Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia

This study of same-sex love in Russian or Soviet history investigates the private worlds of sexual dissidents during the pivotal decades before and after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Using records and archives available only since the fall of communism Dan Healey revisits the rich homosexual subcultures of St. Petersburg and Moscow, charting the ambiguous attitude of the late Tsarist regime and revolutionary rulers toward gay men and lesbians. Through reading of medical case histories, legal records, courtroom transcripts, and debates within the Commissariats of Justice and Health, Healey examines the Tsarist policing of homosexuality, succesive propsaols to decriminalize sodomy, the interest of Soviet physicians in same-sex love, and the cruel fate of sexual dissidents during the political reign of Joseph Stalin.