번역

The Recriminalization of Homosexuality under Stalin: New Sources, New Answers

인물아돌프 히틀러, 보리스 니콜라옙스키, 니콜라이 부하린, 에른스트 룀, 예브게니 파슈카니스, 프리드리히 엥겔스, 막심 고리키, 이반 아쿨로프, 요한 바프티스트 폰 슈바이처, 라자르 카가노비치, 카를 하인리히 울리히스, 카를 마르크스, 니키타 흐루쇼프, 블라디미르 레닌, 마그누스 히르슈펠트, 마리뉘스 판데르루버, 미하일 바흐친, 뱌체슬라프 몰로토프, 니콜라이 크릴렌코, 파울 힌덴부르크, 카를 라데크, 이오시프 스탈린, 블라디미르 베흐테레프, 안드레이 비신스키, 빌리 뮌첸베르크, 겐리흐 야고다, 미하일 쿠즈민, 리우리크 이브네프, 니콜라이 류비모프, 라인하르트 마우라흐, 세르게이 불라토프, 에른스트 토르글러, 블라고이 포포프, 바실 타네프, 마르크 세레이스키, 니콜라이 쿠르샤코프, 카를귄터 하임조트, 지크문트 프로이트, 해블록 엘리스 용어소련 남색죄 사건소련의 낙태 합법화·금지와 남색죄 재범죄화, 독일 성개혁 운동과 나치의 파괴 (1897~1935), 유럽의 성개혁 운동과 1930년대의 반동 (1885~1941)

Historians often highlight a widely known phrase when discussing the recriminalization of homosexuality under Stalin, namely the one coined by Maksim Gor'kii: “Destroy the homosexuals—then fascism will disappear.”[84] This phrase appeared in Gor'kii’s article “Proletarian Humanism,” published simultaneously in Pravda and Izvestiia in May 1934—two months after the all-union decree that announced the recriminalization of homosexuality.[85] In the scholarship, Gor'kii’s article has been called “the regime’s first public explanation of the recriminalization of male homosexuality.”[86] In the piece, Gor'kii states: “In the land where the proletariat governs courageously and successfully, homosexuality, with its corrupting effect on the young, is considered a social crime punishable by law. By contrast, in the ‘cultivated land’ of great philosophers, scholars, and musicians [that is, in Nazi Germany – I.R.], it is practiced freely and with impunity.”[87] Apart from this memorable phrase, the article only briefly touches on homosexuality, and it was hardly the central theme of the text. Moreover, Gor'kii does not explain why the decision was made to recriminalize homosexual relations. A contemporary of the writer might have asked: if homosexuality was portrayed in the USSR as intrinsic to fascist regimes, why would the world’s first proletarian state feel compelled to criminalize it at all? This question, in fact, highlights the contradictory and inconsistent logic underpinning the Soviet Union’s recriminalization of homosexuality.

The longstanding fixation on Gor'kii’s brief reference to homosexuality has prevented historians from pursuing a more thorough search for evidence of public discourse surrounding the recriminalization of homosexuality in printed sources. The discussion of the new law did, in fact, take place. An article by the German legal scholar Reinhard Maurach (1902–1976), titled “The Criminalization of Homosexuality in the Soviet Union,” was published in August 1934 in the German legal journal Zeitschrift für osteuropäisches Recht (Journal of Eastern European Law).[88] Maurach, descended from the Crimean Germans, was born in Simferopol and left the country with his parents in 1920. By 1934, he was one of the leading German experts on the Soviet legal system.[89] To date, his analysis of the recriminalization remains the earliest known response by a foreign expert to the new law.

In his comprehensive review of the law, Maurach argued that the Soviet criminal system was wellstructured and had already addressed a wide range of sexual offences in a comprehensive manner. In his view, this stood in stark contrast to the new legislation, which he regarded as abrupt and disconnected from earlier Soviet legal practice: “The amendment published below, which introduces an anti-homosexual law, has been passed without any prior discussion. In terms of criminal policy, it signifies the abandonment of the core principles of the Marxist concept of morality.”[90] He pointed out that such a measure could only had been adopted “under the pressure of factual circumstances that had become untenable”—a reference, in essence, to the growing visibility of homosexual relations.

