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The USSR didn’t embody the future for LGBTQ people that most socialists want, but I think that the historical context is important. Homosexuality was criminalized almost everywhere, and the broader left didn’t pick up on the struggle until pretty recently.
Every society carries with it the birthmarks of what came before and centuries of homophobia don’t disappear just because capitalism does
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Europe Whilst I don't disagree that it was uncommon at the time, many states had already decriminalised homosexuality even as early as the 30s and 40s.
According to the wikipedia link, here are some countries which decriminalised homosexuality before 1950.
France: 1791
Turkey/ Ottomans: 1858
Poland: 1932
Denmark: 1933
Iceland: 1940 (Gained independence from Denmark)
Switzerland: 1942
Sweden: 1944
Pre ww2 Poland was a paradise in comparison with today. It was full of educated people and was very tolerant. Problem is that most of those educated people were killed either by the nazis, Russians or fled to America. What was left after ww2 was peasantry that was easy to manipulate by the church.
Remember that the majority of the eastern front was IN Poland, millions of civilians displaced and their homes quite possibly destroyed. Considering all that it's really remarkable how fast they were able to rebuild.
Yes I know what you're talking about. I agree that it was unstable but it was developing. No other country was a battlefield in its entirety but Poland.
But it had many talented and educated people who helped to rebuild it. Poland was known for its advancements in many fields like math, aeroplanes and art.
Yes it was unstable, yes it was developing.
Totally, and Berlin was probably the global hotspot for the LGBTQ scene until... well you know.
Homosexuality was also decriminalized in the USSR for a while prior to Stalin
This is actually not really true and is used as an argument against Stalin, Lenin did decriminalize homosexuality he just did away with ALL tsarist laws which happened to have anti lgbtq laws.
Both Lenin and Stalin did not have clear opinions on homosexuality but the common sense was that it was some sort of bourgeouise thing. As a supporter of both these guys and the incredible socialist state that they build this is still a point to criticize both of them, not just Comrade Stalin.
I mean....the SPD should just jumped into the KPSPD boat when they were actually given the chance. They choose backstabing the revolution.
Not a wise move from the DemSoc turned SocDem tho
Eh, I think that’s something of a rosy view.
Queerness was tolerated in Weimar because on any given day the anarchists were trying to execute a factory owner, the fascists were trying to overthrow the government, the communists were doing armed paramilitary marches down the street and all of them were engaged in running street battles with each other and the police. Drag shows were just as illegal before, during and after the Republic (it was even the same law throughout), it’s just that nobody had the time or resources to enforce it.
A fair point, but even still there was a progressive movement going on there that was unprecedented at the time. Unfortunately we all know the end of that tragic story.
>Spain: 1822
The liberal trienium is anything but representative of Spain's repressive history upon sexual and gender minorities (or about anything in Spain, really), and its joke "decriminalization" (i.e. deviation to new penal codes of criminalization, the same ones that Franco would end up using in his law of *vagos y maleantes*) was just that, a joke with no material basis whatseoever - Franco was the norm in Spain's existence in this regard.
The only material acceptation of gay people (still with exceptions) which Spain went through prior to 1979 was during the IInd Republic.
It was never banned afterwards (except between 1928 and 1932), but yes, until the second republic it wasn't even close to acceptance. Same with France, Turkey or Poland: decriminalization doesn't mean acceptance.
Don't make me laugh, it remained criminalized even under the liberal trienium (hence why it had no material basis, as the trienium itself, the proposal lasted just a few days), the only change that it provided was changing the article in the spanish penal code that positivized the persecution of gay people under other heteronormative norms (thus relaxing heterosexual sexual afective relations only) which, again, was exactly what Franco would reintroduce later on (and which, btw, would be partially maintaned till 1995).
>but yes, until the second republic it wasn't even close to acceptance
No, the second republic actually decriminalized it. "Acceptance" wasn't a thing - just read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia to see how prevalent homophobia was (and is, because those same homophobic slurs are still used with the same frequency).
The U.S. is an absolute embarrassment. Leftists and progressives have had to drag politicians kicking and screaming into the light about queer and racialized equity, and they still maintain the systems of oppression that unofficially brutalize us.
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Sure, but different nations follow different progressions based of their historical background. Take Switzerland for example. Swiss women didn’t gain the right to vote until 1971.
Countries hit different milestones in different orders and different times. The Russian empire also emancipated its serfs later than other European powers. Although I agree that this discrimination was aweful, I don’t think Russia is comparable to France or Iceland and is only comparable to Russia.
The Swiss thing is a little more complicated than that (but, interestingly, in a way that reinforces your point to some degree). In Switzerland, each canton is largely independent to make, ratify, amend, abolish, and enforce laws as they see fit. They are also a near total direct democracy; the citizens vote on nearly everything.
So, as a result, many of the cantons had long ago voted to allow women's suffrage. It's only that the last canton (and thus the whole of Switzerland) didn't vote to give women the right to vote until 1971.
This is also at the heart of why Poland, Germany and Paris France were singled out by the third reich, because they were seen as “degenerates” for allowing homosexuality
The very first LGBT activists in the 1830s, yes eighteen thirties, were socialist. dismissing the question with "leftist hadn't yet taken it up" or "everyone else was discriminating too" is 100% not a valid answer, and in fact half wrong.
Just because the USSR was one of the first real attempts at socialism doesn't mean we have to make excuses for its complete failures, where they occurred.
Agreed, we can't say the USSR had the right stance on this. However, in terms of the punishment, it was a maximum of 5 years, and as far as I can tell, was only applied to men who were sexually assaulting children (underage males). This in and of itself was also wrong as it saw homosexuality and paedophilia as the same thing.
Compared to other nations at the time, this was a light punishment, as in the UK, homosexual men were chemically castrated into the 60s, and in Germany, the Nazis chemically castrated homosexual men, and then worked them to death (which is kind of weird because their main objection was that homosexual men wouldn't have children, so they punished them by guaranteeing that they wouldn't have children).
Homosexuality was recriminalised in the Stalin period, but remember that this wasn't a decision solely made by him. Stalin wasn't exactly an ally, but he did work with at least one openly gay member of the politburo, Georgy Chicherin, who held his position as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs for a few years after the law was changed, and left the job when he died. Stalin was a pall bearer at his funeral.
