Halloween Becomes Another Target of the Kremlin’s Culture Wars

Matvey, a 19-year-old from St. Petersburg, Russia, was excited about his plans for Halloween weekend: a spooky celebration where he planned to dress up as a Japanese manga character known as One Punch Man.

The event, called Nekro Comic Con, was intended to be a two-day Halloween party with a costume contest and concerts. Instead, it became the latest casualty of Russia’s culture wars. The authorities canceled the festival not long after it had begun, branded it “Satanist” and arrested an organizer, whom they moved to deport, as part of a larger crackdown on Halloween and related events.

Matvey, a university student studying computer science, said he was “heartbroken” over it. He spoke on condition that only his first name be used given the scrutiny of the event and Russia’s criminalization of what it deems to be satanism.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine drags on, the Kremlin is increasingly trying to define itself in contrast to the West. The Russian authorities have sought to crack down on social events in conflict with the Kremlin’s conservative worldview, said Alexander Verkhovsky, the director of the Moscow-based SOVA Center, which researches the relationship between religion and society. Some have gone so far as to portray the West as overrun with satanist, sexually deviant Nazis, he added, and Halloween as emblematic of that corrupt perspective.

“Halloween somehow became a symbol of Western influence on our youth,” Mr. Verkhovsky said by phone from Moscow. Countering Western influence on young people is a key goal of the Kremlin.

Russia has had plenty of conservative critics of Halloween, but the crusade against it escalated after its military invaded Ukraine in 2022, said Aleksandra Arkhipova, a social anthropologist and an expert on Russian folklore and culture.

Last year, a lawmaker in Russia’s Federation Council, the upper house of its Parliament, called for a ban on Halloween in schools and universities. Displays of “Satanist” symbols in Russia can result in a fine equivalent to $25 or 15 days in jail. Many schools have forbidden public displays of Halloween like costumes and candy. Students at the journalism department of Moscow State University received a message from the administration this year reminding them that they were forbidden to come to campus dressed in costume for Halloween.

The case of the Nekro Comic Con showed how far the authorities were willing to go to minimize Halloween.

But then activists from the conservative group Forty by Forty, which advocates building more Orthodox churches and promotes what it defines as traditional values, denounced the party as a “satanic festival” and called for it to be banned.

“We suggest taking action to prevent certain interested parties from involving underage residents of St. Petersburg in Satanism,” a spokesman for the organization wrote in a denunciation of the event on Telegram, telling followers to complain to local law enforcement. Representatives of the group did not respond to a request for comment.

Two days before the event, organizers were called to a meeting with local government officials, who asked them to cancel it, according to a timeline the organizers shared on social media. They declined.

The following day, when the organizers arrived at the venue to set up, the police and national guard were waiting. They seized furniture and equipment and detained an event producer, Aleksei Samsonov. But then, for unclear reasons, the police cordon lifted, and just before midnight, a supplier arrived with replacement furniture and the organizers worked all night to prepare, they said.

For the first two hours of the festival, everything went smoothly. But eventually, security officials arrived, and drug enforcement officers soon followed. No violations were found, according to the organizers, who said emergency officials also inspected the venue but found no violations. Even inspectors assigned to investigate so-called extremism came looking for prohibited Satanist and L.G.B.T. symbols and found no violations, said Dmitri Trushkov, 24, the head of the event team.

But around 6 p.m., the event permit was withdrawn, on the grounds that the event was not an exhibition, as permitted, but a music festival, something Mr. Trushkov denied.

One man was detained for wearing “extremist symbols” as he was leaving the event, according to the St. Petersburg news outlet Fontanka, though the authorities did not give that as a reason for the shutdown. According to the news report, the man was carrying a glass with a pentagram and a book with the words “Satanic Rituals.” He was sentenced to 12 days in detention.

The event organizers said they were “not calling for anything” and don’t represent any banned organization. They said they had lost about 1 million rubles, or more than $12,000, because of the change in plans.

After two decades in Russia, Mr. Samsonov is to remain in detention until January, and then be deported to Kazakhstan, where he was born.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which is closely aligned with the Kremlin, has sought to connect the idea of Satanism to the war, Mr. Verkhovsky said. “According to the version of the Russian Orthodox Church, we are fighting against some ‘global Satanism,’ which influenced Ukraine and the West,” he said.

After the church’s leader called for banning the “international Satanism movement” in July, Russia’s Supreme Court designated it an “extremist” organization and outlawed it, as it had done with the “international L.G.B.T. movement,” in 2023.

Neither exists as an organization.

The lack of any obvious group or people to represent the outlawed movements, or any direct link to Halloween, is at least part of the reason that the holiday goes on in Russia. Over the weekend, the streets and bars of St. Petersburg were filled with people dressed as demons and beasts. Many attended thematic parties or displayed lit pumpkins and skulls. Local news outlets published lists of Halloween-themed events to attend.

It will take much more than canceling a party to change the attitudes of young people, Matvey said.

“For most young people, it’s just fun,” he said. “My friends mostly joke about it, saying things like ‘Russians don’t need Halloween. Our whole life is scary enough.’”

Ms. Arkhipova predicted that another holiday perceived as an “alien trend” would come under attack in February — Valentine’s Day.

Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from St. Petersburg, Russia, and Alina Lobzina from Berlin.