Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia
The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent
9780226322346
9780226922546
Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia
The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent
The first full-length study of same-sex love in any period of Russian or Soviet history, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia investigates the private worlds of sexual dissidents during the pivotal decades before and after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Using records and archives available to researchers only since the fall of Communism, Dan Healey revisits the rich homosexual subcultures of St. Petersburg and Moscow, illustrating the ambiguous attitude of the late Tsarist regime and revolutionary rulers toward gay men and lesbians. Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia reveals a world of ordinary Russians who lived extraordinary lives and records the voices of a long-silenced minority.
376 pages | 20 halftones, 5 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2001
History: European History
Law and Legal Studies: Law and Society
Political Science: Comparative Politics
Sociology: Sociology--Marriage and Family
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I - Same-Sex Eros in Modernizing Russia
1. Depravity’s Artel’
Traditional Sex Between Men and the Emergence of a Homosexual Subculture
2. "Our Circle"
Sex Between Women in Modernizing Russia
Part II - Regulating Homosecual Desire in Revolutionary Russia
3. Euphemism and Discretion
Policing Sodomites and Tribades
4. The "Queer Subject" and the Language of Modernity
Reforming the Law on Same-Sex Love Before and After 1917
5. Perversion or Perversity?
Medicine, Politics, and the Regulation of Secual and Gender Dissent after Sodomy Decriminalization
6. "An Infinite Quantity of Intermediate Sexes"
The Transvestite and the Cultural Revolution
7. "Can a Homosexual Be a Member of the Communist Party?"
The Making of a Soviet Compulsiry Heterosexuality
PART III - Homosexual Existence and Existing Socialism
8. "Caught Red-Handed"
Making Homosexuality Antisocial in Stalin’s Courts
Epilogue
The Twin Crucibles of the Culag and the Clinic
Conclusion
Appendix
How Many Victims of the Antisodomy Law?
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I - Same-Sex Eros in Modernizing Russia
1. Depravity’s Artel’
Traditional Sex Between Men and the Emergence of a Homosexual Subculture
2. "Our Circle"
Sex Between Women in Modernizing Russia
Part II - Regulating Homosecual Desire in Revolutionary Russia
3. Euphemism and Discretion
Policing Sodomites and Tribades
4. The "Queer Subject" and the Language of Modernity
Reforming the Law on Same-Sex Love Before and After 1917
5. Perversion or Perversity?
Medicine, Politics, and the Regulation of Secual and Gender Dissent after Sodomy Decriminalization
6. "An Infinite Quantity of Intermediate Sexes"
The Transvestite and the Cultural Revolution
7. "Can a Homosexual Be a Member of the Communist Party?"
The Making of a Soviet Compulsiry Heterosexuality
PART III - Homosexual Existence and Existing Socialism
8. "Caught Red-Handed"
Making Homosexuality Antisocial in Stalin’s Courts
Epilogue
The Twin Crucibles of the Culag and the Clinic
Conclusion
Appendix
How Many Victims of the Antisodomy Law?
Notes
Bibliography
Index