A response to the German article was published in 1935 by the young Soviet legal expert Sergei Bulatov (1898–1965) in Soviet State: Journal of the Institute of Soviet Construction and Law of the Communist Academy.[91] Bulatov was a prominent figure in Stalinist legal scholarship, representing a decisive break from the early Soviet criminal justice approach—one that had been anthropologically oriented, focused on the personality of the offender, and shaped mostly by independent scholars, many of whom had been active before the 1917 Revolution. Bulatov played a pivotal role in the debates of the late 1920s over the direction of Soviet criminal research, positioning himself with a new generation of politically driven scholars committed to developing a strictly Marxist criminology.[92] Affiliated with the Communist Academy, Bulatov emerged as a vocal critic of the “old guard” of Soviet criminologists working at the State Institute for the Study of Crime and the Criminal—a network with branches scattered across the USSR. In his article “Vozrozhdenie Lombrozo v sovetskoi kriminologii” (“The Revival of Lombroso in Soviet Criminology”), he condemned their reliance on psychology, their lack of a Marxist framework, and their adherence to “positivism”—a term that, for the new generation of Marxist scholars, carried a pejorative connotation and was seen as an obstacle to aligning scholarship with political objectives. Following this ideological offensive, nearly all early Soviet criminological institutions were shut down by 1930. The Communist Academy was granted authority over Soviet criminal scholarship, aligning research more closely with party directives.

Bulatov was by no means acting independently in this campaign against “bourgeois” criminology. He operated under the leadership of Nikolai Krylenko, the chief state prosecutor, and Evgenii Pashukanis, a prominent legal theorist and leading figure in the Communist Academy. In this context, Bulatov’s selection to respond to Maurach’s article was far from incidental. Tasked with countering foreign criticism, he represented a Marxist criminology that was politically loyal and closely aligned with Party ideology and the goals of the Soviet state. From the very beginning of his piece, Bulatov makes it clear that his response is not an original legal analysis of the new law, but a direct rebuttal to Maurach’s article. As such, Bulatov’s text is marked by irony and biting sarcasm, which is in stark contrast to the impartial and restrained tone of the German scholar.

Bulatov fiercely mocked Maurach’s reference to a breach of the “Marxist understanding of morality” by writing: “We will try to calm Maurach down about the fate of Marxist morality.” He asserted that “Marxist morality stands against sexual promiscuity, viewing it as a social ill that hinders both societal and individual development”; “Marxist morality has always stood against pederasty.”[93] The second target of Bulatov’s criticism was Maurach’s remark that the government could have taken this step only “under the pressure of the circumstances.” Soviet legal experts represented by Bulatov were likely displeased with this remark, as it could be interpreted as evidence of the visibility and pervasiveness of homosexuality in the Soviet state. At the very least, Bulatov’s response directly refuted this assumption: “The law was enacted as a union-level law not because of the particular spread of this vice. [...] The impetus for issuing the law was the discovery in Moscow and Leningrad of several depraved members of the bohemian scene—primarily variety performers and ballet dancers—who had attempted to involve some young men in pederasty.”[94] Notably, Bulatov failed to mention that all those arrested during the covert operations in Leningrad and Moscow had already been convicted under Article 58. This raises a critical question: What was the purpose of introducing new legislation if small groups of homosexuals had already been apprehended and prosecuted? This omission may be seen as further evidence supporting the more nuanced theory of the recriminalization of homosexuality. Undoubtedly, Bulatov had been briefed by a high-ranking official—possibly Krylenko—and may have received verbal instructions on what to write.[95] Nevertheless, he lacked a comprehensive guiding framework and struggled to justify the law through consistent legal reasoning or to present a coherent, noncontradictory account. It is notable that Bulatov omitted any reference to Germany’s purported involvement in local homosexual circles and disregarded the entire espionage narrative. Was he unaware of the information presented by Iagoda, or was it considered classified and therefore withheld from the public? While this remains uncertain without additional sources, what is clear is that at no point was the issue of homosexuality addressed in an internally consistent manner even at the level of the state. There is no evidence that this legal discussion was further developed in the Soviet press or legal literature.

