Yelena Mizulina

In April 2019 Mizulina was widely quoted for her statement in defense of Russian Internet censorship laws, which were characterized as Orwellian by many journalists:

What are rights? They’re the biggest lack of freedom. I can tell you that the more rights you have, the less free we are. A ban is when the person is free because it says "this is impossible, but with everything else — [you can] do what you want."

On January 23, 2017 she announced her intention to quit A Just Russia.

On 11 January 2017, during the first reading of the law, 368 Russian lawmakers voted in favour of the law, one deputy voted against and another abstained.

In July 2016, The Moscow Times reported that Senator Mizulina had proposed amendments to present legislation to downgrade spousal and child abuse from a criminal offense to an administrative misdemeanor offense. Mizulina publicly stated her opinion that the present laws against domestic violence, in which the convicted are subject to fines and a two-year prison sentence, are "absurd" suggesting that such a punishment is excessive for "just a slap."

Due to the Crimean crisis, she was sanctioned by Canada and the United States on March 17, 2014.

On March 17, 2014, the next day after the Crimean status referendum, Mizulina became one of the first seven persons who were put by President Obama under executive sanctions. The sanctions freeze her assets in the US and ban her from entering the United States.

Yelena Muzilina firmly believes in limiting women's right to abortion. She has proposed to let abortions remain free of charge only for medical reasons and in cases of rape. In all other cases, she believes abortions should be billed to the abortion-seeking woman. She has also publicly spoken out against abortions being carried out in private medical institutions, and in favor of a ban on selling products that result in abortions without a prescription from a physician. She believes in obtaining the consent of the husband by all married women before carrying out an abortion, and in the case of underaged women – the consent of their parents.

In July 2013, Yelena Mizulina was part of a group of members of parliament that proposed legislation affecting the Offences Code of Russia that would result in a fine of 1 million rubles on doctors and medical institutions that carried out abortions on women without providing them a 'waiting period' to reflect on their decision to abort. It was also proposed to fine the pregnant women that did not respect this "quiet time" up to 3,000–5,000 rubles.

In July 2013, Mizulina and Olga Batalina [ru] , her deputy in the Duma Committee, filed a complaint at the Institution of Criminal Proceedings against the LGBT rights activist Nikolay Alexeyev. According to Mizulina, Alexeyev is the "leader" of the LGBT community and has launched a campaign to discredit her, "to the detriment of Russia as a whole". Mizulina intends to ask for Alexeyev's punishment to be "in the form of compulsory work in a place where he can not proceed with propaganda, for example, driving a hearse". Representatives of the LGBT community have also appealed to the prosecutor's office with a complaint against Mizulina for inciting hatred against homosexuals and for infringing on the LGBT rights in Russia.

In June 2013, the writer and former Russian Vice Prime Minister Alfred Koch published an article concerning Mizulina's son that lives in Belgium and works for the large international law firm called Mayer Brown that sponsors pro-gay associations and organizations and is among the hundreds on pro-LGBT rights organizations in Belgium, whilst his mother is waging war on homosexuality in Russia. In response to this, Mizulina accused Koch of being a member of a "pedophile lobby". The journalist Andrei Malgin wrote a piece in his blog entitled "Great: anyone that Mizulina doesn't like is a "pedophile lobby".

In June 2013, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal investigation concerning the alleged defamation of Mizulina by a group of people consisting of:

The Russian political scientist Mark Urnov has described the laws instigated by Yelena Mizulina as "diverse, but having a single common quality – their capacity to spread intolerance. They are simply a legal expression of the intolerance and the suppression of everything that corresponds to one's personal views in regard to what is right and wrong".

On November 14, 2012, Yelena Muzilina declared that the 'prophylactic goals' of Internet Restriction Bill of ' acquiring a safe information space on the web without making use of punitive measures' had been accomplished. She also disclosed a possible future legislative project that would prevent access to sites previously included in the Russian Internet blacklist. Among such portals are expected to fall rublacklist.net belonging to Pirate Party of Russia.

In June 2012, the Duma Committee on matters of Family that Mizulina presides, rendered public a project entitled "The State Concept of Family Policy until 2025", which proposes amongst other things, several controversial elements including the following:

Those opposing the law on On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development were also accused by Yelena Mizulina of being part of a "pedophile lobby". In 2012, in regard to the Russian-language Wikipedia protest against the Duma's reading of the bill On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development, Mizulina said:

In 2011, she was re-elected to the Duma as a member of the A Just Russia party. Since December 2011, she is the Chairman of the Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children Affairs.

