User:K!r!lleXXI/sandbox/LGBT rights in Russia/History

Intro

Kievan Rus'

Kievan Rus' (green), c. 1000

In 988, eastern Slavic tribes, known as Kievan Rus', accepted Christianity (eventually becoming an outpost of Orthodox Christianity after the schism between Rome and Constantinople). Christian traditions and dogmas determined negative view of all sexual activities, including harsh penalties for same-sex acts (not by law, for there were no laws against homosexual acts, but by religious beliefs).

Muscovy

Muscovy (green), c. 1500

Due to Tatar and Mongol invasion in the 13th–15th centuries, Slavs migrated northward, where Moscow became a new political center — Muscovy. According to Simon Karlinsky, “the Muscovite period may have been the era of the greatest visibility and tolerance for male homosexuality that the world had seen since the days of Ancient Greece and Rome.” However, there is evidence that sodomy, lesbianism, cross-dressing and women's mannish/tomboyish behavior were mistrusted and condemned by the general population. There also have been foreigners' reports confirming widespread practice of “unnatural vice” in Muscovy.

Many claims about tsars' homosexuality served to discredit political leaders, like it was done to Ivan the Terrible. When tsar Dmitry was overthrown, his broken body was dragged through the streets by his genitals, alongside his reputed male lover.

Male and female cross-dressing, the use of women's powder and finery by men, face shaving, pederasty, lesbian masturbation were proclaimed an abomination by Christian religious authorities, different penances were established for such actions. In homosocial religious environments (covenants and monasteries) both male and female homosexual acts were strictly forbidden (people were under surveillance).

First sodomy law in the army and navy (1706, 1716)

Peter the Great (reigned in 1682–1725) criminalized male homosexuality in the army and navy in 1716.

In 1706, tsar Peter the Great issued a new Military Legal Code (based on Sweden's military code), which proscribed burning at the stake for “sodomy between two men”, however, the tsar (reputedly bisexual) mitigated the punishment, and it is unknown when and if it was applied. A 1716 revision of the Code proscribed corporal punishment for homosexual acts, reserving death penalty or hard labor for life for rape or other use of violence. It is believed that the Code applied only to soldiers on active duty and did not concern the general population.

Imperial Russia

Russian Empire (green), c. 1700

In 1754, a ban on homosexual acts between civilians was proposed for a draft Penal Code, but this ban was removed from the final edit.

First criminalization of male homosexuality for civilians (1835)

Nicholas I (reigned in 1825–1855) criminalized male homosexuality for all civilians in 1835.

In 1832, a new Legal Code was drafted (and enacted in 1835) during the reign of emperor Nicholas I; it was based on German criminal codes and contained Article 995, which prohibited muzhelozhstvo,⁽⁾ punishable by deprivation of all rights and resettlement in Siberia for 4 to 5 years; and Article 996, which covered homosexual rape and seduction of male minors or mentally retarded men, punishable by deprivation of all rights and hard labor in Siberia for 10 to 20 years. However, Article 995 was not enforced on homosexual people very stringently. Moreover, homosexual male prostitution was prospering on streets and in bathhouses of Saint Petersburg and Moscow.

LGBT and pre-Soviet society

WSWs evidently existed well before the 19th century in Russia: Muscovite penitential lists and other religious documents suggest that the Orthodox Church was aware of lesbianism in Russia and banned it. By the end of the 19th century some lesbian women preferred having same-sex intercourse in brothels, sometimes dressed as men. Tomboyish behavior was tolerated in upper- and middle-class families.

In the second half of the 19th century, homosexuality became far more visible in both Russian life and literature; gays and lesbians became relatively well-adjusted in every stratum of society, including the peasantry, the merchantry, the army, and the clergy.

Gender crossing (cross-dressing and other ways to express gender dissent) was traditionally described as hermaphroditism, later it was regarded as a sign of homosexuality (by the 1910s, a medical condition).

