Gay rights in Russia

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Contents 1 Imperial Russia 2 After the Revolution 3 Soviet Union 4 Modern Russia 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Imperial Russia

In the Russian Empire, most of the radicals and socialists developed a view on gender and sexuality that was "Victorian, puritanical, and patriarchal".^[1] Russian socialists generally felt that private emotions, interests or love had to be subordinate to bringing out a revolutionary movement and that free love or homosexuality was a decadent vice brought about by capitalism that would no longer exist after the revolution.

The Russian anarchist Alexander Berkman saw the legalization of sexual relations between consenting adults in private as a part of a revolution, and as a result the Russian anarchists and the center-left Constitutional Democrats in the Russian parliament supported the legalization of homosexuality.".^[2]

However, to Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin, sexual freedom was not part of the liberation of proletarian men and women, but was indeed a vice of the capitalist bourgeoisie.^[3]

[edit] After the Revolution

After the Russian Revolution in 1917 the Communist Party officially abolished all the old Tsarist laws, although these laws were still retained as a guideline where they had not been explicitly revoked.^[4] This included the prohibition on homosexuality. However, prosecutions of male homosexuals did still occur, notably among Orthodox clergy.^[5] Under the criminal code of 1922 and 1926, homosexual relations between consenting adults were legalized. Experts on Soviet law note that despite this, homosexual behavior in Soviet Georgia, Central Asia and Uzbek was treated as a criminal act throughout the 1920s. Moreover, in Azerbaijan in 1923, sodomy was made illegal, and then in Uzbekistan in 1926, and Turkmenistan in 1927.^[6] Some official Soviet documents during this era spoke of homosexuality as a condition that should not be treated as a crime but rather a sickness that could be cured."^[7]

[edit] Soviet Union

Soviet delegates were sent to the German Institute For Sexual Research and at international conferences on human sexuality, they advocated the legalization of homosexuality. In Soviet Russia, Mikhail Kuzmin and other gay poets and writers were free to publish works with homosexual themes until 1929, but the Communist Party under Stalin then made it clear that homosexuality was not a topic for public consumption. Russian gay men and women that wanted a position in government had to marry a person of the opposite sex. In 1933 Joseph Stalin introduced a new criminal code that made homosexuality a crime punishable by five years of hard labor. The Soviet government treated homosexuality as crime against the state akin to espionage.^[8]

In 1941 Nazi Germany invaded Russia, and Stalinist propaganda - like Western propaganda - tried to associate homosexuality to fascism.[1] Other nations that had a Communist revolution, such as Cuba followed much the same model as Soviet Union. [2]

Until the 1980s, gays and lesbians were routinely forcibly committed to hospitals for reparative therapy, which involved several months of psychotropic drugs.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Modern Russia

On May 27, 1993, homosexual acts between consenting males were decriminalized. In 2002, Gennady Raikov, who led a conservative pro-government group in the State Duma, suggested outlawing homosexual acts, but his proposal faced fierce resistance from the Russian gay community and was abandoned.

In February 2006, Grand Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin was quoted as saying about Moscow gay pride marchers, "If they come out on to the streets anyway they should be flogged. Any normal person would do that - Muslims and Orthodox Christians alike..."^[9] Days later, Moscow's Chief Rabbi, Berl Lazar, joined Tadzhuddin in condemning the march in saying that it "would be a blow for morality", but he did go as far as saying that marchers should be beaten.^[10]

In late April and early May 2006, protestors blockaded some popular gay clubs in Moscow. After initial complaints that police had failed to intervene, later blockade attempts were met with arrests.^[11]

In May 2006, a gay rights forum was held in Moscow. An accompanying march was banned by the mayor in a decision upheld by the courts. Some activists tried to march despite the ban and attempted to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider. This act and the presence of non-Russian activists aroused a nationalist reaction in addition to a religious condemnation of homosexuality, leading to the presence of both neo-Nazi groups and Orthodox protesters. According to the BBC, anti-march protestors beat the marchers, and about 50 marchers and 20 protestors were arrested when riot police moved in to break up the conflict.^[12]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• (Russian) Russian National Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transexual Website