What Happened When a Gay Communist Wrote to Stal

Contents:

• 1917 RSIAN REVOLUTN: THE GAY MUNY'S BRIEF WDOW OF EEDOM
• LEN'S REVOLUTN: RED, GAY, AND ALMOST GLOR
• WHAT HAPPENED WHEN A GAY COMMUNIST WROTE TO STAL
• GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME
• FROM GAY NSPIRACY TO QUEER CHIC: THE ARTISTS AND WRERS WHO CHANGED THE WORLD

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

Due to the llapse of Communism 1991, and spe the bourgeois Wt ‘forcg’ the fledglg ‘palist’ Rsian State to openly ‘legalise’ male and female homosexualy 1993, the simultaneo re-emergence of the Rsian Orthodox Church to the polil arena has meant that regardls of this ‘godls’ secular law – the ‘Te Fah’ has once aga been lked to the fanatil holdg of ‘homophobic’ viewpots.

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.

LEN'S REVOLUTN: RED, GAY, AND ALMOST GLOR

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. 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. 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.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN A GAY COMMUNIST WROTE TO STAL

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. Sce he striv to approach this qutn om a Marxist viewpot, the thor of this letter believ that the cree ntradicts both the facts of life self and the prcipl of is a summary of the facts that are discsed tail the attached letter: On the whole, the ndn of homosexuals unr palism is analogo to the ndn of women, the loured rac, ethnic mori, and other groups that are reprsed for one reason or another; The attu of bourgeois society to homosexualy is based on the ntradictn between: palism’s need for “nnon fodr” and a rerve army of labour (leadg to reprsive laws agast homosexualy, which is regard as a threat to birth rat); the ever-growg poverty of the mass unr palism (leadg to the llapse of the workg-class fay and an crease homosexualy).

Dear Comra Stal:Although I am a foreign munist who has not yet been promoted to the AUCP(b), [later to be renamed the CPSU, Communist Party of the Soviet Unn] I neverthels thk that will not seem unnatural to you, the lear of the world proletariat, that I addrs you wh a requt to shed light on a qutn that, as seems to me, has huge signifince for a large number of munists the USSR as well as other qutn is as follows: n a homosexual be nsired someone worthy of membership the Communist Party?

GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

Consequently, they should be nsired even ls worthy to be members of the AUCP(b) I have a personal stake this qutn sofar as I am a homosexual myself, I addrsed this qutn to a number of ras om the OGPU and the People’s Commissariat for Jtice, to psychiatrists, and to Comra Borod, the edor--chief of the newspaper where I work.

A photograph of homosexual and cross-drsg Rsians, prr to 1917 / Image: public domaAll that I managed to extract om them was a number of ntradictory opns which show that amongst the ras there is no clear theoretil unrstandg of what might have served as the basis for passage of the given law. Somewhat earlier, when the arrts of homosexuals had only jt begun, Comra Borod was que discled to view me as a potential crimal; he did not regard me as a bad munist, and this was nfirmed by the fact that he promoted me at work by appotg me head of edorial staff, which is the hight-rankg supervisory posn wh the exceptn of members of the edorial board. On the other hand, however, after the law was issued on March 7, I had a nversatn the OGPU which I was told that the law would be strictly applied to each se of homosexualy that was brought to nnectn wh the lack of clary that exists this matter, I turn to you the hope that you will fd the time to give me an me to expla to you this qutn as I unrstand and foremost, I would like to pot out that I view 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 loured rac who are opprsed by imperialism.

This ndn is likewise siar many ways to the ndn of the Jews unr Hler’s dictatorship, and general is not hard to see an analogy wh the ndn of any social stratum subjected to exploatn and persecutn unr palist we analyse the nature of the persecutn of homosexuals, we should keep md that there are two typ of homosexuals: first, those who are the way they are om birth (moreover, if scientists disagree about the precise reasons for this, then there is no disagreement that certa ep-seated reasons do exist); send, there are homosexuals who had a normal sexual life but later beme homosexuals, sometim out of vicns, sometim out of enomic for the send type, the qutn is cid relatively simply.

FROM GAY NSPIRACY TO QUEER CHIC: THE ARTISTS AND WRERS WHO CHANGED THE WORLD

" / Image: public domaJt as the women of the bourgeois class suffer to a signifintly lser gree om the jtic of the palist regime (you of urse remember what Len said about this), so do natural-born homosexuals of the domant class suffer much ls om persecutn than homosexuals om the workg-class i.

Capalism, which needs an enormo rerve army of labour and nnon fodr orr to flourish, regards homosexualy as a factor that threatens to lower birth rat (as we know, the palist untri there are laws that punish abortn and other methods of ntraceptn) urse, the attu of the bourgeoisie to the homosexual qutn is typil hypocrisy.