By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ As Russia devolves more and more into a ball-and-chain dystopia with ‘foreign agents’ apparently scattered everywhere spreading their bile and chewing away the very intestines of ‘the Motherland’, the patriotic authorities are in hot pursuit, and the Duma is working like a set of overactive bowels. Indeed it is at the level of intestine and bowels that present day Russia operates. And there are more piles every day.
Now we come now to the next chapter – this one involving children. “What do you mean, children?” – you ask. “You mean the propaganda in the schools isn’t working? They all want to learn English? They’re asking questions about d-e-m-o-c-r-a-c-y?”
No, I do not speak of the children in school, nor any other children who are there (as in anywhere), but of the ones who aren’t there. The ones who haven’t been born. And aren’t getting born at an acceptable rate, which is what the Russian government is cracking down on. “No babies, devochka ? What’s going on? You don’t love the Motherland?”
Russia is hardly the only country with a declining birthrate. The Japanese seem dedicated to sexual abstinence from each other while cultivating romantic comfort zones with AI. One day it may become an entirely AI nation. The same is true throughout Europe. Africans, Indians, and Arabs, on the other hand, seem to be doing fine. In some cases it must be that they are too poor to do anything but ‘flirt with each other’, and in other cases it is ‘Long live Islam’.
But these countries, unlike Russia (and Ukraine, which was forced into this) haven’t seen mass exodus – through Russian death on the war front (the number depends on who’s counting) and from people running away from the war and the totalitarian regime that grips Russia like a steel trap (almost enough to apply for NATO membership). And to think – the male population was already low compared to the female side of the bed because of Hitler and Stalin (Uncle Joe’s numbers far exceeded Der Führer’s).
So Russia needs its guys and gals to step it up a notch. And since this isn’t happening, the blame naturally falls on the women. It’s the ladies who are the subversive element, and the reason for it is that they have all been listening to foreign anti-Russia ‘brainwashing’ advocating a ‘childfree’ lifestyle. The logic is plain (and in the minds of Russian authorities, unshakeable): the rest of the world, incapable of resisting the military might of the great Russian army, is trying a different way. They want to talk Russian women out of having children, which of course will eventually result in Russia simply dying out because there will be no more Russians. Get it? It’s all a Western conspiracy. Like everything else.
But don’t kid yourself. The Big Testicles running the nation won’t fall for the ruse.
Time Out. Let’s face it: life has changed in the more civilized societies because of the liberation of women from their former status as broodmares and punching bags. This is not to say that all women suffer at the hands of men, nor that many women do not still enjoy being mothers and homemakers. The militant feminists shriek when a woman declares her intention of being a ‘traditional wife’, but we will always have a lunatic fringe to deal with. According to those screwballs, it’s fine for women to have choices as long as they choose correctly. But surely, surely to (the imaginary) Christ, it should be a woman’s choice whether she wants to have children, am I right?
Wrong, according to the Russian government. Recently the Russian State Duma has decreed that “‘the childfree ideology’, that is, the conscious refusal to have children” will be punished in Russia’s ongoing determination to “preserve family values.” The bill that reached the Duma “foresees the establishment of protection against dissemination on the internet, media, films, and advertisements of information propagandizing the refusal to have children” (RIA Novosti, September 23).
So the government is going to force women to have children on the point of a sword. Reuters provides the following information regarding government-inflicted reprisals:
Deputy Duma speaker Anna Kuznetsova said earlier this month that the law was part of Russia’s “national security strategy”.
Authors of content that falls foul of the law will be subject to fines: up to 400,000 roubles ($4,125) for individuals, twice that amount for officials, and up to 5 million roubles ($51,550) for legal entities.
In Russia, there is nothing funny about the wrath of the government. I personally lived in Moscow for many years and still treasure pleasant relationships, even deep-rooted friendships, with many Russian people. My wife is Russian. I absolutely enjoyed most of my time in the city. I had enough sense not to wander around drunk at 4am with lots of cash on me, a new laptop in my hand, and an expensive watch on my wrist. In fact, I found Moscow safer than crazy American cities. So there is not and never was any ‘Russo-phobia’ on my part. But I knew the score. No demonstrations for me. No Opposition politics. Anyway, I didn’t care about all that then. The economy was good and the Leader was flying around in helicopters and taking judo lessons. Bare-chested on horseback. What a guy.
But then things changed. Having said what a nice place I initially found Russia (well, Moscow actually) to be, the clouds darkened. Crimea was stolen and hostilities increased in Donetsk. Then (by that time I was safely out of Russia) came the invasion of Ukraine (which of course, Russia wants to blame on everyone else) – and the government has resumed its traditional old tricks of brutality to dissidents, unbelievably harsh sentences for those who publicly disagree with the war, death and imprisonment to journalists who dare to stand up to the authorities, the attempted censorship of all media outlets except those that serve the government, anti West and NATO propaganda, fake news, pathological, nonstop lying about everything under the sun, denial of history, and the incessant policy of instilling terror in its citizens. Russians may look tough, sound tough, and be able to hold their own in a street brawl – but they are terrified lambs in the face of government oppression, and they always have been. Always will be, is my guess.
