to travel,” Antelava argues.[74]

Yet Russia’s role in the global culture wars may be ebbing, affected, as Uzlaner and Stoeckl point out, by exogenous shocks that can disrupt international lobby alliances.[75] Since the moral conservative messaging coming out of Russia is so connected with the Kremlin, its ability to impact public opinion in other countries inevitably depends on how Russia’s foreign policy is perceived abroad. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a first sign that this could harm moral conservatives allied with Russia in, for instance, the WCF. The 2014 VIII World Congress was slated to be held in Moscow—in fact, in the Kremlin—but was canceled as an official WCF event, since some of the organizers did not want to be associated with Russia’s territorial aggression against Ukraine.[76] That represented only a temporary setback in the cooperation, which intensified shortly thereafter. At the time, the reputational damage suffered by the WCF due to the organization’s link to the Russian state proved minimal. The Russian chapter of the WCF was involved in organizing international congresses in two other countries of the former Soviet Union, Georgia in 2016 and in Moldova the year after.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a different matter, however. Among the 8,000 participants at the 2022 XIV WCF Congress in Mexico City, no Russians attended. This sharply contrasted with their very visible presence at the previous congresses in Tbilisi, Budapest, Chisinau, and Verona.[77] Neither international travel bans nor long travel distances can explain this change. Stoeckl fingers two likely explanations: “Christian conservatives, who previously expressed admiration for Russia’s robust defense of traditional values and attended events like the World Congress of Families, have either disavowed their former ally or have turned silent.” The Russia connection seemed to have become a liability rather than an asset.[78]

At the same time, Russian moral conservatives have grown increasingly wary of being associated with Western organizations of any kind, even with Westerners who preach the same message as the Kremlin. In 2012 Russia adopted a law against foreign agents, according to which Russians who receive any kind of support from abroad may be labeled “foreign agents,” risking hefty fines and even criminal prosecution.[79]

In December 2020 the conservative-Orthodox website Katehon.ru, owned by Malofeev, published an article titled “World Congress of Families and ‘Russian Influence.’” The anonymous author attacked Stoeckl, who, by pointing out the strong links between the WCF and activists in the ROC, allegedly wanted to discredit both the Russian Church and the Russian state.[80] Considering that these links are not only extensively documented but also something of which the ROC had until recently been very proud, the attack was surprising. It seems that in the increasingly anti-Western atmosphere in Moscow, any contact with Western organizations, even one such as the WCF, could be perceived as potentially dangerous.

In 2023, Komov stepped down from his position as WCF representative in Russia and the CIS. The same year, the Analytical Center for Family Policy, which Komov had established together with Parfent’ev in collaboration with the WCF, broke off all links with its Western partners. On its website, it stated: “Due to both the current foreign policy situation and to changes in [Russian] legislation, as of January 2023, the ACFP has ceased every form of cooperation with the World Congress of Families. It is now a purely Russian project, organizationally unaffiliated with any foreign structures or their activities.”[81] The decades-long collaboration between Russian and Western moral conservatives had been officially brought to an end—apparently, collateral damage of Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022.

Conclusion

Starting around 2012, the Russian authorities have increasingly relied on support from moral conservative constituencies in the country, in return providing material and political goods to the Russian Orthodox Church and like-minded organizations. When Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, conservatism became a pillar of his political platform. At that time, Russian moral conservatives, both inside and outside of the ROC, had already been engaged for 15 years in networking with like-minded activists abroad.

The Russian moral conservatives have been able to influence the international climate on social policy and morality, not only through their participation in organizations such as the World Congress of Families but also by influencing Russian politics. Russia is one of the first countries in the modern world where moral conservatives received a sympathetic ear in the corridors of political power, long before Trump’s America and many smaller countries embraced such policies. When the Russian Duma in November 2024 banned propaganda advocating a “child-free lifestyle,”[82] the political climate for this had been prepared by moral conservatives in Russia long before. Already in 2016, for example, Anatoly Antonov had attacked an alleged “vicious and deviant” “child-free movement.”[83] In large part due to their good political connections at home, Russian social activists have managed to play a very important role in international campaigns to promote conservative/neotraditional values, in particular family values.[84]

