Question is in the title. Where can I find information about gay and trans rights in the Soviet Union? Or if anyone would be able to share what they know. I understand it was decriminalized in 1917, but that’s about it.

I suppose sources about modern China and LGBTQ would be nice as well, post revolution and current.

Very hard to find trustworthy sources.

  • AdvancedAktion
    6•2 years ago

    Is there any other erroneous claims in my post or the links?

    How strictly were these laws implemented?

    Is there any statistics regarding this?

    • @tisamantis@lemmygrad.ml
      3•2 years ago

      My sources (I don’t trust them myself) claim roughly the following:

      1. Charges of sodomy were sometimes used when dealing with spies, suspected spies or people conducting counterrevolutionary activities. Case of D.T. Florinsky (they were invited to People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs by Chicherin, btw…) is cited - they were jailed for 5 years for sodomy, after that they were also charged w/ espionage and executed in 1937. This seems like internal party struggle. Other people who faced similar charges were B.A. Prozorovsky, B.S. Pshibishevsky. Whether or not these people were spies is unknown to me, but charging people with sodomy is just…sad?

      2. OGPU may have dealt with (suspected) homosexuals in an extrajudicial manner. In 1930, “raids on homosexuals” (“with intent of dealing with german spies”) were conducted and at least 175 people were arrested, rumors state they may have been Zinovyev or Trotsky supporters. It seems there is no data on number of people charged w/ sodomy during this time period.

      3. After Stalin’s death, apparently anti-homosexual practices became even worse. My numbers show the average number of people sentenced every year between 1961 and 1991 is around 500-800 people, with spikes to >1200 in 1970s. As numbers are estimates by Dan Healey, they should not be trusted.

      Unlike what I posted before, which were pictures of official legal documents, this information is not trustworthy at all, comes primarily from a single source, may actually carry intent of smearing the USSR. Alas, this picture of USSR seems reasonable to me, because:

      1. Nearly everyone was homophobic in the past. (Yes, that includes Stalin. If Stalin wasn’t a homophobe, he would object to homophobic legislation.)

      2. Homophobia is extremely widespread in Russian minds today, and it had to come from somewhere.

      I think someone more competent than me should study material and make judgements about this issue. Alas, that someone should probably know the Russian language.

      P.S. I wanted to post an actual link to the wiki article, but it’s was being formatted weird. I’ll reiterate: Don’t trust anything. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/История_преследования_гомосексуалов_в_России