The Early USSR was not tolerant of queers — Debunking the Myth of “Queer Tolerance”

Against Western woke nonsense!

A common mythical narrative among “leftists” (and self-proclaimed Marxists) is that in the early years of socialist Russia and the USSR, homosexuality was “decriminalized” and thus concluding that from the mere abolishment of a criminal code of the past regime, which happened to include anti-LGBT laws, homosexuals were now all of a sudden, free men who could do whatever they want. Through my understanding of the early Soviet law as well as reading up on cases of early intolerance towards homosexuals, I’ve decided to once and for all bust this insidious myth that the USSR “decriminalized” homosexuality. Here I will focus more on the early aspects of anti-LGBT sentiment in the USSR (before 1934) in this article.

1. ON ABOLISHING OF THE TSARIST CODE

A common reason to imply that homosexuality was “decriminalized” in the USSR was due to the criminal code of the Tsarist Russia (imposed in 1903 as the last criminal code of such) being abolished which happened to include anti-LGBT laws. The reason why this argument falls apart is because of this. Abolishing a criminal code does not just abolish select few laws, but all of the laws of said code. This means that crimes such as murder and theft, were also “decriminalized” should we follow by the logic that abolishing a criminal code decriminalizes criminal actions that were mentioned in that code. This is profoundly a low and stupid implication of “decriminalizing” something. Even when the code was abolished, crimes were still punished under revolutionary Russia and early USSR.

We know that crimes were still punished after the code was abolished because of the people’s courts that were established after the overthrow of the bourgeois liberal Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1917. In July 1918, the 5th All-Russian Congress of the Soviets adopted and published the constitution of the RSFSR, and so, law continued to exist among the Bolsheviks.

2. THE SOCIAL AND LEGAL ATTITUDE IN THE EARLY PERIOD

Article 176 regarding the crime of Hooliganism as a likely factor to have resulted in punishing homosexuality in the early USSR (Criminal Code of the RSFSR, June 1st, 1922)

When brought up that USSR did not decriminalize nor tolerate homosexuality, often will they bring up that homosexuality was apparently “decriminalized” in Russia and Ukraine (like the ProleWiki revisionists who support outright anti-LGBT countries (as literally pro-LGBT countries are usually first-world, Western-aligned, capitalist nations) yet at the same time emphasize need to support the LGBT people). This, I could not verify because no legal protection of homosexuals was mentioned in the criminal code of RSFSR (1922) when talking about crimes against ordinary people (Chapter 5, articles 142–179).

Homosexuality clearly wasn’t “decriminalized” (de jure) as there were no legal articles implying that being homosexual was protected under a certain clause of the law. It was simply not the interest of the Bolsheviks to instill any pro-LGBT law at all and thus couldn’t care any less on what many liberals and revisionists decry as “social stigma”. The principles of socialism simply do not require tolerance of LGBT people in order to be considered as “proper” or “true” (besides, the pro-LGBT social narrative once again was pushed by Western individualist libertine thinkers).

But just because there was no law against homosexuality, did not mean homosexuality was unpunished. We have stated earlier that the 1922 criminal code did not legalize homosexuality (no article in the code supports homosexual relations), but there were no direct articles against homosexuality. This is because homosexuality was punished under different terms that were not direct. Even before the criminal code, we see how in the example of prostitution (see Alexandra Kollontai, 1921), one was punished regardless if there wasn’t a clear law that directly stated so.

But just because of such sheer absence of law, it did not mean that it likely had to rely on other articles of the socialist law. Prostitution very much was deemed negatively by the Bolsheviks and Lenin himself (who massacred prostitutes because they were pleasuring the White Army soldiers and officers) seeing them as enemies who are more so aligned to the Menshevik and the White Army cause. This was legally criminalized in the 1922 code (Article 171, punished with three years of imprisonment).

Homosexuality was not directly criminalized until 1934, but was still punished, proven by the rather socially conservative attitude of both the working masses and the party members. Homosexuality was not seen as positive at all in the 1920s Soviet Union and was punished via article 176 as an act of hooliganism. This originated in 1921 when Soviet psychologist, Vladimir Bekhterev said, “The introduction of homosexual tastes and activities to the broad public…is socially harmful and cannot be permitted. The creation of clubs or dens for such purposes must be punished under the criminal law.’” (from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, pg. 593, cited in the Sociolegal Control of Homosexuality, pg. 224).