The recriminalization of homosexuality was a piecemeal process that began as a secret campaign against the most visible parts of the Moscow and Leningrad homosexual communities. It culminated in Stalin’s command to introduce a separate criminal article. This also occurred in a broader context— the earlier decriminalization of homosexuality was guided by medical and legal experts and seen as a crucial element of a new, modern state embracing a scientific approach to sexuality. The medical community, actively engaged in debates on homosexuality in the 1920s, remained silent in the 1930s; perhaps the members of this community had realized that, for the authorities, the topic was no longer a scholarly matter. Even after the adoption of the criminal article, Soviet authorities struggled to establish a consistent stance on homosexuality. In 1939, high-ranking officials debated the possibility of organizing a public trial for homosexuals from Moscow and Leningrad, all of whom had been accused of consensual same-sex activity. In a note to Vyacheslav Molotov, the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars at the time, Andrei Vyshinsky, the General Prosecutor of the Soviet Union, proposed staging a public trial: “To combat pederasty, I would suggest sending these cases, upon completion, to open court hearings, accompanied by the publication of the sentences in the press. I request your instructions.”[96] Yet, no instructions followed. Open hearings never took place, and only Stalin could have rejected this idea—likely through oral communication—as he was the sole authority capable of making such a decision. Notably, the prosecution of homosexual men and those engaged in same-sex activity remained selective, and the authorities never sought to make it comprehensive in character. The figure of the homosexual reemerged in Russian public discourse in the second half of the 1980s: “The overlap between a repressive regime and attacks on homosexuals is hardly a coincidence, as they, in a certain sense, serve as an indicator of freedom.”[97] The criminalization of homosexuality was increasingly challenged by experts and members of the public who viewed it as a form of injustice that needed to be rectified during the tumultuous era of perestroika. In the light of new evidence, the question should shift from why homosexuality was recriminalized under Stalin to whether it is possible that homosexuals might not have been targeted at all at the time.

Acknowledgments

This research is funded by the Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2023-336). I am grateful to the editors of the journal and anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and constructive comments.

Author biography

Irina Roldugina was born in Moscow. She received a doctoral degree in history from the University of Oxford and is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Scholar at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

