Russian Gay History: Soviet Era - Present

Unfortunately, decriminalization in the early Soviet period did not mean an end to persecution. The modern Soviet fervor for science meant that homosexuality was now treated as a subject for medical and psychiatric discourse, an illness to be treated and cured. The sexual liberation that accompanied the Revolution was to be short-lived. The egalitarian and pro-women policies that had liberalized divorce and marriage laws and promoted abortion gave way by the early 1930s to Stalinist pro-family policies. It was in this context that the Soviet Union re-criminalized homosexuality in a decree signed in late 1933.

The new Article 121, which punished muzhelozhstvo with imprisonment for up to 5 years, was followed by raids and arrests at the height of the Stalinist terror. The numbers of men arrested are not known, but by the 1980s there were about 1000 every year. The Soviet Union had the largest population of incarcerated men in the world, and given the importance of prison culture for Soviet culture as a whole, it is likely that prison homosexuality played a part in forming Soviet gay culture.

In Soviet prisons there was a class of men called opushchennye (degraded) who were required to fulfill the sexual needs of the rest. On the one hand, they were at the lowest rung of the social ladder, but they were sometimes protected by their lovers. And not only men charged with Article 121 were opushchennye: any prisoner could be degraded by ritualized rape -- for losing at cards, over an insult, or even because his beauty made him an attractive sex object. Gay men in Russia kept a low profile in the Soviet period, many restricting their gay activities to small circles of proven friends.

In 1984 a handful of gay men in Leningrad attempted to form the first organization of gay men. They were quickly hounded into submission by the KGB. It was only with Gorbachev's glasnost that such an organization could come into existence in 1989-90.

The collapse of the Soviet Union that soon followed the failed coup only accelerated the progress of the gay movement. Occasional gay discos were held, more gay publications appeared, gay plays were staged. In 1993 a new Russian Criminal Code was signed -- without Article 121. Men who had been imprisoned under the article began to be released. Gay life in Russia today is in the process of normalization. Capitalism has brought the first gay businesses--bars, discos, saunas, even a travel agency. While life in the provinces remains hard for gay men, Russian gays in the cities are beginning to create a community.
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The early Soviet era began a period of time in which Russian culture stigmatized homosexuality by putting it in a corner. It is pretty obvious that how homosexuality was treated in this time period is what made tolerance even harder to obtain. Glasnost was clearing the opening needed to begin a more free period of open homosexuality, which is still recent. The Soviet era really badly stigmatized Russian homosexuals, and it is still distinctly difficult for tolerance to be obtained... but it's a start.