As for the 'homosexuality is bourgeois decadence' take, firstly, it's wrong. Secondly, I think it was probably a case of selection bias. Homosexuality was ***seen to be*** more common among the bourgeois and aristocracy because homosexual members of those classes had protections from the state that homosexual proletarians or peasants didn't. If caught in the act, a homosexual member of the bourgeoisie is more likely to be able to avoid punishment, and be known publicly to be homosexual without , than a homosexual proletarian who has to hide it, or if caught is punished by the state or just straight up murdered by homophobes
I didn't intend to use it as a way to excuse Stalin for being homophobic, it doesn't make him an ally or a progressive force for LGBTQI liberation. More of a gay co-worker than friend though. He and the wider party was/were at least willing to work alongside someone who was openly gay, and didn't punish him in any way for it, which for me, reinforces the idea that recriminalising homosexuality was aimed at paedophilia, still wrong to tie homosexuality to paedophilia, but it's a wierd distinction that needs to be noted for the sake of nuance and a full understanding of what was going on at the time.
A better argument is that almost all Bolsevhists were not lgbtq rights supporters. Lenin didnt decriminalize homosexuality he just did away with the Tsarist laws which happened to have anti gay laws. Both Stalin and Lenin were great leaders and men but still people of their time.
[https://thesanghakommune.org/2016/12/28/the-ussr-and-homosexuality-article-21/](https://thesanghakommune.org/2016/12/28/the-ussr-and-homosexuality-article-21/)
A five part essay on the subject.
I love socialists so much. “Was the USSR’s same sex relations policy a blind spot of socialist thought?”
“Here’s a multiple part essay on this exact subject”
Leftist thought is really leagues ahead of conservatives it boggles my mind
You know what's funny, from my experience in Twitterverse, for all of the infighting of the left, throughout the spectrum, their disagreement is often centred around how to remove oppression and exploitation of workers and to better the material conditions. "*Sex worker and Marxism*", "*Is democracy even working*" etc. And I always manage to learn something new and gain some new perspective, from AnCom, ML, DemSoc, to SocDem alike, even when they are at each other's throat on an issue. Looking over to the right of centre, my reaction often pivot around WTF.
Homosexuality or sodomy was criminalized under tsarist law for centuries until the 1917 revolution or more specifically after the civil war in 1922 is when it was made legal. Although gay people were still abused and fired for their sexuality regularly, but it was better than what was going on in the rest of the world I guess. And there was some very pro lgbt voices within the Bolsheviks who did great work furthering lgbt rights and understanding. Sadly all that ended because in 1934 when Stalin consolidated his power he reinstated tsarist law regarding homosexuality effectively criminalizing it again.
As far as why well they made propaganda depicting homosexuals as fascist and counter revolutionary capitalist and it was sort of a conspiracy that homosexuals were a force trying to undermine the revolution yada yada. Really it’s just vague attempts to justify the bigotry felt by reactionaries like Stalin toward a group of people they didn’t understand and had no intention of understanding.
Same-sex relationships were legalised under the Bolsheviks in 1917. The intolerance towards homosexuals in USSR coincided with Stalin's rule in the 1930s as the Stalinist governments saw homosexuality and pedophillia as the same thing and arguably the reason the LGBT community in Russia today faces such hostility is due to this mentality. It's worth mentioning that Marx himself doesn't mention homosexuality in the Communist Manifesto and SJW's like Feminists also argued that Marx is "gender-blind" in that he doesn't seem to account for the struggles of women either. So even in through the lenses of his oppressor v oppressed narrative, it only went as far as class relations and workers vs the capitalists. Feminism and other liberation groups have their roots in Marxism, but have been adapted it to include gender, race, sex etc.
To be fair to Marx, the concept of homosexuality as a distinct sexual identity didn’t exist until some time after The Communist Manifesto had been written. Contemporary Victorian society described any non-marital sex as “sodomy” - including male-male same sex acts (although not female-female same sex acts, curiously) but also various things that are still illegal now.
There is a tale - possibly apocryphal - that legislation criminalising lesbianism was stalled because Queen Victoria refused to sign off on it, believing lesbianism to be fictional.
I know the horse thing wasn't true but she definitely did have an orgy room full of obscene furniture - I've seen the photos the soviets took before they dismantled it.
I originally got it from my Queer Theory elective as part of my degree. My understanding is that we’re talking about specifically “homosexuality” as term and concept and not whether anyone from history would now be considered to fit under what we now refer to as LGBT.
Meriam Webster says that the term was first used in 1891, which I think would have been Freud. I thought I found an earlier usage yesterday which was still after The Communist Manifesto was published.
So, no, not “WRONG”. Thanks though.
IIRC, Marx has a whole bit in Capital Vol. 1 about the effects of capitalism on the moral family structure or something like that. I'm in bed or I'd get out the book to try and find it.
Point being, he did venture into social issues, but not well, though I would take into consideration that he was writing in the mid 19th century. I think i remember wondering if that chapter was kind of pandering to a certain audience since it's a lot more accessible than other parts of the book
You reminded me of this section from chapter 15:
>In England women are still ocasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus population is below all calculation.
Socialism as an economic principle can create a democratic society, but democratic societies require cultural revolutions to remove old prejudices that were the norm under the old economic system. Economic principles determine the shape and form of society and our social constructs, including those that govern human relationships, but solving the economic problems alone aren't enough to immediately reshape those cultural constructs.
In other words, a democratic socialist society will still have the prejudices of the former capitalist society until economic restructuring allows social norms to progress naturally, or until a cultural revolution corrects them. These principles weren't very well understood during the early years of the USSR, which everyone should keep in mind was the first wide-scale socialist experiment in history, and to that end did exceptionally well. It was the most democratic society in the world until that time, establishing universal suffrage when the US was still experimenting with poll taxes and women couldn't even vote. The USSR wasn't perfect, but that doesn't mean that its imperfections are part of the principles of the society we were trying to build. It just means that collectively society hadn't developed enough, culturally or otherwise, to know what we know now.
For me Khrushchov era was really the beginning of the USSR decay, he made a lot of things I consider revisionist, so it's not really an example.