Notes

  1. Arkhiv Upravleniia Federal'noi sluzhby bezopasnosti po Sankt-Peterburgu i Leningradskoi oblasti (Archive of the Administration of the Federal Security Service in Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad Region [AU FSB po SPb]), d. P-82888, vol. 6, l. 409. The archival records related to the Moscow operation remain classified. ↩
  2. “Iz istorii ugolovnogo kodeksa: primerno nakazat' etikh merzavtsev,” in Istochnik: Dokumenty russkoi istorii: Prilozhenie k rossiiskomu istorikopublitsisticheskomu zhurnalu Rodina 5-6 (1993): 164–5. ↩
  3. Ibid. ↩
  4. All tsarist legislation was repealed after the October Revolution, including the article that criminalized homosexuality. However, in 1922, the first Russian Socialist Criminal Code was published. It did not include any provisions criminalizing same-sex relations, meaning that homosexuality was officially decriminalized. Importantly, some Soviet republics introduced anti-sodomy legislation in the 1920s, well before the all-Union criminalization under Stalin. Notably, both Azerbaijan and Georgia adopted laws criminalizing male homosexual activity during that period (see Dan Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent [Chicago, 2001], 159). ↩
  5. When examining the recriminalization of homosexuality in the Soviet Union, it is more accurate to extend the chronology to a two-year period (1933–1934). The first Soviet decree criminalizing male homosexuality was issued by the USSR All-Union Central Executive Committee on December 17, 1933, leading to the first arrests of homosexual men. For instance, under the decree a Muscovite named Evgenii Konstantinov (b. 1907) was arrested in February 1934 and sentenced to three years in a labor camp. This information was obtained by the author from the FSB archive in Moscow on June 29, 2022. The written response is preserved in the author’s personal archive. The final version of the decree criminalizing male homosexuality was adopted by the USSR All-Union Central Executive Committee on March 7, 1934. See Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii Raboche-Krest'ianskogo Pravitel'stva SSSR za 1934 g. Otdel pervyi (Moscow, 1948), 6–7, 225. ↩
  6. Laura Engelstein, “Soviet Policy toward Male Homosexuality: Its Origins and Historical Roots,” Journal of Homosexuality 29:2-3 (1995): 155– 78; Dan Healey, “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 (2002): 349–78; Dan Healey, Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi (London, 2017): 151–77; Healey, Homosexual Desire, 181–204. ↩
  7. On the development of a consistent view among German socialists and communists regarding homosexuality as a fascist aberration, see Harry Oosterhuis, “The ‘Jews’ of the Antifascist Left: Homosexuality and Socialist Resistance to Nazism,” Journal of Homosexuality 29:2/3 (1995): 227–257. ↩
  8. Dan Healey has put it: “By contrast to Hitler’s loud and crude anti-homosexual campaigning of the 1920s and early 1930s, the proscription of male homosexuality throughout the USSR in 1933–34 was imposed without public discussion.” See Healey, Homosexual Desire, 183. ↩
  9. “Gomoseksualizm,” Bol'shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1st ed., vol. 17 (Moscow, 1930), 593–96. For the analysis of this entry see Healey, Homosexual Desire, 323–34. ↩
  10. Ibid., 595. ↩
  11. As Laura Engelstein has put it: “Why the government considered it necessary to recriminalize homosexual relations between adult men after a hiatus of sixteen years, during which popular attitudes may not have changed but when the law remained neutral, cannot be deduced from the available sources.” See Engelstein, “Soviet Policy toward Male Homosexuality,” 169. “The question of homophobic repression in the Stalinist 1930s can be revisited with newly available sources,” see Healey, “Homosexual Existence,” 351. ↩
  12. Healey, Russian Homophobia, 158, 163. ↩
  13. All tsarist legislation was abrogated after the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. From 1917 to 1922, the concept of “revolutionary justice” played a major role in law enforcement. In 1922, the Criminal Code of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic reaffirmed the decriminalization of homosexuality by not including a related criminal article. On the concept of “revolutionary justice,” see Pavel Vasilyev, “Revolutionary Conscience, Remorse and Resentment: Emotions and Early Soviet Criminal Law, 1917–1922,” Historical Research 90:247 (2017): 117–33. ↩
