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Memories
Soviet Homophobia: gays and lesbians
in the gulags
The attitude of non-acceptance of homosexuals in the Soviet Union, although
never reaching systematic persecution, was definitely in the style of strong
ostracism, legally approved and punished, which existed because of the emargination
previously widely practised in Tsarist Russia.
The policies of the Soviet period and the Soviet policies towards homosexuals
can be divided into five key periods:
- 1917-1933: the decriminalisation of homosexuality, relative tolerance,
homosexuality officially defined as an illness
- 1934-1986: the re-criminalisation of homosexuality, severely treated by
trial in court, discrimination and silence;
- 1987-1990: the start of open public discussions on the homosexual condition
from a scientific and humanitarian viewpoint on the part of professionals
and journalists.
- 1990 - May 1993: gays and lesbians themselves take up the question, bringing
into the limelight civil rights, with the addition of conflict and the politicising
of the question.
- June 1003: decriminalisation of homosexuality; the homosexual underground
begins to develop with a gay and lesbian sub-culture, with relative organisations,
publications and centres, but social slander of love and relations between
people of the same sex continues.
The initiative of the repeal of anti-homosexual legislation, after the revolution
of February 1917, did not come from the Bolsheviks, but from the cadets (constitutional
democrats) and from the anarchists (Karlinsky, 1989). However, once the old
penal code was abrogated, after the October Revolution, the anti-homosexual
article was also no longer valid.
The penal codes of the Russian Federation of 1922 and 1926 do not mention homosexuality,
even if the corresponding laws were maintained in force in places where homosexuality
was more widespread - in the Islamic republics of Azerbaijan, Turkmenia and
Uzbekistan, as well as in Christian Georgia. At the World Congress of the Sexual
Reform League, held in Copenhagen in1928, Soviet legislation was even held
up as an example to the other countries.
The Soviet medical and legal experts were very proud of the liberal nature
of their legislation: in 1930 the medical expert Mark Serejski wrote in the "Great
Soviet Encyclopaedia": "Soviet legislation does not recognise the so-called
crimes against morality. Our laws are based on the principle of protecting
society, and therefore envisage punishment only in those cases in which the
object of homosexual interest is a child or a minor..." (p. 593).
As can rightly be noticed, the formal decriminalisation of sodomy did not mean
that such behaviour was protected from incrimination. The absence of formal
laws against anal sex and lesbianism did not prevent the incrimination of homosexual
behaviour as a form of disorderly conduct. After the emancipation of the penal
code in 1922, in the same year at least two trials for homosexuality that we
know of were held.
The eminent psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev stated in the witness box that "the
public ostentation of such impulses... is socially harmful and cannot be allowed" (Engelstein,
1995, p. 167).
The official position of Soviet medicine and law in the twenties, as shown
by Serejski's encyclopaedia article, was that homosexuality was an illness
that was difficult, if not impossible, to cure. Therefore, "recognising
the incorrect development of the homosexual... our society combines prophylactic
and therapeutic measures with all the necessary conditions to make the conflict
from which homosexuals suffer as painless as possible, in order to resolve
their typical alienation within society". (Sereisky, 1930, p. 593).
Although, during the nineteen twenties intellectual homosexuals still held
important positions in Soviet culture, the opportunity for open philosophical
and artistic discussion, like that at the beginning of the century, disappeared.
With the decree of the 17th December 1933 and the law of the 7th March 1934,
homosexuality again became a criminal offence.
The exact reasons for this brusque change are still unknown, but it was clearly
a part of the "Sexual Termidoro" (the period of "Terror" of the French Revolution,
ed. note) and of a general repressive tendency. Criminalizing articles were
included into the codes of all the Soviet republics. According to article
121of the Penal Code of the Russian Soviet Republic, homosexuality
(muzhelozhstvo) was punished by the privation of freedom for a period
of up to 5 years and, according to article 121.2, up to 8 years in the case
of the use or threat of physical violence, or the exploitation of the subordinate
position of the victim, or for relationships with minors.
In January 1936 Nikolai Krylenko, the people's Inspector for Justice, announced
that homosexuality was the product of the decadence of the
exploiting classes who had nothing to do, and for whom, in a democratic society
based on sound principles, there was no room (Kozlovsky, 1986). Homosexuality
was thus linked to the counter-revolution. Later, Soviet magistrates and doctors
described homosexuality as a manifestation of the "moral decadence of the bourgeoisie",
repeating word for word the arguments of the German fascists.
