As prominent journalist and historian Nikolai Svanidze said in a recent episode of "Historical Process," a popular talk show on Rossia 1 television, Putin has continued the Soviet practice of state-sponsored homophobia by signing the gay-propaganda law on June 30. Josef Stalin started this tradition when he first made homosexuality a crime in 1933, punishable by up to six years in prison. Stalin's problem with homosexuality, Svanidze noted, focused less on the moral aspect and more on the fact that homosexuals — much like Jews, Chechens and other minorities — were "unreliable elements" and should be persecuted.
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