Stalin's criminalization of male homosexuality in 1933 led to the worst stigmatization and persecution of homosexuals in Russia's history. The mass arrests in 1934 and periodic crackdowns since that time led to the virtual invisibility of gay men and lesbians in Russian life and literature for the next four decades.

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Only in the 1970s did there appear underground gay writers, such as the poet Gennady Trifonov (b. 1945), who served a hard labor sentence from 1976 to 1980 for privately circulating gay poetry in manuscript; and the fiction writer Yevgeny Kharitonov, who died at the age of forty in 1981, but was published to great acclaim in 1993.

Glasnost and Homosexuality

With the coming of glasnost, gay figures of the past, such as Leontiev and Kuzmin, have been reprinted; a number of gay periodicals have appeared; and foreign gay novels by Marcel Proust and James Baldwin have been translated. Despite the present chaotic conditions in Russia, the decriminalization of homosexuality by Boris Yeltsin's government suggests that the future of Russian gay literature might well turn out to be promising.

The confusion of queer identities and possibilities presented by Moscow owes much to its rapid growth and village origins of its inhabitants.

A cultural crossroads between Asia and Europe, Russia has a long, rich, and often violent heritage of varied influences and stark confrontations in regard to its patterns of same-sex love.

St. Petersburg, Russa was once the crucible of one of history's liveliest and most articulate homosexual cultures.

James Baldwin, a pioneering figure in twentieth-century literature, wrote sustained and articulate challenges to American racism and mandatory heterosexuality.

For Russian nobleman Sergei Diaghilev, who revolutionized music, the visual arts, theater, and dance, homosexuality may have been integral to his creativity.

The mother of modern dance, Isadora Duncan brought her feminist consciousness to the stage; and in her bohemian private life, she constantly challenged society's rules.

One of the earliest gay photographers of the male nude, Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden created images that evoke a dreamy vision of forbidden desire, while also raising questions about sexual tourism and kitsch.

Nikolai Gogol's repressed homosexuality is reflected obliquely in nearly all of his works, especially in the fear of marriage that permeates his stories and plays.

The Russian writer and translator Mikhail Kuzmin wrote poems and novels that present sympathetic, often idealistic, portrayals of gay love and desire.

The creativity of Russian poet Sophia Parnok was closely linked to her lesbianism.

Marcel Proust is the author of A la recherche du temps perdu, one of the major achievements of Modernism and a great gay novel.

One of the greatest composers in the history of music, Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky inspired a cult of gay admirers who detected in his work themes of forbidden love.

A lesbian theme runs throughout the works of Marina Tsvetaeva, widely considered one of the four greatest twentieth-century Russian poets.