Talk:LGBTQ history in Russia

Eisenstein.

The article makes the unreferenced statement that Sergei Eisenstein was homosexual. Such a fact is not mentioned on the Eisenstein page and the few references found on google talk about a fictional representation of him in a 2014 movie. Shouldn't such an unfounded statement be removed? 80.245.166.10 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:46, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Referencing.

This article almost fully contradicts the Russian version: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/История_ЛГБТ-движения_в_России СЛУЖБА (talk) 19:37, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

There's no requirement that Wikipedia articles be consistent across different language-Wikipedias. It's likely (inevitable, in fact) that the English and Russian Wikipedia articles on this subject will be written from different points of view. If on the other hand, there are factual disputes between them, that's more concerning; but it doesn't necessarily mean we have a problem here. The important thing is to make sure this article conforms with our policies (particularly WP:V and WP:NPOV); if Russian Wikipedia wants to write something different, that's up to them. Robofish (talk) 00:33, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Pre-Christian Russia

How about information on pre-Christian Russia? I know Genghis Khan decreed the death penalty for homosexuals, but between that and the founding of the Muscovy principate I can't find anything. Without knowing if pre-Christian Muscovy (or Kiev) persecuted homosexuals, there's no way to have any perspective on the influence of the Orthodox Church, or for that matter whether the Church was influenced by culture.

Dismalscholar (talk) 04:40, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Lenin

An IP has recently changed a lot of the sourced information about the relationship between the Soviet Union under Lenin and homosexuality. We need to avoid the attempts to paint Lenin as some kind of activist for homosexuality, because it simply isn't true. What the Bolsheviks did was abolish the entire Criminal Code of the Russian Empire, including sections 995 and 996 (which dealt with homosexuality) along with it.

Pre-revolution the issue of homosexuality was primarily a concern for Kadets and anarchists, rather than Bolsheviks. The Soviet Health Ministry's reports on homosexuality under Lenin's rule still viewed homosexuality as a negative trait but regarded them as suffering from a mental illness rather than criminals.

This isn't even a Trotsky-Stalin thing, because Trotsky never spoke on the issue of homosexuality either. Anti-communists have tried to link Bolsheviks to homosexuality and in the West since the 1960s the bourgeois student left has presumed of Lenin that he would have supported homosexuality generally (without evidence). Claíomh Solais (talk) 15:40, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I apologise if my attempts at edits on the section have been taken in a negative way (I made the edits). I want to be clear that I am not attempting to vandalise the page.

I made these changes for two reasons - 1. The current section on the 1920a was unreadable and unclear - often bringing in stray lines of unrelated thought (such as Inessa Armand) and not stating facts or developments on homosexual issues in the Soviet Union, in the 1920s, in a clear npov way. 2. The current section was not presenting an npov on Bolshevik policy about homosexuality. Instead of presenting that policy, which was contradictory and often fluctuated between support for homosexual rights after 1917 and hostile state repression (i.e. the post-1924 official reclassification of homosexuality as a 'mental disorder'), the current section presents the whole Bolshevik policy overly in the negative - which is not correct.

It is also incorrect to state (as the previous version does) that homosexuality was decriminalised in 1922. It was decriminalised in 1917. That decriminalisation was confirmed in 1922 - when the legal code was reviewed.

I agree that Bolshevik policy about homosexuality and homosexual rights was mixed at best - but I was attempting to rewrite the section to reflect that.

Yes prior to the revolution the issue of homosexual rights was primarily one for the kadets and the anarchists, but there were some Bolshevik campaigners for homosexual rights - particularly ones who had contact with the German SPD in the 1890s. But that is neither here or there regarding Russian/Soviet state and social views on homosexuality.

The point is that the Bolsheviks (after 1917) and the early Soviet Republic (after 1917) had a mixed policy about homosexuality - this should be reflected in the section, both for the positives and negatives, not just the negatives.

The health ministry was often split on the issue of homosexuality - especially previous to 1925. Hence why one faction of the ministry supported homosexual rights, gender realignment surgery and support for transsexuals, national and international conferences in support of homosexual rights, providing Magnus Hirschfeld and the German sexual institute with support, and why another was negative and eventually managed to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder in the USSR. To classify the ministry as purely negative on the issue is unfair - and unfair to those state officials and doctors who worked in the 1920s to see a more enlightened policy about the issue, who went on to pay the price for their commitment to human decency when many were purged in the later 1920s/1930s repressions under Stalin.

The health ministry's reports on homosexuality were also split - yes you do see such Soviet reports classifying homosexuality as 'a mental disorder' in even the early 1920s. But you also see some which state the opposite - which favour homosexual rights.

