School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

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Start date: 2010 × Type: PhD thesis × Author: Alexander, Rustam ×

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    Homosexuality in the USSR (1956-82)
    Alexander, Rustam ( 2018)
    The history of Soviet homosexuality is largely unexplored territory. This has led some of the few scholars who have examined this topic to claim that, in the period from Stalin through to the Gorbachev era, the issue of homosexuality was surrounded by silence. Such is the received view and in this thesis, I set out to challenge it. My investigation of a range of archival sources, including reports from the Soviet Interior Ministry (MVD), as well as juridical, medical and sex education literature, demonstrates that although homosexuality was not widely discussed in the broader public sphere, there was still lively discussion of it in these specialist and in some cases classified texts, from 1956 onwards. The participants of these discussions sought to define homosexuality, explain it, and establish their own methods of eradicating it. In important ways, this handling of the issue of homosexuality was specific to the Soviet context. This thesis sets out to broaden our understanding of the history of official discourses on homosexuality in the late Soviet period. This history is also examined in the context of and in comparison to developments on this front in the West, on the one hand, and Eastern Europe, on the other. The thesis draws on the observation made by Dan Healey, the pioneering scholar of Russian and Soviet sexuality, that in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death a combination of science and police methods was used to strengthen heterosexual norms in the Soviet society. Taking this observation as a point of departure, I explore late Soviet debates over whether homosexuality should be viewed and handled as a criminal and/or a medical phenomenon. The examination of these discussions will contribute to our knowledge about the oppression of homosexual men and women in the Soviet Union, providing insight into the roots of contemporary Russian homophobia and expanding our knowledge about Soviet history more broadly.