Asking “what brought the American culture warriors, who were used to leading rather than following, into the fold,”[85] Christopher Stroop provides an important part of the answer himself: “Especially since the beginning of Putin’s third term, the Russian state has enthusiastically embraced opposition to LGBTQ rights and to some extent opposition to abortion, and has positioned itself, increasingly successfully, as the global standard bearer for the defense of ‘traditional values.’”[86]

Kristina Stoeckl and Dmitry Uzlaner stress the impulses that Russian moral conservatives have received from abroad, yet they also regard the Russians as “star pupils” who have made good use of what they have learned as participants in the global culture wars.[87] The Russian-American connections within the international moral conservative movement seem to have been a two-way street, the Russians have been both pupils and teachers. In an opinion piece written for the U.S. government-funded Current Time Russian-language TV and digital network, editor Dmitry Treshchanin called the WCF “the main force behind the American export of homophobia and sexism,” where “Russian and American fundamentalists teach each other to spank children and fight gays.”[88] Swiss researcher Leandra Bias has argued that “We’re not talking about a single global strategy here. These groups operate by learning from each other about what works and what doesn’t.”[89]

The impact of Russian activists in the WCF can be felt in different ways. On the level of messaging, the rhetoric of many of the most prominent Russian participants—like Alexei Komov and Father Dmitry Smirnov—was more radical than what one could find in the writings of American WCF luminaries such as Allan Carlson. This reflected the general tone of the anti-liberal (anti-gender, antiabortion, etc.) discourse in the ROC and in Russian society overall. Another asset of the Russian chapter of WCF was its good connections to both politicians and sources of funding. Several Russian oligarchs were involved in its activities and seem to have been major backers behind WCF congresses in post-Soviet countries like Georgia and Moldova. Recall that the 2014 VIII WCF Congress was slated to be held at the very center of political and economic power in Russia: the Kremlin. However, precisely what was a driver of the Russian contribution to the WCF—the solid backing of the political authorities in a large country—eventually became a problem. The fact that the VIII Congress was canceled was a sign that the connection to the Russian leadership could be a double-edged sword and harm the reputation of the international WCF organization and those affiliated with it.

The Russian-American connections in the “moralist international” survived that challenge, but with the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the linkage to the Putin regime became too toxic for many Westerners in the WCF. Meanwhile, facing pressure back home in an increasingly repressive atmosphere, the Russians had to leave the organization, whose activities have been scaled down in the years since. The last congress to date was in Mexico City in 2022, and the next has not been announced. The event in Mexico City, touted as “the largest ever,” may turn out to be the WCF’s swan song.

---

[1] Kristina Stoeckl and Dmitry Uzlaner, The Moralist International: Russia in the Global Culture Wars (New York: Fordham University Press, 2022).

[2] Helge Blakkisrud and Pål Kolstø, eds., Political Legitimacy and Traditional Values in Putin’s Russia (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024). For a discussion of terminology, see below.

[3] They were “Life, dignity, human rights and freedoms, patriotism, citizenship, service to the Fatherland and responsibility for its destiny, high moral ideals, a strong family, creative work, the priority of the spiritual over materialism, humanism, mercy, justice, collectivism, mutual assistance and mutual respect, historical memory and the unity of the peoples of Russia.” See “Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 9 noiabria 2022 g. № 809 ‘Ob utverzhdenii Osnov gosudarstvennoi politiki po sokhraneniiu i ukrepleniiu traditsionnykh rossiiskikh dukhovno-nravstvennykh tsennostei’.” [Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of November 9, 2022, no. 809 ‘On Approval of the Fundamentals of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values’]. Ofitsial’nyi internet-portal pravovoi informatsii [Official Internet Portal of Legal Information]. http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202211090019.

[4] Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2020).

[5] Zoe Knox, Russian Society and the Orthodox Church. Religion in Russia after Communism (Milton Park: Routledge, 2005), chap. 6, especially 159–60.