Typical of this position was an anonymous article on "homosexuality" that appeared
in the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia of 1952. References to possible biological
causes of homosexuality, which until then had been used for humanitarian purposes
as a reason for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, were now refused. "The
origin of homosexuality is linked to daily social circumstances; for the great
majority of people who dedicate themselves to homosexuality, such perversions
stop as soon as the person finds himself in a socially favourable environment...
In Soviet society with its healthy customs, homosexuality is seen as a sexual
perversion and is considered shameful and criminal. Soviet penal legislation
considers homosexuality as punishable with the exception of those cases in
which it is the manifestation of deep psychic disorder". The exact number
of people incriminated on the basis of article 121 is unknown (the first official
information was produced only in 1988), but it is believed to be about one
thousand a year. From the end of the eighties, according to official data,
the number of men sentenced on the basis of article 121 constantly decreased.
In 1987, 831 men were sentenced (this figure refers to the entire Soviet Union);in
1989, 539 people, in 1990, 497, in 1991, 462, in the first six months of 1992,
227, all except for ten being sentenced on the basis of article 121.2 (the
figures refer only to Russia) (Gessen, 1994). According to Russian lawyers,
most of these sentences were in fact issued on the basis of article 121.2,
80 percent of the cases involving people under 18 years of age (Ignatove, 1974).
In an analysis of 130 sentences based on article 121, between 1985 and 1992,
it was found that 74 percent of the accused were sentenced on the basis of
article 121.2, 20 percent of which for rape with physical force, 8 percent
with the use of threats, 62 percent for sexual contact with minors, and 2 and
18 percent respectively for exploitation of the subordinate or vulnerable position
of the victims (Dyachenko, 1995).
These statistics should, however, be considered with a certain scepticism,
remembering that many of these and other accusations could have been invented
or falsified and that many confessions were extorted by physically punishing
the accused person and the witnesses.
Article 121 did not only aim at homosexuals. The authorities also frequently
used it in the case of dissidents and to increase work camp sentences. Sometimes
the KGB was clearly involved in the incrimination, as, for example, in the
case of Lev Klein, the famous archaeologist from Leningrad: his trial was orchestrated
from beginning to end by the local KGB in flagrant violation of all procedural
norms. (Samoilov, 1993).
Usually the purpose of such actions was to frighten the intelligentsia. Application
of the law was selective. If the well-known cultural personalities took care
not to offend the authorities, they enjoyed a kind of immunity and an eye was
closed on their homosexual tendencies, but they could not, however, have access
to positions of any importance. They only had to disturb an influential person
for them to feel the full weight of the law. Such a case destroyed the life
of the famous Armenian director Sergei Paradzhanov.
Even at the end of the eighties, the director of the Yuny Zritel theatre in
Leningrad, Zinovy Korogodsky, appearing before a court, was dismissed from
his post and deprived of all his honorary titles. There are many such examples.
The anti-homosexual campaign introduced at the beginning of the 1930s was short-lasting.
By the middle of the decade, absolute silence had fallen on the question. Homosexuality
had become unmentionable in the literal sense of the word. The conspiracy of
silence even included academic themes such as the phallic cult, and the pederasty
of Ancient Greece.
This shadowy silence further intensified the tragedy of Soviet homosexuals,
who not only feared incrimination and blackmail, but could not even develop
adequate self-awareness or self-identity. In addition to the incriminations,
discrimination of all kinds, illegal, widespread and without limits, targeted
not only homosexuals but also lesbians.
Lesbian relationships were in no case included in any penal code, and relations
between women were less visible and less subject to attacks. Public opinion
towards lesbians was as inflexible as towards gay men. Lesbians were ridiculed,
incriminated, dismissed, expelled from the universities and threatened with
being deprived of the custody of their children. The punitive Soviet psychiatry
was one of the main weapons of both legal and illegal repression. Psychiatrists
who knew nothing of sexuality were always ready to find grounds that allowed
them to subject the lives of people thus stigmatised to medical and police
observation, or to close them in psychiatric hospitals in conditions often
much worse than prison.
Even after the emergence of a more tolerant and better informed "sexual pathology" (the
Russian term to define clinical sexology, which suggested that all sexual terms
were pathological), at the end of the 1970s, medicine offered very little help.
