1
On 27 January 1956 the head of the corrective and labour camps and colonies of the MVD, Sergei Yegorovich Yegorov, signed a new decree featuring an unusual subject.1 The document drew the attention of GULAG directors to the growing problem of homosexuality in colonies and prisons, which, as Yegorov wrote, was ‘likely to have serious consequences’, if measures to prevent it were not taken:
The Central Administration of prison camps and colonies of the MVD USSR has information about increased instances (among both male and female prisoners) of sodomy (muzhelozhstva), lesbian love and other types of sexual perversion, including rape and syphilis infections resulting from this. Considering that this state of affairs is abnormal and that it is likely to have serious consequences, I request that you study this phenomenon on the ground and in detail and then submit an elaborate report (dokladnaya) to the Central Administration of prison camps and colonies of the MVD USSR by 15 March 1956.2
Yegorov went on to specify a list of the issues which he expected the chiefs of the GULAG colonies across the Soviet Union to address in their reports. Among other matters he required that they provide statistics on ‘frequency of the instances of sexual perversions among prisoners’, ‘types of sexual perversions’ and ‘instances of mental, venereal and other illnesses due to this (na etoi pochve)’ and information on ‘the cohort of prisoners engaging in sexual perversions, their age, gender, physical state and the type of conviction’.3 Furthermore, Yegorov sought suggestions on ‘the measures of the regime (rezhimnyi), educative or whatever measures of influence on prisoners, required to be employed in the struggle with sexual perversions’. The head of the GULAG also suggested that apart from prison officers, specialists in psychiatry, forensic medicine and venereology should also be engaged in the effort to eradicate homosexuality in the GULAG system.4
Yegorov’s decree represented, in Michel Foucault’s words, an ‘institutional incitement’ to speak about homosexuality and a ‘determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken about’.5 It was also apparently one of the first serious and massive attempts of the Soviet officials to bring same-sex desire ‘under the authority of the language’ and ‘take charge’ of it through discourse after Stalin’s death. Indeed, Yegorov’s decree gave rise to fruitful discussions on homosexuality among GULAG directors and doctors which I will explore in the sections to follow. In their reports GULAG directors framed homosexuality as not just a crime against morality, but a problem that had implications for the inmates’ health and the GULAG’s economic productivity. Same-sex activity was a source of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) which threatened to go beyond the barbed wire and spread to society at large. It also provoked gruesome acts of violence among prisoners, fomenting the establishment of informal prisoner hierarchies and destabilising camp discipline and work. GULAG directors proposed to tackle homosexuality with discourse: they stressed the importance of educational work with prisoners and individual discussions between the doctor and the prisoner on the harm of this phenomenon. GULAG doctors, often underestimated and neglected, seized the opportunity to demonstrate the utility of their profession to the GULAG leadership by studying lesbianism, offering scientific solutions to the problem and, most importantly, emphasising the crucial role they played in the fight against it.
Yet, despite their use of discourse against homosexual activity, some GULAG directors still contended that camp authorities should continue to punish male same-sex activity in the camps with prison terms, and that lesbianism should be criminalised too. Doctors, while not opposing the prosecution of male homosexual activity, had a different opinion on lesbianism, preferring to examine it through a scientific lens. According to them, female homosexuality was a temporary phenomenon which in most cases would disappear once the prisoner was released, and only hardened lesbians should be tackled with punitive measures.
GULAG crackdown on homosexual sex: reasons and background
So why did the issue of homosexuality become a matter of urgency for the GULAG leaders in early 1956? Dan Healey tells us that the sexual culture of the Soviet GULAG was no different from that of tsarist prisons, where same-sex activity flourished and was deplored by penal experts.6 In the Stalin GULAG, male and female homosexual activity was highly visible too. Although male homosexual relations were often marked with rape and sexual abuse of younger inmates at the hands of older or more ‘criminal’ inmates, some same-sex liaisons could be consensual.7 Lesbian relationships, according to the GULAG memoirists, were less violent and often gendered – ‘masculinised’, tougher women cohabited with more submissive ‘feminine’ partners – and such couples mounted stiff resistance to the authorities’ attempts to separate them.8
