ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the near-invisibility of masculinity as a scholarly topic and political issue in post-Soviet Russia. Masculinity is generally seen only when pundits, experts, or artists identify it as a problem, contributing to the reluctance of scholars to develop a comprehensive theory of masculinity. These dynamics were evident in a 2018 online video and in the public response in which a music video parody, appearing homoerotic to a western audience, was criticized and praised in Russia with no reference to the homoeroticism—despite the virulent homophobia stirred up by a 2013 law against so-called gay propaganda. Part of this invisibility is the importance of various forms of male homosociality in Russia, modeled in militarized masculinity, and that reinforce the hierarchical masculinity of the cult of Putin. Avant-garde novelists such as Vladimir Sorokin and Actionists such Voina, Pussy Riot, and Piotr Pavlensky—progressive culture and political figures who are temperamentally and ideologically predisposed to question tradition—have used a critique of masculinity as part of their resistance to current state power, but the Russian public often downplays or ridicules the gendered elements of their writings and performances.