In all Soviet books on "sexual pathology", homosexuality was described as a
pernicious "sexual perversion", an illness to be treated. (Vasilchenko, 1977,
1983). At the beginning of the 1980s, a campaign against homosexuality was
launched. In the first manual, at the time the first in the whole nation, for
teachers on sexual education (of which one million copies were printed and
immediately sold out), homosexuality was defined as a dangerous pathology and "a
violation of the normal principles of sexual relations... Homosexuality defied
both normal heterosexual relationships and the moral and cultural fulfilment
of society. It therefore deserved to be condemned as a social phenomenon, as
specific personal behaviour, and as a moral attitude" (Khripkova & Kolesov,
1982, pp. 96-100). Thus, teachers, like the police and doctors, were put on
guard against homosexuality.
Still today, with rare exceptions, the psychiatrists and sexologists of Russian
clinics, even those who have supported the decriminalisation of homosexuality,
consider it an illness and reproduce in their writings the many absurdities
and stereotypes prevalent in public opinion.
The most recent medical manual on clinical sexology, published in 1990, defines
homosexuality as a "pathological tendency". It states that, apart from biological
causes, "a strong pathogenic factor that contributes to the formation of
homosexual attraction can be the teaching on the part of parents and teachers
of a hostile attitude to the opposite sex" (Vasilchenko, 1990, p. 429-430).
In a psychiatry degree thesis in 1994, prepared under the guidance of Professor
A. Tkachenko, homosexual behaviour was not only described as "anomalous", but
most of the 117 gay men studied by the author were diagnosed as having "psychic,
psycho-physical and unbalanced infantilism...", "...signs of organic defects
of the central nervous system" and "overestimation of the sexual sphere".
Aids in the USSR
The Aids epidemic has further worsened the situation of gays. When the symptoms
of the virus appeared in the United States, the initial information relative
to the fact in the Soviet press was more or less: a new unknown illness has
appeared in the USA; the victims are homosexuals, drug addicts and Puerto Ricans.
Brought up in the spirit of official Internationalism, Soviet citizens were
perplexed by the mention of the Puerto Ricans. They could understand God's
punishment for homosexuals and drug addicts. For their misdeeds; but why Puerto
Ricans? In 1986 Professor Nikolai Burgasov, then representative of the Ministry
for Health and the Chief Doctor of Hygiene for the URSS, declared publicly: "There
are no circumstances in our country for the spread of the illness; homosexuality
is punished by law as a serious sexual perversion (article 121 of the Russian
penal code) and we constantly warn people of the dangers of drug abuse".
When Aids at last appeared in the Soviet Union, those responsible for the programme
of epidemiological study, the Chairman of the Soviet (now Russian) Academy
of Medical Sciences, Professor Valentin I. Pokrovsky, and his son, Dr. Vadim
V. Pokrovsky, again accused homosexuals of being carriers of the HIV infection
and the representation of every kind of vice. A little later Alexander Potapov,
the Minister of the Federation and a professor of psychiatry, took the liberty
of writing in the "Literaturnaya Gazeta", in answer to questions on drug addicts;
for some reason he connected them with homosexuals, adding, "My colleagues
in Paris have spoken to me of a furious crowd that killed two homosexuals in
a Paris park, before the eyes of the police." This representative of the most
humanitarian of the professions gave no further comment on this event, going
on to discuss what the Belgian authorities were doing to limit the sale of
pornography. He concluded, pensively: "you see how the forces of life enter
into action." No one made any comment at all on his monstrous utterances. When
AIDS appeared in the Soviet Union, those responsible for the epidemiological
programme again blamed everything on homosexuals, publicly accusing them of
being HIV carriers and of every other possible vice. Their convictions were
authentic, since the educational programmes of the Soviet medical institutions
had never even discussed the problem of homosexuality.
Even the liberal magazine Ogonyok, which was the first to publish the profile
of an Aids victim, a gay technical assistant who had caught the Aids virus
in Africa, was unable to hide its disgust and its condemnation. However, the
Glasnost, added to the threat of Aids, made more or less frank discussions
on the problems of sexual orientation possible for the first time, at first
in academic literature, and then in the more popular press.
The fall of the Wall
After the break up of the Soviet Union, the Baltic republics, Latvia, Estonia
and Lithuania, together with the Ukraine, revoked the provisions against homosexuals.
A touch of colour: in the frantic days of the failed putch of 1991, with Gorbachev's
exit from the scene and the rise of Yeltsin, there was a micro-historical event,
duly reported in a historic research by Enrico Oliari. During the demonstrations
following the coup, Moscow was completely isolated, cut off from all means
of communication. In the whole of Moscow there was one single fax machine that
worked. Yeltsin immediately placed himself at the head of the Resistance movement,
but he had no means of communicating with the outside world. His collaborators
informed him that they had found one single working fax in the whole capital:
it was that of a Moscow gay association. Thanks to a small fax, belonging to
a homosexual organisation, "White Crow", recovering control of the situation,
urged the population to rebel and informed the world of what was really happening.
