# World Congress of Families The **World Congress of Families (WCF)** is a U.S.-founded network that organizes the international religious right around opposition to LGBT rights, abortion, and "non-traditional" family structures. It is a key piece of the U.S.–Russia "traditional values" alliance that [[Dave Troy]]'s "[[The Octopus]]" series identifies as a bridge connecting American conservatives to the Kremlin and the [[Russian Orthodox Church]]. ## Origins WCF was conceived in 1995 when American historian [[Allan Carlson]] — a Reagan appointee to the National Commission on Children — traveled to Moscow and met Russian sociologists Anatoly Antonov and Viktor Medkov, who were alarmed by Russia's collapsing birth rate. They agreed to convene an international gathering on the "natural family." The first World Congress of Families was held in Prague in March 1997. The umbrella body later rebranded as the International Organization for the Family. ## The Russian pivot By the late 2000s and 2010s the network had developed a pronounced orientation toward Russia, holding much of its activity in Russia and Kremlin-friendly countries. Two wealthy, Kremlin-connected businessmen became its principal Russian patrons: [[Vladimir Yakunin]] (a close Putin associate and former head of Russian Railways) and the Orthodox oligarch [[Konstantin Malofeev]], who offered to fund a large share of a planned Moscow congress. Anti-LGBT and anti-abortion activist [[Alexey Komov]] became WCF's Russia representative and founded the affiliated FamilyPolicy.ru in 2012. WCF's model helped export U.S.-style "family values" legislation: Russian anti-abortion and anti-"gay propaganda" measures advanced in the Duma drew on the American playbook — Troy notes that Russia "was learning from [[Phyllis Schlafly]]'s playbook." ## U.S. ties On the American side WCF overlapped heavily with [[Brian Brown]] and the [[National Organization for Marriage]], the anti-same-sex-marriage group, knitting the U.S. and Russian Christian right into a single transnational advocacy bloc. ## Why it matters In the Octopus frame, WCF is the "Orthodox church" tentacle's civilian arm: where Cold War anti-communism once defined the alliance, by the 2010s the shared cause had become a religiously framed culture war, with Russia recast from enemy to model. Both Yakunin and Malofeev were placed under Western sanctions after Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea. ## See also - [[Allan Carlson]] · [[Konstantin Malofeev]] · [[National Organization for Marriage]] · [[Russian Orthodox Church]] · [[The Octopus]]