Irina, a Moscow teenager with white-blond hair dressed in laddered tights and a black leather jacket, sits on a park bench in the city center with two girlfriends, drinking a bottle of beer and enjoying the warm summer afternoon.
The girls, sporting punky combinations of dyed hair, nose rings, and slightly sullen expressions, look like average teenagers in many parts of the world. But in Moscow, they are the target of a new government campaign to purge Russia's youth of immorality and sin. Irina, for one, is skeptical.
The plan that has Irina nervous is a package of bills and amendments, introduced in Russia's State Duma in June, aimed at "protecting children's morality." If some Duma deputies have their way, young Russians could soon find themselves in trouble for activities as seemingly innocent as carving pumpkins or listening to music.
Together with proposals to combat child alcoholism and pornography, the policy project outlines a raft of draconian measures such as a 10 p.m. curfew for all school-age children and a ban on tattoos and body-piercings.
Under the new measures, schools would be prohibited from celebrating Western holidays like Halloween and St. Valentine's Day, which are deemed inappropriate to "Russian culture." Toys in the shape of monsters or skeletons would be banned as "provoking aggression."