[6] Christopher Stroop, “Bad Ecumenism: The American Culture Wars and Russia’s Hard Right Turn,” The Wheel, 6 (Summer 2016): 20–24, https://wheeljournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/4_BadEcumenism.pdf; Andrey Shishkov, “Two Ecumenisms: Conservative Christian Alliances as a New Form of Ecumenical Cooperation,” trans. April L. French, 2017. https://doi.org/10.22394/2311-3448-2017-4-2-58-87.

[7] Kristina Stoeckl, “The Rise of the Russian Christian Right: The Case of the World Congress of Families,” Religion, State & Society 48, no. 4 (2020): 223–238, on 223, https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2020.1796172.

[8] Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International, 49.

[9] Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International, 44.

[10] Kristina Stoeckl, “Transnational Norm Mobilization: The World Congress of Families in Georgia and Moldova.” The Foreign Policy Center, July 18. https://fpc.org.uk/transnational-norm-mobilization-the-world-congress-of-families-in-georgia-and-moldova/.

[11] Gionathan Lo Mascolo and Kristina Stoeckl, “The European Christian Right: An Overview,” In The Christian Right in Europe: Movements, Networks, and Denominations, ed. Gionathan Lo Mascolo, 11–42. Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript Verlag, 2023.

[12] Christopher Stroop, “A Right-Wing International? Russian Social Conservatism, the World Congress of Families, and the Global Culture Wars in Historical Context,” Public Eye 48, no. 4 (Winter 2016): 4–22, on 4, https://politicalresearch.org/sites/default/files/2018-10/PE_Winter16_web-1.pdf.

[13] Pål Kolstø, Family, Sex, and Faith: The Biopolitics of the Russian Orthodox Church, Northern Illinois University press, Ithaca NY, 2024.

[14] Agnieszka Graff and Elżbieta Korolczuk, “‘The West Is Trying Too Hard’: Gender and the Right-Wing Critique of Globalization,” Critical Sociology, 51, no. 4–5 (2025): 743–760, https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205241260001; John Anderson, “Rocks, Art, and Sex: The ‘Culture Wars’ Come to Russia?,” Journal of Church and State 55, no. 2 (2013): 307–334, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/css085; Lo Mascolo and Stoeckl, “European Christian Right,” 11–42.

[15] Lo Mascolo and Stoeckl, “European Christian Right,” 24.

[16] Stroop, “A Right-Wing International?”

[17] Aleksei Komov and Anton Pospelov, “Mirovoi prosemeinyi al’ians: imperiia nanosit otvetnyi udar” [Global Pro-Family Alliance: The Empire Strikes Back], Pravoslavie.ru, May 23, 2019, https://pravoslavie.ru/121346.html; Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International, 45–49.

[18] Anatolii Antonov, “Demograficheskoe budushchee Rossii: depopuliatsiia navsegda?” [Russia’s demographic future: depopulation forever?], in Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia [Sociological research], 3 (1999), 80–87.

[19] Antonov, “Demograficheskoe budushchee Rossii.”

[20] “Milliony liudei v Rossii ne khotiat imet’ detei” [Millions of people in Russia do not want to have children!], Pravoslavie, October 19, 2010, https://pravoslavie.ru/42176.html.

[21] Anatolii Antonov, “Krizis familisticheskoi tsivilizatsii v XXI veke” [The Crisis of Familistic Civilization in the XII Century], Ekonomicheskie Strategii [Economic Strategies], 1 (2016), 40–43, on 40 and 42, https://www.inesnet.ru/wp-content/mag_archive/2016_01/ES2016-01-040-43_Anatoly_Antonov.pdf

[22] Komov and Pospelov, “Mirovoi prosemeinyi al’ians”; Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International,45–48.

[23] I Prague, 1997; II Geneva, 1999; III Mexico City, 2004; IV Warsaw, 2007; V Amsterdam, 2009: VI Madrid, 2012; VII Sydney, 2013; VIII Moscow, 2014 (cancelled); IX Salt Lake City, 2015; X Tbilisi, 2016; XI Budapest, 2017; XII Chișinău, 2018; XIII Verona, 2019; XIII Accra, 2019; and XIV Mexico City, 2022. See Cole Parke, “U.S. Conservatives and Russian Anti-Gay Laws – The WCF,”Political Research Associates,October 16, 2013, https://politicalresearch.org/2013/10/17/u-s-conservatives-and-russian-anti-gay-laws-the-wcf; Stoeckl, “Rise of the Russian Christian Right.”