I agree that Lenin's position on homosexual rights was often ambivalent. But he did decriminalise it as an objective fact of history and he did stop the ban on homosexuals having both civil and political rights (i.e. the ban on homosexuals holding political/civil office). There is also no statement from Lenin that he was opposed to homosexual rights - but then there is nothing in the positive either besides his decriminalisations of homosexuality in 1917 and in 1922 and some other reforms relating to homosexual civil/political rights. Usually people take this as a point of Lenin's ambivalence on sexual matters on his part - that he was not much concerned with homosexual issues beyond simple legal and civil rights (as Tamás Krausz has argued in his recent intellectual biography of Lenin) and not with wider social equality or social toleration. He, like many on the Left at the time, did not pay enough attention to it at the time - which was a mistake. He should also not have surrendered the issue about homosexual legality to the conservative factions in the Central Asian Republics - which was a further mistake. Whatever the matter there is nothing to suggest Lenin was opposed to homosexual freedom. Having the picture of Lenin with a caption that he had homosexuality classified as 'a mental disorder' is clearly not npov - nor is it correct, as Lenin had no control over that later matter of classification. The Soviet classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder only officially occurred in the late 1920s - after Lenin's death in 1924. (I am aware of the earlier attempts in the mid-1920s but it was not until the late 1920s in which such repression became state policy.) Like Soviet policy in this period we can only suggest that Lenin's personal position was ambivalent - but it was not negative and it was positive by the wider standards of the time.

One could also argue that Lenin's personal position on homosexuality is irrelevant for this page - considering that this page is about the history of the Russian state's treatment of homosexuality, not Lenin's.

Of course I agree that we should not overly aggrandise Lenin and the Bolsheviks as clear-cut fighters for homosexual rights in general - when they clearly were not. What we can say from the historical record is that the Bolsheviks often had a contradictory policy about the issue - some factions favoured extension of rights for homosexuals (i.e. Kollantai, legal reformers, the legal commission of 1922/1923 on marriage, homosexual rights, gender etc., sections of the health and state apparatus), while others were ambivalent (Lenin) or openly hostile (Stalin, the Party/State factions in the Central Asian republics) about homosexuals and homosexual rights. What we can also say is that they often had a mixed policy about the issue after 1917 which often fluctuated in the 1920s. The way the current version reads is as if Bolshevik policy about the issue was openly hostile and that the decriminalisation in 1917 was merely an afterthought - which is unfair and untrue.

What should be attempted in this section is a statement of the difficult facts (i.e. that the Bolsheviks decriminalised homosexuality in 1917, that their wider policy about homosexual rights was mixed and fluctuated throughout the 1920s) - without editorialising about Bolshevik motives (which were often mixed and contradictory between different sections of the Party) and without editorialising a point of view of history which is written in retrospect without appreciating that there were some positive social advances from the Bolsheviks on this issue (i.e. that they decriminalised homosexuality and that some sections of the Party and State were supportive of further homosexual rights).

I agree that there has often been an attempt to claim Lenin and the Bolshevik Party as great champions for homosexual rights - when the reality was often mixed. But it was mixed between the positive and the negative on the issue - mixed between attempts at social progress on the matter and the backlashes of the mid and late 1920s. One can argue that Bolshevik policy was inadequate or contradictory on homosexual rights - but that is to ignore the historical nuance (i.e. wider conditions for homosexuals prior to 1917 or wider conditions for homosexuals outside Russia at the time) and that some progress was attempted by them. By the standards of the time and what subsequently happened to homosexual rights in the USSR the early Bolshevik policy was positive enough. It could (and should) have been better - but it was the best at the time and subsequently for a long time.

I hope we can agree on at least some of these issues. I do want to contribute to this entry in a positive way. I am not here to try and overly defend the Bolsheviks and ignore their flaws on this issue. I just think it is important to recognise that they were the first to make this important leap of homosexual rights by decriminalising it and for other attempts at expanding on such rights. It is important to keep historical context in mind - which (I think) puts the Bolsheviks in a better light given the backward views of many of them and their country at the time, and the world in general in the period. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8003:255B:6700:7C91:9F00:61AF:11F0 (talk) 01:08, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on LGBT history in Russia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added {{dead link}} tag to http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3056
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090524042725/http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/02/01/1309_type82915type82917_117600.shtml to http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/02/01/1309_type82915type82917_117600.shtml

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 09:47, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

An empty reference

Reference [2] simply cites "Louis Crompton".--Adûnâi (talk) 10:09, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Article title is dishonest

There is no discussion of transgender issues at all, except for a claim that Tsar-era anti-transgender legislation was removed, which is quite possibly a spurious claim, as it feels unlikely that this would have impacted on Russian society enough at the time for such legislation to even have been written. I would suggest the article either be renamed to note that it only covers LGB (not T) history, or have a major re-write, which would I expect require considerable research. Rhialto (talk) 09:21, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

I've added some information on a propaganda law from St. Petersburg that included transgender people. Mkarpa (talk) 23:44, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

