by William Dean
(2/14/01)
Sex was officially repressed by every government agency under the old political rules of Russia. Homosexual and lesbian sex were either criminal actions, or cause for psychiatric imprisonment.
"From Stalin through Yeltsin, men who had sex with other men in
Russia could be charged under Statute 121 of the Soviet (later
Russian) Penal Code. These men faced up to seven years of hard
labor for homosexual sex. They occupied the lowest rungs of the
prison hierarchy because of their 'crime.' Other prisoners and
guards consistently blackmailed, raped, abused, and even
murdered men who were convicted of sodomy, with full impunity.
This law against sodomy was removed in 1993, but until then
several hundred, or possibly several thousand, men were imprisoned
each year for loving other men. Countless more were blackmailed
or just plain intimidated by the state into hiding their
sexuality.
"For women who loved other women, the Soviet state had other
plans. They committed them to psychiatric care because 'such
women are schizophrenics.' Lesboerotic women were forced to
undergo frequent shock treatment, drug therapy, and even sex
change operations in order to 'cure' them. Today, although
lesboerotic women are no longer forced into psychiatric care,
they are often officially encouraged to seek it. Any women who
are not eighteen years of age can, and are, committed by family
members for the act of loving other women."
So says Professor Laurie Essig, in speaking about the research
and background for her recent book Queer in Russia, published by
Duke University Press in 1999.
"If you believed that the Russian people were generally
repressive of homoerotic desires, that's untrue," she continues.
"In many ways, Russian society has always been more 'European' in
its attitudes about sex. There is the shrug of the shoulders and
a 'who cares' attitude about sexual 'deviance.' On the other
hand, Russia has a very different history than Europe and
perhaps most different of all is that the identity politics that
so wracked the conscience of Western Europe and the United States
in the 1960s and '70s, completely passed Russia by. You may have
noticed that I am careful not to use terms like 'gay' or
'lesbian' when discussing same-sex eroticism in Russia. That's
because most Russians don't see what they do in bed as an
important part of their public identity. The idea that someone's
sexual practices should shape their work or social life or
geographic location is not one that has strong roots. It's an idea
that has been introduced by contact with the West; a notion of
sexual identity in Russia is a foreign one."
"With the coming of more sexual liberality, activist groups have
quickly formed, such as the Triangle Organization of Moscow. But
for the most part, these identity-based organizations of 'gays
and lesbians' have failed, partly because they're seen as
just another manifestation of Western imperialism. Also, it's
because they just don't make sense in a culture where few who experience attraction to the
same sex define that attraction as 'gay' or 'lesbian'. Instead,
Russians tend to use very general terms such as 'blue' or 'pink'
or 'people of the moonlight' to describe same-sex attraction.
"The terms are ambiguous enough that they do not stop them from
also identifying as straight. Especially if they don't break any
of the rules of gender, and if they are conventionally masculine
men or feminine women and play the conventionally gendered sexual
roles of insertive men or receptive women."
Curiously, Russian sex experts say that most of the activity that
has occurred in the past ten years has revolved around expressing
sexual desire, rather than identity. There are a lot of discos
and dating services, or theatrical representations, and lots
of Web pages offering future Russian wives or straight
pornography, but few gay and lesbian organizations.
"The up-side to all of this avoidance of identity politics," says
Professor Essig, "is that everyone can participate in or consume
images of same sex desire without being permanently marked as
'queer.' So in Russian popular culture there are lots of images
of same sex desire. The down side of this is that the lack of
identity doesn't provide any way of fighting sexual oppression
and prejudice. Laws have been passed which can be, and are, used to
harass strictly queer discos and organizations. Citizens and even
police officers are not above blackmailing or other hate crimes.
Even more dangerous are bands of young men known as remontniki or
'fixers', who cruise the streets looking for men to bash for being
pidri ('faggots')."
"This is despite the fact that Russian culture is filled with
homoeroticism. One of the most obvious examples are the plays
directed by Roman Viktiuk, almost all of which have a homosexual,
but not necessarily 'gay', relationship at their center. These
plays are presented frequently in the country's major theaters
and television. Another example of homoerotic popular culture is
music, where figures such as Boris Moiseyev are openly
transgressing gender and sexual roles. In terms of literature,
there have been a few books in recent years with homoerotic
themes. One of the main 'characters' of my book, a dissident and
activist by the name of Zhenya Debrianskaia, has published two
novels recently. It's interesting to think about what gets
translated into English. All those novels by Soviet dissidents
during the Cold War that went on and on about their unfair
imprisonment, and yet somehow none of them noticed that they were
imprisoned alongside sexual dissidents who were much worse off
than they."
Essig emphasizes the strong cultural differences between the West
and Russia. "Russians have a long history of state intervention
in daily life, so few in Russia want to suddenly announce to the
world anything about their private life, let alone sexual
acts that could cost them their jobs, their family, and even
their freedom. Russia is not in danger of becoming a talk show
culture about their sex practices anytime soon."
Though hers was scholarly research, Essig also discovered some new
personal awareness as she probed deeper. "The most surprising
thing for me was that my own sexuality, seemingly so 'real', was
in fact dependent on my own cultural context. In Russia and in
Russian I thought about the meaning of my desires differently
than I do in the US and in English. I was less rigid in some ways
around sex, but perhaps more rigid around gender and the
stability of gender roles as a way to create and explore desire.
"The most shocking thing to me is that nationalism, extremely
popular in Russian society, can be so much a part of queer
Russia. Certain queer leaders are very nationalist and certain
nationalist leaders are openly queer. The most encouraging thing
to me is that there is a whole generation of Americans and
Russians who have grown up since I did the research for this book,
and they grew up on the Internet and knowing each other. I think
in some ways they will be less inclined to step on each other's
toes.
"I know I stepped on far too many when I first began the research
for Queer in Russia, and many other Westerners were equally
insensitive to cultural differences.
Instead of taking the familiar and casual attitude that all roads
lead to the same end -- some rigid sexual identity, a coming out
of the closet, a creation of a gay space like San Francisco, I
hope that this new generation, which has been able to communicate
since they were first experiencing any sort of desire, will think
about how different cultures and histories and even languages
lead to different ways of thinking about something as natural
and unchanging as sexual desire. What I really desire is that
they and we can have pleasure, free of any state and societal
intervention."
