Anti-homosexual legislation existed in the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the early years of the Russian Federation. Homosexuals were imprisoned, sent to psychiatric hospitals and had their gender changed. The article for “sodomy” was abolished only in 1993 - exactly 25 years ago.
Why, after the revolution of 1917, were homosexual relations briefly decriminalized because of their “tradition,” how did “active” homosexuals act as witnesses in cases against “passive” ones, and when did the first LGBT human rights group appear in Leningrad? “Paper” spoke with sociologist Alexander Kondakov, who is researching the article for “sodomy” in the USSR.
Alexander Kondakov
Sociologist, researcher at the University of Helsinki, head of the Laboratory for Sexuality Research
How the USSR reintroduced criminal penalties for male homosexuality and why it was necessary
In 1934, Article 154 on sodomy was introduced into the USSR Criminal Code, paragraph “a” of which stated the prohibition of voluntary homosexual relationships (punishment - from three to five years in prison), and paragraph “b” - involuntary ones (from five to eight years). years of imprisonment). After the reform of the code in 1960, this article received number 121, and the terms changed slightly: voluntary homosexual relations were punishable by up to five years in prison. The lower limit of the term of imprisonment was not specified. In the future, this allowed courts to hand down relatively lenient sentences.
If we consider the general prerequisites for criminalization, we can say that the 1920s were a time of experimentation, including in law, education and sexuality, and the 1930s became a time of conscious steps back and the return of the system of absolute centralized power that existed before the revolution .
The criminalization of homosexuality was not the only such step. There was also a tightening of divorce policy and a ban on abortion. At the same time, scientists stop studying homosexuality - they are forbidden to talk about it.
Since the introduction of the article, systematic work on the criminal prosecution of homosexuals has begun. Drug and psychiatric “treatment” for lesbians, as well as some men, also appeared.
At the same time, only men were tried under Article 154, and subsequently under Article 121; women could not be criminally prosecuted because of their sexuality. Lesbian love was not considered something criminal, but, of course, this topic was taboo.
Participants in the masquerade ball on January 15, 1921. Petrograd. Photo: Author: wikimedia
How to fight for yourself
Can a victim of discrimination protect himself on his own, without waiting for tectonic shifts in the penitentiary system of Ukraine? Representative of the Secretariat of the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine Yaroslav Bilyk
assures that yes.
“During monitoring visits, people come to us with complaints, and during confidential conversations we also receive information and take it into account when writing reports. Prisoners can also contact the Ombudsman's Office and write a complaint or statement. The complaint is submitted closed and considered for 24 hours. However, the administration of the institution does not review such correspondence. There is a free hotline of the Ombudsman's Office (38-044-253-75-89; 0800-50-17-20 – ed.), where you can contact it orally. All requests are reviewed and response measures taken."
,” Bilyk answered Vesti.ua’s question.
As an example, he cited an incident that occurred during a visit to the capital’s pre-trial detention center - a man filed complaints about harassment and physical violence. He asked to be transferred from a cell in which there were ten people. As a result, the victim was isolated. Next, the administration must conduct an investigation and take action, including transferring the prisoner to another institution. “We need to put pressure on the administration, especially if there is a threat to life safety”
, the specialist advises. But in general, he admits, the problem cannot be solved globally without the construction of new institutions for serving sentences.
In the meantime, Ukrainians are just learning to be tolerant and adequately perceive each other’s differences, deputy mayor of Sumy Maxim Galitsky
. On his Facebook page, he wished members of the LGBT community to repeat the fate of prisoners in concentration camps of World War II. A criminal case has been opened against Galitsky.
Meanwhile, in the spring, a pride in support of LGBT people will be held for the first time in Zaporozhye. And last year’s march in Kyiv was unusually calm. They went much further in Switzerland - there, in a referendum, they voted to introduce criminal liability for discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation.
Scandals in Ukrainian prisons. Violence, hunger and death row
How homosexuals were changed gender and why lesbians were sent to psychiatric hospitals
In the Soviet Union, people did not necessarily go to the police if they noticed that someone was violating the Criminal Code. This also applied to homosexual relations - a person could be sent to a comradely court or a party meeting, where they could decide not to do anything, be reprimanded, deprived of party membership, or sent to a hospital.
This, as [sociologist] Francesca Stella shows, was especially true for lesbians - a psychiatric hospital was the most likely way to resolve the situation. In the USSR, electric shock and medications were used to treat women and a few men who could also end up in a psychiatric hospital.