When he came to power, to obtain a post on the Council of Europe, the Russian
President, Boris Yeltsin, followed the example of the Baltic republics, and
article 121.2 was abrogated as part of a vast law reform, signed on the 29th
April 1993 and published one month later.
Article 121.2 remained in force, but the maximum punishment was reduced to
7 - 8 years imprisonment. The changes came about silently, in a packet of very
small legal changes without detailed explanations on the part of the mass media.
At the basis of these changes in the Russian penal code, there was a long and
difficult path. The first draft, prepared by the Russian Ministry for Justice
and published in a special issue of the no-longer existing Zakon at the beginning
of 1992, did not quote article 121, but instead included a new article, n.
132, entitled "Homosexuality or the satisfaction sexual passion in perverted
forms". According to this article, "the satisfaction of sexual passion" (or,
in another version, "sexual needs") in other perverted forms (including lesbianism), "if
carried out with the use or the threat of physical force, or by exploitation
of the vulnerable condition of the victim" was punishable by the privation
of liberty for up to 3 years. Punishment was very severe in the case of repeated
crimes, and also for those guilty of group violence, of causing serious lesions
to the victim, or if the victim was a child under 14. The first draft was extremely
confused. Homosexual relations between consenting adults were not punishable,
but homosexuality was still "a perversion", and the mention of lesbianism was,
in this context, a point of regression. According to Russian law, sexual acts
that were violent or requested by force with a woman other than one's own wife,
were not allowed. Technically the violence had to include actual vaginal penetration,
therefore the definition of violence to males was practically impossible. There
are no legally acceptable terms for oral or anal penetration, juridically denominated "perverted
forms" of sexual satisfaction. The principle of equality of gender in sexual
relations also presented difficulties. Since violence is believed to be a more
serious offence than any other sexual act, violence against an adult woman
or a young girl was much more punishable than a violent sexual act committed
against a man or a young boy. In this context, men and boys had "less value" than
females: yet if a man had had sexual relations with a boy of 17, he had to
be imprisoned for up to seven years, while if the same act had been with a
girl of 17, it would go unpunished. This first draft was also criticised for
many other imperfections and was refused by the Soviet Supreme. A new draft
of the criminal code, prepared by a group of lawyers and presented to the Duma
by the Ministry for Justice and by the President's legal office in 1994, was
decidedly better (the Ugolovny Code, 1994). There was still article 142 "on
forced homosexual relations", which was punished as an act of violence.
Furthermore it was written, in article 144, that homosexuality, but not lesbianism,
represents coercion of the person. On the whole the draft was written rather
carelessly. In the index it was written, under article 143, on sexual coercion
except for violence, that "the satisfaction of sexual passion in the perverted
forms is authorised", while the text refers to "forced actions aimed at the
satisfaction of sexual needs". In a later version of the draft the phrase "perverted
forms" was reintroduced. In a previous version, formulated by A. N. Ignatov,
sexual orientation was not mentioned, having mysteriously disappeared at the
last moment, without the workgroup being aware.
After lengthy discussion a compromise version was accepted. The new criminal
code was accepted by the Duma in July 1995, but it was refused by the Federal
Council and by President Yeltsin (December 1995). When the Duma procured a
new edition, the new version of the code was finally approved by both Houses
in June 1996, and was signed by the President on the 1st January 1997. Chapter
18 of the code was called "crimes against sexual inviolability and sexual freedom
of the individual", which was an improvement on the title of the preceding
drafts in 1994, "crimes relative to sexual relations".
The articles that said "have forced homosexuality" and "the perverted forms
of sexual satisfaction", but not the "forced actions of article 132 of a sexual
nature" were removed:
- Homosexuality, lesbianism or other actions of a sexual character committed
with the use or the threat of force against the victim or against other
persons, or exploiting the vulnerability of the victim, are punished by the
privation
of freedom for a period of from three to six years.
- The same actions, if committed:
- several times or by a person previously sentenced for crimes
foreseen by the clauses of this chapter;
- by a group of people in a premeditated way or by an organised
group;
- if leading to the infection of the victim of a venereal disease;
- abusively against an incapable person;
are punished by the privation of freedom for a period of from four to ten
years.
- Actions that are foreseen in the first and seconds parts of the article,
if:
- leading accidentally to the death of a victim;
- causing serious damage to the health, HIV infection, or any
other serious consequences;
- committed with abuse against a person under fourteen years of
age;
are punished by the privation of freedom for a period of from eight to fifteen
years. (Ugolovny Code, 1996).
