What Happened When a Gay Communist Wrote to Stal

Contents:

• A DOUBLE DEFEAT: CATASTROPHE FOR GAY EMANCIPATN GERMANY AND THE USSR
• GAY LIFE STAL’S GULAG
• GAY THE USSR
• THE HISTORY OF HOMOSEXUALY RSIA: OM SOVIET SEX CHANG TO GAY GULAGS
• WHAT HAPPENED WHEN A GAY COMMUNIST WROTE TO STAL

A DOUBLE DEFEAT: CATASTROPHE FOR GAY EMANCIPATN GERMANY AND THE USSR

Before 1933, Joseph Goebbels had long nounced Hirschfeld and the Instute for Sexual Science’s claims that homosexuals fact reprented a “third sex, ” that same-sex timacy should not be tegorized as crimal, and that people troubled by “physil and psychologil sex disorrs” should be provid the bt unsellg and treatment available.

GAY LIFE STAL’S GULAG

Goebbels also knew that the Instute’s prence Berl had been backed by the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), power Berl sce 1919, and hoed the Scientific Humanarian Commtee (found by Hirschfeld 1897 to advance homosexual rights) and an ternatnal anizatn, the World League for Sexual Reform.

GAY THE USSR

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.

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

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.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN A GAY COMMUNIST WROTE TO STAL

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. 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.

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).