There is no mention of homosexuality in Notes on Muscovite Affairs

Article may be misleading, because the only mentioning of that Sigismund von Herberstein has noted the prevalence of homosexuality among all social classes is made in this article referring two decently modern LGBT-specific sources. I didn't find any mention of LGBT in Sigismund's work, and would greatly appreciate if either you could cite me the piece of the original work or comment that this mention is likely a myth, rather than truth. 2A00:CC47:21FC:5401:0:0:0:3062 (talk) 10:30, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I concur and I haven't found anything either. Both references pointing to it are written by the same person. 2604:4080:1035:9C90:551A:BF62:C27:CA30 (talk) 01:47, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

February 2023

Moved from User talk:M.Bitton

 – M.Bitton (talk) 18:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Article may be misleading, because the only mentioning of that Sigismund von Herberstein has noted the prevalence of homosexuality among all social classes is made in this article referring two decently modern LGBT-specific sources. I didn't find any mention of LGBT in Sigismund's work, and would greatly appreciate if either you could cite me the piece of the original work or comment that this mention is likely a myth, rather than truth. 2A00:CC47:21FC:5401:0:0:0:3062 (talk) 10:30, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Also Adam Olearius did not write about rampant homosexuality in Russia. His book "Travels of the Ambassadors sent by Frederic, Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy and the King of Persia, London, 1662; and 1669)" does not mention this at all. You use incorrect and unverified sources and create myths. 178.205.51.70 (talk) 18:07, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Since I didn't add the content that you are attributing to me and at least one of the sources that you removed does indeed support the material, I moved your comment here so that the others can chime in. M.Bitton (talk) 18:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Splitting proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I propose splitting the section “Soviet Union” into a separate article LGBT history in the Soviet Union.

• This page’s size is 80,898 bytes (81 kb), assessed “probably should be divided” (60–100 kb) according to WP:SIZESPLIT.
• This page’s scope subordinates Soviet LGBT history to that of the Russian Federation, when it also belongs to fourteen other states, none of which even has an article in Category:LGBT history by country. This is a non-NPOV WP:BIAS privileging the RF at the expense of Moscow’s former colonies.

 —Michael Z. 18:13, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

• Support, and while we are at it, LGBT history in Russian Federation would make sense as well. Of course, the splits must follow the WP:Summary style guideline. - Altenmann >talk 19:14, 4 September 2023 (UTC)
• Questions: if you think there articles missing, why don't you create it? By split do you mean the removal of the "Soviet Union" section from this article? Marcelus (talk) 20:54, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

  It is not that it is "missing". We are talking here about a major restructuring, and it is a reasonable practice to ask other editors first. Maybe someone else suggests a better approach or reasonably opposes. - Altenmann >talk 21:23, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

  "Split" is not necessarily "removal". Here the topics are not 100% independent; it is restructuring following the WP:Summary style guideline. - Altenmann >talk 21:26, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

  But I don't see much of anything to split in this article. It describes the history of LGBT people in Russia, one of the sections is called "Soviet Union", which can't come as a surprise because Russia was part, moreover central, of the Soviet Union. If @Mzajac feels that an article LGBT history in Soviet Union is missing, there is nothing to prevent such an article from being created. But there is no reason to "split" anything from this article.

  Besides, your proposal to create LGBT history in Russian Federation makes no sense, because Russian Federation is Russia. Marcelus (talk) 21:48, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, Russian Federation is Russia today. But the article is about history. Therefore in this sense the terms Russian Federation and Russia are not equivalent. The word "is" is highly misleading. Birch is tree, but this does not mean that all text about birch must go into the page "tree". Same with Russia. - Altenmann >talk 22:56, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