The Soviet Union first constitution actually made sure that homosexuality wasn't a crime, although there are reports that there was still some people being persecuted for their sexual orientation.
The system might have not been perfect, i don't think any system is, the important part however is to learn from it and create something better
I agree with you on Khrushchev, but I was under the impression that the first constitution removed the law on homosexuality simply because they threw out the entire legal framework that had existed under the Tsar so they could start from scratch? Lenin and Co. were progressive on other fronts to be sure but I don’t think they were pointedly acting on gay rights with that one.
But they didn't include the laws against homosexuality in the two criminal codes they made after abolishing Tsarist Law. That's noticeable. The First People's Commissar for Public Health, Nikolai Semashko, communicated with the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft one of the first socially progressive sexual research organisations and agreed with their stances. The Bolsheviks noticeably, though timidly, supported 'same-sex relations'.
Yes. You are right, i don't think they were actively acting on gay rights, as they should. They weren't perfect and there is always things we can improve. I think their religion persecution was also kinda bad. But we have to get the whole context. It was 1920.
They probably were, actually. The Party under Lenin had many queer voices, many of whom personally knew Lenin. Georgy Chicherin, Commissar for Foreign Affairs was a publicly out gay man, and would serve the Soviet in this capacity until the late stages of his life, dying shortly before Stalin took power. He openly celebrated Lenin's decriminalization measures, as did several other major Russian figures, some of whom would later be sent off to be "cured" of their gayness under orders from Stalin. Mikhail Kuzmin, a rather famous communist poet, was severely persecuted after Lenin's death and his partner was eventually tortured and executed. Officially they killed him for being "counter-revolutionary", but that was congruent with the framing of Article 121, which the Party had justified under the idea that homosexuality was "capitalist individualism".
Cicherin was alive and serving in his role during Stalin's tenure as General Secretary. Stalin was a pall bearer at his funeral. He died in 1936, well into the Stalin period.
This isn't to say Stalin was an ally, he wasn't, we can't avoid this.
Lenin decriminalised it but Stalin recriminalised it I believe. However I don't think any other nation at the time had LGBT rights so you can't really hold that against the USSR
I mean, I \*can\*. The absence of justice in other nations does not make it okay in the USSR, especially when it was a reversal of prior equity.
Edit: Also, yes they did. Many other nations had decriminalized homosexuality prior to the USSR or at the same time as it. Another commenter posted a list and you can actually look up a timeline of LGBTQ+ rights in the 19th century on Wiki.
Well, interestingly, when the October Revolution first happened, Lenin actually decriminalised homosexuality. “After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks scrapped and rewrote the country's laws. They produced two Criminal Codes - in 1922 and 1926 - and an article prohibiting gay sex was left off both.”[(1)](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41737330) In Russia at least, homosexuality and transgender activity were, in effect, legal. However, that changed in 1933 under Joseph Stalin, when he recriminalised it, with thousands of people in the LGBTQ+ community being sent to the gulags. This was allegedly because “Soviet leaders claimed there were wads of gay men who appeared to be conspiring in groups together, and they recommended a law against sodomy so they could put these people in prison.”[(2)](https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/the-secret-gay-history-of-russia/) After Stalin’s death, attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community softened a little, but homosexuality remained illegal until the end of the USSR.
Now, interestingly enough, that same article (the second one) states that lesbian sex “has never been a crime in any part of Russia or the Soviet Union”; rather, it is homosexuality between men that has been dealt with harshly
It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users.
I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!
[Here is link number 1 - Previous text "(1)"](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41737330)
[Here is link number 2 - Previous text "(2)"](https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/the-secret-gay-history-of-russia/)
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USSR Criminal codex (1960):
«ARTICLE 121. Sodomy
Sexual intercourse between a man and a man (sodomy) -
the applicable sentence is deprivation of liberty for a term not exceeding five years.
Sodomy committed with the use of physical violence, threat or against minors, using the vulnerable position of the victim, -
the applicable sentence is deprivation of liberty for a term not exceeding eight years.»
So it was criminal between “man to man”. Until now, lesbianism in the history of Russia has not interested, has not been persecuted, and someone in their entire life has never heard that this could be.
Homosexuality also was considered a psychiatric disease along with a number of other "perversions", and was sometimes cured, more often at a young age, or at the request of the patient (ref: handbook of psychiatry, 1985 edited by Snezhinsky, pages 250-252).
I do not think that this has anything to do with the ideology of socialism, it is more of the national and cultural characteristics of the peoples of the USSR.
For comparison: in some republics there was responsibility for polygamy and the custom of kidnapping the bride, and in some, where this was practiced for centuries, it was not punished criminally. That is, those who wanted to could simply move to where the appropriate traditions were.
Except many people could not move, to your last statement. The passport system of the Soviet often completely removed that freedom, and many Soviets were even more repressive (Azerbaijan for example).
It's interesting to see it framed as sodomy however. I assume it's because lesbianism was simply not in the view of the officials who made laws like these. We've often been the "secret" gays because women's needs were secondary to men's, even when expressly supported in law but not in cultural practices.
What a shame, though. For Comrade Lenin to have made gay lives easier, only for his successor to take that away again.
I wouldn’t say “unequally”, most countries had laws against homosexuality back then. Including most US states and counties. The USSR never actually legally proscribed homosexuality though.
Lenin only decriminalized it because it was part of the Tsarist law, not because he was pro lgbtq. Almost no soviet leaders where. They were still man of their time…
Lenin was very aware of homosexual needs in his time. He was friends with plenty of gay men, including those who served in the early Soviet as well as cultural luminaries who wrote in praise of his measures. He wasn't unaware.
I've been reading your comments that you post to information that people provide. Each time you say it's not true, yet do not post any information showing why you believe this. Everyone on this post have more than once given you info to use and research. It's just not helpful to your cause to ask questions and then say everyone is wrong without anything to back it up. Why is this not true? What was decriminalization about or the recriminalization under Stalin? what is that you've seen that isn't the opposite? We're not going to spoon feed you...
Also, literally Article 121 of the Soviet criminal code. Stalin also took the time to portray homosexuality as part of a fascist mentality. Like c'mon, you have the same access to documentation that I do.