[American sociology professor who visited the USSR] Laurie Essig found that already in the early 1970s, some doctors performed gender reassignment surgery on gay men and women. This basically came from the theory that if, for example, a man has sexual desire directed towards a man, then he is a woman. Thus, Soviet doctors wanted to “cure” homosexuals. This did not necessarily require a court decision—it was enough to seek help and become a patient.
For gender correction at that time, appropriate hormonal therapy was already used, as well as surgical intervention, that is, plastic surgery on the body, including the genitals. Everything was official. Such operations were financed from the USSR budget.
Some of the operations, of course, concerned not homosexual men and women at all, but transgender people wishing to undergo gender reassignment.
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AIDS breeding ground
Despite all the innovations and attempts at reform, the state of penal institutions in Ukraine remains not just disastrous, but catastrophic. Overpopulation, torture, bullying, hunger and disease
– in such conditions there are people who break the law.
This is especially true for those who are usually called people of “non-traditional sexual orientation.” The public organization “Ukraine Without Torture”
states that representatives of the LGBTI community are in prisons in the most terrible conditions.
They are subject to discrimination both from other prisoners and from the staff of the institutions in which they are held. Administrations not only fail to counteract atrocities, but also contribute to them. What’s also scary is that human rights activists do not always undertake to defend the interests of those who are different from others. Excessive cruelty is also shown to them by law enforcement agencies - even at the stages of arrest or search.
“When I first saw in what terrible conditions in the (men’s – ed.) colony live those people who, of their own free will or by force, have sexual relations with men, it seemed that I had never seen worse: complete unsanitary conditions, these people
cannot provide medical care compared to other people who are serving sentences for the same crimes
Lyudmila Protsenko,
a representative of the NGO “Ukraine without Torture”, coordinator of the NPM monitoring group in the Cherkasy region .
Photo: NGO “Ukraine without Torture”
“When we were preparing materials and received photographs from colleagues, I didn’t even want to use them - otherwise you could simply scare society with what is happening in places of detention.”
, she added.
According to her, it is towards prisoners with a sexual orientation that differs from the traditional understanding of society that the attitude is especially negative. In the prison hierarchy they are at the lowest level
, informal sanctions are applied against them, they are given the most difficult work, they are deprived of the right to date,
they are forced to have sex
, and they are isolated from others.
“In case of illness or punishment, they are placed in a separate cell, a separate “corner”, but not so that the person feels good, this is an additional method of discrimination. This emphasizes that this person is not like the others.”
,” explained Protsenko.
Such prisoners are marked on their clothes and in their cell cards, they are not provided with medicine, and prison doctors refuse to help them. In addition, there is still a tradition in places of deprivation of liberty to make holes in spoons (they were “rewarded” to prisoners from the so-called caste of the neglected or offended). People eat separately, sleep without beds or at a distance from their fellow prisoners, and exist in an atmosphere of alienation and isolation.
Photo: NGO “Ukraine without Torture”
Lack of access to protective equipment leads to HIV infection and sexually transmitted diseases. Hence, Ukraine has the first place in Europe in the spread of the immunodeficiency virus. It is noteworthy that there are very few colonies where prisoners are allowed to use condoms, and such an indulgence exists only for heterosexual couples.
Those who identify as a different gender have the hardest time in prison, activists say. According to them, transgender people are subjected to the most sophisticated bullying,
and the state should pay special attention to this problem.
How they started talking about homosexuality again in the USSR and how the first LGBT group arose in Leningrad
Since the 1930s, the topic of homosexuality has hardly been discussed. It was impossible to even utter such a word - this could only be done by specially trained people within the walls of the offices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or courtrooms.
One of the first clues that the discussion of homosexuality was taking place behind the scenes was the new edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia in the 1970s. Two words immediately appeared in it related to this issue - “sodomy” and “homosexuality”. Sodomy was understood as a criminally punishable “sexual perversion consisting in sexual intercourse between a man and a man; usually with homosexuality, less often - situational.” And by “homosexuality” is the medical side of the same phenomenon.
We can say that this is an expression of some kind of pluralism of opinions. Indeed, it is known that at that time Leningrad lawyers were preparing a project to decriminalize “sodomy.” As a result, this idea was not approved and forgotten - although it is not entirely known why exactly.
