Novaya Gazeta Europe reports on conversion therapy in Russia: more than 30 “treatment” centers and stories of survivors
On 30 November, it has been two years since Russia’s Supreme Court designated the “international LGBT movement” as an “extremist organisation”. Against this backdrop, Novaya Gazeta Europe published a long piece by Tatiana Kalinina on conversion therapy in contemporary Russia — from official rhetoric to private “rehabilitation centers” and the personal stories of those affected.
What Novaya-Europe writes
The outlet notes that in the two years since the Supreme Court’s decision, Russian courts have handed down more than a hundred convictions for “participation in the LGBT movement” or for displaying queer symbols, including the rainbow flag. Dozens of people are facing administrative and criminal cases solely because of their real or alleged queer identities.
Against this backdrop, according to 2021 data from state pollster VCIOM, almost a quarter of Russians (23%) still believe that LGBTQ+ people are “sick and need medical treatment” — despite the fact that the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of diseases in 1990 and transgender identities in 2019.
The journalist shows how state rhetoric about “illness” and “healing” is used to equate LGBTQ+ people with threats on a par with pedophiles and extremists, and how it becomes a justification for repression.
How the authorities normalise the idea of “treatment”
The article cites Russian officials and propagandists who for years have portrayed LGBTQ+ people as a “contagion” and a “deviation” that must be “cured” or isolated:
– MP Vitaly Milonov, who claimed that “80% of pedophiles are homosexuals”, proposed sterilising gay people and keeping them “in shelters like cats”, and called homosexuals “the lowest stage of development of the animal world”;
– former head of the State Duma Committee on Family Affairs Tamara Pletnyova, who said in 2019 that Tchaikovsky was “sick” and should have been “treated”;
– Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, who compared an inclusive kindergarten for queer families in Germany to a “hotel for pedophiles” and a “surgery ward combined with a cannibalism clinic”, and later described gender diversity in the West as a “hell of value narratives” and “anti-values”;
– State Duma vice speaker Pyotr Tolstoy, who describes “LGBT propaganda” as an instrument of “hybrid warfare” and justifies its blanket ban as “protecting future generations”.
The piece separately mentions Vladimir Putin’s 2023 order to the Health Ministry to create, on the basis of the Serbsky Centre, an institute that would “study the behaviour of people with disrupted gender self-identification”. Health Minister Mikhail Murashko linked this to the task of bringing “the ideas that homosexuals and trans people have about their gender into line with reality”. Milonov, in turn, spoke of the need for a “comprehensive action plan” to combat not only the ideology but the “illness” itself.
Human rights defenders quoted by the outlet see all this as a normalisation of conversion practices at the state level.
Nadya’s story: the psychologist who “treated” a lesbian
The first story in the piece is about Nadya Mityagina, an English teacher and blogger, a lesbian from Syktyvkar. As a teenager, before she fully realised her orientation, she was taken to a psychologist by her mother.
At first, the specialist worked on Nadya’s anxiety and family issues, building trust. But when Nadya admitted that she was attracted to girls, the psychologist began to insist that this was “unnatural”, “caused by trauma” and could be “fixed”.
According to Nadya, the psychologist:
– linked her feelings to “problems with her father”;
– claimed that “2% are born that way, the rest are traumatised”;
– cited “examples” of supposedly unhappy LGBT people with addictions;
– insisted that lesbians “will never have children” and are doomed to loneliness.
One of the exercises gave the article its headline image: the psychologist divided Nadya’s palm into four segments (tiramisu, lemon, “dog vomit”, milk) and placed “kissing a woman” into the “vomit” segment, forcing the teenager to repeatedly imagine “eating dog vomit and kissing a woman” in order to make her feel disgusted by her own desires.
Under the influence of this “therapy” and homophobic rhetoric about “LGBT propaganda”, Nadya avoided queer content for years, believed she could “get infected” and felt ashamed of her feelings. The process of shedding this imposed shame took years — with the help of a new therapist, support from her partner and self-education. She now lives in Argentina with her wife and speaks openly about the harms of conversion therapy.
Igor’s story: 555 days in a “rehabilitation center”
The second story is about Igor (name changed), a transgender man whose mother sent him to a closed “rehabilitation center” under the guise of “a countryside facility to treat depression”. Igor had never used drugs, but the institution operated as a paid rehab for “addicts” and turned him into an object of “re-education”.
According to Igor’s account:
– on arrival, staff told him that if he refused to sign the papers, he “would not leave alive”;
– the daily routine involved exhausting physical labour, constant cleaning and a system of punishments (for example, 100 push-ups for swearing, “shame signs”, bans on communication and phone calls);
– the center used so-called “emotional tunings” — forced written “confessions” followed by pressure and humiliation;
– informant behaviour was encouraged: a wall board recorded any “non-recovering behaviour” by other residents;
– the “center” functioned like a totalitarian sect under the banner of the “12-step” programme.