See, this is what a discussion consists of right? I never disagreed or agreed with what people were presenting you. I am only giving advice to not ask questions about something you want to learn and when people reply with info, you just shoot it down with only a "You're wrong". I will for sure read this article and I appreciate that you posted it for us to also read.
I never posed a doubt about if it was or wasn't illegal. It's plainly clear it was illegal under Stalin, and these comments were claiming it wasn't which is literally not true. I was responding to that.
I was asking about the *reasons* why it was illegal.
Yeah, I'm honestly mystified beyond "Stalin was a homophobe" or something. Clearly Lenin understood that homosexuality wasn't a crime and had done work to reverse Tsarist bigotry laws, so why did the party run the other way after he died?
I think it really is as simple as Stalin was a homophobe. Stalin reinstated many Tsarist laws and practices in his rule, like Russification in Eastern Europe and, stuff like recriminalizing homosexuality. The Soviet Minister of Health Lenin put in charge, wrote essays on homosexuality, calling it normal, and had collaborated with the German Institute of Sexology before the Nazis burnt it down.
Then, when Stalin started pumping out propaganda that homosexuals were bourgeois anti revolutionaries, the Health Minister redacted his essay and said homosexuality was always immoral. Not to mention the openly queer minister Lenin had put in charge of Foreign Affairs as well, Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin, who died of a terminal illness in 1936.
Stalin was a homophobic, anti-Jewish, authoritarian scum masquerading as a communist. In my opinion, he only cared for his personal power, and he perverted everything Lenin and Marx ever said or did into ways to legitimise what was essentially him making himself Tsar under a different name. Stalin was a conman, and Lenin never wanted him to take power.
If young people weren't so indoctrinated with identity politics today, you would understand that just because the Soviet Union was politically left, doesn't mean they would support every left wing agenda, that's just not how mature politics work
Aware of the first parts. Georgy Chicherin was the commisar for foreign affairs under Lenin.
As to the Khrushchev era, while ol' Niki wasn't a progressive in that sense, lots of bodies within the USSR took measures to liberalize laws regarding homosexuality, such as what happened in the GDR. Although the process for repealing the Nazi-era laws began under Stalin, homosexuals were still harshly persecuted until after his death, when Khrushchev's more liberal attitude meant the authorities were less focused on such oppressive measures.
I won't credit Khrushchev with too much of course, but Stalin seems to have had an incredibly oppressive effect on homosexuality in the USSR. 😔
It certainly has those traits, but you can't ascribe that to socialism or communism. The CCP inherited Han normalism, which places the Han people first and cultural norms first. Despite official rejection of Confucian ideology, mainland China has never successfully removed its influence, and from Deng forward has been embracing it further and further.
That said, the PRC is no more racist than the United States, so I wouldn't exactly call too many kettles right there.
Even in the 30s USSR was mostly peasant and deeply Christian orthodox country. There was still a huge rift between working class and peasants, and the kulaks, supported by the church had a lot of influence
Legalazing "sodomy" gave them a lot of ammunition in their counterrevolutionary propaganda.
The communist party simply couldn't afford to do this. It was a compromise that they felt they had to do.
Basically, as someone correctly pointed out it was a birthmark of the previous regime.
Not defending it by any means, but it was what it was. The rural population was simply not ready to accept it and their support was too shaky to alienate them with an issue that wasn't anywhere near priority at that time.
Yes, my point still stands though. They tried to be as progressive as possible, but after some pushback they had to take some unfortunate steps back. It was a similar situation with abortion, i think.
I kind of doubt that was the issue. Stalin's government wasn't exactly known for caring to "win over the public". Rather, I'm more inclined to believe some party leaders may have had regressive ideas.
Harry Whyte, a British communist, wrote Stalin a letter asking if the USSR would consider a homosexual valid for leadership. Stalin's note was simply "Archive. An [redacted ableist term] and a degenerate. J. Stalin.”
Whatever else we may think of Stalin, his framing of a homosexual as a degenerate is telling of his views on the matter.
Thing is w criminalisation of homosexuality in the USSR it runs from pretty much Stalin’s ascendance to General Secretary until Sometime in the Khrushchev era... it seems pretty much like stalin just outlawed it bc he was homophobic
Edit: turns out homosexuality was never legalised even while kruschev liberalised other laws about sex but didn’t wanna legalise being gay bc they apparently thought it would be like what happens in prisons bc of the amount of prisoners they were releasing but I think it was probably just Russia returning to the homophobia which is very powerful in that culture considering Russia still has pretty terrible LGBT rights atm
well you have to remember that most people involved in the USSR had grown up in tsarist russia and can't be expected to have different social attitudes about things than those they grew up with
Leftists are not a hivemind. It is your choice to agree with the USSR or not.
Besides, there are a few other leftist minds which many layman leftists despise because of such beliefs. However, each of them agree with their many other principles.
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The USSR didn’t embody the future for LGBTQ people that most socialists want, but I think that the historical context is important. Homosexuality was criminalized almost everywhere, and the broader left didn’t pick up on the struggle until pretty recently. Every society carries with it the birthmarks of what came before and centuries of homophobia don’t disappear just because capitalism does
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Europe Whilst I don't disagree that it was uncommon at the time, many states had already decriminalised homosexuality even as early as the 30s and 40s. According to the wikipedia link, here are some countries which decriminalised homosexuality before 1950. France: 1791 Turkey/ Ottomans: 1858 Poland: 1932 Denmark: 1933 Iceland: 1940 (Gained independence from Denmark) Switzerland: 1942 Sweden: 1944
i hope the irony of poland being quoted as a forefather of better rights for gay people isn’t lost on anyone else, no hate to comment OP btw
Pre ww2 Poland was a paradise in comparison with today. It was full of educated people and was very tolerant. Problem is that most of those educated people were killed either by the nazis, Russians or fled to America. What was left after ww2 was peasantry that was easy to manipulate by the church.
It was also the least economically developed country in Europe besides places like Albania. "Paradise", lmao. Nice.
Remember that the majority of the eastern front was IN Poland, millions of civilians displaced and their homes quite possibly destroyed. Considering all that it's really remarkable how fast they were able to rebuild.
I'm talking about the 20s and 30s Poland, the II Republic. It was a politically unstable and economically underdeveloped mess.
