The Cambridge History of Gay and Lbian Lerature - November 2014
Contents:
23 - RSIAN GAY AND LBIAN LERATURE
In December 2022, Rsia expand s existg “gay propaganda” law to exert ntrol over public discsns and narrativ surroundg non-heterosexual relatnships and inti. The topic of homosexualy and s histori wh the lands that make up today’s Rsian Feratn has been, until recently, faiar chiefly to stunts of Eastern European or Slavic studi, particularly the fields of lerature, art and mic.
While the censorship mechanisms place durg Tsarist tim and the views on homosexualy held by the Rsian Orthodox clergy severely limed discsn or exprsn of same-sex lov, such relatnships did occur. In ntrast to the emphatic nmnatn of homosexualy regularly advanced by the Wtern church unr Catholicism, the Orthodox Church functned an environment where the fn of masculy clud same-sex relatns the spectm of possible sexual relatns. This was also an era which saw an explosn of diverse artistic and lerary schools, among whose members were several openly lbian and gay thors of both prose and poetry.
Proment poets this group clud Nikolai Kliuev (1884-1937), Mara Tsvetaeva (1892-1941), Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) and Sofia Parnok (1885-1933), who was scribed as the “Rsian Sappho” – th, for a brief perd, beg lbian or gay was no longer an inty that had to be hidn, but one which uld be theoretilly openly celebrated. Between 1976 and 1982, three articl on “Rsia’s Gay Lerature and History”, ” Death and Rurrectn of Mikhail Kuzm “ and “ Gay Life Before the Soviets: Revisnism Revised “ were published Gay Sunshe, Slavic Review and THE ADVOCATE rpectively. The Gay Sunshe article was later clud the 1993 anthology Gay Roots: Twenty Years of Gay Sunshe: An Anthology of Gay History, Sex, Polics, and Culture eded by Wston Leyland wh substantial addnal materials add unr the tle “ Rsia’s Gay History and Lerature om the Eleventh to the Twentieth Centuri.