Natalia Kosikhina, a senator from Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, called for a ban on Halloween celebrations in all Russian schools Thursday, denouncing the holiday as an unwelcome Western influence.
“We need to do everything to ensure that this Western holiday is simply forgotten by the public and never again remembered. That’s why it’s important for us to not only minimize how often it’s mentioned in the media, advertisements and stores, but also to restrict its celebration at schools and universities,” Kosikhina said.
The Russian senator denounced Halloween as a day when children dress as “dead people and evil spirits.”
“I can’t help but agree with those who argue that worshiping ‘dark forces’ – even as a form of entertainment – is wrong,” she said.
Kosikhina said a total ban on Halloween might backfire, because “young people will want to celebrate this holiday even more,” so she limited her demand to a ban on Halloween festivities in schools and universities.
Kosikhina has also manned the culture-war barricades against kvadrobers, an odd Russian youth craze that involves teenagers costuming themselves as animals and doing their best to imitate whatever animal they have dressed up as. There is a similar trend called “furries” among Western youth, but Russian teens seem to be taking it further.
As with Halloween, Kosikhina and like-minded Russian politicians claim the kvadrober craze is a Western psychological warfare attack intended to “dehumanize” Russian youth.
“Offering to try themselves in the role of animals, fictional characters, mythical creatures. Such manifestations only at first look like a game and a joke. Behind this lies a serious program of rejecting humanity and everything human,” Russian parliamentary chair Vyacheslav Volodin, a fellow member of the United Russia party, said two weeks ago.
“Washington and Brussels are losing their dominance. In order to continue ruling the world, they are implementing the ‘Dehumanization’ project,” he charged. By “Brussels,” he meant the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which is headquartered there.
Kosikhina showed none of the reticence she displayed with banning Halloween, demanding kvadrober be completely outlawed across the Russian federation before it “traumatizes the psyche” of Russian children and brings “tragic consequences.”
Some Russian police want the kvadrober movement banned for the more prosaic reason that people running around in costumes all the time could lead to an increase in street crime. Some of the more energetic practitioners of the bizarre fad have reportedly bitten bystanders.
Opposition lawmakers pushed back against United Russia’s campaigns to eliminate Halloween, which is not really all that popular in Russia.
“We already ban so many things. We’re annoying people. We need to cheer them up. We need to think of a format that instills our citizens with positive emotions,” said State Duma lawmaker Andrei Svintsov of the Liberal Democratic Party.
