Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia
Author: F. Stella
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137321245

This book explores the everyday lives of 'lesbian' women in urban Russia. It explores changes and continuities by examining generational differences, and attends to regional variation by considering what 'lesbian' life looks like in different locations, problematising essentialist accounts of Russian sexualities and western-centric theorizations.

Soviet and Post-Soviet Sexualities

Soviet and Post-Soviet Sexualities
Author: Richard C.M. Mole
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2019-01-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317224914

Despite Soviet Russia having been one of the first major powers to decriminalise homosexual acts between men, attitudes towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in contemporary Russia and the other post-Soviet states have become increasingly hostile, with the introduction of laws restricting their rights and an increase in homophobic violence. This book explores how this situation has come about. It discusses how meanings attached to non-heteronormative sexualities have been constructed for specific socio-political purposes by elites in line with Marxist-Leninist or nationalist thought, explores how attitudes to non-normative sexualities developed historically and examines the current situation in the post-Soviet space, including Russia, Transcaucasia, Central Asia and the Baltic States. The book provides a wealth of detail on this understudied subject and assesses how LGBT subjects are responding to this state of affairs.

Cracks in the Iron Closet

Cracks in the Iron Closet
Author: David Tuller
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 1997-11-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226815688

David Tuller provides the first look into the emotional and sexual lives of Russian lesbians and gays and the pervasive influence of the state on gay life. Part travelogue, part social history, and part journalistic inquiry, the book challenges our assumptions about what it means to be gay. The book also explores key issues in Russia and Soviet life, including concepts of friendship, community, gender, love, fate, and the relationship between the public and private spheres. "Tuller's observant reporting and personal experiences make for absorbing reading: the human comedy rendered in unexpected ways."—New Yorker "Anyone who thinks San Francisco is the world capital of sexual polymorphism should read this book."—Adam Goodheart, Washington Post "[This book is] is profoundly moving."—Jim Van Buskirk, San Francisco Chronicle

Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi

Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi
Author: Dan Healey
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2017-12-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350000779

"An historical exploration of Russian homophobic attitudes and their origins in the country's troubled 20th century"--

Lyudmila and Natasha

Lyudmila and Natasha
Author: Misha Friedman
Publisher: New Press, The
Total Pages: 100
Release: 2015-02-17
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1620970546

The photojournalist Misha Friedman is renowned for his efforts to capture life in contemporary Russia, documenting subjects as varied as political corruption, the dangers of coal mining, the tuberculosis epidemic, and the Bolshoi Ballet. In publications ranging from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and the New Yorker, Friedman's grimly evocative black-and-white images—“intimate, behind-the-scenes photos” (Time)—have been credited with capturing moments of intense pathos, bleak existence, and human dignity. He has received multiple international awards for his “unflinching” lens and his intrepid reporting. For his new collection of photographs, Lyudmila and Natasha, Friedman trains his lens on a gay couple living on Saint Petersburg, offering a series of intimate snapshots of their relationship as it unfolds over the course of a year. Faced with a hostile political climate, financial difficulties, and often unstable living arrangements, the subjects of this stunning book reveal the possibilities for love in the most uncertain of times. With the fabled city of Saint Petersburg as its backdrop, Lyudmila and Natasha powerfully evokes both a vital place and the people who call it home. Lyudmila and Natasha was designed by Emerson, Wajdowicz Studios (EWS).

Queer in Russia

Queer in Russia
Author: Laurie Essig
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822323464

After a decade of conducting interviews, as well as observing and analyzing plays, books, pop music, and graffiti, Essig presents the first sustained study of how and why there was no Soviet gay community or even gay identity before "perestroika." 9 photos.

Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society

Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society
Author: Julie Makarychev, Andrey Umland, Andreas Fedor
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2020-10-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 3838214668

Special Sections: Russian Foreign Policy Towards the “Near Abroad” and Russia's Annexiation of Crimea II This special section deals with Russia’s post-Maidan foreign policy towards the so-called “near abroad,” or the former Soviet states. This is an important and timely topic, as Russia’s policy perspectives have changed dramatically since 2013/2014, as have those of its neighbors. The Kremlin today is paradoxically following an aggressive “realist” agenda that seeks to clearly delineate its sphere of influence in Europe and Eurasia while simultaneously attempting to promote “soft-power” and a historical-civilizational justification for its recent actions in Ukraine (and elsewhere). The result is an often perplexing amalgam of policy positions that are difficult to disentangle. The contributors to this special issue are all regional specialists based either in Europe or the United States.

Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia

Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia
Author: Edmond J Coleman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2014-05-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317955595

Important new findings on sex and gender in the former Soviet Bloc! Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia is a groundbreaking look at the new sexual reality in Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe after the fall of communism. The book presents the kind of candid discussion of sexual identities, sexual politics, and gender arrangements that was often censored and rarely discussed openly before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1987. Authors from a variety of disciplines examine how the changes caused by rapid economic and social transformation have affected human sexuality and if those changes can generate the social tolerance necessary to produce a well-rooted democracy. The first theoretical and empirical body of work to sexuality in (post)transitional countries, Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia examines the effects of the profound social transformation taking place in the former Soviet Union. Through an interdisciplinary perspective, the book addresses vital issues of this transformation, including gender relations, gender roles and sex norms in transition, sexual representations in the media, patterns of adult sexual behavior, gay and lesbian issues, sex trafficking, health risks, and sex education. The book also presents a critical examination of whether the fall of communism has, in fact, induced changes in sexuality and gender relations. Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia examines the changes in sex and gender in countries in transition, including: the negative consequences of Serbia’s “state-directed non-development” during the 1990s the causes and consequences of trafficking in women from the Russian Federation the ongoing debate over human rights for sexual minorities in Romania the effects of two Yugoslavian films released in the 1990s that feature transgender characters sexualities in transition in Croatia problems created by changes in sexual behavior among urban Russian adolescents the social and legal state of lesbians in Slovenia Sexuality and Gender in Postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia fills in the gap in the current knowledge and understanding of the effects of the profound social changes taking place in Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe. The book is an essential read for academics and researchers working in gender studies, political science, and gay and lesbian studies. Handy tables and figures make the information easy to access and understand.

Lesbian Geographies

Lesbian Geographies
Author: Kath Browne
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317105648

It has long been recognised that the spatialisation of sexual lives is always gendered. Sexism and male dominance are a pervasive reality and lesbian issues are rarely afforded the same prominence as gay issues. Thus, lesbian geographies continue to be a salient axis of difference, challenging the conflation of lesbians and gay men, as well as the trope that homonormativity affects lesbians and gay men in the same ways. This volume explores lesbian geographies in diverse geographical, social and cultural contexts and presents new approaches, using English as a working language but not as a cultural framework. Going beyond the dominant trace of Anglo-American perspectives of research in sexualities, this book presents research in a wide range of countries including Australia, Argentina, Israel, Canada, USA, Russia, Poland, Spain, Hungary and Mexico.

Russian Style

Russian Style
Author: Julie A. Cassiday
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2023
Genre: History
ISBN: 0299346706

In the two decades after the turn of the millennium, Vladimir Putin's control over Russian politics and society grew at a steady pace. As the West liberalized its stance on sexuality and gender, Putin's Russia moved in the opposite direction, remolding the performance of Russian citizenship according to a neoconservative agenda characterized by increasingly exaggerated gender roles. By connecting gendered and sexualized citizenship to developments in Russian popular culture, Julie A. Cassiday argues that heteronormativity and homophobia became a kind of politicized style under Putin's leadership. However, while the multiple modes of gender performativity generated in Russian popular culture between 2000 and 2010 supported Putin's neoconservative agenda, they also helped citizens resist and protest the state's mandate of heteronormativity. Examining everything from memes to the Eurovision Song Contest and self-help literature, Cassiday untangles the discourse of gender to argue that drag, or travesti, became the performative trope par excellence in Putin's Russia. Provocatively, Cassiday further argues that the exaggerated expressions of gender demanded by Putin's regime are best understood as a form of cisgender drag. This smart and lively study provides critical, nuanced analysis of the relationship between popular culture and politics in Russia during Putin's first two decades in power.