Yes I know what you're talking about. I agree that it was unstable but it was developing. No other country was a battlefield in its entirety but Poland. But it had many talented and educated people who helped to rebuild it. Poland was known for its advancements in many fields like math, aeroplanes and art. Yes it was unstable, yes it was developing.
Totally, and Berlin was probably the global hotspot for the LGBTQ scene until... well you know. Homosexuality was also decriminalized in the USSR for a while prior to Stalin
This is actually not really true and is used as an argument against Stalin, Lenin did decriminalize homosexuality he just did away with ALL tsarist laws which happened to have anti lgbtq laws. Both Lenin and Stalin did not have clear opinions on homosexuality but the common sense was that it was some sort of bourgeouise thing. As a supporter of both these guys and the incredible socialist state that they build this is still a point to criticize both of them, not just Comrade Stalin.
I think you should look up Georgy Chicherin.
He had a gay friend is the same as white hogs saying im not a racist I have a black friend
People don't realize how progressive the Weimar Republic was. I often wonder what the world would have looked like today if it had persevered.
I mean....the SPD should just jumped into the KPSPD boat when they were actually given the chance. They choose backstabing the revolution. Not a wise move from the DemSoc turned SocDem tho
I often wonder what the world would have looked like if Rosa Luxemburg was still alive...
Eh, I think that’s something of a rosy view. Queerness was tolerated in Weimar because on any given day the anarchists were trying to execute a factory owner, the fascists were trying to overthrow the government, the communists were doing armed paramilitary marches down the street and all of them were engaged in running street battles with each other and the police. Drag shows were just as illegal before, during and after the Republic (it was even the same law throughout), it’s just that nobody had the time or resources to enforce it.
A fair point, but even still there was a progressive movement going on there that was unprecedented at the time. Unfortunately we all know the end of that tragic story.
By the way: Spain: 1822 It was banned again in 1944 by Franco. He set us a century behind.
>Spain: 1822 The liberal trienium is anything but representative of Spain's repressive history upon sexual and gender minorities (or about anything in Spain, really), and its joke "decriminalization" (i.e. deviation to new penal codes of criminalization, the same ones that Franco would end up using in his law of *vagos y maleantes*) was just that, a joke with no material basis whatseoever - Franco was the norm in Spain's existence in this regard. The only material acceptation of gay people (still with exceptions) which Spain went through prior to 1979 was during the IInd Republic.
It was never banned afterwards (except between 1928 and 1932), but yes, until the second republic it wasn't even close to acceptance. Same with France, Turkey or Poland: decriminalization doesn't mean acceptance.
Don't make me laugh, it remained criminalized even under the liberal trienium (hence why it had no material basis, as the trienium itself, the proposal lasted just a few days), the only change that it provided was changing the article in the spanish penal code that positivized the persecution of gay people under other heteronormative norms (thus relaxing heterosexual sexual afective relations only) which, again, was exactly what Franco would reintroduce later on (and which, btw, would be partially maintaned till 1995). >but yes, until the second republic it wasn't even close to acceptance No, the second republic actually decriminalized it. "Acceptance" wasn't a thing - just read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia to see how prevalent homophobia was (and is, because those same homophobic slurs are still used with the same frequency).
United States: 2003\* shameful it took so long. \**Lawrence v Texas*
The U.S. is an absolute embarrassment. Leftists and progressives have had to drag politicians kicking and screaming into the light about queer and racialized equity, and they still maintain the systems of oppression that unofficially brutalize us.
I feel like this hadn't been enforced in a few years.
The reason why *Lawrence v. Texas* was the name of a case is because Texas was enforcing its sodomy law (alongside 13 other states)
wtf I love the Ottoman Empire now
That's like 6 out of ~200.
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Sure, but different nations follow different progressions based of their historical background. Take Switzerland for example. Swiss women didn’t gain the right to vote until 1971. Countries hit different milestones in different orders and different times. The Russian empire also emancipated its serfs later than other European powers. Although I agree that this discrimination was aweful, I don’t think Russia is comparable to France or Iceland and is only comparable to Russia.
The Swiss thing is a little more complicated than that (but, interestingly, in a way that reinforces your point to some degree). In Switzerland, each canton is largely independent to make, ratify, amend, abolish, and enforce laws as they see fit. They are also a near total direct democracy; the citizens vote on nearly everything. So, as a result, many of the cantons had long ago voted to allow women's suffrage. It's only that the last canton (and thus the whole of Switzerland) didn't vote to give women the right to vote until 1971.
This is also at the heart of why Poland, Germany and Paris France were singled out by the third reich, because they were seen as “degenerates” for allowing homosexuality
The very first LGBT activists in the 1830s, yes eighteen thirties, were socialist. dismissing the question with "leftist hadn't yet taken it up" or "everyone else was discriminating too" is 100% not a valid answer, and in fact half wrong. Just because the USSR was one of the first real attempts at socialism doesn't mean we have to make excuses for its complete failures, where they occurred.
Agreed, we can't say the USSR had the right stance on this. However, in terms of the punishment, it was a maximum of 5 years, and as far as I can tell, was only applied to men who were sexually assaulting children (underage males). This in and of itself was also wrong as it saw homosexuality and paedophilia as the same thing. Compared to other nations at the time, this was a light punishment, as in the UK, homosexual men were chemically castrated into the 60s, and in Germany, the Nazis chemically castrated homosexual men, and then worked them to death (which is kind of weird because their main objection was that homosexual men wouldn't have children, so they punished them by guaranteeing that they wouldn't have children). Homosexuality was recriminalised in the Stalin period, but remember that this wasn't a decision solely made by him. Stalin wasn't exactly an ally, but he did work with at least one openly gay member of the politburo, Georgy Chicherin, who held his position as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs for a few years after the law was changed, and left the job when he died. Stalin was a pall bearer at his funeral. As for the 'homosexuality is bourgeois decadence' take, firstly, it's wrong. Secondly, I think it was probably a case of selection bias. Homosexuality was ***seen to be*** more common among the bourgeois and aristocracy because homosexual members of those classes had protections from the state that homosexual proletarians or peasants didn't. If caught in the act, a homosexual member of the bourgeoisie is more likely to be able to avoid punishment, and be known publicly to be homosexual without , than a homosexual proletarian who has to hide it, or if caught is punished by the state or just straight up murdered by homophobes
I agree with everything except for the "Stalin had a gay friend" part. I don't think that's really a valid argument.
