Nudists (naturists) of St. Petersburg may lose their only dedicated beach Denes near the city that has been hosting naked people every summer since the early 1960s. Nudist beach Denes located on the coast of the Gulf of Finland in 2008 was included in the prestigious American directory 1000 best beaches and holiday destinations for nudists in the world.
Local authorities claim they want to prohibit going naked here and turn the facility into a beach for disabled people.
A representative of Kurortny district administration of St. Petersburg told local TV channel LifeNews78 (https://life.ru/t/life78/191855) the only beach where city’s naturists are gathering is going to be closed for them. This is not the first attempt of the authorities to ban naturism on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, all the previous ones that have been going on since the Soviet times have failed. Even calling the police didn’t help since the policemen could not find severe violations of law.
The beach is located in the town of Sestroretsk which administratively belongs to St. Petersburg. The clothes-free season is to be officially opened at Denes on May 1 and will last till October. Nowadays the situation is up in the air. Witnesses say that the beach was being under reconstruction some time ago, which confirms the seriousness of authorities’ intention to reshape its functions and thus solve the problem which even strict communist moral rules failed to tackle. Though these days the reconstruction is brought to a halt and it is still obscure whether it will be finished.
Just a few years ago attacks on social nudity in Russian seemed to be rather weak, without the strong backing of the public and officials. By 2016, things seem to have changed with the adoption of St. Petersburg’s anti-gay law in 2013 and increasing intolerance towards some forms of behavior. Some St. Petersburg parliament members even called for the closure of nightclubs and other facilities of this kind. Of course, the future is difficult to predict, but practices of Medieval philosophy are increasingly becoming common in Russia, where an Internet user faces a criminal trial for denying the existence of God.