Political views on homosexuality in pre-Soviet Russia

Anarchist Alexander Berkman softened his prejudice against homosexuality through his relationship with Emma Goldman (who had made the rights of homosexuals a part of her political agenda) and his time spent in an American jail, where he learned that working class men could be gay, thus rebuking the idea that homosexuality was a sign of upper- or middle-class or wealthy exploitation or decadence.

One of the founders of the Kadets, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, had written a research paper on the legal status of homosexuality in Russia, published by early gay rights advocate Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin.

Thus, at least two antimonarchist parties (Anarchists and Kadets) supported the repeal of the laws, prohibiting any form of consensual, adult sexual expression in Russia.

Post-revolutionary Soviet Russia

See also: 1905 Revolution, February Revolution, October Revolution, and History of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union (1917–1927)

The provisional government, formed after the abdication of Nicholas II in February 1917, managed to promote human rights and freedoms on a new scale; women and minorities were given full civil and political rights.

After the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, Lenin abolished the entire Criminal Code of the Russian Empire, which was wrongfully interpreted as repealing of laws against consensual homosexual acts (Article 995).

First decriminalization of male homosexuality (1922)

In 1922, after the end of civil war, a new Soviet Criminal Code was promulgated. It prohibited sex with minors (under the age of 16), male and female prostitution, and pandering. There was no mention of sexual contacts between consenting adults, effectively legalizing all homosexual acts. It was done so to secularize and medicalize the language of sexual crime. Old Testament concepts like “sodomy,” “fornication,” and “feminine honor” were purged from the law.

Yet, the legalization of private, adult and consensual homosexual relations only applied to Russia itself. Homosexuality or sodomy remained a crime in Azerbaijan (1923), Soviet Georgia, Central Asia throughout the 1920s. Similar criminal laws were enacted in Uzbekistan (1926) and Turkmenistan (1927).

However, the majority of Bolsheviks did not welcome homosexual relationships and perhaps subscribed to the view that it was a medical condition (probably hormonal anomaly), which would be treatable in the future, but the prosecution of homosexuals was seen as irrational. A lot of gay people, who lived openly in imperial times, got married to opposite-sex partners to deflect suspicions.

Psychiatric views on lesbianism

Soviet psychiatrists enthusiastically studied lesbians. They did not believe lesbian love was inherently a problem, some even suggested helping lesbians to accept their desires and allow them to get married, for “typical lesbian personality” (active, tough, can-do attitude, disregard for feminine fripperies, and will to study and do paid work) carried a positive political message, though there were worries that lesbians would refuse to have babies.

Stalinist Russia

See also: History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953)

Joseph Stalin had his own vision of a modern, industrialized society that could stand up to the capitalist West and the Nazi regime in Germany: instead of a sexual revolution allowing the maximum personal autonomy, Stalin's new policies limited life-choices for women (by banning abortion in 1936) and made divorce more difficult and expensive.

Second criminalization of male homosexuality for civilians (1934)

In 1933, Stalin decided once again to criminalize male homosexuality to promote heterosexuality: facing an inevitable major war with Nazi Germany, the state needed to lift the declining birth rate. On the other hand, Stalin's plan to eliminate prostitution (including male homosexual prostitution) in the first Five-Year Plan (1928–1932) lead to a proposition from the NKVD head Genrikh Yagoda (on 15 September 1933) to ban “sodomy as a profession”, ultimately banning any male homosexual acts.

Article 154a (renumbered in 1960 to Article 121 and remained under this number until 1993) was added to the Criminal Code of the USSR (enacted on 7 March 1934), punishing male homosexual acts with up to 5 years in prison; same acts with the use of physical force, threats, exploitation, or with a minor were to be punished with up to 8 years in prison.

Mass arrests and accusation of counterrevolutionary conspiracy

In late summer 1933, 130 males were arrested in Moscow and Leningrad and accused of pederasty (it is possible this term was used broadly to label homosexual males). In January 1934, a new wave of mass arrests of homosexuals occurred in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, and Odessa.

