Discourses of the Domestic Violence Decriminalization in Russian Public Sphere: the Spaces of Consensus and Antagonism

This paper studies discourses of the decriminalization of domestic violence in the Russian public sphere. The problem of domestic violence in Russia is quite serious. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 2016 there were 65.5 thousand victims of domestic violence, and 27090 of them were women. In 2017 the article 116 of the Russian Penal Code was changed after the adoption of the law establishing the decriminalization of domestic violence. This type of violence began to be considered by Russian legislators as only an administrative offence. The accepting of the law caused a serious resonance. The purpose of the study is to learn how and with what rhetorics a discussion of the decriminalization of domestic violence is formed in the Russian public sphere. The study examined the main theoretical approaches to the problem of domestic violence, including discursive ones. There were also identified the areas of the public sphere and their features to explain the rhetorics of discourses of domestic violence. After the discourse analysis and the rhetorical analysis of selected publications of the Russian media, we came to the following conclusions. The authorities speak the language of traditional values: the necessity of the law is justified by the protection of the integrity of the family. The Russian public sphere is far from a consensual model: the power comes to an imaginary consensus, and the practice of deliberation does not influence the decision-making. The model of an agonistic dispute had potential in the Russian media - but the government does not participate in the discussion, does not respond to criticism, and the process of deliberation becomes unequal. It is also possible to note the rudiments of counterpublic in the Russian public sphere - they are formed by victims of violence. However, their voice in the general discussion has not yet been heard, due to the stigmatization of the topic of violence in society.