Multicultural societies such as the United States and Russia both possess systems to protect their citizens, particularly members of minority groups who are most at risk of facing discrimination and violence. While the United States protects hate speech under the First Amendment, Russia specifically bans “actions aimed at the incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as the humiliation of a person or group of persons on grounds of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, attitude to religion, as well as affiliation to any social group, committed publicly or with the use of media or information and telecommunication networks” under Article 282 of the Russian criminal code. The legal framework for such a strict attitude toward hate speech in Russia is largely adapted from German hate speech laws to Russian standards and conditions. However, the historical precedent for such a system goes much further back than the current Russian government. The current system chiefly draws upon the centuries-long history of Russian multiculturalism and interethnic conflict, laws against sexism and racism adopted by the Soviet Union, and the legacy of the current Russian state using hate speech laws to silence nationalist and extremist factions as well as social movements.

Russia is home to 185 ethnic groups, 35 official languages, as well as more than a hundred unregistered languages spoken by the indigenous people of Siberia. Religion in Russia is divided between the Russian Orthodox Church, a massive Muslim population, and the only majority-Buddhist province in Europe, not to mention the many thousands of other Christian denominations, one of the largest and oldest Jewish populations in the world, and the hundreds of syncretic and shamanistic traditional religions. Despite efforts by the current Russian government, the previous Soviet government, and even the preceding monarchist regime, inter-ethnic violence has long afflicted Russian society. In particular, the Chechen conflicts of the 1990s and the invasions of Crimea and Georgia have inflamed tensions between the Muslim people of the Caucasus, ethnic Ukrainians, ethnic Georgians, and the predominantly Russian majority. A majority of the terrorist attacks on Russian soil since the 1990s have been acts of ethnic violence between Chechen separatists and Islamists and the Islamophobic reaction to said attacks, particularly in major cities such as Moscow. Accordingly, the Russian government uses its hate speech laws as a means of ensuring against the occurrence of such attacks, and has a great interest in preventing hate speech which might escalate into prolonged violence. The resurgence of the slogan «Росси́я для ру́сских», or “Russia for Russians” (a phrase that holds significant anti-Semitic and fascist connotations in Russia), in discourse among far-right opposition politicians has also prompted the Putin administration to step up anti-hate speech enforcement in advertisements and on the internet. In cases relating to the internet, the Russian government holds the internet provider accountable for any hate speech rather than the specific source of the speech itself. According to the Media Law and Policy Institute, Rosokhrankultura, the government’s media regulator, issued 32 warnings to independent Russian media outlets in 2006 concerning their coverage of purported extremist activity. Hate speech law in Russia also extends to protecting the sexes. However, LGBT and gender minorities, unrecognized by the Russian government, are excluded. While in the past these laws have been used to prosecute misogynist hate, they have been criticized by international women’s advocacy groups for being used to attack feminists for their positions.

From a Russian legal perspective, extremism is not defined primarily by violence as it is in the West, but measured by how it attacks the status quo, thus encompassing social movements such as certain feminist and LGBT initiatives. Specifically, Russian law defines extremism as “public justification of terrorism or other terrorist activity,” demonstrating how Russian law is much more subject to interpretation than the United States. This is largely due to Russia’s unique judicial structure. In Russia, the number of jury trials remains small, with only about 600 out of about 1 million trials per year. While lawyers are central to the American legal system, only about 47,000 defense lawyers exist in all of Russia and are mostly employed for specialized cases. This has led to a judiciary with little independence, compelling Constitutional Court Judge Anatoly Kononov to admit in an interview that “no independent judiciary exists in Russia today.” In 2006, President Putin, who controls such a great deal of power over the constitutional court, went as far as to include any slanderous criticisms of state officials as extremism, providing an example of how flexible the definition of extremism can be in the face of Russian legal philosophy. In order to understand how Russian hate crime law is used to protect the status quo, one must recognize that the Russian political landscape does not resemble the multiparty American system with its emphasis on separation of powers but conversely centralizes the political and legal spheres. The ruling United Russia Party, despite having a vague national conservative agenda, primarily functions as a catch-all party. However, within the United Russia Party, an eclectic mix of political ideologies exists, including socialists, communists, and Social Democrats. Given this, a majority of the opposition to the United Russia Party contains political ideologies that are both vaguely liberal and well outside the realm of liberalism, including nationalists, anti-Semites, and monarchists (which remain a significant political force in Russia even at present). Knowing this provides context to why a right-wing government might pursue laws to control right-wing extremist rhetoric, being more interested in preserving order and the status quo.

Without providing context, Russian hate speech laws appear incongruent with the Western perception of both Russians and the Russian government. However, such laws are in fact consistent with the aims of Russian legal and political philosophy, serving as a means of eliminating radicalism in the political sphere. These laws, supplemented with a variety of other legal and political mechanisms, have allowed the current Russian government to remain the dominant entity, a considerable feat given the short but tumultuous history of the Russian federation.