[24] “More Than 8,000 Participate in International Congress of Families in Mexico,” The Church of Jesus Christ, March 8, 2024, https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/international-congress-families-mexico.

[25] FamilyPolicy.ru.

[26] Sara Kalm and Anna Meeuwisse, “Transcalar Activism Contesting the Liberal International Order: The Case of the World Congress of Families,” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 30, no. 2 (Summer 2023): 556–579, on 563, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxad001.

[27] Allan Carlson, Conjugal America: On the Public Purposes of Marriage. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 100.

[28] Carlson, Conjugal America, 49.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Allan Carlson and Paul T. Mero, The Natural Family: A Manifesto (Dallas, TX: Spence, 2007), 114.

[31] Carlson and. Mero, The Natural Family, 177.

[32] “The Mexico City Declaration,” World Congress of Families, http://www.worldfamilydeclaration.org/

[33] “Sydney Declaration 2013,” World Congress of Families, https://www.familypolicy.ru/rep/Sydney_Declaration_WCF_2013_ru.pdf.

[34] One source claims that he gave a talk also at the Budapest Congress in 2017, but that is not corroborated by other sources. “Pozdravliaem professora A.I. Antonova s 85-letnim iubileem”, [Congratulations to Professor A.I. Antonov on his 85th birthday]. Website of the sociological department of the Moscow State University August 29, 2021, http://socio.msu.ru/index.php/%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%B5-%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B8/1026-2021-08-29.

[35] Stoeckl, “Rise of the Russian Christian Right,” 228.

[36] Patriarchia, “Predsedatel’ Patriarshei komissii po voprosam sem’i, zashchity materinstva i detstva vystupil na otkrytii XI Vsemirnom kongresse semei v Budapeshte” [The Chairman of the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood spoke at the opening of the 11th World Congress of Families in Budapest], May 29, 2017, http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/4911968.html; Patriarchia, “Predsedatel’ Patriarshei komissii po voprosam sem’i, zashchity materinstva i detstva vystupil na XII Vsemirnom kongresse semei” [The Chairman of the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood spoke at the 12th World Congress of Families], September 15, 2018, http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5268277.html; Patriarchia, “Predsedatel’ Patriarshei komissii po voprosam sem’i, zashchity materinstva i detstva vystupil na XIII Vsemirnom kongresse semei” [The Chairman of the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood spoke at the 13th World Congress of Families], April 1, 2019, http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5403026.html.

[37] “Predsedatel’ Patriarshei komissii po voprosam sem’i” [Chairman of the Patriarchal Commission on Family Issues], (2017), emphases added.

[38] “O proekte” (On the project), https://www.familypolicy.ru/o-nas/o-proekte-2.

[39] See Pål Kolstø, Family, Sex and Faith: The Biopolitics of the Russian Orthodox Church. Northern Illinois University Press, Ithaca NY 2024, chap. 6.

[40] “Vsemirnyi Kongress Semei podderzhal rossiiskii zakon o zaprete propagandy gomoseksualizma” [The World Congress of Families supported the Russian law banning the promotion of homosexuality], Novostnaia sluzhba Pravmir [Pravmir News Service], June 17, 2013, https://www.pravmir.ru/vsemirnyj-kongress-semej-podderzhal-rossijskij-zakon-o-zaprete-propagandy-gomoseksualizma/.

[41] Formally known as the “Law for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating a Denial of Traditional Family Values.”

[42] “Vsemirnyi Kongress Semei podderzhal” (note 40)

[43] Stoeckl, “Transnational Norm Mobilization,” 229. For an informative overview of Malofeev’s commercial/ideological/political networks, see Marlene Laruelle, “Values entrepreneurship an ideological reaction: the case of Konstantin Malofeev”, in Blakkisrud and Kolstø, Political Legitimacy, 80-108; Kristina Stoeckl, Russian Orthodoxy and Secularism (Leiden: Brill 2020).

[44] Katharina Bluhm and Martin Brand, “‘Traditional Values’ Unleashed: Ultraconservative Influence on Russian Family Policy,” in New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe, eds. Katharina Bluhm and Mihai Varga (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 223–244, on 226.