Article 133 "on coercive acts of a sexual nature" states: "the coercion of
a person in requests for sexual, homosexual, lesbian or other actions of a
sexual nature by means of blackmail, threat of lesions, damage or removal of
property, or exploiting the subordinate position of the victim, is punished
with forced (corrective) labour for up to two years or the privation of freedom
for up to one year." No specific act, such as oral or anal penetration, is
mentioned, and no difference is made between homosexual or heterosexual behaviour.
The law gives important symbolic tribute to the principle of sexual equality
in as much as, with the exception of violence to a female victim, all other
sexual actions that are criminal, such as violence, force and coercion, can
be directed equally against a person of either sex. The legal age of consent
for voluntary sexual relations in the 1995 draft was 14 years, with no difference
as regards gender, that is as regards either heterosexual or homosexual behaviour.
In the definitive version of the code, article 134 foresees that requests for
sexual relations, whether homo or lesbian, with the submission of a person
under 16 years of age to a person of over 18, are punished with the limitation
of freedom for up to 3 years or with privation of freedom for up to 4 years.
In general, the new law is a solution representing a compromise. In a more
analytical way, for personal conviction, but also for political reasons, legislators
have refused to remove homosexuality completely from the penal code. An open
defence of homosexuality could be damaging for electoral purposes for all the
political parties. Paradoxically, only the reactionary Vladimir Zhirinovsky,
of all the Russian political heads, had the courage, before the 1993 elections,
to publicly defend human rights and the reputation of homosexuals in a long
speech on television. However, that was the only evidence of his "liberalism",
and in fact his words were not taken seriously. All the other Russian political
parties, including the "democrats" (who were accused of being pro-Western and
of ruining the Russian economy) showed that they were conservative, defending
the family. The defence of "the traditional Russian values of the family" is
hardly compatible with sexual freedom. All other homosexual contacts between
consenting adults were finally decriminalised. The inclusion, for the first
time, of lesbianism in Russian legislation follows the principle of sexual
equality; the fact that homosexuality and lesbianism are no longer considered
offensive as "perversions" or "unnatural", but given, on paper, equality to
other sexual attitudes, demonstrates that all forms of sexual acts are acceptable
unless illegal, that is with a non-consenting partner. Professor Ignatov was
particularly active and persistent as a member of the workgroup, so much so
as to convince his more conservative colleagues. "After forwarding my criticisms
and my suggestion to the Duma in a letter," the Professor stated, "I was invited
to a private discussion with the legal committee of the Duma. The deputy chairman
of the committee, V.V. Pokhmelkin, agreed with almost all my suggestions, but
Professor I.M. Galperin did not. I asked them to eliminate the subject of "perversion
of the forms": "Gentlemen, I imagine you having oral sex with your wives and
lovers with no remorse; however, in your white paper this is defined as a "perversion".
Do we not have enough hypocrisy in this country?" The figures remain disturbing;
it is clear that a change in an article of the code is not enough to change
Custom deeply rooted in time. In Soviet Russia the presumed homosexuality of
the adversaries was an instrument used in political struggle, however there
still remains today a homophobic attitude, difficult to unhinge, with latent
marginal forms that continue to consider homosexual relations as reprehensible
and antisocial behaviour, as is shown, for that matter, by the latest figures
of the Russian Federation on alcoholism and crime.
Bibliography
Gessen, M. (1994). "The rights of lesbians and gay men in the Russian Federation".
San Francisco: International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.
- Kon, I.S. (1995): "The sexual revolution in Russia: From the age
of the Tsar to today" (Trans. James Riordan). New York: Free Press.
- Kon, I.S. (1988): "Vvedenie v seksologiyu". Moscow: Meditsina
- Vasilchenko, G. S. (Ed.). (1983): "Chastnaya seksopatologiya" (2
vols.). Moscow: Meditsina.
- Burgin, D. (1994): Sophia Parnok. "The life and work of Russia's
Sappho". New York: New York University Press.
- Isayev, D. D. (1993, June-August): "Survey of the sexual behaviour
of gay men in Russia". ILGA Bulletin, 3
- Healey, D. (1991): "A social history of homosexuality 1917-1934".
Unpublished master's thesis, School of Slavonic and East European Studies,
University of London.
- Kon, I.S. (1993): "Sexual minorities". In I. Kon & J. Riordan
(Eds.), Sex and Russian society (pp. 89-115). Bloomington: Indiana University
Press
On line:
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