Sergei Parajanov, convicted under article for sodomy. Photo: wikimedia
In the magazine Ogonyok, after a long silence in the 1970s, several materials devoted to sexuality and LGBT people suddenly appeared. They describe homosexuality from a negative point of view, but thanks to them, the veil of silence has been lifted even further.
After the new glasnost policy [after 1986] came into force, the issue of homosexuality began to be actively discussed, although these discussions were often related to the HIV epidemic that began at the same time. By the end of the 1980s, homosexuality was spoken about in different ways, although mostly in a negative way.
At the same time, the first LGBT initiative groups emerged in the RSFSR. In Leningrad there was one of the most famous organizations - the Wings group, which actively, as far as possible, opposed the criminalization of male homosexuality. Activists corresponded with people who had been imprisoned under Article 121, lobbied for the repeal of the article through friends from the Politburo, and eventually achieved registration of their organization in 1991.
At the same time, in the early 1990s, the first conferences on health for gay men, built around the problem of HIV, were held in the USSR. The first took place in Tallinn in 1990, and the following year in Moscow and Leningrad. And then the Soviet Union collapsed - but the article remained in Russian legislation.
Physical and sexual violence
Globally, LGBT prisoners and those identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender are at risk of torture, abuse and violence at the hands of prisoners and prison staff, according to Amnesty International. Amnesty International cites numerous cases in many countries where LGBT prisoners are known to have been abused or killed by fellow inmates or prison staff.
"Prisoners of any part of the following description are likely to be abused: young, small in size, physically weak, gay, first offender, possessing" feminine "characteristics such as long hair or high-pitched voice; modest, non-aggressive, shy, intelligent, not street education"; or have been found guilty of sexual offenses against minors. Inmates with any of these characteristics tend to face an increased risk of sexual violence, while those with multiple overlapping characteristics are even more likely to experience violence."
Gay and bisexual men are often targeted for sexual assault in prison. This is reflected in various American court decisions. For example, in Cole v. The Flick Court upheld the right of prisons to limit the length of inmates' hair, arguing that allowing long hair could lead to an increase in attacks on homosexuals.
The combination of high rates of sexual violence against gay inmates and high rates of HIV infection in prisons is "a matter of life and death for the LGBT community," according to Andrea Kavanaugh Kern, spokesperson for Stop Prisoner Rape.
While much of the data concerns male prisoners, according to Amnesty International, "orientation was found to be one of four categories that make female prisoners more likely to be targeted for sexual violence."
How the article for sodomy was decriminalized in Russia and what happened to those convicted after that
Most scientists who analyzed the abolition of the article for sodomy in Russia in May 1993 are inclined to believe that the reason was the country’s accession to international organizations. For example, to join the Council of Europe there was a clear requirement - the decriminalization of homosexuality.
Despite the fact that the amendments were technical, the norm was entrenched in society - and the article for “sodomy” was not returned to the Criminal Code when the Russian government began to actively deviate from European conventions and motivate lawmaking with political pretexts. Proposals to return “sodomy” and “lesbianism” to legislation have been and continue to be submitted to the State Duma, but have not yet found support.
The law banning “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” was adopted in 2013 precisely because 20 years earlier, during decriminalization, the abolition of anti-homosexual legislation was not a direct consequence of an understanding of the need for this step. The government was not ready to accept modern society then, and it still is not ready to do so.
When the law on “sodomy” was repealed, there was an amnesty for the first part of the article - for voluntary homosexual relations - in 1993 and the convicts were gradually released from prison. However, none of them were rehabilitated, that is, they were not recognized as wrongfully convicted, they were not entitled to any benefits or payments for the suffering they suffered in prison.
Insulation
For their own safety, LGBT people in prison are sometimes placed in a punishment cell or guarded. Although homosexuality is "generally seen as requiring additional protection", cases of homophobia.
Another problem is that protective and disciplinary custody are often the same thing, namely confinement in a “protective unit” in very limited and isolated conditions - solitary confinement - which prevents such prisoners from participating in drug rehabilitation programs, educational programs, professional training, contact with other prisoners or visitors, or enjoy privileges such as the right to watch television, listen to the radio, etc.
In other cases, institutions may have special areas for vulnerable prisoners, such as LGBT, elderly or disabled prisoners. In San Francisco, for example, transgender inmates are automatically separated from other inmates. However, according to Eileen Hurst, the San Francisco sheriff, homosexuality alone does not justify a request for protective housing: inmates requesting such housing must demonstrate their vulnerability.
