FREE, GAY AND… RUSSIAN?
Rainbow parades attacked by thugs, police in riot gear beating gay activists with batons, young gay Russians with bloodied faces and black eyes: these are the images of modern Russia. But Russia’s relationship to the gays is long and complicated and hasn’
Gays with bloodied faces and black eyes: these are the images of modern Russia. But the old country’s relationship with the gays is long and complicated and hasn’t always been so hostile.
In August this year, Maxim Neverov became the youngest person ever charged under Russia’s so-called gay propaganda laws.
The 16-year-old first came to the attention of the authorities when he took part in a performance art piece called, Gays Or Putin in which activists in Biysk (a city near Russia’s southern border with Kazakhstan), tried to highlight Russia’s suppression of LGBTIQ people’s right to gather publicly.
“The essence of the performance was to submit 12 notifications to the local authorities for holding rallies on mutually exclusive topics (for Putin or against Putin and for gays or against gays and so on),” Neverov tells DNA. “This performance was discussed for several weeks by the media and residents of Biysk.”
However, that’s not why young Neverov was prosecuted; it was because of photos he posted to Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.
“These were images of two embracing guys without T-shirts,” says Maxim, “The authorities considered that this propagandized nontraditional sexual relations.”
Neverov says he has developed a thick skin as a young LGBT person in Russia since first realising he was gay at the age of 11 or 12.
“For many, it’s hell, but for me it’s a routine. Homophobic comments do not hurt me,” says the stoic teen.
His lawyers are appealing his case, which has become emblematic of the attitude of the state towards sexual minorities in a country that has been ranked by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association as the second most homophobic country in Europe.
However, history suggests that this hostility towards homosexuality is a relatively new phenomena in Russia. So, where did it come from, and why now?
A EUROPEAN EXCEPTION
It seems that from the beginning of recorded Russian history, there was a unique tolerance of homosexuality in Europe’s Far-East that was not found in other parts of the Christian world.
Though deeply frowned upon, the Russian Church’s approach to homosexuality in the Middle Ages was not as severe as in other parts of Europe, where it often attracted the death penalty.
Lay people who confessed to acts of “sodomy” were ordered to undergo periods of penance for their sins. One 12th Century religious text suggested a period of eight years, but by the 15th Century, three years was considered enough to cleanse a person’s soul of the transgression. The threat of same-sex bonds forming between monks was an ongoing problem for the church so, for the clergy, the punishment was excommunication or worse.
By the 1600s many of the country’s larger cities had gender segregated public bathhouses. There is not a lot of information about the goings-on in these venues but, if the examples of other countries are taken into account, they were probably popular meeting places for same-sex attracted men (most would have been married), and a place where male prostitution occurred.
“Nowhere in the East or West was this sin looked upon so lightly as in Russia,” wrote historian Sergey Solovyov of the late 17th Century. However, in 1716, Tsar Peter The Great felt it necessary to crackdown on homosexuality in the military and introduced corporal punishment in an effort to stamp it out. That law only applied to soldiers and it distinguished between consensual sex and male rape, which was much more severely punished.
By the 1870s and ’80s an urban homosexual subculture had emerged in Russia. Just as in other big cities in Europe at that time, there were meeting places, codes, and secret networks for those in the know. Rumours of homosexual affairs among the nobility were the source of popular gossip with commoners – though the word “homosexual” didn’t formally enter the
Surprisingly, the children of homophobes are tolerant. They quietly communicate with me, despite the fact that I’m gay, and can discuss anything with me.