[45] Komov and Pospelov, “Mirovoi prosemeinyi al’ians.”

[46] Ibid.

[47] Komov and Pospelov, “Mirovoi prosemeinyi al’ians.”

[48] Parke, “U.S. Conservatives and Russian Anti-Gay Laws.”

[49] Tom Porter, “The Christian Right is Looking to Putin’s Russia to Save Christianity From the Godless West,” Newsweek, September 15, 2018, https://www.newsweek.com/how-evangelicals-are-looking-putins-russia-save-christianity-godless-west-1115164.

[50] Hannah Levintova, “How US Evangelicals Helped Create Russia’s Anti-Gay Movement,” Mother Jones, February 21, 2014, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/02/world-congress-families-russia-gay-rights/.

[51] Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International.

[52] Stoeckl, “Transnational Norm Mobilization,” 231–33, https://fpc.org.uk/transnational-norm-mobilization-the-world-congress-of-families-in-georgia-and-moldova/.

[53] Stroop, “A Right-Wing International?”

[54] Quoted in Stroop, “A Right-Wing International?” 4.

[55] Komov and Pospelov, “Mirovoi prosemeinyi al’ians.”

[56] “CEO Pavel Parfentiev Appointed World Congress of Families Ambassador to the European Institutions,” FamilyPolicy.ru, March 2, 2013, https://en.familypolicy.ru/read/231.

[57] Brian Tashman, “World Congress of Families Praises Russian Laws ‘Preventing’ Gays from ‘Corrupting Children’,” Rightwing watch, June 3, 2013; Stroop, “A Right-Wing International?” 8; see also “Predsedatel’ Patriarshei komissii” [Chairman of the Patriarchal Commission], 2017, http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/4911968.html.

[58] Larry Jacobs, in Irina Akhundova “‘Sem’ia i vera – dve storony odnoi medali’ [Family and faith are two sides of the same coin], Beseda s Lourensom Dzheikobsom, ispolnitel’nym direktorom Vsemirnogo kongressa semei [A conversation with Lawrence Jacobs, Executive Director of the World Congress of Families], https://pravoslavie.ru/69509.html. For the fate of the 2014 Moscow WCF Congress, see below.

[59] Jacobs, in Akhundova.

[60] Jacobs, in Akhundova.

[61] Melik Kaylan, “Kremlin values: Putin’s Strategic Conservatism,” World Affairs, 177, no. 1 (2014): 9–17, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43555061; Blakkisrud and Kolstø, Political Legitimacy; Kristina Stoeckl, Russian Orthodoxy and Secularism (Leiden: Brill 2020).

[62] Kolstø, Family, Sex and Faith.

[63] Pål Kolstø, “The Russian Orthodox Church and Its Fight against Abortion: Taking on the State and Losing,” Religion, State and Society 51, no. 2 (2023): 153–173, https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2023.2190290.

[64] Pål Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud, “Not So Traditional After All? The Russian Orthodox Church’s Failure as a ‘Moral Norm Entrepreneur’,” PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo no. 710, October 4, 2021, https://www.ponarseurasia.org/not-so-traditional-after-all-the-russian-orthodox-churchs-failure-as-a-moral-norm-entrepreneur/.

[65] Oleg Bulychev, “Dve Rossii” [Two Russias], Pravoslavie, May 1, 2015. https://pravoslavie.ru/79021.html.

[66] “Sviateishii Patriarkh: ‘Tserkovnaia zhizn’ dolzhna byt’ sluzheniem” [His Holiness the Patriarch: ‘Church life’ must be a service], Pravoslavie i mir, May 13, 2009, https://www.pravmir.ru/svyatejshij-patriarx-cerkovnaya-zhizn-dolzhna-byt-sluzheniem/.

[67] Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International.

[68] Patrick Buchanan, “Vladimir Putin, Christian crusader?” The American Conservative, April 4, 2014, http://www.theamericanconservative.com/2014/04/04/vladimir-putin-christian-crusader.

[69] Katherine Kelaidis, Holy Russia? Holy War? Why the Russian Church Is Backing Putin against Ukraine (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2023), 114–17.