  14. For the most detailed account of the Reichstag fire, see Benjamin Carter Hett, Burning the Reichstag: An Investigation into the Third Reich’s Enduring Mystery (Oxford, 2014); Benjamin Carter Hett, “‘This Story Is about Something Fundamental’: Nazi Criminals, History, Memory, and the Reichstag Fire,” Central European History, 48:2 (2015): 199–224. ↩
  15. Hett, Burning the Reichstag, 87–88. ↩
  16. Ibid., 89. ↩
  17. Oosterhuis, “The ‘Jews’ of the Antifascist Left,” 227–57. ↩
  18. Eleanor Hancock, Ernst Röhm: Hitler’s SA Chief of Staff (Basingstoke, 2008), 85, 88, 90–91. ↩
  19. Hancock, Ernst Röhm, 111–114; Andrew Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families: Homosexuality and Community in the Early Nazi Movement (New York, 2015), 180. It must be noted, however, that it was not only the German leftist press that attacked Röhm’s homosexuality; he also had enemies within the Nazi Party who weaponized it against him. ↩
  20. Eleanor Hancock, “‘Only the Real, the True, the Masculine Held Its Value’: Ernst Röhm, Masculinity, and Male Homosexuality,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 8:4 (1998): 625–26. ↩
  21. Ibid., 640. ↩
  22. Anson Rabinbach, “Staging Antifascism: ‘The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror,’” New German Critique 103 (2008): 97– 126, 233; Klaus Sohl, “Enstehung und Verbreitung des Braunbuchs über Reichstagsbrand und Hitler terror 1933/1934,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte 21 (1980): 289–327; Helmut Gruber, “Willi Münzenberg’s German Communist Propaganda Empire 1921–1933,” The Journal of Modern History 38:3 (1966): 278–97; Sean McMeekin, The Red Millionaire: A Political Biography of Willi Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West (New Haven, 2005); Babette Gross, Willi Münzenberg: A Political Biography (East Lansing, 1974); Wackerfuss, Stormtrooper Families, 247–50. ↩
  23. O podzhoge Reikhstaga (iz “Korichnevoi knigi”) (Moscow, 1933). ↩
  24. Sovetskaia Iustitsiia 19 (October 1933): 1–4. ↩
  25. When comparing the 1933 German, Russian, and English editions of The Brown Book, I discovered that the English version provides fewer details about van der Lubbe’s biography and personality. Importantly, crucial descriptions of his homosexuality, found in the Russian and German versions, are omitted from the English edition. This could indicate that the authors saw Russian and German readers as their primary audience and aimed to provide them with as many details as possible. ↩
  26. The translation is mine and is based on the Russian edition. See Korichnevaia kniga o podzhoge Reikhstaga i gitlerovskom terrore (Moscow, 1933), 48. ↩
  27. Korichnevaia kniga, 147–52. On Magnus Hirschfeld’s life and work, see Elena Mancini, Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement (New York, 2010); Ralf Dose, Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement (New York, 2014); Charlotte Wolff, Magnus Hirschfeld: A Portrait of a Pioneer in Sexology (Quartet Books, 1986). ↩
  28. Iur, “Marinus van-der-Liubbe,” Izvestiia, September 10, 1933. A gulag survivor, Nikolai Liubimov left a valuable account of gay men arrested in Moscow in autumn 1933, when he was himself a prisoner in the Butyrskaia Prison, held on unrelated charges. In this memoir, Liubimov suggested that Karl Radek was the author of the piece. See Nikolai Liubimov, Neuviadaemyi tsvet. Kniga vospominanii. Tom 2 (Moscow, 2000), 94. Although I cannot substantiate Liubimov’s claim, it appears quite plausible given that Radek, a prominent Bolshevik, was foreign affairs editor at Izvestiia at the time. At the newspaper, Radek’s expertise, particularly in matters related to Germany, was well known. Moreover, according to the log of visitors to Stalin’s office, Radek met with him six times between March and September 1933—the period leading up to the publication of the article in Izvestiia. See Na prieme u Stalina. Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924–1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008). As Warren Lerner writes, “changes in the international scene in 1933 suddenly increased Stalin’s dependance on Radek.” See Warren Lerner and Karl Radek, The Last Internationalist (Stanford, 1970), 156. ↩