So now here come the ham-fisted authorities (it is really a challenge to grasp how blitheringly stupid the Russian Duma is) who are going to insist that women begin popping out the младенцы (babies) like bubble gum out of a machine. Preferably not one, not two, but three! The next thing you know, Russian families will bloom to the degree that living in a 40 square meter apartment will no longer seem like a Barnum & Bailey circus tent and more like one of those rusty, creaky lifts I used to go up on. Ah, the Traditional Family restored!
‘Family values’ to the side, the real reason for this is the dangerous decline of the Russian population. And what the government refuses to accept as the real cause (which has nothing to do with what Big Brother Bullshit is trying to sell), is that many women – who would like to have children if they were in a decent environment for bringing them into the world – are unwilling to because they feel they can’t afford it. Many are working long hours for little pay, and they have expressed very clearly their fear of not being able to offer more than a roof and window to their kids. According to the Russian research company “Russian Field,” 17 percent of childless Russians do not want children due to poverty and unemployment (RussianField.com, August 23). Another reason is the war. Why drag new life into a world where life is cheap? Why create an infant in a place where death is worth no more than a single payout for signing up and the future is shaped like a mushroom?
When I was in Moscow, I noticed that the city was packed with old women wandering about, pulling little carts behind them, heading for destinations clear to them but mysterious to the world. I recall remarking to a friend that “Moscow is a city of старые бабушки (old grandmothers)!”
.” He did not disagree. “Where are the men?” I ventured. His answer, “The men are gone.” There was nothing enigmatic in his voice, only the flatness of finality, as if he were pointing to the imaginary doors of some gray metro station that exists only the minds of men in prison or was left standing stolidly before the people of the past.
The funny (as in strange and sad) thing is that Russians appear to love children, in fact adore them. It is etched in my mind how, when I was zooming about the city in the crowded metro, every time a woman came onboard with a child – not just babies but toddlers with sturdy legs – all the men would leap to their feet as if the cabin were on fire just to make a place for the child to sit. Or for the mother to cradle her young. This generous habit was also true of guys from the old bloc countries. The children melted their hearts, even as I would mutter to myself, “What a show! Why can’t the little bastards stand on their feet? It’s good for them!” But rise the gentlemen would, without question. These might have been the same fellows who would slap their wives at home. The same guys who, in prison, will sing chanson in worshipful honor of the same mothers that they brought nothing but grief to. But the chaps on the trains would click their heels and stand at attention. Well, everybody was a baby once, even the terminal alcoholics in front of the stations.
But now the government means business. The requirement for more babies is as real as the need for more bullets and missiles. Well, scrap metal can be aggrandised, melted down, and recycled. However, in plain bald truth, there is nothing the authorities can do to ‘force’ women to have babies, although it is a fact that abortion clinics are being shut down, and the plan is to ban or limit contraceptives to young women. No, the real reason is to create the possibility of legal persecution and, ultimately, prosecution of anyone deemed undesirable. The official hogwash about being ‘childless’ constituting a subversive, anti-Russian ideal means nothing more than another control mechanism. In Russia, various regulations, often ambiguous, exist in order to keep the public under strict repressive conditions and in fear of incarceration. In Russia, the ‘law’ is an abstract contortionist. An octopus with a thousand tentacles. It means what the authorities want it to mean.
Russia has always been this way. The war has only brought the true nature of the Russian mentality out of the closet. It is now, and forever has been, a violent free-for-all where human rights and human life mean nothing. The millions upon millions of wasted lives during the war because of Stalin’s mismanagement and later genocide against own people, some of them legitimate ‘war heroes’ that Stalin, in his paranoia, feared to the extent that he exterminated them or sent them to gulags is a fact well-known to objective students of history who do not languish under the brawny, smelly arm of Russian bureaucratic numbskulls, headbreaking goon squads, and revisionist propaganda merchants.
So, I would finally like to hear an explanation of just how the government is going to force the fucking that will be necessary to make all these ‘United Russia’ babies. Will the authorities stand outside the doors or beneath windows required by law to remain open, and shout (when there is silence) “Heyyyyyy! We don’t hear any moaning and groaning in there! Get moving and start bouncing!! The Motherland needs ORGASMS. Spermatozoa and fertilized uteruses! Or тюрьма (prison)!”
Frankly, I don’t see any other way. Besides, what woman could resist such charm?
