Rustam Alexander - Böcker

This ground-breaking book challenges the widespread view that sex and homosexuality were unmentionable in the USSR. The Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras (1956–82) have remained obscure and unexplored from this perspective. Drawing on previously undiscovered sources, Alexander fills in this critical gap. The book reveals that from 1956 to 1991, doctors, educators, jurists and police officers discussed homosexuality. At the heart of discussions were questions which directly affected the lives of homosexual people in the USSR. Was homosexuality a crime, disease or a normal variant of human sexuality? Should lesbianism be criminalised? Could sex education prevent homosexuality? What role did the GULAG and prisons play in homosexuality across the USSR? These discussions often had practical implications – doctors designed and offered medical treatments for homosexuality in hospitals, and procedures and medications were also used in prisons.This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5, Gender equality.

In 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities. Rustam Alexander recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were directly affected by those laws, including a naïve Scottish journalist based in Moscow who dared to write to Stalin in an attempt to save his lover from prosecution, and a homosexual theatre student who came to Moscow in pursuit of a career amid Stalin’s harsh repressions and mass arrests. We also meet a fearless doctor in Siberia who provided medical treatment for gay men at his own peril, and a much-loved Soviet singer who hid his homosexuality from the secret police.Each vignette helps paint the hitherto unknown picture of how Soviet oppression of gay people originated and was perpetuated from Stalin’s rule until the demise of the USSR. This book comes at a time when homophobia is again rearing its ugly head under Putin’s rule.

A poignant and deeply researched history of gay oppression in the USSR.In 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities.Red closet recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were affected by those laws, including a naïve Scottish journalist who dared to write to Stalin in an attempt to save his lover from prosecution and a homosexual theatre student who came to Moscow in pursuit of a career amid Stalin’s harsh repressions and mass arrests. We also meet a fearless doctor in Siberia who provided medical treatment for gay men at his own peril and a much-loved Soviet singer who hid his homosexuality from the secret police.Each story helps paint the hitherto unknown picture of how Soviet oppression of gay people originated and was perpetuated from Stalin’s rule until the demise of the USSR.

The first book to tell the shocking story of the AIDS crisis in Soviet Russia.Throughout the 1980s, as the world was grappling with the escalating crisis of AIDS, Soviet Russia continued to deny there was a problem. Arguing that the disease was limited to foreigners and ‘immoral’ groups, the government failed to take meaningful action, long past the point other countries had begun to recognise the full scale of the threat.In this ground-breaking book, Rustam Alexander tells the story of AIDS in Soviet Russia. Fixated on disinformation, censorship and the persecution of marginalised communities, the Soviet authorities wasted precious time, allowing the epidemic to strike at the very heart of the nation: its children. Yet, despite the government’s failure, a number of brave journalists, doctors and nascent gay groups decided to take matters into their own hands and engage in full-fledged AIDS activism.Tracing the political and social response to AIDS in the final years of the Soviet era, Alexander sheds light on the devastating consequences of government inaction. He draws on personal stories, media reports and archival materials to provide a riveting account of the Russian people’s fight against AIDS amid the tumultuous transformations of Gorbachev’s perestroika.

This book examines the autobiographies and diaries of Soviet homosexual men who underwent psychotherapy during the period from 1970 to 1980 under the guidance of Yan Goland, a psychiatrist-sexopathologist from Gorky. The examination of these unique and little known documents contributes to our scant knowledge about the practices that many would call a Soviet proto-type of 'aversion therapy'. It also helps us understand the way homosexual people faced "queer dilemmas" of the self and how they sought to reconcile their queer desire with being Soviet.