  29. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Sochineniia. Tom XXIV (Leningrad, 1931), 203–4. ↩
  30. Iur, “Marinus van-der-Liubbe,” Izvestiia, September 10, 1933. ↩
  31. Soviet readers were not provided with any details apart from the cited fragment. Engels’s letter was a reaction to a booklet by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs that Marx had sent him earlier. On Marx’s and Engels’s homophobia, see Hubert Kennedy, “Johann Baptist von Schweitzer: The Queer Marx Loved to Hate,” Journal of Homosexuality 29:2-3 (1995): 69–96. ↩
  32. Some articles focused specifically on van der Lubbe’s homosexuality; for example, see “Avantiurist i psikhopat na sluzhbe u sovetskikh podzhigatelei,” Gudok, September 19, 1933; “Kto takoi van der Liubbe,” Izvestiia, September 20, 1933; “Kto podzhёg Reikhshtag,” Moskovskii bol'shevik, September 20, 1933. ↩
  33. Liubimov, Neuviadaemyi tsvet, 94. ↩
  34. Paul Hagenloh,“‘Mass Operations’ under Lenin and Stalin” in The Anatomy of Terror: Political Violence under Stalin, ed. James Harris (Oxford, 2013), 163–75. ↩
  35. For example, the Academic Trial of 1929–1931 and the Bronnikov Trial of 1932 (“On Counterrevolutionary Units of Fascist Youth Clubs and Anti-Soviet Literary Salons”). ↩
  36. Aleksandr Kokurin and Nikita Petrov, Lubianka: Organy VChK-OGPU-NKVD-NKGB-MGB-MVD-KGB, 1917–1991: Spravochnik (Mosсow, 2003), 49–50. ↩
  37. AU FSB po SPb, d. P-82888, v. 1–9. ↩
  38. Viktor Ivanov, a graduate of the Politico-Military School of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Leningrad, was the first historian to access these files in the early 2010s. See Viktor Ivanov, “Kontrrevoliutsionnye organizatsii sredi gomoseksualistov Leningrada v nachale 1930-kh godov i ikh pogrom,” Noveishaia istoriia Rossiia 3 (2013): 126–43. ↩
  39. I worked with this case and other archival files that are analyzed in this article prior to the Russian Supreme Court’s November ruling designating the “international LGBT movement” as extremist. I do not rule out the possibility that this decision has further restricted access to historical sources on the history of homosexuality in Russia, including those used in this article. ↩
  40. Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg, f. 52, op. 5, d. 923, l. 103-4 ob. Vladimir Bekhterev (1857–1927) was a Russian neurologist and founder of Psychoneurological Institute and treated homosexuals with hypnosis before 1917. In the 1920s, he continued his scholarship on homosexuality and published several articles. He also actively traveled across the country and gave lectures on the questions of sexuality and homosexuality. See Vladimir Bekhterev, “Polovye ukloneniia i izvrashcheniia v svete refleksologii,” Voprosy izucheniia i vospitaniia lichnosti 4/5 (1922), 644–747; Vladimir Bekhterev, “O polovom izvrashchenii, kak osoboi ustanovke polovykh refleksov” in Polovoi vopros v shkole i v zhizni, ed. I. S. Simonov (Leningrad, 1927), 160–80. On the subject of letters sent to Bekhterev by homosexual and trans individuals in the 1920s, see Irina Roldugina, “‘Pochemu my takie liudi?’ Rannesovetskie gomoseksualy ot pervogo litsa: Novye istochniki po istorii gomoseksual'nykh identichnostei v Rossii,” Ab Imperio 2 (2016): 183–216. ↩
  41. Vasilii Rafalovich, “S Engel'som pomolimsia,” Rabochii i teatr, October 10, 1930, 6–7. ↩
  42. This information was obtained by the author from the FSB archive in St. Petersburg on May 18, 2022. The written response is preserved in the author’s personal archive. ↩
  43. Hirschfeld barely documented his visit to the USSR and never publicly mentioned his meeting with Leningrad homosexuals. See Magnus Hirschfeld, “New Morals for Old in Soviet Russia,” The Illustrated London News 6 (April 1929): 685–87. The announcement of Hirschfeld’s talk in Moscow appeared in The Evening Moscow newspaper, see “Doklad nemetskogo vracha o polovom voprose,” in Vecherniaia Moskva, May 25, 1926. Hirschfeld’s visit to Leningrad was noted in Pravda and Izvestiia, see “Priezd germanskogo uchenogo Professora Girshfel'da,” Pravda, June 4, 1926; “Germanskii uchenyi v Akademii Nauk,” Izvestiia, June 6, 1926. ↩