In 1936, Commissar of Justice Nikolai Krylenko proclaimed that there was no reason for anyone to be homosexual after 2 decades of Socialism, and those who persisted in remaining homosexual deserved 5 years of hard labor, for they might be engaged in the work of counterrevolution.

Medical views on LGBTI people

In 1929, a conference of the leading Soviet medical body — the Expert Medical Council of the Commissariat of Health — was held to discuss questions of homosexuality, cross-dressing, transsexuality and intersexuality. The tenor of deliberations was that the male member of “intermediate sex” was the product of nurture, of conditions of lifestyle gone wrong, and that these deviations were evidently preventable. On the other hand, female “transvestite” was more "bioligized" and intractable, for no hormonal therapy could restore her femininity.

Post-Stalinist Decades in Russia

See also: History of the Soviet Union (1953–1985)

Since Stalinist period, the Soviet political police used homosexuals as informers or recruiters of foreign gay men for espionage. KGB agents infiltrated gay communities and entrapped homosexuals.

Liberalization and de-Stalinization era

Stalin's death on 5 March 1953 set in motion a process of liberal and humane political transformation. De-Stalinization, promoted by collective leadership first, and then by Nikita Khrushchev (in 1957–1964), sought to renovate the Communist Party's relationship with society. In an attempt for liberalization, 2.5–4.5 million people were released from Gulag, abortion was decriminalized in 1955, sentences for many crimes were reduced in 1960, but there was no “liberalization” regarding homosexuality, au contraire, the result of de-Stalinization for gays and lesbians was increased surveillance and incarceration. It is believed that the sodomy law remained, because Khrushchev did not want homosexuality to “infect” Soviet society, for homosexual practices were widespread in prisons and labor camps. Still, this law did little to limit the gay/lesbian subculture growth, though about 1000 men per year were imprisoned for homosexuality in 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The number of men, convicted under the 1934 sodomy law until 1993, estimates from 60'000 to 250'000, while the provisional total number of convictions recorded in the sources that are accessible for the entire era of sodomy criminalization (1934–1993) comes to about 26'000 cases As of 2001.

Reparative treatment of lesbian behavior

A major study in 1950s and 1960s in Soviet Kazakhstan offered a modest “success rate” with its drug-and-persuasion therapy on lesbian women, released from Gulag camps, but this “cure” was promoted to be used in Leningrad in 1970s. Authorities hoped to contain lesbian behavior. By the late Soviet years the medical treatment of lesbians had solidified into a routine: they were given compulsory psychiatric treatment, made to report to medical authorities on a periodic basis, and (as psychiatric outpatients) were denied certain forms of employment or a driver's license.

Surgical approach to transsexuality

The surgical re-assignment of gender was attempted and made routine from the 1960s into the 1980s under endocrinologist Aron Belkin (1927–2003), director of the Moscow Center of Psychiatric Endocrinology. He was also a leading exponent of Soviet medical routines for the surgical and hormonal “correction” of intersexual babies and adults. Belkin's work, and the medical literature by his school of gender specialists, reveals no awareness of the experiments of early Soviet surgeons and endocrine specialists in these areas. There were “crude operations” to effect changes of sex in humans in 1928 in Moscow (later condemned) and attempts to "clarify" the sex in hermaphrodites as early as 1925.

From Ottepel to Glasnost

See also: Ottepel, Glasnost, History of the Soviet Union (1985–1991), and History of post-Soviet Russia

In 1973, a Textbook of Soviet Criminal Law was published in Leningrad, where authors pointed out that no logical or scientific grounds had ever been stated in any Soviet juridical publication for criminalizing consensual sexual acts between males, also citing examples of other Socialist countries where antihomosexual laws have been rescinded. The Glasnost campaign made homosexuality a mentionable topic in Soviet press.

In 1984, a handful of gay men in Leningrad attempted to form the first organization of gay men. They were quickly hounded into submission by the KGB. The Moscow Gay & Lesbian Alliance was headed by Yevgeniya Debryanskaya, and Roman Kalinin became the editor of the first officially registered gay newspaper, Tema. The summer of 1991 saw the first international conference, film festival, and demonstrations for gay rights in Moscow and Leningrad. The collapse of the Soviet Union that soon followed the failed coup only accelerated the progress of the gay movement. Occasional gay discos were held, more gay publications appeared, gay plays were staged.

