Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Sex and punishment

A history of homosexuality in the USSR
by
June 2023, no. 454

Red Closet: The hidden history of gay oppression in the USSR by Rustam Alexander

Manchester University Press, £17.99 hb, 273 pp

Sex and punishment

A history of homosexuality in the USSR
by
June 2023, no. 454

In July 1986, at the onset of the Glasnost era, a program featuring a discussion between American and Soviet women on a range of contemporary issues was broadcast on Soviet television. Reflecting on the prevalence of sex in US popular culture, an American participant asked her Soviet collocutors whether this was also the case in their country. The response was curt: ‘There is no sex in the USSR.’

Although the full exchange was somewhat more nuanced, this phrase would be inscribed into the Soviet collective memory, as it perfectly captured the Soviet attitude towards sex as an awkward and taboo subject. The sex lives of heterosexual Soviet men and women were indeed confined to the outer margins of public, political, and academic discourse throughout the Soviet era. Homosexuality was an even greater anathema. Yet behind this façade of abstinence, there was sex in the Soviet Union – including gay sex, which is the focus of Rustam Alexander’s insightful volume Red Closet: The hidden history of gay oppression in the USSR.

Alexander’s examination of homosexuality in the Soviet Union represents a feat of historical enquiry on two counts. First, locating and accessing sources on the subject is a difficult (and risky) undertaking in contemporary Russia, where relevant archival collections remain classified, potential witnesses are prone to self-censorship, and where gender and LGBTQ research is often met with intense hostility. Second, Red Closet originates from Alexander’s academic monograph, Regulating Homosexuality in Soviet Russia, 1956–91: A different history (2021), and has been substantially reworked for a non-specialist audience. Research translation of this nature often presents a significant intellectual challenge, particularly as complex historical phenomena can become flattened in the process. Although not immune to this risk, Red Closet ultimately delivers an account of homosexual experience in the Soviet Union that is at once accessible, informative, and brave.

Red Closet: The hidden history of gay oppression in the USSR

Red Closet: The hidden history of gay oppression in the USSR

by Rustam Alexander

Manchester University Press, £17.99 hb, 273 pp

You May Also Like

Comment (1)

  • The nuance and indeed the artistry of the management of a regime such as that which Putin oversees is to offer the masses a simplistic view of society in which minorities are coerced and silenced. It's an approach which plays to the worst tendencies of human foolishness and yet it continues to gain in popularity.
    Posted by Patrick Hockey
    02 June 2023

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.