According to Novaya, Igor’s mother, unable to accept his gender identity, was looking for ways to “get her daughter back”, and the owners of the center took advantage. The cost of such “treatment” could range from 60,000 to 100,000 rubles a month. Contact with the outside world was tightly controlled, calls were monitored, and over 555 days Igor lost 30 kilos and, in his own words, looked “like a concentration camp inmate”.
He stresses that there was nothing “broken” in him — only pressure, transphobia and depression — and that the “treatment” itself was torture, after which he needed “years of rehabilitation and returning to himself”.
A network of conversion centers and the stance of human rights defenders
According to an investigation by the project Systema, cited by Novaya-Europe, there are at least 12 organisations in Russia offering “treatment for homosexuality”. The Initiative to Ban Conversion Therapy in Russia adds another 16 to that list alone. This means there may be more than 30 such structures operating across the country, not counting those documented by other human rights groups (SK SOS, Sfera, Vyhod, Memorial and others).
They often advertise themselves as centres for treating alcoholism and drug addiction but, when approached directly, confirm that they “work” with LGBTQ+ people. Their methods include:
– religious pressure;
– isolation;
– psychotropic medication;
– hypnosis;
– punitive psychiatry;
– “spiritual rehabilitation” under the threat of violence.
Some centers work remotely — for example, the “Workshop of Soul and Body” sells hypnosis audio recordings for 7,000 rubles, while the Orthodox shelter “Unfading Hope” reportedly charges around 50,000 rubles a month for accommodation and “conversations with psychologists”.
According to the human rights defenders quoted by Novaya-Europe, many of these institutions lack medical licences, complaints from victims to the police are ignored, and state structures continue to propagate queerphobic narratives instead of recognising conversion therapy as a problem.
International context
The article recalls that the World Psychiatric Association considers attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity unethical, and the UN equates some forms of forced “treatment of homosexuality” with torture. Despite this, conversion practices in Russia are effectively encouraged: official rhetoric about “illness” and “correction” goes hand in hand with increasingly harsh anti-LGBT laws and silent acceptance of private “clinics”.
In this way, Novaya Gazeta Europe documents not only the personal trauma of people who have gone through conversion therapy, but also the systemic nature of this practice: the way it is fuelled by official discourse, the business model of private centers, and the lack of effective protection for LGBTQ+ people in Russia.
What Novaya-Europe writes
The outlet notes that in the two years since the Supreme Court’s decision, Russian courts have handed down more than a hundred convictions for “participation in the LGBT movement” or for displaying queer symbols, including the rainbow flag. Dozens of people are facing administrative and criminal cases solely because of their real or alleged queer identities.
Against this backdrop, according to 2021 data from state pollster VCIOM, almost a quarter of Russians (23%) still believe that LGBTQ+ people are “sick and need medical treatment” — despite the fact that the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of diseases in 1990 and transgender identities in 2019.
The journalist shows how state rhetoric about “illness” and “healing” is used to equate LGBTQ+ people with threats on a par with pedophiles and extremists, and how it becomes a justification for repression.
How the authorities normalise the idea of “treatment”
The article cites Russian officials and propagandists who for years have portrayed LGBTQ+ people as a “contagion” and a “deviation” that must be “cured” or isolated:
– MP Vitaly Milonov, who claimed that “80% of pedophiles are homosexuals”, proposed sterilising gay people and keeping them “in shelters like cats”, and called homosexuals “the lowest stage of development of the animal world”;
– former head of the State Duma Committee on Family Affairs Tamara Pletnyova, who said in 2019 that Tchaikovsky was “sick” and should have been “treated”;
– Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, who compared an inclusive kindergarten for queer families in Germany to a “hotel for pedophiles” and a “surgery ward combined with a cannibalism clinic”, and later described gender diversity in the West as a “hell of value narratives” and “anti-values”;
– State Duma vice speaker Pyotr Tolstoy, who describes “LGBT propaganda” as an instrument of “hybrid warfare” and justifies its blanket ban as “protecting future generations”.
The piece separately mentions Vladimir Putin’s 2023 order to the Health Ministry to create, on the basis of the Serbsky Centre, an institute that would “study the behaviour of people with disrupted gender self-identification”. Health Minister Mikhail Murashko linked this to the task of bringing “the ideas that homosexuals and trans people have about their gender into line with reality”. Milonov, in turn, spoke of the need for a “comprehensive action plan” to combat not only the ideology but the “illness” itself.
