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Life in Russia

The life of an average Russian gay, what does it feel like? I bet this is one of the questions that brought you to our site. The answer is quite simple - it is much the same as in the West. Like any Western gay, we get up in the morning, shave, take a shower, eat breakfast, kiss good-bye to our parner (if we are fortunate to have one) and go to the office. We work, chat with colleagues (some of them share our 'small secret', sometimes we are not 'out'), then go home. In the evening we cruise (if we happen not to have a partner) - in the parks, saunas, discos or in the Net - we fall in love, we part, we forgive, we forget. Well, does it matter so much that we take metro to go to the office, while you take a car, or that we prefer black tea to Starbucks coffee? We have a much more important thing in common: we all need to love and to be loved.

If you have come to our site for the thrilling stories of prosecution of gays in Russia, you will hardly find any, the state clampdown is, fortunately, a matter of the past. Essays in this section can also be dubbed "Russian Gays and Russian Society" for they discover this interaction from different points of view - whether it is about the evolution of the gay scene, the attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church towards gays, the life of a gay couple in a small Ukrainian village, or the opening of a new gay disco in Moscow.

Read our FAQ section to find out about the marriage law, gay Pride and discrimination of gay and transsexual people in the country.

Photo by Seva Galkin

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News on "Life in Russia"

· 17/02/2010 Murderer of a 22-year old gay got “gentle” punishment
· 15/02/2010 2nd Rainbow Strike Bowling Championship to play in Chelyabinsk this April
· 11/02/2010 “I Love You, Philip Morris!” on the Russian screens
· 03/02/2010 "Raduga" (Rainbow) - 1st National Gay Help Line Launched in Russia
· 28/01/2010 The Russian LGBT Network prepares for RWAHO-2010
· 07/01/2010 Petersburg beats Moscow in lesbian entertainment
· 06/01/2010 LGBT Legal Service Starts in Petrozavodsk
· 26/12/2009 Drag Queen 2009 of Ural region
· 04/12/2009 LGBT Christians international conference summed up in Moscow
· 03/12/2009 LGBT community of Saint-Petersburg calls for further strengthening and development of the National volunteer movement

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All articles on "Life in Russia"

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· Petersburg is responsible for...
The tolerance level towards LGBT people among citizens of the Northern Russian Capital has showed gradual increase in recent months

· Carrying One’s Cross
Only one week ago, Arseny turned 35. He is medium height, with an unathletic figure, he has thick, wavy hair, so he wears it very short. He has deep-set grey eyes, a small nose, thin lips and a chin that resembles someone who is strong-willed. You cannot call Arseny handsome by any means, perhaps because of the “beard” that he wears, possibly for some other reason.

· Kiev’s “Queer Week”: We didn’t invite journalist, we worked for the community
The conclusion of Spring brought to Kiev a repeat of the festival “Queer Week.” Through the use of art techniques, the group wanted to illustrate the wide differences that exist in our society.

· The Russian LGBT Network pronounces 2009 to be memorial year for the gay and lesbian victims of political repressions
75 years ago, the Soviet system began political repressions against gays and lesbians.

· Discrimination in Russia
We've compiled the list of most asked questions about the law and the society in Russia.

· Rights Movement Divides Russia's Gay Community
Elena Gusyatinskaya's tiny apartment in the drab northwestern outskirts of Moscow holds a special place in the city's gay subculture. Her living room is really a gay-themed library, lined to the ceiling with books, manuscripts, magazines, movies and many-colored binders of newspaper clippings...

· "My Happy Family". Documentary
"My Happy Family" is a documentary examining challenges of lesbian motherhood in Russia. The film focuses on the first stage of parenthood - family planning - along with the decision making process of giving birth to a child in a same-sex family, and a consideration of the options available to lesbian couples in Russia.

· Soviet Homophobia
Soviet punitive psychiatry was one of the main weapons of both legal and illegal repression. Sexologically ignorant psychiatrists were always ready to find some serious diagnosis that enabled persons so stigmatized to be put under lifelong medical and police observation or detained in a psychiatric hospital under conditions often much worse than prison.

· Declaration by Members and Partners of Russian LGBT Organisations Network
The most important thing is that the prohibition for free circulation of information legalises and perpetuates the close nature of LGBT community, which is the main cause of discrimination, irrational fears and slander with respect to homosexuals.

· Shaved, Brave and Ready to Rave
"I've been dressing up as a woman for 15 years now," said Ivan, resplendent in silver hair and a long, lacy dress of his own design. "Before, we had to do it on the quiet, in secret, but now we can be women as much as we like."

· Julie's Desperate Search for Home
The 15th child of a Chechen elder, Julie is a transsexual - a man who is psychologically a woman - and must worry not only about Russian bombs but her Islamic homeland's traditional culture, which is not receptive to gays and transsexuals.

