Unofficial restrictions on Halloween celebrations are tightening in Russia. At Moscow State University’s journalism faculty, students were told, according to the Telegram channel First University, that costumes, makeup and other holiday-related symbols were not allowed on campus. They were warned of disciplinary penalties, although no clear justification for the ban was provided.
In July, Russia’s Supreme Court declared a supposedly “international Satanism movement” extremist, even though no such real organization appears to exist. After that, Vladimir Nikishin, director of the Institute of Information and Media Security at Kutafin Moscow State Law University, told TASS that Halloween had become a visible example of a growing satanist subculture in online media. He said pumpkins and images of vampires, zombies and ghosts are not banned by themselves, but an inverted cross, a pentagram or depictions of the devil could lead to liability under Article 20.3 of the administrative code.
The restrictions have reached other venues as well. At a school in the Rostov region, administrators said local authorities had recommended canceling Halloween-related events. In St. Petersburg, Alexey Samsonov, one of the organizers of the NekroComicon festival, was detained before the event. Organizers and media outlets said police sealed off the site, and Samsonov, a Kazakh citizen, was kept overnight at a police station for document checks.
Speaking to Novaya Gazeta Europe, anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova described the campaign as part of a broader state strategy of “import substitution” for holidays and of cultural isolation.
In her view, Halloween is being pushed out by invented substitutes such as “Pumpkin Savior Day” and “Veles Night,” even though such observances have no real historical link to late October. Arkhipova argues that the current campaign is aimed primarily at schoolchildren and students: the authorities want to shield young people from what they portray as Western influence and to underline distance from the global cultural space.