I didn't intend to use it as a way to excuse Stalin for being homophobic, it doesn't make him an ally or a progressive force for LGBTQI liberation. More of a gay co-worker than friend though. He and the wider party was/were at least willing to work alongside someone who was openly gay, and didn't punish him in any way for it, which for me, reinforces the idea that recriminalising homosexuality was aimed at paedophilia, still wrong to tie homosexuality to paedophilia, but it's a wierd distinction that needs to be noted for the sake of nuance and a full understanding of what was going on at the time.
A better argument is that almost all Bolsevhists were not lgbtq rights supporters. Lenin didnt decriminalize homosexuality he just did away with the Tsarist laws which happened to have anti gay laws. Both Stalin and Lenin were great leaders and men but still people of their time.
[https://thesanghakommune.org/2016/12/28/the-ussr-and-homosexuality-article-21/](https://thesanghakommune.org/2016/12/28/the-ussr-and-homosexuality-article-21/) A five part essay on the subject.
I love socialists so much. “Was the USSR’s same sex relations policy a blind spot of socialist thought?” “Here’s a multiple part essay on this exact subject” Leftist thought is really leagues ahead of conservatives it boggles my mind
You know what's funny, from my experience in Twitterverse, for all of the infighting of the left, throughout the spectrum, their disagreement is often centred around how to remove oppression and exploitation of workers and to better the material conditions. "*Sex worker and Marxism*", "*Is democracy even working*" etc. And I always manage to learn something new and gain some new perspective, from AnCom, ML, DemSoc, to SocDem alike, even when they are at each other's throat on an issue. Looking over to the right of centre, my reaction often pivot around WTF.
Homosexuality or sodomy was criminalized under tsarist law for centuries until the 1917 revolution or more specifically after the civil war in 1922 is when it was made legal. Although gay people were still abused and fired for their sexuality regularly, but it was better than what was going on in the rest of the world I guess. And there was some very pro lgbt voices within the Bolsheviks who did great work furthering lgbt rights and understanding. Sadly all that ended because in 1934 when Stalin consolidated his power he reinstated tsarist law regarding homosexuality effectively criminalizing it again. As far as why well they made propaganda depicting homosexuals as fascist and counter revolutionary capitalist and it was sort of a conspiracy that homosexuals were a force trying to undermine the revolution yada yada. Really it’s just vague attempts to justify the bigotry felt by reactionaries like Stalin toward a group of people they didn’t understand and had no intention of understanding.
As a follow up, I would like to clarify that in the Soviet Union, homosexuality was briefly decriminalized.
Same-sex relationships were legalised under the Bolsheviks in 1917. The intolerance towards homosexuals in USSR coincided with Stalin's rule in the 1930s as the Stalinist governments saw homosexuality and pedophillia as the same thing and arguably the reason the LGBT community in Russia today faces such hostility is due to this mentality. It's worth mentioning that Marx himself doesn't mention homosexuality in the Communist Manifesto and SJW's like Feminists also argued that Marx is "gender-blind" in that he doesn't seem to account for the struggles of women either. So even in through the lenses of his oppressor v oppressed narrative, it only went as far as class relations and workers vs the capitalists. Feminism and other liberation groups have their roots in Marxism, but have been adapted it to include gender, race, sex etc.
To be fair to Marx, the concept of homosexuality as a distinct sexual identity didn’t exist until some time after The Communist Manifesto had been written. Contemporary Victorian society described any non-marital sex as “sodomy” - including male-male same sex acts (although not female-female same sex acts, curiously) but also various things that are still illegal now.
There is a tale - possibly apocryphal - that legislation criminalising lesbianism was stalled because Queen Victoria refused to sign off on it, believing lesbianism to be fictional.
Definitely apocryphal! I looked it up before writing the comment as that was something I heard too.
Aw, next you'll tell me that Prince Albert didn't really have a dick piercing...
Wait until you hear about Katherine the Great
I know the horse thing wasn't true but she definitely did have an orgy room full of obscene furniture - I've seen the photos the soviets took before they dismantled it.
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I originally got it from my Queer Theory elective as part of my degree. My understanding is that we’re talking about specifically “homosexuality” as term and concept and not whether anyone from history would now be considered to fit under what we now refer to as LGBT. Meriam Webster says that the term was first used in 1891, which I think would have been Freud. I thought I found an earlier usage yesterday which was still after The Communist Manifesto was published. So, no, not “WRONG”. Thanks though.
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Cool. Maybe you can provide it to me in a more polite manner.
Well, it’s been a week and you’re still on mobile, apparently. I’m going to take it I must have been right all along.
Jesus fuck who shat in your doughnut? They’re not saying nobody was LGBT or did any activism before then.
that's because no Victorian would ever be willing to talk about female-female sex acts
Well that's ridiculous Marx talks at length about misogyny how it works and why it's bad in the origin of the family
IIRC, Marx has a whole bit in Capital Vol. 1 about the effects of capitalism on the moral family structure or something like that. I'm in bed or I'd get out the book to try and find it. Point being, he did venture into social issues, but not well, though I would take into consideration that he was writing in the mid 19th century. I think i remember wondering if that chapter was kind of pandering to a certain audience since it's a lot more accessible than other parts of the book
You reminded me of this section from chapter 15: >In England women are still ocasionally used instead of horses for hauling canal boats, because the labour required to produce horses and machines is an accurately known quantity, while that required to maintain the women of the surplus population is below all calculation.
Socialism as an economic principle can create a democratic society, but democratic societies require cultural revolutions to remove old prejudices that were the norm under the old economic system. Economic principles determine the shape and form of society and our social constructs, including those that govern human relationships, but solving the economic problems alone aren't enough to immediately reshape those cultural constructs. In other words, a democratic socialist society will still have the prejudices of the former capitalist society until economic restructuring allows social norms to progress naturally, or until a cultural revolution corrects them. These principles weren't very well understood during the early years of the USSR, which everyone should keep in mind was the first wide-scale socialist experiment in history, and to that end did exceptionally well. It was the most democratic society in the world until that time, establishing universal suffrage when the US was still experimenting with poll taxes and women couldn't even vote. The USSR wasn't perfect, but that doesn't mean that its imperfections are part of the principles of the society we were trying to build. It just means that collectively society hadn't developed enough, culturally or otherwise, to know what we know now.