Yelena Mizulina has accused several of her political opponents of belonging to a so-called "pedophile lobby" She first suggested that "in the depths of the United Russia party there was a "pedophile lobby" that was against toughening the law on sexual offenses against minors in 2011 during the evaluation of the Criminal Code of Russia.

In 2010, Mizulina received a medal from the World Congress of Families.

In 2007, she was elected to the Duma as a member of A Just Russia party. In January 2008, she became the chairman of the Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children Affairs. Originally A Just Russia put forward another candidate, Svetlana Goryacheva, for this position, which was not well accepted by the United Russia party, and Mizulina's candidature was offered as a compromise.

As a member of the Constitutional Court, she also worked as the Deputy Head of the Legal Department of the Duma and she graduated from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in 2005.

After the Union of Right Forces lost the 2003 legislative elections, Mizulina, no longer an elected parliament member, was appointed to the Constitutional Court of Russia as the representative of the Duma. In this position, she was a proponent of local governors being no longer elected but rather directly nominated by the president of the Russian Federation.

In February 2001, she announced that she would discontinue her membership in the Yabloko party and in June of the same year she joined the Union of Right Forces party.

In December 1999, she was elected member of Russian parliament, the Duma, from the Yabloko party. In July 2000, she became the head of the 'Yaroslavl Union of Democratic Forces' (in Russian "Ярославский союз демократических сил"), which was composed of members of the Yabloko party and the Union of Right Forces.

In 1995, she joined the opposition pro-democratic political party Yabloko and the group "Reformi – the new direction" (in Russian "Реформы — новый курс"). From 1995 and on, she was the head of the Yaroslavl regional and public organisation Ravnovsie (in Russian "Равновесие" he Federation Council).

In December 1995, Muzilina was elected a member of parliament Duma from the Kirov region representing the political party Yabloko. As a result, she resigned her position in the Federation Council in January 1996.

In 1994, a polemic broke out when she requested a larger state-provided flat in the goal of exotic cat breeding.

In 1993, she joined the Russian legislature from the political union "The Russian Choice" and was elected to the Federal Council (upper house of parliament in the Russian Federation), where she became the Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Legislation and Judicial and Legal Matters, a member of the Committee on Regulation of Parliamentary Procedures.

In 1992, she obtained a Doctor of Science in Law degree (see Education in Russia) entitled Criminal code: the concept of self-limiting country at the Institute of State and Law. In regard to this dissertation Yelena Mizulina has publicly declared the following: "Turns out that what I wrote – unique, that I indeed am a learned person from God" (in Russian "казалось, что то, что я написала — уникально, что я, действительно, учёный от Бога"). Between 1992 and 1995, she was a docent and subsequently a professor at Yaroslavl State University.

In 1985, she became Senior Research Associate to Yaroslavl State Pedagogical University named after K.D. Ushinsky. Her husband later confessed that he had taken advantage of his job as the head of the ideology in the Yaroslavl Oblast to obtain the job for Yelena. In 1987, Muzilina obtained the status of head of department of Russian history, heading the faculty until 1990. She remained a member of the Communist Party until 1991.

Between 1977 and 1984, she worked as a consultant, and then from 1984, as head consultant in the Yaroslavl regional court. In parallel she obtained a Candidate of Sciences degree via distance learning from the Kazan State University. In 1983 she successfully defended a dissertation entitled "The nature of supervisory review in the criminal process (based on the material provided by the Yaroslavl Regional Court)".

Yelena Borisovna Mizulina (Russian: Елена Борисовна Мизулина , born December 9, 1954) is a Russian politician serving as a member of the Russian Parliament between 1995 and 2003 and again since 2007. Since 2012, she has been the center of attention in regard to a set of controversial laws concerning the rights of the LGBT community in Russia and the adoption of Russian orphan children by foreigners. She is currently Chairman of the Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children Affairs. She has changed her political affiliation several times, having served public office on behalf of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the liberal Yabloko and Union of Right Forces parties and is currently representing the region of Omsk in the Duma as a representative of the social democratic A Just Russia party.

Yelena Borisovna Mizulina was born on December 9, 1954, in the city of Buy in Kostroma Oblast, Soviet Union. In 1972 she began studying at the Faculty of Law and History of the Yaroslavl State University where she first met her future husband Mikhail Mizulin. They were married after their fourth year as undergraduates at university. She graduated in 1977 with a law degree and worked as a research assistant of the same university.