Gay life Stal’s Gulag

The sprawlg system of Soviet mps ntaed many untold stori. I spoke to one of the few historians rearchg the experienc of gay men and lbians the Gulag to fd out more. RU * gay soviet leaders *

This terview troduc the work of acclaimed historian Dan Healey, who sheds light on how gay men survived the Soviet Gulag, their life afterwards and different attus the USSR to gay men and Healey, Profsor of Morn Rsian History at Oxford Universy, has explored the history of homosexualy tsarist and Soviet Rsia, the nature of masculy unr socialism, the problems of sexual disorrs and sexual vlence the USSR and the history of medice Stal’s Gulag.

1917 RSIAN REVOLUTN: THE GAY MUNY'S BRIEF WDOW OF EEDOM

Rsian tolerance of the gay muny was briefly terpted unr the Bolsheviks. * gay soviet leaders *

Healey is the thor of the only published monograph on the history of homosexualy Rsia: Homosexual Dire Revolutnary Rsia: The Regulatn of Sexual and Genr Gkov spoke to Dan Healey after the lnch of his latt book: Rsian Homophobia om Stal to do we know about gay/queer people Gulag? That giv you a kd of snapshot of the posn of the group of people imprisoned for their homosexualy unr Article 154-a of the RSFSR Penal relatns between men were punishable by imprisonment of between three and five years, and sexual relatns between men wh the e of vlence or the subjugatn of one party to the other were punishable by imprisonment of between five and eight subjects of your book were not only people arrted unr Article 154-a.

Also, “outg”, the public disclosure of rmatn about gays’ sexual orientatn, uld, an atmosphere of public homophobia, bee a potential risk for blackmail by foreign telligence polil terpretatn of this “crime” was the reason for the severy of sentenc unr Article 154-a, as “polils” were “socially hostile” mat the Soviet prison mp system.

The letter seems fact to have been a piece of provotn on the part of the OGPU, signed to jtify arrtg gays the terts of natnal another letter to Stal, the OGPU proposed more severe sentenc for public exprsns of homosexualy and for payment for sex between men.

LATVIA BE 7TH NATN TO BE LED BY AN OPENLY GAY HEAD OF STATE

* gay soviet leaders *

I thk that for Stal, homosexualy was a “male” issue, nnected to natnal and his circle did not approve of women’s emancipatn: there was not a sgle woman the PolburoWomen, on the other hand, didn’t serve the armed forc and weren’t particularly active the secury ans, so they were ls of a risk. He did not thk guts would e if had jt been a he gambled - rightly - that a proper weddg wh all the Rsian tradns, bread and salt, a blsg om the proud parents, and a ncert to follow, would be the time Rsia's gay muny was enjoyg a brief wdow of the October Revolutn 1917, the Bolsheviks scrapped and rewrote the untry's laws.

They produced two Crimal Cos - 1922 and 1926 - and an article prohibg gay sex was left off source, Central State Library of St PetersburgImage ptn, Rsian sailors wh young men drsed women's cloth, 1916But the weddg Petrograd (now St Petersburg) was not all seemed. The se was eventually closed and the "unter-revolutnari" got away wh nothg more than a to regnise 'one's own'Image source, Olga KhoroshilovaImage ptn, Apasha and Apashka, fashn ins of the NEP era, Lengrad, mid-1920sGay men had been part of a distct unrground muny Rsia long before the revolutn and they regnised each other by the "secret language" of St Petersburg, some wore red ti, or red shawls, onto which they would sew the back pockets of powred their fac and wore a lot of the revolutn, the heavily ma-up "silent film star look" beme more mastream and no longer jt a fashn for young gay more about the Rsian RevolutnThe upheaval of the revolutn and civil war brought hard tim to Rsia and gay men were not able to match the flamboyant cloth and luxury accsori favoured by some of their unterparts across but still persecutedThe Bolsheviks were directly fluenced by Magn Hirschfeld, a German scientist who found the Instute of Sexology Berl.

They poured out their souls, askg him to help them pe wh prsn and even to "cure their illns" letters and other documents show that members of the gay muny were credibly brave - some wore women's drs and rsets, wore their hair long and often looked like real women. It nsisted of soldiers, sailors, clerks - people who had not been part of the fashnable St Petersburg salons before the revolutn and who were not wele guts of the "aristocrats" after the 1920s, German Travti theatre - which men drs as women and vice versa - beme popular among Soviet gay men.

