What Happened When a Gay Communist Wrote to Stal

Contents:

• A DOUBLE DEFEAT: CATASTROPHE FOR GAY EMANCIPATN GERMANY AND THE USSR
• GAY THE USSR
• GAY LIFE STAL’S GULAG
• 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.

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. Though homosexualy is no longer outright illegal -- and has not been nsired a mental disorr sce 1999 -- a stubbornly homophobic stra of natnalism persists, as evinced most recently by an anti-homosexual "propaganda" bill that is gag momentum the State Duma.

Though homosexualy is no longer outright illegal — and has not been nsired a mental disorr sce 1999 — a stubbornly homophobic stra of natnalism persists, as evinced most recently by an anti-homosexual "propaganda" bill that is gag momentum the State Duma. The artist’s new book, Mosw, is an evotive but unembellished medatn on gay cisg the pal cy, featurg photographs of the public toilets near the Hermage Garns; the stairs to the riversi embankment by Mosw Universy; the Bolshoi Theater; and many other inic lotns.

GAY THE USSR

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). It is an tertg pot to observe that both the USSR (and the post-Soviet-Rsian Feratn), reta a hostile and negative attu toward both the theory and practice of homosexualy – if homosexualy is fed as a sexual relatnship between two nsentg adults of the same genr; i.

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 the actual anti-homosexual legislatn qutn, f ‘perasty’ as the performance of a sexual act between one man and another. Where homosexualy was mentned by the bourgeois legal s, was ually viewed as an exprsn of sexual viancy, and is tertg to note that the legal system of the Soviet Unn took this le, when virtually all other areas, the USSR thoroughly parted away om tablished bourgeois thkg. Anti-homosexual views are a product of historil relig views that have been superimposed onto secular bourgeois society – simply through force of hab om one generatn to the next – that has nothg to do wh science, but which has been morally assumed to be ‘scientific’ nature.

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.

GAY LIFE STAL’S GULAG

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

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.

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. 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. In Homosexual Dire Revolutnary Rsia, Wal-based scholar Dan Healey relat the LGBTQ stggle the Rsian Revolutn, the historic progrsive gas ma unr Len and the Bolsheviks, and the later return unr Stal to state persecutn and homophobic, sexist puranism.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN A GAY COMMUNIST WROTE TO STAL

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.

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.