A poster shows a woman with a rifle and babushka on her head under a red flag in front of smoking factory chimneys. Review

How a ‘Fairy-Tale Country’ for Women Turned Its Back on Feminism

Julia Ioffe’s new feminist history of Russia offers important lessons for the West. November 21, 2025, 2:20 PM Comment icon View Comments ( )

One snowy day in February 2017, I visited Sokolniki Park in Moscow, where a few hundred Russian women were protesting the latest in what seemed like an endless onslaught against women and sexual minorities: President Vladimir Putin had just approved a bill to decriminalize domestic violence.

This was the only Russia I had known since arriving in the country as a journalist in 2012. LGBTQ rights were under constant assault, from adoption bans to t

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