Böcker av Rustam Alexander

A poignant and deeply researched history of gay oppression in the USSR. In 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities. Red closet recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were affected by those laws, including a naïve Scottish journalist who dared to write to Stalin in an attempt to save his lover from prosecution and a homosexual theatre student who came to Moscow in pursuit of a career amid Stalin's harsh repressions and mass arrests. We also meet a fearless doctor in Siberia who provided medical treatment for gay men at his own peril and a much-loved Soviet singer who hid his homosexuality from the secret police. Each story helps paint the hitherto unknown picture of how Soviet oppression of gay people originated and was perpetuated from Stalin's rule until the demise of the USSR. This book comes at a time when homophobia is again rearing its ugly head under Putin's rule.

This ground-breaking book challenges the widespread view that sex and homosexuality were unmentionable in the USSR. The Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras (1956-82) have remained obscure and unexplored from this perspective. Drawing on previously undiscovered sources, Alexander fills in this critical gap. The book reveals that from 1956 to 1991, doctors, educators, jurists and police officers discussed homosexuality. At the heart of discussions were questions which directly affected the lives of homosexual people in the USSR. Was homosexuality a crime, disease or a normal variant of human sexuality? Should lesbianism be criminalised? Could sex education prevent homosexuality? What role did the GULAG and prisons play in homosexuality across the USSR? These discussions often had practical implications - doctors designed and offered medical treatments for homosexuality in hospitals, and procedures and medications were also used in prisons.