NEW YORK — Neither Ded Moroz (Father Frost) nor his young snow-maiden assistant, Snegurochka — traditional New Year’s Eve figures in Russia — made an appearance here at a party of exiles celebrating their homeland’s biggest holiday.

But inside this small bar on the Lower East Side, there were many other reminders of New Year’s Eve in Russia, which during Soviet times replaced Christmas as an appropriately atheist year-end bash. Caviar, vodka and tinsel were abundant, and revelers were treated to an impromptu performance of the song “I Like the Way” from the 1970s Soviet film “Irony of Fate,” shown perennially during this season back home.

These were traces of a motherland many have only recently left behind but have little hope of returning to anytime soon. As lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Russians, many feel they have been chased out of their home country by a growing homophobia prevalent among the political and religious elite and recently formalized in a new law.

Read the full article at Al Jazeera America.

An LGBT group has created an alternative IKEA catalog in response to IKEA Russia’s removal of a story about a gay couple from its monthly catalog.

The group held a photoshoot in the IKEA store in Brooklyn for IQEA, a more inclusive catalog featuring same-sex couples. It also promoted a book about LGBT Russians titled Gay Propaganda: Russian Love Stories.

IKEA Russia’s monthly catalog was supposed to feature a couple from Dorset called Clara and Kirsty and their IKEA home furnishings, but was reportedly changed to a story about a designer in China to comply with the country’s anti-gay laws.

According to a spokesperson for the Russian store, there are two guidelines for distributing communication materials, which are home interior design and following the law.

Read the full story at Design Taxi.

Protesters recently went to an Ikea store in Brooklyn to make the point. There, they staged a photo-shoot for an alternative catalog called IQEA, and promoted a forthcoming book about LGBT Russians titled Gay Propaganda: Russian Love Stories.

Jelezniakov added: “It’s that ‘little’ act of erasing that invalidates the very existence of many, only because of their sexual orientation.” The book and these pictures help put LGBT Russians back in the frame.

Read the full article at Fast Company.

A story recently featured in an Ikea lifestyle magazine was supposed to be about two young parents reinventing their small living space. But after the furniture giant pulled the piece from its Russian edition, the focus went from storage space to social justice.

Listen to the full interview at CBC Radio.

A group of gay and lesbian demonstrators touched down at an Ikea in Brooklyn, N.Y. over the weekend for a “guerilla photo shoot” in protest of the Swedish company’s decision to nix an article about a same-sex couple from the December issue of the Ikea Family Live magazine, which is distributed in Russia.

The photo shoot was organized by Joseph Huff-Hannon, co-editor of the forthcoming book Gay Propaganda: Russian Love Stories, Alexander Kargaltsev, a gay Russian artist and photographer who was recently granted asylum in the U.S., and Rusa LGBT co-founder Nina Long.

Read the full article at the Huffington Post.

In response to Ikea’s removal of a profile of a lesbian couple from the Russian edition of the company’s Ikea Family Live magazine, a group of gay and lesbian Russian activists and American allies staged a kiss-in at the Ikea store in Brooklyn.

Ikea cited Russia’s prohibition on “promoting non-traditional sexual relationships to minors” for removing the profile of a couple named Kirsty and Clara and their baby.

Read the full story at Buzzfeed.

Her glitzy, diva’ish concert performance wouldn’t be out of place at that shrine of campy over-the-top-pop Eurovision. Songbird Valeriya Perfilova is one of Russia’s favourite entertainers and with three children she’s become a high profile symbol of motherhood and motherland. She’s also one of the more visible supporters of a Russian law criminalising the so-called ‘promotion of homosexuality’.

‘I think it’s our duty to protect our children from any kind of sexual propaganda. A person’s private life has to be behind their doors. Why should I know who, who does this or that. I think it’s not decent to speak about it.’ VALERIYA PERFILOVA, Entertainer

Masha Gessen is also a mother of three but she she believes the open and vague wording of the homosexual propaganda law means she could be marched off the jail at any time. That’s because she’s a lesbian, raising her children with her partner and that could be interpreted as flouting that law.

‘Theoretically it’s possible to start hauling us into the police station today, several times a day for instances of violation.’ MASHA GESSEN, Writer

Watch the full broadcast via ABC News.

Sometimes the absurd details are what stand out the most when Russians describe the effects of the new and ill-defined anti-gay “propaganda” law on everyday life.

One gay couple I spoke with, newly arrived in the U.S., recently posted photos to Facebook of their wedding day at New York City Hall. Their parents back in Russia sent them congratulations, and so did the elder sister of one of the grooms, but she had to wait until evening to look at the pictures online, after her children had gone to sleep. “After all, it’s illegal in Russia: You can’t show the kids,” her brother told me. Another Russian, a journalist who was recently fired from his job after he came out, described the rhetorical gymnastics that his former network had to engage in to report on the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year without mentioning that the winner of the Palme d’Or, Blue Is the Warmest Color, is a steamy lesbian romance.

Read the full piece in the Huffington Post.

Last night OR Books announced the publication of Gay Propaganda, a collection of stories and interviews with LGBT Russians, edited by Masha Gessen and Joseph Huff-Hannon. The dual language book, a provocative response to Russia’s ban on “homosexual propaganda”, will print in January 2014 in time for the Winter Olympics in Sochi. E-copies in Russian will be made available for free to anyone that wants them.

See more at Dodge and Burn.

In the tradition of the Soviet samizdat (self-publication) and in defiance of Russia’s ban on “gay propaganda,” a collection of love stories by LGBT Russian writers, titled “Gay Propaganda”, was released Thursday.

The book, edited by journalist and author Masha Gessen and writer Joseph Huff-Hannon, “will be distributed within Russia via underground activist networks,” publishers OR Books said in a press release Thursday.

Read the full article at The Moscow Times.