  44. AU FSB po SPb, d. P-82888, v. 3, l. 125. Two meetings with Hirschfeld are also described in Mikhail Kuzmin’s diary. Kuzmin is the author of Russia’s first homosexual novel, The Wings, as well as a memoirist and poet, renowned for his openness about same-sex attraction both in his personal life and in his writings. This part of his diary has not yet been published. I am grateful to Aleksandra Pakhomova, the editor of the forthcoming volumes, for granting me access to the source. Efremov shared a three-room apartment with his mother, Liubov Pavlovna, and was employed as a teacher at the Naval School, see Central State Archive of St. Petersburg (TsGA), f. 1963, op. 180–1, d. 397, l. 170 ob. The meeting between Hirschfeld and Nikolai Kliuev—a prominent poet and openly homosexual man—is also mentioned by Mikhail Bakhtin, who did not witness it himself but heard about it from Kliuev, see Mikhail Bakhtin, “Beseda s V. D. Duvakinym,” in P. E. Podberëzkin, ed., Nikolai Kliuev. Vospominania Sovremennikov (Moscow, 2010), 341–42. ↩
  45. AU FSB po SPb, d. P-82888, v. 6, l. 328. ↩
  46. Ibid., v. 1, l. 343; AU FSB po SPb, d. P-82888, v. 2, l. 238. ↩
  47. Ibid., v. 5, l. 119. ↩
  48. Letters, notebooks, photographs, and even an unpublished novel written by one of the men were among the confiscated materials. ↩
  49. AU FSB po SPb, d. P-82888, v. 2, l. 178–80. ↩
  50. Ibid. ↩
  51. Ibid., d. P-82888, v. 6, l. 98 ob. ↩
  52. Ibid., d. P-82888, v. 4, l. 358. ↩
  53. Ibid., l. 347. ↩
  54. Ivanov, “Kontrrevoliutsionnye organizatsii,” 130–31. ↩
  55. AU FSB po SPb, d. P-82888, v. 5, l. 79–87. ↩
  56. Ibid. ↩
  57. Ibid., l. 9. ↩
  58. Ibid., l. 11. ↩
  59. In 1940, Elizaveta Lisenko, the mother of young Leningrad dramatist Lev Lisenko, who had been sentenced to ten years in forced labor camps for “counterrevolutionary activity” as part of the Leningrad case, filed several appeals with the procuracy regarding her son’s conviction. In one letter, she noted that in 1933 Lev had been subjected to psychological pressure and spent seven months in solitary confinement; had he been subjected to more serious physical violence, it is likely that she would have mentioned it. See AU FSB po SPb, d. P-82888, v. 1, l. 438. ↩
  60. AU FSB po SPb, d. P-82888, v. 2, l. 48. ↩
  61. Ibid., v. 7. ↩
  62. Viktor Ivanov mentions that during the passportization campaign, “compromising material” was collected on more than 2,000 people. He refers to an internal document from the FSB archive, which remains inaccessible to scholars. However, he does not connect this information to the arrests carried out during the 1933 Leningrad campaign, nor does he elaborate on the nature of the “compromising material.” Ivanov, “Kontrrevoliutsionnye organizatsii,” 131. ↩
  63. AU FSB po SPb, d.P-82888, v. 1, p. 88, 169, 244–45; v. 3, p. 89, 92. ↩
  64. Ibid., p. 106. ↩
  65. M. Knopov, V. Taranukha, “Kurshakov — terapevt, pedagog, obshchestvennyi deiatel′ (k 130-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia),” Klinicheskaia meditsina 94:4 (2006): 317–19. ↩
  66. AU FSB po SPb, d. P-82888, v. 1, p. 106. ↩
  67. Aleksandra Golitsyna, Kogda s vami Bog: Vospominaniia (Moskva, 2017), 124. ↩
  68. How the KGB used Soviet homosexual men to compromise western visitors to the USSR in the 1950s–1960s, see Irina Roldugina, “The Perpetrator in Focus. KGB Same-Sex Entrapment in the 1950s–1960s and the Cold War,” Journal of the Cold War Studies (forthcoming). ↩
  69. “Iz istorii Ugolovnogo kodeksa: Primerno nakazat' etikh Merzavtsev,” Istochnik: Dokumenty russkoi istorii: Prilozhenie k rossiiskomu istorikopublitsisticheskomu zhurnalu Rodina, 5-6 (1993): 164–65. ↩
  70. The report is part of a 193-page file titled “The Courts and Procuracy,” which contains numerous documents related to the judicial and penal system from February 1933 to December 1934. These include telegrams, notes by Iagoda, Ivan Akulov, and Nikolai Krylenko, as well as references, Politburo resolutions, and various reports. ↩
  71. Healey, Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, 158. ↩
  72. Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History [RGANI]), f. 3, op. 57, d. 37, l. 19–21. ↩
  73. Ibid. ↩
  74. AU FSB po SPb, d. P-82888, v. 5, p. 58. ↩
  75. Ibid., v. 2, p. 116–17. ↩
  76. RGANI, f. 3, op. 57, d. 37, l. 19. ↩
  77. Nikita Petrov, Konstantin Skorkin, Spravochnik. Kto rukovodil NKVD, 1934–1941 (Moscow, 1999), 459. ↩