BEG GAY IN RSIA: A HISTORY OF ATTUS

Rsia is generally seen as serly laggg terms of gay rights, but the nearly 25 years sce the llapse of the Soviet Unn the history of attus toward Rsia's gay muny has been a roller aster. From phg boundari wh provotive mil exports to a grim U-turn unr Vladimir Put, the path of Rsia's LGBT muny has been a challengg one. * gay soviet leaders *

Before the revolutn, Leifert was a supplier to the imperial urt and he also ma stum for the dancers of the Marisky then all me to an endAfter Afanasy Shr's plot to ensnare "unter-revolutnari" wh his spectacular gay marriage ceremony, there were no more high-profile weddgs or arrts like this the 1920s. Although homosexualy was tolerated, the muny started to lose s eedom the source, Olga KhoroshilovaImage ptn, Rsian "Travti" theatre, 1910sIn July 1933, 175 gay men om different walks of life were arrted what me to be known as the Case of the Lengrad Homosexuals. Petrograd, 1916-1917Those same assertns were repeated the early 1930s, as well as forced nfsns obtaed by the secret Case of the Lengrad Homosexuals led to the re-cln of the article outlawg homosexualy the new Crimal Co of 1934 and Rsia's short-lived tolerance of gay rights fally me to an Khoroshilova was speakg to BBC Rsian's Anna on this story.

Inially, my rearch began wh Article 121 of the 1934 RSFSR Crimal Co, and s apparent associatn between male homosexualy and the od crime of paedophilia (a logil assumptn ma om an analysis of the wordg – albe English translatn). However, also rri the implied nnotatn that the practice of ‘homosexualy’, is fact the practice of ‘child abe’, wh the former beg clearly nflated wh the latter, spe the fact that Article 121 appears to fe ‘perasty’ as the performance of a sexual act between one man and another.

THE HISTORY OF HOMOSEXUALY RSIA: OM SOVIET SEX CHANG TO GAY GULAGS

Wh Rsia set to host next year’s Wter Olympics, ternatnal attentn is focsed on the untry’s relatnship wh s gay and lbian cizens. * gay soviet leaders *

Article 121, spe s cur readg, appears to have been signed to protect Soviet society om the menace of child abe and paedophilia, although is rerd that Soviet amia was terted the practice of homosexualy om a medil perspective, and attemptg to ascerta s root e (wh a number of early Soviet rearchers followg the Czarist assumptn of aberratn).

GAY THE USSR

The past five years have wnsed an explosn of tert the histori of lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, and queer people the Soviet Unn and s succsor stat. This special issue extends our unrstandg of the history of queer experience the late Soviet Unn and s succsor stat. Its eight articl balance attentn between the Rsian “re” and republics on the “periphery” of the USSR: Geia, Kyrgyzstan, and Latvia. One article draws attentn to Italy, and t... * gay soviet leaders *

The attus, built up and staed over many hundreds of years, are difficult to uproot over-night, even a regime as progrsive as the USSR, which did not pursue liberately anti-gay agendas, but looked to ‘clu’ rather than ‘exclu’. However, the important area of homosexualy, s progrsive nature was not fully veloped at the time, not bee of any ‘imaged’ anti-gay agendas, but bee Socialist dialectil velopment simply tak time to unfold a scientific and logil manner.

It is an tertg pot to observe that both the USSR (and the post-Soviet-Rsian Feratn), reta a hostile and negative attu toward both the theory and practice of homosexualy – if homosexualy is fed as a sexual relatnship between two nsentg adults of the same genr; i. The Soviet law text entled ‘Crimal Co of the RSFSR’, Chapter Four – ‘Crim Agast the Life, Health, Freedom, and Digny of the Person’, ntas Article 121 (1934), which stat full the followg, which forbids male homosexual relatnships:. However, also rri the implied nnotatn that the practice of ‘homosexualy’, is fact the practice of ‘child abe’, wh the former beg clearly nflated wh the latter, spe the fact that the actual anti-homosexual legislatn qutn, f ‘perasty’ as the performance of a sexual act between one man and another.

Where homosexualy was mentned by the bourgeois legal s, was ually viewed as an exprsn of sexual viancy, and is tertg to note that the legal system of the Soviet Unn took this le, when virtually all other areas, the USSR thoroughly parted away om tablished bourgeois thkg.

GAY MUNIST ON RSIA, FASCISM AND USSR’S LEGACY

In fact the emancipatn of women om patriarchal ntrol was a major feature of Soviet Law, and yet this did not apparently extend to the nsiratn of the emancipatn of homosexual women om the equally ‘patriarchal’ bias of male legal domatn. This is imaged nonsense, of urse, but do expla the Christian Church’s bigotry when to the matter of homosexualy – spe the fact that many morn-day Christian prits have been revealed to be both child-molters and rapists, etc. Anti-homosexual views are a product of historil relig views that have been superimposed onto secular bourgeois society – simply through force of hab om one generatn to the next – that has nothg to do wh science, but which has been morally assumed to be ‘scientific’ nature.

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