Human rights defenders quoted by the outlet see all this as a normalisation of conversion practices at the state level.
Nadya’s story: the psychologist who “treated” a lesbian
The first story in the piece is about Nadya Mityagina, an English teacher and blogger, a lesbian from Syktyvkar. As a teenager, before she fully realised her orientation, she was taken to a psychologist by her mother.
At first, the specialist worked on Nadya’s anxiety and family issues, building trust. But when Nadya admitted that she was attracted to girls, the psychologist began to insist that this was “unnatural”, “caused by trauma” and could be “fixed”.
According to Nadya, the psychologist:
– linked her feelings to “problems with her father”;
– claimed that “2% are born that way, the rest are traumatised”;
– cited “examples” of supposedly unhappy LGBT people with addictions;
– insisted that lesbians “will never have children” and are doomed to loneliness.
One of the exercises gave the article its headline image: the psychologist divided Nadya’s palm into four segments (tiramisu, lemon, “dog vomit”, milk) and placed “kissing a woman” into the “vomit” segment, forcing the teenager to repeatedly imagine “eating dog vomit and kissing a woman” in order to make her feel disgusted by her own desires.
Under the influence of this “therapy” and homophobic rhetoric about “LGBT propaganda”, Nadya avoided queer content for years, believed she could “get infected” and felt ashamed of her feelings. The process of shedding this imposed shame took years — with the help of a new therapist, support from her partner and self-education. She now lives in Argentina with her wife and speaks openly about the harms of conversion therapy.
Igor’s story: 555 days in a “rehabilitation center”
The second story is about Igor (name changed), a transgender man whose mother sent him to a closed “rehabilitation center” under the guise of “a countryside facility to treat depression”. Igor had never used drugs, but the institution operated as a paid rehab for “addicts” and turned him into an object of “re-education”.
According to Igor’s account:
– on arrival, staff told him that if he refused to sign the papers, he “would not leave alive”;
– the daily routine involved exhausting physical labour, constant cleaning and a system of punishments (for example, 100 push-ups for swearing, “shame signs”, bans on communication and phone calls);
– the center used so-called “emotional tunings” — forced written “confessions” followed by pressure and humiliation;
– informant behaviour was encouraged: a wall board recorded any “non-recovering behaviour” by other residents;
– the “center” functioned like a totalitarian sect under the banner of the “12-step” programme.
According to Novaya, Igor’s mother, unable to accept his gender identity, was looking for ways to “get her daughter back”, and the owners of the center took advantage. The cost of such “treatment” could range from 60,000 to 100,000 rubles a month. Contact with the outside world was tightly controlled, calls were monitored, and over 555 days Igor lost 30 kilos and, in his own words, looked “like a concentration camp inmate”.
He stresses that there was nothing “broken” in him — only pressure, transphobia and depression — and that the “treatment” itself was torture, after which he needed “years of rehabilitation and returning to himself”.
A network of conversion centers and the stance of human rights defenders
According to an investigation by the project Systema, cited by Novaya-Europe, there are at least 12 organisations in Russia offering “treatment for homosexuality”. The Initiative to Ban Conversion Therapy in Russia adds another 16 to that list alone. This means there may be more than 30 such structures operating across the country, not counting those documented by other human rights groups (SK SOS, Sfera, Vyhod, Memorial and others).
They often advertise themselves as centres for treating alcoholism and drug addiction but, when approached directly, confirm that they “work” with LGBTQ+ people. Their methods include:
– religious pressure;
– isolation;
– psychotropic medication;
– hypnosis;
– punitive psychiatry;
– “spiritual rehabilitation” under the threat of violence.
Some centers work remotely — for example, the “Workshop of Soul and Body” sells hypnosis audio recordings for 7,000 rubles, while the Orthodox shelter “Unfading Hope” reportedly charges around 50,000 rubles a month for accommodation and “conversations with psychologists”.
According to the human rights defenders quoted by Novaya-Europe, many of these institutions lack medical licences, complaints from victims to the police are ignored, and state structures continue to propagate queerphobic narratives instead of recognising conversion therapy as a problem.
International context
The article recalls that the World Psychiatric Association considers attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity unethical, and the UN equates some forms of forced “treatment of homosexuality” with torture. Despite this, conversion practices in Russia are effectively encouraged: official rhetoric about “illness” and “correction” goes hand in hand with increasingly harsh anti-LGBT laws and silent acceptance of private “clinics”.
In this way, Novaya Gazeta Europe documents not only the personal trauma of people who have gone through conversion therapy, but also the systemic nature of this practice: the way it is fuelled by official discourse, the business model of private centers, and the lack of effective protection for LGBTQ+ people in Russia.