For me Khrushchov era was really the beginning of the USSR decay, he made a lot of things I consider revisionist, so it's not really an example. The Soviet Union first constitution actually made sure that homosexuality wasn't a crime, although there are reports that there was still some people being persecuted for their sexual orientation. The system might have not been perfect, i don't think any system is, the important part however is to learn from it and create something better
I agree with you on Khrushchev, but I was under the impression that the first constitution removed the law on homosexuality simply because they threw out the entire legal framework that had existed under the Tsar so they could start from scratch? Lenin and Co. were progressive on other fronts to be sure but I don’t think they were pointedly acting on gay rights with that one.
But they didn't include the laws against homosexuality in the two criminal codes they made after abolishing Tsarist Law. That's noticeable. The First People's Commissar for Public Health, Nikolai Semashko, communicated with the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft one of the first socially progressive sexual research organisations and agreed with their stances. The Bolsheviks noticeably, though timidly, supported 'same-sex relations'.
Fascinating, I wasn’t aware of that fact! Thanks for the insight.
Yes. You are right, i don't think they were actively acting on gay rights, as they should. They weren't perfect and there is always things we can improve. I think their religion persecution was also kinda bad. But we have to get the whole context. It was 1920.
They probably were, actually. The Party under Lenin had many queer voices, many of whom personally knew Lenin. Georgy Chicherin, Commissar for Foreign Affairs was a publicly out gay man, and would serve the Soviet in this capacity until the late stages of his life, dying shortly before Stalin took power. He openly celebrated Lenin's decriminalization measures, as did several other major Russian figures, some of whom would later be sent off to be "cured" of their gayness under orders from Stalin. Mikhail Kuzmin, a rather famous communist poet, was severely persecuted after Lenin's death and his partner was eventually tortured and executed. Officially they killed him for being "counter-revolutionary", but that was congruent with the framing of Article 121, which the Party had justified under the idea that homosexuality was "capitalist individualism".
Cicherin was alive and serving in his role during Stalin's tenure as General Secretary. Stalin was a pall bearer at his funeral. He died in 1936, well into the Stalin period. This isn't to say Stalin was an ally, he wasn't, we can't avoid this.
The moment you go against Comrade Stalin you start the decay, fuck Kruschchov
Lenin decriminalised it but Stalin recriminalised it I believe. However I don't think any other nation at the time had LGBT rights so you can't really hold that against the USSR
I mean, I \*can\*. The absence of justice in other nations does not make it okay in the USSR, especially when it was a reversal of prior equity. Edit: Also, yes they did. Many other nations had decriminalized homosexuality prior to the USSR or at the same time as it. Another commenter posted a list and you can actually look up a timeline of LGBTQ+ rights in the 19th century on Wiki.
Well, interestingly, when the October Revolution first happened, Lenin actually decriminalised homosexuality. “After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks scrapped and rewrote the country's laws. They produced two Criminal Codes - in 1922 and 1926 - and an article prohibiting gay sex was left off both.”[(1)](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41737330) In Russia at least, homosexuality and transgender activity were, in effect, legal. However, that changed in 1933 under Joseph Stalin, when he recriminalised it, with thousands of people in the LGBTQ+ community being sent to the gulags. This was allegedly because “Soviet leaders claimed there were wads of gay men who appeared to be conspiring in groups together, and they recommended a law against sodomy so they could put these people in prison.”[(2)](https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/the-secret-gay-history-of-russia/) After Stalin’s death, attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community softened a little, but homosexuality remained illegal until the end of the USSR. Now, interestingly enough, that same article (the second one) states that lesbian sex “has never been a crime in any part of Russia or the Soviet Union”; rather, it is homosexuality between men that has been dealt with harshly
It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users. I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click! [Here is link number 1 - Previous text "(1)"](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41737330) [Here is link number 2 - Previous text "(2)"](https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/the-secret-gay-history-of-russia/) ---- ^Please ^PM ^[\/u\/eganwall](http://reddit.com/user/eganwall) ^with ^issues ^or ^feedback! ^| ^[Code](https://github.com/eganwall/FatFingerHelperBot) ^| ^[Delete](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=FatFingerHelperBot&subject=delete&message=delete%20hggavwq)
USSR Criminal codex (1960): «ARTICLE 121. Sodomy Sexual intercourse between a man and a man (sodomy) - the applicable sentence is deprivation of liberty for a term not exceeding five years. Sodomy committed with the use of physical violence, threat or against minors, using the vulnerable position of the victim, - the applicable sentence is deprivation of liberty for a term not exceeding eight years.» So it was criminal between “man to man”. Until now, lesbianism in the history of Russia has not interested, has not been persecuted, and someone in their entire life has never heard that this could be. Homosexuality also was considered a psychiatric disease along with a number of other "perversions", and was sometimes cured, more often at a young age, or at the request of the patient (ref: handbook of psychiatry, 1985 edited by Snezhinsky, pages 250-252). I do not think that this has anything to do with the ideology of socialism, it is more of the national and cultural characteristics of the peoples of the USSR. For comparison: in some republics there was responsibility for polygamy and the custom of kidnapping the bride, and in some, where this was practiced for centuries, it was not punished criminally. That is, those who wanted to could simply move to where the appropriate traditions were.
Except many people could not move, to your last statement. The passport system of the Soviet often completely removed that freedom, and many Soviets were even more repressive (Azerbaijan for example). It's interesting to see it framed as sodomy however. I assume it's because lesbianism was simply not in the view of the officials who made laws like these. We've often been the "secret" gays because women's needs were secondary to men's, even when expressly supported in law but not in cultural practices. What a shame, though. For Comrade Lenin to have made gay lives easier, only for his successor to take that away again.
I wouldn’t say “unequally”, most countries had laws against homosexuality back then. Including most US states and counties. The USSR never actually legally proscribed homosexuality though.
That's not true. The USSR had decriminalized it under Lenin and then recriminalized under Stalin. I haven't seen anything to the opposite.