And thus, in 1922, homosexuality was legally seen as an act of hooliganism under Article 176 rather than a separate action of its own. This is proven by two cases that took place. The first case was when the Cheka raided a gay bar, suspecting it to harbor counter-revolutionary tendencies (Articles 57–73 of the 1922 criminal code). Official Soviet media reported it to be a “club” or a “den” for “sexual perverts”. They arrested them all and tried them as a danger to public welfare.

The second case involved a lesbian couple (of which one engaged in illegal forgery of documents and cross-dressed into a man in order to attain marriage certificate via a loophole). The woman in question was Evgeniia, who illegally changed her name to “Evgenii” in order to get a legal loophole for her same-sex partner. Despite allegedly not being able to find any signs of “abnormal behavior”, this case very much was sanctioned as it was indeed punishable under articles 177–179 to deliberately falsify information (and given the case took place in 1922 following the institution of the all-Union criminal code, the pair were defined in having falsified the documents). The “Evgenii” woman continued to face trouble with the law for continued impersonation, having been arrested in 1926 for such.

We hereby declare here, in conclusion, that homosexuality was never decriminalized in the USSR in the first place, that the abolishing of a previous criminal code, the social attitude, and thus the general perception, were negative towards homosexuality, especially the early legal structure of USSR in 1922 which punished homosexuality as an act of hooliganism (Article 176) as well as punishing transvestites under the clause of impersonation and falsifying documents (articles 177–179).

3. LENIN’S OFFICIAL POSITION ON SEXUALITY

Our final key component to ultimately bust this myth about a “pro-LGBT” USSR is by taking the official stance of its one fatherly revolutionary, Vladimir Lenin. Lenin very much had expressed his stances on love and sexuality. These are his official words and statements that I have uncovered from my research.

In his letters to Inessa Armand in 1915, Lenin identified 10 points regarding the concept of “free love”. Numbers 8 to 10 (freedom to non-reproduction and adultery) were regarded as “bourgeois”, while numbers 1 and 2 were the most important and primary for the proletariat (freedom from material burden). Other numbers before 8 are thus seen as proletarian by Lenin. We see that Lenin defines free love as the freedom from the material burden in affairs of love as well as freedom from social prejudice (and narrow circumstances of such) and arrangements by “Papa”. A person deserves free love, but no person shall ever cheat in a relationship and no person shall refuse to have children (“Do not be afraid of having children. Society needs more workers and rejoices at the birth of every child.”, Kollontai, 1920).

In his 1920 letters to Clara Zetkin, Lenin rejected the Glass of Water theory (that doing sexual acts will be as simple as drinking a glass of water), deeming it as “un-Marxist”. Lenin further said that “the present widespread hypertrophy in sexual matters does not give joy and force to life, but takes it away”. Lenin opposed sexual deviance. He wanted the youth to engage in more healthy activities such as “swimming, racing, walking, bodily exercises of every kind, and many-sided intellectual interests”. These were more important to do than engage in sexual hooliganism and infidelity (“He reels and staggers from one love affair to the next. That won’t do for the political struggle, for the revolution.”).

Yes, Lenin would have condemned homosexuality if he wanted to, but instead went on a more general concept of sexual hooliganism that he felt was plaguing the youth. He wanted people to focus more on healthy lifestyles and sought to discourage any deviant lifestyles, hence why he took opposition to the idea that free love would mean no reproduction and endless cheating (in a 1915 letter to Inessa Armand).

This is also why he was fine with having homosexuality punished as an act of hooliganism in the USSR and was fine with ordering a massacre of prostitutes due to them being aligned with the White Army and the Menshevik enemies. Lenin did not, ever, advocate for any legal and practical protection of homosexuals. All this jabber from self-proclaimed “Marxists” and more libertine “leftists” stems from oversimplified and greatly falsified perceptions and misinterpretations of Lenin’s social position and the general official Soviet stance on homosexuality, whether through social presentation and whether through legal matters.