Second decriminalization of male homosexuality (1993)

See also: History of post-Soviet Russia

Boris Yeltsin (in office in 1991–1999) decriminalized male homosexuality in Russia in 1993.

On 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist, but its legislation continued to apply in Russian Federation, so male homosexuality remained illegal.

On 27 May 1993, after some debates, homosexual acts between consenting males were once again legalized: Article 121.1 was removed from the Criminal Code of RSFSR, and no other limit on homosexual acts ever appeared in the new Criminal Code of Russia (enacted in 1996). The reform was largely the result of pressure from the Council of Europe. While President Boris Yeltsin signed the bill into law on 29 April 1993, neither he nor the parliament had any interest in LGBT rights legislation and none of the Russian political parties endorsed LGBT rights. There have been reports that by 13 August 1993, not all persons serving sentences under the old legislation have been released from jail, and there have been cases of homosexuals being re-sentenced and kept in jail, cases of imprisoned homosexuals who cannot be located and of missing files.

On 4 July 1999, the Russian Ministry of Health approved the new classification of mental and behavior disorders (based on Class V of ICD-10, which removed homosexuality in 1990), it no longer designated “homosexual orientation” as a mental disorder. Under the previous classification, which dated from 1982, homosexuality was classified as a personality disturbance.

References

• Healey, Daniel (2004, last updated on 19 July 2005). "Russia". glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture. glbtq, Inc. Retrieved 30 May 2009. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
• Karlinsky, Simon (1997). "Introduction". In Moss, Kevin (ed.). Out of the blue: Russia's hidden gay literature: an anthology (1st ed.). San Francisco, Calif.: Gay Sunshine Press. ISBN 9780940567207. OCLC 34878850. Retrieved 30 May 2009.
• Haggerty, George E.; Beynon, John; Eisner, Douglas, eds. (2000). Gay histories and cultures: an encyclopedia. The encyclopedia of lesbian and gay histories and cultures. Vol. 2 (ill. ed.). London: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9780815318804. OCLC 41991370. Retrieved 3 June 2009.
• Karlinsky, Simon (1992). "Russia's Gay Literature and Culture: The Impact of the October Revolution.". In Dynes, Wayne R.; Donaldson, Stephen (eds.). History of homosexuality in Europe and America. Studies in homosexuality. Vol. 5 (ill. ed.). New York: Garland Publishing. ISBN 9780815305507. OCLC 25707010. Retrieved 30 May 2009.
• Hazard, John N. (Spring 1965). "Unity and Diversity in Socialist Law". Unification of Law. Law and Contemporary Problems. Vol. 30. New York: Duke University School of Law. pp. 270–290. doi:10.2307/1190515. JSTOR 1190515. OCLC 26677697.
• Healey, Daniel (Summer 2001). "Masculine purity and "Gentlemen's Mischief": Sexual Exchange and Prostitution between Russian Men, 1861-1941". Slavic Review. 60 (2): 233–265. doi:10.2307/2697270. ISSN 0037-6779. JSTOR 2697270. OCLC 264370472. PMID 18170950. S2CID 42687288.
• Healey, Daniel (2002). "Homosexual Existence and Existing Socialism: New Light on the Repression of Male Homosexuality in Stalin's Russia". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 8 (3): 349–378. doi:10.1215/10642684-8-3-349. ISSN 1064-2684. OCLC 89728987. S2CID 143578469.
• Feinberg, Leslie (7 October 2004). "Can a homosexual be a member of the Communist Party?". Workers World. Retrieved 1 June 2009.
• Healey, Daniel (2001). Homosexual desire in Revolutionary Russia: the regulation of sexual and gender dissent (ill. ed.). University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226322346. OCLC 45270442. Retrieved 2 June 2009.