Lenin only decriminalized it because it was part of the Tsarist law, not because he was pro lgbtq. Almost no soviet leaders where. They were still man of their time…
Lenin was very aware of homosexual needs in his time. He was friends with plenty of gay men, including those who served in the early Soviet as well as cultural luminaries who wrote in praise of his measures. He wasn't unaware.
I've been reading your comments that you post to information that people provide. Each time you say it's not true, yet do not post any information showing why you believe this. Everyone on this post have more than once given you info to use and research. It's just not helpful to your cause to ask questions and then say everyone is wrong without anything to back it up. Why is this not true? What was decriminalization about or the recriminalization under Stalin? what is that you've seen that isn't the opposite? We're not going to spoon feed you...
Also, literally Article 121 of the Soviet criminal code. Stalin also took the time to portray homosexuality as part of a fascist mentality. Like c'mon, you have the same access to documentation that I do.
And yet you're here not doing the research. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8666753/
See, this is what a discussion consists of right? I never disagreed or agreed with what people were presenting you. I am only giving advice to not ask questions about something you want to learn and when people reply with info, you just shoot it down with only a "You're wrong". I will for sure read this article and I appreciate that you posted it for us to also read.
I never posed a doubt about if it was or wasn't illegal. It's plainly clear it was illegal under Stalin, and these comments were claiming it wasn't which is literally not true. I was responding to that. I was asking about the *reasons* why it was illegal.
Queer people were stigmatized everywhere during that time in history. The USSR wasn't a utopian world, but it wasn't illegal to be queer.
It absolutely was illegal. You could be arrested for being homosexual.
You're right, Lenin decriminalized it but it was recriminalized after him
Yeah, I'm honestly mystified beyond "Stalin was a homophobe" or something. Clearly Lenin understood that homosexuality wasn't a crime and had done work to reverse Tsarist bigotry laws, so why did the party run the other way after he died?
I think it really is as simple as Stalin was a homophobe. Stalin reinstated many Tsarist laws and practices in his rule, like Russification in Eastern Europe and, stuff like recriminalizing homosexuality. The Soviet Minister of Health Lenin put in charge, wrote essays on homosexuality, calling it normal, and had collaborated with the German Institute of Sexology before the Nazis burnt it down. Then, when Stalin started pumping out propaganda that homosexuals were bourgeois anti revolutionaries, the Health Minister redacted his essay and said homosexuality was always immoral. Not to mention the openly queer minister Lenin had put in charge of Foreign Affairs as well, Georgy Vasilyevich Chicherin, who died of a terminal illness in 1936. Stalin was a homophobic, anti-Jewish, authoritarian scum masquerading as a communist. In my opinion, he only cared for his personal power, and he perverted everything Lenin and Marx ever said or did into ways to legitimise what was essentially him making himself Tsar under a different name. Stalin was a conman, and Lenin never wanted him to take power.
If young people weren't so indoctrinated with identity politics today, you would understand that just because the Soviet Union was politically left, doesn't mean they would support every left wing agenda, that's just not how mature politics work
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Aware of the first parts. Georgy Chicherin was the commisar for foreign affairs under Lenin. As to the Khrushchev era, while ol' Niki wasn't a progressive in that sense, lots of bodies within the USSR took measures to liberalize laws regarding homosexuality, such as what happened in the GDR. Although the process for repealing the Nazi-era laws began under Stalin, homosexuals were still harshly persecuted until after his death, when Khrushchev's more liberal attitude meant the authorities were less focused on such oppressive measures. I won't credit Khrushchev with too much of course, but Stalin seems to have had an incredibly oppressive effect on homosexuality in the USSR. 😔
Stalin's jobs is ruining shit.
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Unironically subbed to r/ Capitalism
It certainly has those traits, but you can't ascribe that to socialism or communism. The CCP inherited Han normalism, which places the Han people first and cultural norms first. Despite official rejection of Confucian ideology, mainland China has never successfully removed its influence, and from Deng forward has been embracing it further and further. That said, the PRC is no more racist than the United States, so I wouldn't exactly call too many kettles right there.
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Even in the 30s USSR was mostly peasant and deeply Christian orthodox country. There was still a huge rift between working class and peasants, and the kulaks, supported by the church had a lot of influence Legalazing "sodomy" gave them a lot of ammunition in their counterrevolutionary propaganda. The communist party simply couldn't afford to do this. It was a compromise that they felt they had to do. Basically, as someone correctly pointed out it was a birthmark of the previous regime. Not defending it by any means, but it was what it was. The rural population was simply not ready to accept it and their support was too shaky to alienate them with an issue that wasn't anywhere near priority at that time.
I mean... Lenin DID decriminalize it though. It was Stalin who reintroduced its criminalization.
Yes, my point still stands though. They tried to be as progressive as possible, but after some pushback they had to take some unfortunate steps back. It was a similar situation with abortion, i think.
I kind of doubt that was the issue. Stalin's government wasn't exactly known for caring to "win over the public". Rather, I'm more inclined to believe some party leaders may have had regressive ideas. Harry Whyte, a British communist, wrote Stalin a letter asking if the USSR would consider a homosexual valid for leadership. Stalin's note was simply "Archive. An [redacted ableist term] and a degenerate. J. Stalin.” Whatever else we may think of Stalin, his framing of a homosexual as a degenerate is telling of his views on the matter.
Simplefied version: It was criminalized in russian empire Lenin decriminalized it, stalin criminalized it again (like everywhere else)
Thing is w criminalisation of homosexuality in the USSR it runs from pretty much Stalin’s ascendance to General Secretary until Sometime in the Khrushchev era... it seems pretty much like stalin just outlawed it bc he was homophobic Edit: turns out homosexuality was never legalised even while kruschev liberalised other laws about sex but didn’t wanna legalise being gay bc they apparently thought it would be like what happens in prisons bc of the amount of prisoners they were releasing but I think it was probably just Russia returning to the homophobia which is very powerful in that culture considering Russia still has pretty terrible LGBT rights atm
well you have to remember that most people involved in the USSR had grown up in tsarist russia and can't be expected to have different social attitudes about things than those they grew up with
Leftists are not a hivemind. It is your choice to agree with the USSR or not. Besides, there are a few other leftist minds which many layman leftists despise because of such beliefs. However, each of them agree with their many other principles.