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Traditional Values

Tagssoft powerlgbt disinfoothering

EquivalentsRUтрадиционные ценности

Definition

Section titled “Definition”

“Traditional values” (Russian: traditsionnye tsennosti) is a state-promoted moral agenda that frames Russia as the global defender of the family, religion, and a “natural” social order against a decadent and permissive Western liberalism. It is the positive, self-flattering face of a worldview whose negative images are Gayropa and the morally bankrupt Collective West: where the West is said to be collapsing into degeneracy, Russia presents itself as the last bastion of virtue.

The agenda is real policy, not just rhetoric. Since 2022 it has an official definition in Russian law, and it underwrites concrete legislation — above all the suppression of LGBT life — as well as a far-reaching campaign of cultural diplomacy.

Origin and history

Section titled “Origin and history”

The “traditional values” turn took shape in Putin’s third term, after the 2011–2012 protests, as the Kremlin sought a unifying conservative ideology to replace a thin official patriotism. Scholars such as Marlene Laruelle have analysed how morality, Orthodoxy, and anti-Western sentiment were fused into a flexible state doctrine usable both at home and as soft power abroad.1

The doctrine was formalised on 9 November 2022, when Putin signed Executive Order No. 809, “On Approving the Foundations of State Policy for Preserving and Strengthening Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values.” The decree enumerates values such as life, family, patriotism, service, and “the priority of the spiritual over the material,” and explicitly names foreign and liberal influence as a threat to them.2 In parallel, the “gay propaganda” law (2013, extended to all ages in 2022) and the 2023 Supreme Court ruling branding the “international LGBT movement” “extremist” turned the rhetoric into prosecutable law.34

Function in propaganda

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The agenda is used to:

  • export soft power to conservative and religious audiences worldwide, recruiting sympathisers far beyond Russia’s borders who share its hostility to liberal social norms;
  • provide moral cover for domestic repression, especially of LGBT people, dissenters, and independent culture, by recasting it as the defence of the nation’s spiritual health;
  • serve as the positive mirror of Gayropa and the Collective West, supplying the “good” pole that the demonised West sets off;
  • bind church and state, aligning the Russian World civilisational claim with a moral mission.

The framing is selective and instrumental. “Traditional values” are invoked to justify policy the state already wants — censorship, persecution, the militarisation of patriotism — while inconvenient realities (high divorce rates, domestic violence, the partial decriminalisation of some domestic abuse in 2017) are passed over. It treats “values” less as lived ethics than as a banner of identity in a civilisational conflict.

Key examples

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Executive Order 809 (2022). The decree gave “traditional values” the status of official state policy and named Western influence as a danger to be resisted — converting a cultural slogan into a governing doctrine.2

Anti-LGBT legislation. The 2013 “gay propaganda” law, its 2022 extension to adults, and the 2023 “extremist” designation of the “LGBT movement” are the sharpest applications of the agenda, exposing LGBT people to prosecution in the name of moral protection.34

Cultural diplomacy. Russian institutions and allied networks promote the “traditional values” brand to conservative movements abroad, positioning Moscow as the leader of a global moral counter-revolution.1

The domestic record

Section titled “The domestic record”

The “traditional values” brand is hardest to square with Russia’s own social statistics, which on most family and public-health measures are worse than those of the Western societies it derides.

  • Abortion. Russia long had among the highest abortion rates in the world — 37.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in 2010, the highest of any country in the UN’s comparative data. The rate has fallen substantially since (to roughly 12 per 1,000 by 2021) but remains high by Western European standards.5
  • Divorce. Russia’s crude divorce rate, around 3.9–4.7 per 1,000 people in recent years, is among the highest in the world and roughly double the typical Western European rate of under 2.0.6
  • Domestic violence. In February 2017 Russia decriminalised first-offence battery against family members, downgrading it from a criminal to an administrative offence — a measure championed by conservative and Orthodox groups explicitly in the name of protecting the family.7
  • Alcohol. Per-capita consumption was about 11.7 litres of pure alcohol in 2016 — down sharply from a mid-2000s peak but still among the highest in the world — and alcohol remains a leading driver of premature death among working-age Russian men.8
  • HIV. Russia has the worst HIV epidemic in the European region, with 40.2 newly diagnosed cases per 100,000 population in 2021, even as new infections fell across Western Europe and North America.9

Official Russian statistics, especially from Rosstat, tend to understate politically sensitive categories, so several of these figures are likely conservative.

Why it matters

Section titled “Why it matters”

“Traditional values” matters because it gives Russian authoritarianism a positive, exportable identity. Repression at home and confrontation abroad are reframed not as power politics but as the defence of civilisation’s moral core — a message that resonates with audiences who feel alienated by rapid social change, including many outside Russia.

That resonance is the point. By appealing to genuine conservative sentiment worldwide, the doctrine builds sympathy for the Russian state among people who would never endorse its wars or its repression directly — making “traditional values” one of the Kremlin’s most effective instruments of soft power, and one of the hardest to counter.

See also

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Sources

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Mentioned in

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Footnotes

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  1. Laruelle, M. (2019). Russian Nationalism: Imaginaries, Doctrines, and Political Battlefields. Routledge. ↩ ↩2

  2. Executive Order No. 809, “On Approving the Foundations of State Policy for Preserving and Strengthening Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values,” President of Russia, 9 November 2022. ↩ ↩2

  3. Edenborg, E. (2017), on Russia’s “traditional values” politics; and the “gay propaganda” law (2013, extended 2022). ↩ ↩2

  4. “Russia: Supreme Court Bans ‘LGBT Movement’ as ‘Extremist’,” Human Rights Watch, 30 November 2023. ↩ ↩2

  5. Abortion rates from Rosstat figures and the UN Demographic Yearbook: 37.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 (2010) was the highest of any country reporting to the UN; the rate fell to roughly 12 per 1,000 by 2021. ↩

  6. Crude divorce rates from Rosstat (~3.9 per 1,000 in 2020, ~4.7 in peak years); Western European rates are typically below 2.0 per 1,000 (Eurostat). ↩

  7. “Russia: Bill to Decriminalize Domestic Violence,” Human Rights Watch, 23 January 2017; the amendments were signed into law on 7 February 2017 (Library of Congress, “Russia: Decriminalization of Domestic Violence”). ↩

  8. World Health Organization, Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health: Russian per-capita consumption ~11.7 litres of pure alcohol in 2016, down from a mid-2000s peak. ↩

  9. UNAIDS and WHO European Region data: Russia recorded 40.2 newly diagnosed HIV cases per 100,000 population in 2021, the highest rate in the European region. ↩