[70] Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, “Putin’s American Comrades and Our Post-Truth Moment. The Recent Growth of Russian Orthodoxy in Appalachia Has Roots in the Kremlin’s Disinformation Campaigns,” Divinity Chicago, December 10, 2020, https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/putins-american-comrades-and-our-post-truth-moment. See also, Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, Between Heaven and Russia: Religious Conversion and Political Apostasy in the Appalachia (New York: Fordham University Press 2022), and Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, “As Russia Ramps Up ‘Traditional Values’ Rhetoric—Especially Against LGBTQ+ Groups—It’s Won Putin Far-Right Fans Abroad,” The Conversation, December 15, 2023, https://theconversation.com/as-russia-ramps-up-traditional-values-rhetoric-especially-against-lgbtq-groups-its-won-putin-far-right-fans-abroad-219102.

[71] Robert Horvath, “The Reinvention of ‘Traditional Values’: Nataliya Narochnitskaya and Russia’s Assault on Universal Human Rights,” Europe-Asia Studies 68, no. 5 (July 2016), 868–892, https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2016.1184230; Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International, 136–48.

[72] Natalia Antelava, “From Russia with hate,” The Coda Story, March 7, 2025, https://www.codastory.com/polarization/from-russia-with-hate/.

[73] Robert Coalson, “’Family Values’ Congress Brings Pro-Moscow Message To Georgia,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 17, 2016, https://www.rferl.org/a/georgia-confress-families-antigay-moscow-oligarchs-bush/27741199.html.

[74] Antelava, “From Russia with hate.”

[75] Dmitry Uzlaner and Kristina Stoeckl, “Are Transnational Moral Conservative Alliances Stable?” Culture Wars Papers, no. 8, May 2022, Culture-Wars-papers-no.-8-May-2022.pdf.

[76] Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International, 110–112. However, the congress nevertheless went ahead more or less as planned, with most of the same participants and the same agenda, albeit not under the WCF banner.

[77] Kristina Stoeckl, “A Moralist International Under Arms? Russia’s Role in the Global Culture Wars, Prior to and During Its War With Ukraine,” March 28, 2024, https://talkabout.iclrs.org/2024/03/28/a-moralist-international-under-arms/.

[78] Isobel Cockerell, “Russia spent years courting the Christian right. With the war in Ukraine, has the alliance faltered?” The Coda Story, February 21, 2023, https://www.codastory.com/polarization/kristina-stoeckl-russia-traditional-values/.

[79] The law has since been sharpened several times.

[80] “Vsemirnyi Kongress Semei i ‘rossiiskoe vliianie’” [The World Congress of Families and ‘Russian influence’], Katekhon, December 16, 2020, https://katehon.com/ru/article/vsemirnyy-kongress-semey-i-rossiyskoe-vliyanie.

[81] “Uchrediteli Тsentra” [Founders of the Center], https://www.familypolicy.ru/o-nas/uchrediteli.

[82] Anastasia Korochkina, “Putin podpisal zakon o zaprete propagandy chaildfri” [Putin signed a law banning childfree propaganda], Forbes, November 23, 2024, https://www.forbes.ru/society/525734-putin-podpisal-zakon-o-zaprete-propagandy-cajldfri.

[83] See n 22.

[84] Alicja Curanović, 2015. “The Guardians of Traditional Values: Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church in the Quest for Status.” German Marshall Fund of the United States.

[85] Stroop, “Bad Ecumenism,” 24.

[86] Ibid.

[87] Stoeckl and Uzlaner, The Moralist International, 87–102.

[88] Dmitrii Treshchanin, “Kak rossiiskie i amerikanskie fundamentalisty uchat drug druga shlepat’ detei i borot’sia s geiami” [How Russian and American fundamentalists teach each other to spank children and fight gays], Current Time, September 19, 2018, emphasis added, https://www.currenttime.tv/a/29496972.html.

[89] Giannis Mavris, “Russia portrays itself as ‘last line of defence for traditional values’,” Swiss Info, December 11, 2023, https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/russland-die-unterdrueckung-von-frauen-und-queers-als-strategie/49043240.