  78. On Iagoda’s career and his reputation inside the agency, see Mikhail Shreider, NKVD iznutri: Zapiski chekista (Moscow, 1995), 24–25. ↩
  79. RGANI, f. 3, op. 57, d. 37, l. 21. ↩
  80. Healey, Homosexual Existence, 362. ↩
  81. Stalin’s direct involvement in the editorial process of the anti-homosexual article is well documented, see Healey, Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi, 159–60. ↩
  82. In his “Letter of an Old Bolshevik,” originally published in Russian in the Menshevik journal The Socialist Courier (Sotsialisticheskii vestnik) in 1936–37 and later translated into English and circulated among Western leftist circles, Boris Nicolaevsky—drawing on earlier conversations with Nikolai Bukharin—refers to a “homosexual conspiracy” at the end of 1933, allegedly linked to the Germans and uncovered in both Ukraine and Russia. However, Iagoda’s note contains no reference to Ukraine, and I have found no evidence to suggest that this narrative was actively exploited by the GPU of Ukraine. Nicolaevsky’s reference in the Letter appears to echo rumors circulating among high-ranking Soviet officials at the time. See Letter of an Old Bolshevik: The Key to Moscow Trials (New York, 1937), 16. ↩
  83. K. Markov, “‘Moral' skotov,” Uchitel'skaia Gazeta, August 1, 1941; D. Zaslavskii, “Unichtozhenie sem'i i morali v fashistskoi Germanii,” Krasnaia Zvezda, January 8, 1942; I. Lezhnev, “Katekhezis liudoeda,” Krasnyi flot, October 11, 1941; Sergei Shvetsov, “Novye plani fiurera,” Razgromim Vraga, June 2, 1942. ↩
  84. Maksim Gor'kii, “Proletarskii gumanizm,” Pravda, May 23, 1934. ↩
  85. On March 7, 1934, the USSR Central Executive Committee (TsIK), the highest authoritative governing body, adopted the article criminalizing male homosexuality. The new law was announced in Pravda and Izvestiia on March 10, 1934. ↩
  86. Healey, Homosexual Desire, 189. ↩
  87. Gor'kii, “Proletarskii gumanizm.” ↩
  88. Reinhard Maurach, “Die Einführung der Strafbarkeit der Päderastie in der Sowjetunion,” Zeitschrift für osteuropäisches Recht 1/2 (1934): 93–97. ↩
  89. Pavlo Berzin, “Rainkhart Maurakh - nemetskii uchenyi-kriminalist i urozhenets Simferopolia (khronika poiskov fragmentov biografii v nemetskikh istochnikakh),” Vіsnik Krimіnal'nogo sudochinstva 4 (2016), 87–93. ↩
  90. Maurach, “Die Einführung der Strafbarkeit,” 95. ↩
  91. Sergei Bulatov, “Zakon 7 marta 1934 goda i ego otsenka v germanskoi presse,” Sovetskoe gosudarstvo. Zhurnal instituta sovetskogo stroitel'stva i prava Komakademii 1:2 (1935): 159–61. ↩
  92. Louise Shelley, “The 1929 Dispute on Soviet Criminology,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 6:1 (1979): 175–85; Louise Shelley, “Soviet Criminology: Its Birth and Demise, 1917–1936,” Slavic Review 38:4 (1979): 614–28. ↩
  93. Bulatov, “Zakon 7 marta,” 159–60. ↩
  94. Ibid., 160. ↩
  95. In March 1936, Nikolai Krylenko, the People’s Commissar for Justice of the RSFSR, delivered a speech at the XVI Congress of the All- Russian Central Executive Committee. His address focused on clarifying the rationale behind recently adopted laws and amendments to Soviet legislation, including the anti-homosexual article. Notably, he made no reference to fascism or Germany. Krylenko framed the issue in terms of class struggle: “The laboring masses believe in normal relations between the sexes and are building their society on healthy principles. In this environment, there is no place for such effete gentlemen. Who provides our main clientele for such affairs? Is it the working class? No! It’s classless hoodlums [cheerful excitement, laughter]. Classless hoodlums, either from the dregs of society or from the remains of the exploiters’ class [applause]. They have no place to go [laughter]. So they take to pederasty. Together with them, next to them, under this excuse, in stinky secretive bordellos, another kind of activity takes place—counterrevolutionary work.” See Nikolai Krylenko, “Doklad narodnogo komissara iustitsii RSFSR,” Sovetskaia Iustitsiia 7 (1936): 1–5. ↩
  96. Russian State Archive (GARF), f. 5446, op. 81a, d. 302, “Ob obvinenii v pederastii vracha Chufarovskogo i drugikh (1939–1940).” ↩
  97. Andrei Bystritskii, “Gomoseksualizm i perestroika,” Krasnoiarskii Komsomolets, July 16, 1990. This article would be republished a month later in the much more widely circulated newspaper Sovetskaia Molodezh′. ↩