· Coming Out for Bisexuals
Bisexuals have many things in common with gay men and lesbians. At the same time there are some differences that can make our experience distinctive. Bisexuals get flak from both sides; we can't take for granted the support of either the mainstream or the gay/lesbian communities.

· What is Biphobia?
For bisexually identified people to maintain their integrity in a homo-hating heterosexist society they must have a strong sense of self, and the courage and conviction to live their lives in defiance of what passes for "normal."

· Life Line
I've never wanted her to be better or worse. I feel that she also accepts me as I am. She never tried to change me or render different in this or that. I was free of the necessity to pretend. I discovered that I could just be…

· To Be a Lesbian in Ukraine
My ideal of a dyke is as follows: smart, pretty, moderately feminine (boyish in a cute way which just adds to her charm), stylish (in a broad sense – having found her own style on life's catwalk), independent and free-spirited, romantic and mild, generous and exalted, understanding and hip to diverse phenomena of modern life.

· Low Awareness Shelters Russia's Lesbian Moms
Overall, society's ignorance has been a blessing for Irina, a 41-year-old lesbian mother of two. Several years ago, the English-language teacher left her second husband and set up house in Moscow with her female lover and her two teenage daughters.

· The Royal She
The nighttime transformation of Sergei, a member of a popular Moscow theater company, into Lora Kolli, director of an eponymous drag theater and the self-styled matriarch of Moscow's drag cabaret scene.

· Weird Moscow
Since its first few appearances on the Moscow scene in the late 1980's, drag has slowly been making a comeback in Russia. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, clubs with regularly scheduled drag performances have been opened, and performers periodically rent out theaters for shows.

· Go Girl!
Since its first few appearances on the Moscow scene in the late 1980's, drag has slowly been making a comeback in Russia. In Moscow and St. Petersburg, clubs with regularly scheduled drag performances have been opened, and performers periodically rent out theaters for shows.

· Bisexuality
Bisexuality is the capacity for emotional, romantic, and/or physical attraction to more than one gender/sex. A person who self identifies as bisexual affirms this complexity and acknowledges a reality beyond the either/or dualities of heterosexism.

· Struggle for Decriminalization
After 1987, the question of what exactly homosexuality was and how one should relate to "blues" - whether to regard them as sick, as criminals. or as victims of fate - began to be discussed extensively in the popular, especially youth, press.

· Repeal of Article 121
The principle of gender equality in sexual relations also presented difficulty. Because rape was believed to be a more serious offense than any other sexual assault, the rape of an adult woman or a young girl was punishable much more severely than any forced sexual assault or penetration inflicted upon an adult male or young boy.

· Changing Public Opinion
The social situation of sexual minorities is everywhere affected by public attitudes, which do not change overnight. Homophobia and discrimination against gay men and lesbians are still conspicuous in present-day Russian sexual and political culture.

· Problems and Prospects
The most obvious social change in Russia is the disappearance of the old conspiracy of silence and the appearance of same-sex love as a fashionable topic for newspapers, art, and salon conversation. Formerly suppressed and forbidden "gay sensibilities" and eroticism are gradually being recognized and integrated into the elite culture

· Introduction
In the Soviet era, domestic space for all was squeezed by unprecedented pressures. In such conditions, Muscovites were accustomed to appropriating public spaces, and constructing privacy in them through various devices.

· 1600-1861: Traditional Masculinities And Love Between Men
Until some time into the nineteenth century, it appears that masculine norms for the majority of Russians (i.e. peasants and lower orders of townsmen) included permission for some forms of same-sex erotic contact. There was no 'homosexual identity' discernible among a subset of Muscovite men, much less a corresponding subculture.

· 1861-1917: The Appearance of a Homosexual Subculture
The late tsarist decades were a period of rapid social transformation, and as might be expected, Moscow shared in that change. The transitional mentality characteristic of the era is illustrated in the attitudes of a Moscow merchant from the peasant estate, Pavel Vasil'evich Medved'ev, whose diary of the year 1861 describes his emotional and spiritual inner world.

· 1917-1991: Carving Privacy From Communal Space
The World War, revolution and then civil war brought sweeping and devastating change to Moscow in the years between 1914 and 1921. Combat, epidemics, migration and starvation decimated the urban population, and from a 1917 high of 1.9 million, the city's inhabitants dropped to only 1 million in 1921.

· Moolight Love
This was the first book ever published in Russian that covered the controversial subject of homosexuality from a non-medical point of view. Moonlight has a light-blue color, and 'goluboy' ('a light-blue one') is a common Russian word to denote a male homosexual.

· Historical Prelude
Inconsistencies were inevitable, as the process of Christianization of Russia, which lasted over centuries - all the while involving new territories and peoples - was in many ways incomplete and superficial. Christian norms not only coexisted with pagan norms, but also frequently incorporated them.

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