Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (LGBTQ) persons in the post-Soviet states face legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBTQ residents.
History
After the October Revolution: 1917–1933
The Soviet Government of the Russian Soviet Republic decriminalised homosexuality in December 1917, following the October Revolution and the discarding of the Legal Code of Tsarist Russia.[Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. E.H. Carr. 1994]
Through the abolishment of the Tsarist legal code in 1917, the Russian Communist Party effectively legalised homosexuality. The initial Russian Soviet criminal code contained no criminalisation of homosexuality as the subject was omitted.
Yet, the abrogation of the Tsarist law, was part of an overall rejection of the laws of the Russian Empire, and the Soviets never undertook any campaign to reduce prejudice against homosexuality.Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, Volume 2 - Marxism
The legalisation of private, adult and consensual homosexual relations only applied to the Russian SFSR and the Ukrainian SSR. Homosexuality or sodomy remained a crime in Azerbaijan (officially criminalised in 1923), as well as in the Transcaucasian and Central Asian Soviet Republics throughout the 1920s. Similar criminal laws were enacted in Uzbekistan in 1926 and in Turkmenistan the following year.
Despite decriminalising homosexuality in 1917 wider Soviet social policy on the matter of wider homosexual rights and the treatment of homosexual people in the 1920s was often mixed. Official Soviet policy, in both the RSFSR and the wider USSR, in the 1920s, on homosexuality, fluctuated between toleration and support, attempts at legal equality and social rights for homosexual people, to open examples of state hostility against homosexuals and state attempts to classify homosexuality as 'a mental disorder to be cured'.The Construction of Homosexuality. David Greenburg. University of Chicago Press. 1988. p. 440 In the Communist Party itself during this period of the 1920s such divergences of opinion and policy on Soviet treatment of homosexuality was also common - ranging from positive, to negative, to ambivalent, over views about homosexuals and homosexual rights. Some sections and factions of the Bolshevik Government attempted to improve rights and social conditions for homosexuals based on further legal reforms in 1922 and 1923, while others opposed such moves. Commissar of Health Nikolai Semashko, in the early 1920s, for example, was sympathetic Russian Masculinities in History and Culture. edited by B. Clements, R. Friedman, D. Healey. Springer, 2001. p.170, see note 52 to homosexual emancipation 'as part of the [sexual] revolution' and attempted such reforms for homosexual rights in the area of civil and medical areas.[Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia. Healey. 132-133] According to Wayne R. Dynes, some sections of the Bolsheviks of the 1920s actively considered homosexuality a "[social] illness to be cured" or an example of "bourgeois degeneracy", while other Bolsheviks believed it should be legally/socially tolerated and legally/socially respected in the new socialist society.[Dynes, Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, 2016, p. 1137]
The Bolsheviks also rescinded Tzarist legal bans on homosexual civil and political rights - especially in the area of state employment. In 1918 Georgy Chicherin, an openly homosexual man, was appointed as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR. In 1923 Chicherin was also appointed People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, a position he held until 1930.
In the early 1920s the Soviet government and scientific community took a great deal of interest in sexual research, sexual emancipation and homosexual emancipation. In the 1920s the Soviet Union sent delegates from the Commissariat of Health, led by Commissar of Health Semashko, in January 1923,[Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia. Healey. 132-133, 309] to the German Institute for Sexual Research, as well as to some international conferences on human sexuality between 1921 and 1930, where they expressed support for the legalisation of adult, private, and consensual homosexual relations, and the improvement of homosexual rights in all nations. In both 1923 and 1925 Dr Grigorii Batkis, director of the Institute for Social Hygiene in Moscow, published a report, The Sexual Revolution in Russia, which stated that homosexuality was 'perfectly natural' and should be legally and socially respected.[Die Sexualrevolution in Russland, Berlin: 1925 Girgorri Batkis] In the Soviet Union itself the 1920s saw developments in serious Soviet research on sexuality in general, sometimes in support of the progressive idea of homosexuality as a natural part of human sexuality - such as the work of Dr Batkis prior to 1928.["Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle," Alexandra Kollontai, Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, trans. Alix Holt (London: Allison & Busby, 1977), 241.] Such delegations and research were sent, and authorised, and supported by the People's Commissariat for Health under Commissar Semashko.
However, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Soviet policy and attitudes on homosexuality and homosexual rights changed, alongside wider social backlashes against homosexual rights in general in the USSR. Along with increased repression of political dissidents and non-Russian nationalities under Stalin, LGBTQ themes and issues faced increasing official government censorship, and a uniformly harsher policy across the entire Soviet Union. Homosexuality was officially labelled a disease and a mental disorder in the late 1920s (specifically over a period from 1927 to 1930).West, Green. Sociological Control of Homosexuality: A Multi-Nation Comparison. p. 224. In this climate Commissar Semashko reduced his support for homosexual rights and Dr Batkis and other sexual researchers repudiated (in 1928) their own earlier scientific reports of homosexuality as a natural human sexuality.The Construction of Homosexuality. David Greenburg. University of Chicago Press. 1988. p. 440, see note 23 This followed earlier Soviet tendencies in sections of the medical and health communities, even in the early 1920s, to classify homosexuality, if not as a crime, then as an example of mental or physical illness. Earlier examples of this type of hardening Soviet attitude towards homosexuality include the 1923 report from the People's Commissariat for Health entitled The Sexual Life of Contemporary Youth, authored by Izrail Gel'man, which stated that "Science has now established, with precision that excludes all doubt, that homosexuality is not ill will or crime but sickness. The world of a female or male homosexual is perverted, it is alien to the normal sexual attraction that exists in a normal person." The official stance from the late 1920s could be summarised in an article of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1930 written by medical expert Sereisky (based on a report written in the 1920s):
Stalin: 1933–1953
In 1933 the Soviet government, under Joseph Stalin, recriminalised homosexuality. On March 7, 1934, Article 121 was added to the criminal code, for the entire Soviet Union, that expressly prohibited only male homosexuality, with up to five years of hard labor in prison. There were no criminal statutes regarding lesbianism. During the Soviet regime, Western observers believed that between 800 and 1,000 men were imprisoned each year under Article 121.Resource Information Center The precise reason for the new law is still in some dispute.
Some historians have noted that it was during this time that Soviet propaganda began to depict homosexuality as a sign of fascism, and that Article 121 may have a simple political tool to use against dissidents, irrespective of their true sexual orientation, and to solidify Soviet opposition to Nazi Germany, who had broken its treaty with the USSR.
More recently, a third possible reason for the anti-gay law has emerged from declassified Soviet documents and transcripts. Beyond expressed fears of a vast "counterrevolutionary" or fascist homosexual conspiracy, there were several high-profile arrests of Russian men accused of being pederasts. In 1933, 130 men "were accused of being 'pederasts' – adult males who have sex with boys. Since no records of men having sex with boys at that time are available, it is possible this term was used broadly and crudely to label homosexuality." Whatever the precise reason, homosexuality remained a serious criminal offense until it was repealed in 1993.
The Soviet government itself said very little publicly about the change in the law, and few people seemed to be aware that it existed. In 1934, the British Communist Harry Whyte wrote a long letter to Stalin condemning the law, and its prejudicial motivations. He laid out a Marxist position against the oppression of homosexuals, as a social minority, and compared homophobia to racism, xenophobia and sexism."Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia" Dan Healey, 2001, p.188. The letter was not formally replied to.
A few years later, 1936, Justice Commissar Nikolai Krylenko publicly stated that the anti-gay criminal law was correctly aimed at the decadent and effete old ruling classes, thus further linking homosexuality to a right-wing conspiracy, i.e. tsarist aristocracy and German fascists.
De-Stalinization and onwards: 1953–1991
When Stalin came to power, homosexuality became a topic unfit for public depiction, defense or discussion. Homosexual or bisexual Soviets who wanted a position within the Communist Party were expected to marry a person of the opposite sex, regardless of their actual sexual orientation. A notable example was the Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein, who despite his homosexuality managed to survive by leading a double life, having affairs with men while married to a woman, producing films that were politically pleasing to Stalin.
After Stalin died in 1953, he was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev, who proceeded to liberalize the Stalin era laws regarding marriage, divorce, and abortion, but the anti-gay criminal law remained. The Khrushchev government believed that absent of a criminal law against homosexuality, the sex between men that occurred in the prison environment would spread into the general population as they released many Stalin-era prisoners. Whereas the Stalin government conflated homosexuality with pedophilia, the Khrushchev government conflated homosexuality with the situational, sometimes forced, sex acts between male prisoners.
In 1958, the Interior Ministry sent a secret memo to law enforcement ordering them to step up enforcement of the anti-gay criminal law. Yet, during the late 1950s - early 1960s, Aline Mosby, a foreign reporter in Russia at the time, attributed to the more liberal attitude of the Khrushchev government to the fact that she did see some gay couples in public and that it was not uncommon to see men waiting outside of certain theaters looking for dates with male performers.The View from No. 13 People's Street. Aline Mosby. 1962
A 1964 Soviet sex manual instructed: "With all the tricks at their disposal, homosexuals seek out and win the confidence of youngsters. Then they proceed to act. Do not under any circumstances allow them to touch you. Such people should be immediately reported to the administrative organs so that they can be removed from society."Russia's Gay Men Step Out of Soviet-Era Shadows