Introduction to “Soviet and Post-Soviet Sexualities”

References to same-sex desire were all but absent in the Soviet press and removed from all translations of foreign literature, while gatherings of gays and lesbians in the public sphere were forbidden.9While Brian Baer suggests that, as a result, "Soviet culture offered little ontological basis for the representation of homosexuality as an identity, as a stable subject position through which one might assume a voice in the Russian public sphere," this view is not shared by the author of the first article in the cluster.10While taking into account the effects produced by ideology and medical and penal discourse, Arthur Clech argues that Russian men and women in the USSR were nevertheless able to construct homosexual subjectivities that were not reduced to either sickness or criminality but were rather created through language, irony, and solidarity. "12While heterosexuals are able to express their sexuality publicly and so "transcend the so-called public-private dichotomy," gays and lesbians have historically been expected to remain invisible by performing traditional masculine and feminine behavior and/or keeping to their own spaces, such as gay and lesbian bars and clubs.13In the immediate post-Soviet years LGBT Russians appear to have adhered to this "sexual contract," although more radical groups used the new post-decriminalization environment to engage in queer activism aimed at shocking Russian society.14In the mid-nineties, LGBT community organizations and publications mushroomed across Russia, but their numbers dwindled to almost nothing by the early years of the new millennium in the face of official harassment and cuts in overseas funding. The politicization of homophobia in post-Soviet Russia came to a head in the 2013 "gay propaganda law," under the terms of which individuals and organizations can be fined for disseminating information about "non-traditional sexual orientations" among minors, promoting "the social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional relationships," or "the depiction of homosexual people as role models, including any mention of famous homosexuals. The visibility the legislation has inadvertently produced should thus be seen an important component of resistance to the state-sponsored attempts to render homosexuality invisible. [...]Russian activists can now count on the support of Russian queer diasporas overseas.