Ernst Röhm, The Hight-Rankg Gay Nazi - JSTOR Daily

Contents:

• WHAT HAPPENED WHEN A GAY COMMUNIST WROTE TO STAL
• GAY LIFE STAL’S GULAG
• THE REVOLUTNARY WAR HERO WHO WAS OPENLY GAY
• 1917 RSIAN REVOLUTN: THE GAY MUNY'S BRIEF WDOW OF EEDOM
• ERNST RöHM, THE HIGHT-RANKG GAY NAZI
• WAS STAL GAY

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN A GAY COMMUNIST WROTE TO STAL

Naturally, the society that arose out of the nservative Rsian monarchy, not even the munists were unanimo on the matters: Whyte noted the disapproval of homosexualy by his superr, Mikhail Borod, although he add that Borod neverthels nsired a personal matter, and nsired Whyte a good munist. He sentially summarized differg pots of view existg wh the Bolshevik Party at the time: one which nsired homosexualy to be a sign of “bourgeois generacy, ” and another which believed that gay liberatn is part of the stggle for universal emancipatn.

Naturally, he belonged to the latter mp and th nsired “the ndn of homosexuals who are eher of workg-class orig or workers themselv to be analogo to the ndn of women unr the palist regime and the lored rac who are opprsed by imperialism. However, Whyte refers to Mar van r Lubbe, a Dutch munist who was executed for allegedly settg fire to the Reichstag, as a provotr and a “perast” – a term which has been historilly ed to imply a nnectn between homosexualy and pedophilia. In general, he seems to have partially accepted the newly-troduced belief that there is ed somethg “generate” and “bourgeois” about certa gay people but ntrasted this to natural homosexualy such as his own.

GAY LIFE STAL’S GULAG

He had fully ternalized the Bolshevik ethos: throughout his letter, we unrstand that his openg qutn, “n a homosexual be nsired someone worthy of membership the Communist Party, ” is not merely rhetoril.

Ironilly, as a gay man, he found far easier to live unr var dictatorships than unr the Brish monarchy, perhaps bee, as a foreigner and a Brish cizen, he was relatively untertg and harmls to most lol thori. 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?

THE REVOLUTNARY WAR HERO WHO WAS OPENLY GAY

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.

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

Public ’s nearly impossible to answer the qutns, bee few even amongst the most ted of Gulag mat left any wrten documentatn behd, given the homophobia of Soviet society and the all-embracg fear the populatn. Koz’s se is tertg bee he left a diary which he had kept all his adult life, and part of , the entri for 1955-1956, has been even Koz don’t speak about his own homosexual experienc, if he had any, the mps. 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. One document om the Stal era (disvered by historian Ira Rolduga) talks about the fact that when 1932-1933 open gay men Lengrad suggted havg relatns wh straight men, the latter rpond wh vlence and aggrsn.

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.

ERNST RöHM, THE HIGHT-RANKG GAY NAZI

What needs to be stated is that Soviet legal and medil opn on this qutn was no different than what was generally accepted the world at large, namely, that homosexualy was a psycho-sexual disorr, a form of mental illns. Moreover, I thk should also be poted out that, spe the view that homosexualy was a mental disorr, the actual law qutn, Article 121 of the Soviet Crimal Co, was pretty much only enforced s of pedophilia, wh some 800 – 1000 prosecutns annually. Our laws proceed om the prciple of protectn of society and therefore untenance punishment only those stanc when juvenil and mors are the objects of homosexual tert … while regnizg the rrectns of homosexual velopment … our society b prophylactic and other theraptic measur wh all the necsary ndns for makg the nflicts that afflict homosexuals as pals as possible and for rolvg their typil trangement om society wh the llective—Sereisky, Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 1930, p.

The facts, are a ltle different:“The iative for revotn of antihomosexual legislatn, followg the Revolutn of Febary 1917, had e, not om the Bolsheviks but om the Cats (Constutnal mocrats) and the anarchists (Karlsky, 1989). The Rsian Feratn crimal s for 1922 and 1926 did not mentn homosexualy, although the rrpondg laws remaed force plac where homosexualy was most prevalent – the Islamic republics of Azerbaijan, Turkmenia, and Uzbekistan, as well as Christian Geia.

So “while regnizg the rrectns of homosexual velopment … our society b prophylactic and other theraptic measur wh all the necsary ndns for makg the nflicts that afflict homosexuals as pals as possible and for rolvg their typil trangement om society wh the llective” (Sereisky, 1930, p. When homosexualy do re-enter the Soviet crimal , prosecutns are relatively rare (1, 000 per year out of a populatn of 200 ln) and those that were prosecuted targeted stanc of rape, child abe, and abe of pennt and vulnerable are the FACTS. 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.

WAS STAL GAY

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.