Part 3: Journeys and Interviews in Russia
“All the best ones, when you thought it over, were gay.”
Revolutionary Romances
July 23, 1991, Leningrad. Opening day of Russia’s first ever Lesbian and Gay Symposium and Film Festival. Last time I was here, fourteen years ago, I was another person, married but coming out, meeting my first love. Before I went to Russia in 1991, people had very little contact with anyone outside their country. It was a crime”punishable by prison to have contact with foreigners.
Emerging from a bus with seventy North American queers, eager to meet and show off to Russian novices who did not quite trust the new perestroika freedoms, I tried to make eye contact with one of the women standing outside smoking, but she looked away. Fifteen or more young men and a few women milled tentatively around the entrance of the House of Culture on Sophia Perovskaya Street. Some lurked with their backs half turned, unwilling to enter the white two-story building; others seemed ready to take off running. My heart was beating fast; I was nervous, too. Were they waiting for friends to take their big step with, or were they just cruising the Americans? Peter the Great’s canal rippled a nod. I was here!
Exactly fourteen years ago, as a meek twenty-five-year-old married woman, I had joined a tour of Russia and found myself wandering around Leningrad, asking passersby for directions and wondering why they were ignoring me. At the time, Russians could not risk so much as talking to foreigners, could not risk even talking to foreigners on the street for fear of imprisonment or at least censure. Meeting my first love in Soviet Russia, in the summer of 1977, was revolutionary because any kind of openness, never mind about sexuality, was taboo. We were both foreigners so it wasn’t the same for us. Even back then, in that hostile atmosphere, I knew there was no turning back to the traditional heterosexual lifestyle I had in California. I was forever indebted to Russia for my lesbian passage and my liberation. Russia was where I had the opportunity and courage to come out.
Now, in the summer of 1991, I was a veteran activist and a new Russia was blossoming. Soviet Leningrad would soon revert to its original name, St. Petersburg, and after decades of hiding and fear, the lives of sexual minorities in Russia would gradually become more public. Even so, the cameras hanging around our necks were ominous to those prospective participants at the entrance of the House of Culture. Making eye contact and talking could still have consequences. I watched my friend Alan approach a group of men. One of them waved his hand in front of the camera while the others turned away in unison, as if doing a dance routine. The whole atmosphere in Leningrad seemed furtive and quiet; a smaller number of people attended our event. It was as if they were waiting to watch the reception in the capital, which was to come.
As we lingered outside, I explained to a group of our English-speaking delegates that tematichesky (thematic) was a code word for homosexual. Beginning in 1934, Stalin and others tried to wipe out homosexuality in the Soviet Union, on the heels of Hitler in Germany. Countless men, both gay and non-gay, had been subjected to the most deplorable humiliating treatment and prison conditions, over the past six decades. Women were also victimized often by forced psychiatric treatment. As a result of this campaign, most ordinary Russians believed that homosexuals were either criminals or mentally ill. In Russia, anyone could be prosecuted for all kinds of alleged offenses, such as hooliganism. With that kind of fear instilled in the population, it was a wonder anyone came out to the House of Culture for the festival opening.
Three days later we took the festival to Moscow where it was the biggest happening in the great capital. Thousands of Muscovites flocked to My Beautiful Laundrette, Desert Hearts, The Times of Harvey Milk, Maurice, November Moon, and an early film of Gus Van Sant’s, Mala Noche. Russian queers found themselves in the same line as movie buffs, taking the rare chance to see foreign films. While LGBTs and those curious about the life watched queer stories of heartbreak and struggle on the screen, the rest of the audience perhaps saw them as fantasies unrelated to their lives. Few Russians knew that one of their greatest and best known artists, the nineteenth century composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was gay.
The dearest friends I made during those two weeks were the six Siberians. Imagine traveling across the entire country at a time when it was abnormal to travel at all in Russia, except for official reasons. How did these young people trust that the event would even take place? Upon their arrival in Moscow for the first time, Asya and Lena and Olga from Novosibirsk, Natasha from Krasnoyarsk, and Benjamin and Aleksey from Barnaul consented to hold a press conference. Our activities were organized by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, a U.S. organization, with the help of gay and lesbian leaders in Moscow and Leningrad. The Russian government at the time was in transition so they were not interested in our actions. One of my favorite actions was the kiss-ins at the monument of Yury Dolgoruky, founder of Moscow. We planned ahead—which couples would kiss and drape the steps leading up to the monument. And the couples just made out right there in a group on the steps of the monument, in the middle of Moscow. At the forefront of the kiss-ins, Asya and Lena, together for about a year, came out publicly on Moscow TV. reporters and American delegates.
Benjamin and Aleksey also shared their heretofore secret lives with reporters and American delegates. It was so brave to announce themselves as a couple, knowing the news would get back to Barnaul. In front of the Bolshoy Theater a few of us stood in various spots, giving out condoms to passersby who took them without hesitation and seemed quite interested. Benjamin said to me, “People don’t even know what they are taking home. They love freebies.” We laughed.
These were much more serious steps than any of the Americans could know. The media did report on some of the actions. “We didn’t come here to hide under a chair,” Natasha told the Moscow press. The Siberians risked losing their jobs when they returned home. Asya worried that her mother might try to institutionalize her. Contrary to her expectations, Natasha, a TV technician, received a supportive response from her coworkers at her job in Krasnoyarsk. When her supervisor tried to harass her, her coworkers protested and he backed off. Perusing photos Natasha had from the conference, one coworker remarked, “How can people with such beautiful sincere eyes be bad?”
Along with queer materials and our own stories and experiences to share with our new Russian friends, some of us took videos and recorded conversations. When I returned to San Francisco, the gay magazine, The Advocate, published my short profile of Olga Krause, the St. Petersburg singer and poet who attended the conference. Olga became a good friend and over the next years continued to sing, becoming a queer activist and author of books about her life as a lesbian. I resolved to come back and travel through Russia to interview more sexual minorities, the term often used in Russia for LGBTs. Shortly after we returned home in August, there was a coup in Russia that ended up establishing Boris Yeltsin as president—a new democracy was beginning. For the next six years I continued to collect amazing stories.