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
Contents:
GAY RIGHTS RSIA AND THE FORMER SOVIET REPUBLICS
* lgbt in the soviet union *
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. 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. It’s known that 1933 Genrikh Yagoda, the head of the Soviet secret police, wrote a letter to Stal which he said that “homosexuals are beg arrted, but we have realised that we don’t have an article to charge them unr.
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.
GAY LIFE STAL’S GULAG
The younger partner a male gay relatnship would sometim bee more feme and even take a female name, and an equivalent velopment might take place a lbian society bee more homophobic after the Gulag was closed down? One famo se was that of filmmaker Sergey Paradjanov, who was arrted and imprisoned several tim for his homosexualy, the first time ’s well known that there were gays and bisexuals the polil and cultural el of the Stal era.
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. 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.
1 The followg nferenc hosted some of the scholars featured this special issue, and we are grateful to their anizers for their labour and for the environments for exchange and bate that they fostered: “Rearchg, reworkg and reprentg Soviet and Socialist LGBT histori, ” 29 Sep – 2 Oct, 2016, Talln Universy, Estonia (anizers: Uku Lember, Andreas Kalkun, Mart Rünk, Jaan Samma); “Communist Homosexualy, 1945-1989, ” 30 Jan – 3 Feb., 2017, Universé Paris-Est Créteil and EHESS (anizers: Jérôme Baz, Arthur Clech, Mathi Lericq); Dotyk Queer History Ftival, 6-8 Apr. 2 Feza Aripova, “Queerg the Soviet Pribaltika: Crimal Cas of Consensual Sodomy Soviet Latvia (1960s-1980s), ” Ey Channell-Jtice, ed., Delonizg Queer Experience: LGBT+ Narrativ om Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Lexgton books, 2020), 95-114; Dan Healey, Rsian Homophobia om Stal to Sochi (London: Bloomsbury Amic, 2017), 171-172. See Sergej Shcherbakov, “On the Relatnship between the Lengrad Gay Communy and Legal Authori the 1970s and 1980s, ” Udo Parikas and Teet Veispak, eds., Sexual Mori and Society: The Changg Attus toward Homosexualy 20th Century Europe (Talln: Instute of History, 1991), 94-104.
GAY THE USSR
5 A Canadian activist and historian suat Pezzana’s expulsn om the USSR among actns like the California Briggs iative, the blasphemy se agast the UK Gay News magaze, and aggrsive prosecutns of Toronto’s Body Polic newspaper at this moment: Tim McCaskell, Queer Progrs: From Homophobia to Homonatnalism (Toronto: Between the L, 2016), 75. Lrie Essig’s ethnography of late/post-Soviet lbian and gay life opens wh two chapters on the “expert gaze”: chapter 1 on the law, mostly about male queers; and chapter 2 about medice, that looks at some medil approach to women, men, and trans people.