  Bad comparison. It would make sense if we were talking about "Russia" and "country" (Russia is a country, but this does not mean that all text about Russia must go into the page "country"). Marcelus (talk) 08:53, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  Here is n exact comparison: take a look into the history of any country. It is split by time periods. And here is a perfect match: History of the Jews in the Soviet Union and History of the Jews in Russia. The arrangement there looks weird, but it tries to reflect the "multifurcated" history of the subject. - Altenmann >talk 09:08, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  We could follow your suggestion and potentially copy this Soviet Union section to a new article, and to an article section in fourteen other country-specific articles. Then we’d have sixteen WP:CFORKs, so we might decide to delete fifteen of them. Hm, which one of the sixteen should we keep, do you think, and why?  —Michael Z. 04:44, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  For the third time I am mentioning WP:Summary style here. Please take some time and read it. This is exactly a way how to avoid forking. I did it several times when people brainlessly cut and paste the same text into different articles. Instead, I used to create one common sub-article and trim the corresponding sections elsewhere, leaving only summaries. Sometimes it was a huge task, because these forks in different articles grew independently in different directiosn, so I had to merge content. To a significant degree student's Wikipedia asssignments cotributed to this. Vast majority of these students dindt care about wikiedia, only about their grade. They throw in a nice essay (following wikipedia policies, luckily), never reading whether something similar is written in wikipedia already, and never come back. ... - Altenmann >talk 05:25, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  I agree 100 percent.  —Michael Z. 05:42, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  I don't understand why you would copy anything. If the LGBT history in Ukraine article had a section on the Soviet Union then it should be written with a focus on Ukraine. Of course, certain phenomena or, above all, legislation was country-wide, for the entire USSR, but the situation in Soviet Ukraine had its own peculiarities. The section in this article is written with a focus on Russia, as a part of the USSR, to copy directly into an article about, say, Ukraine, Lithuania or Tajikistan, would be nonsensical. Therefore, I believe that there is nothing to split here. Marcelus (talk) 08:58, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  It is not written with a focus on Russia as a part of the USSR. The section would stand alone as an LGBT history of the USSR with little or no editing.  —Michael Z. 19:25, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  Then writing an article LGBT history in Soviet Union will be easy. However, for this purpose, there is no point in splitting anything from this article. Or do you think some parts of the Soviet Union section are out of scope of the article subject? If so please write which one.

  I perceive some inconsistency in your reasoning. You yourself pointed out that "Moscow" was the centre of the Soviet empire, so it is natural that the two entities would overlap. Marcelus (talk) 20:18, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

  Well, yes, it would be easy, because I would just copy this article section. Unless we are required to assemble a clean-room team to write that article.

  Many entities overlap and Moscow is hardly the only, the most important, or even a thing they have in common. It’s the nations of these countries that have been constant while Moscow’s dominion has come and gone. Russia is not the Soviet Union.  —Michael Z. 20:14, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

  That's correct. And the LGBT history in Ukraine should have a ref to LGBT history in the Soviet Union, e.g., in "See also". I don't think there were any peculiarities for LGBT in Ukrainian SSR comparing to the rest of the USSR, but if there were, a small section could be added to address them. 20:10, 5 September 2023 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Altenmann (talk • contribs)

  So you’d be okay with moving that section to LGBT history in Ukraine and having a ref here to it? Or do you think Russia articles should have a privileged position in the history of the Soviet Union and former colonial republics are less important? The neutral POV is to treat modern successors of the Soviet Union as equal. —Michael Z. 20:17, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

  In the future, please name the person you are asking the question. I am confused: we are discussing the separat article, LGBD histroy of thee Soviet Union. Let's do this easy part first and then see what will be required further. - Altenmann >talk 23:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

  Russia is the successor state of SU, other post-Soviet countries aren't equal in that with Russia. Marcelus (talk) 21:18, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

  This political fact has nothing to do with LGBT history. For example that Russia is successor of SU does not mean that, e.g., mineral resources of Ukraine belong to Russia. - Altenmann >talk 23:55, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

  That’s just false, on at least two counts.

  1) Legally speaking, the Russian Federation claims to be the USSR’s continuator, but this is disputed by Ukraine, it is problematic because the RF also declared the USER ceased to exist. Twelve states are successors to the USSR. And three are formerly occupied, but also have their LGBT histories in the Soviet Union as much as the others from 1940 to 1990-ish.

  2) Other post-Soviet countries aren't equal in that with Russia. You are unselfconsciously flaunting your WP:BIAS. We shouldn’t make prejudiced statements like that, much less insist they be our basis for editing Wikipedia. This goes against WP:5P 2 and 4.  —Michael Z. 13:58, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

  Can you explain the prejudice here? Marcelus (talk) 15:16, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

  You say that Soviet-era LGBT history of all the people in all the Soviet countries belongs to Russia. Because Russia is more equal due to the Russian Federation’s supposed political status. This is prejudiced against half the people in the Soviet Union who were not in the Russian SFSR and their legacy.

  The way to correct this is to treat the history of the Soviet Union as not the history of Russia.

  If I misunderstood, please explain.  —Michael Z. 15:35, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

• Strong support We should move the existing coverage to its own article. We should retain a brief summary of the main points here and direct people who want to know more to the new article. It is a substantial topic in its own right and it needs space to be covered in depth without this article becoming too long to read. It covers more than just Russia. This is a part of the history of many different countries and having a stand-alone article makes it easier for this content to be linked into each of their individual LGBT history articles. --DanielRigal (talk) 14:32, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Support per nom. HappyWith (talk) 18:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

I should also note that LGBT rights in the post-Soviet states has a bunch of content that duplicates this article's coverage of the Soviet period which should probably be merged into the new article too. HappyWith (talk) 18:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Note: Although not directly related, people interested in this discussion might also have opinions on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/LGBT rights in the post-Soviet states‎. --DanielRigal (talk) 14:36, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.