A handful of indictments and terse summaries of GULAG sodomy cases from 1943 to 1953 demonstrate that camp authorities routinely prosecuted same-sex relations between men. Such cases were tried in special camp courts, which were created in 1944 and dealt specifically with the crimes committed in the corrective labour colonies.9 Courts relied on the testimonies of eyewitnesses and camp guards who caught the defendants red-handed. Medical examinations of the suspects appear to have been conducted occasionally: only one indictment contains a reference to this procedure.10 It also seems that inmates playing an ‘active’ role in sexual intercourse were likely to be penalised more severely than their ‘passive partners’. For instance, inmates Sherbakov and Golubev from the Khabarovsk GULAG, who were found guilty of consensual sodomy which they engaged in during January and February 1951, received different sentences. Sherbakov, who played an active role, received five years in prison and Golubev three years.11 Sherbakov twice tried to appeal the court’s decision, arguing in his complaint to the USSR Supreme Court that his ill-wishers deliberately gave false testimony against him, but his complaints were eventually rejected.12 Judicial decisions in sodomy cases could also be affected by special state occasions: Mark Dubovitskii, convicted for sodomy with minors in one of the prisons of the city of Nal’chik in August 1945, had the charges against him revoked and was released as part of Stalin’s 1945 amnesty.13
After Stalin’s death it became obvious to his heirs that the GULAG was in urgent need of reform. The system of prison camps and colonies was indeed in deep crisis: it was economically inefficient, and due to the rapid growth of the prison population, it was becoming more difficult to control. Prisoners actively sought to undermine the camp administration’s authority, taking part in acts of mass disobedience, refusing to work and instigating uprisings.14 Messages about the GULAG system’s degradation were quickly reaching the Party leaders, who received numerous complaints from prisoners about their dire living conditions and the rampant criminality in the camps.15
One of the Party’s earliest responses to this crisis was the amnesty decree in 1953, which triggered the release of 1.2 million prisoners from the camps and colonies.16 Far from resolving the GULAG crisis, this led to more problems and concerns. The mass exodus of an able-bodied ‘positive contingent’ (polozhitel’nogo kontingenta) from camps and colonies led to a deficit of a qualified labour force in the camp system, while the sharp increase in the remaining cohorts of especially dangerous criminals (osobo opasnykh prestupnikov) further intensified tensions in the GULAG and led to more prisoner uprisings.17 A wave of crime overwhelming the entire country was another undesirable consequence of the mass exodus of prisoners.18 Despite this, the Soviet leadership continued reducing the size of the GULAG, placing the blame for the crime wave on the camp officials, who had ostensibly failed to re-educate prisoners and prepare them for life outside the GULAG.19
Yegorov’s decree was a product of these massive reforms: it reflected the GULAG leadership’s anxiety about the mass release of prisoners into the society, which could have unforeseen consequences. In particular, camp authorities and medics were anxious about the possible spread of the prisoners’ homosexual relations beyond the barbed wire, along with a spread of STIs such as syphilis, believed to be a consequence of sodomy.20 Yegorov’s call for educative measures also appears to be a result of Stalin’s heirs’ determination to ‘diminish the economic focus’ of the GULAG ‘in favour of re-education’ of prisoners, as demonstrated by Jeffrey S. Hardy.21 GULAG inmates were no longer to be perceived as merely a labour force; instead, camp administrators were encouraged to view them as ‘wayward citizens in need of encouragement, support, trust, training and education’.22 As part of this ‘re-education’ shift, the party leadership adopted other decrees between March and July 1954. These required that GULAG officials prepare inmates ‘for an honest working life’ through the improvement of the use of labour, education and political work.23 Yet, as Hardy has argued, Stalin’s heirs did not have a clear strategy on how to transform the GULAG into a place of re-education.24 The lack of such a strategy is palpable in the GULAG commandants’ approach to homosexuality, which I will examine further: although they reported the usefulness of ‘educative talks’ with prisoners engaging in same-sex activities, some of them still suggested that criminal sanctions were more efficient.
Yegorov circulated the decree to the directors of the corrective labour camps across the entire Soviet Union.25 However, only one short memorandum responding to his call is available in the archives – signed by the head of the Siberian GULAG, Velikanov.26 Addressing his report to the new director of the GULAG, Pavel Nikolaevich Bakin, who took over from Yegorov on 4 April 1956, Velikanov admitted that in the Siberian corrective labour camp there were instances of ‘lesbian love’ among women:
In the MVD Siberian corrective labour camp there are instances of sexual perversions in the female camp sections. So-called lesbian love is common among female prisoners. This type of sexual perversion is mainly prevalent among women prisoners at the age of twenty to forty years, who come from criminal-bandit and thief cohorts (ugolovno-banditstvuyushchii i vorovskoi element) with multiple convictions for various crimes… [In the camp sections], where thieves-recidivists and criminal-bandit cohorts with multiple convictions are housed, 50–60% of all prisoners engage in sexual perversions. In other camp sections that house inmates convicted for the first time and those convicted under article 58 the instances of sexual perversions are also present, but they are not widespread (ne nosyat massovogo kharaktera).27
This report is unique documentary evidence of the camp authorities’ understanding of the distribution and nature of homosexual activity in the GULAG. Velikanov believed that homosexuality was more characteristic of common prisoners with multiple convictions, rather than political prisoners from the educated intelligentsia. The latter, relating their GULAG experiences in memoirs, demonstrated a similar perception of GULAG homosexuality, also suggesting that it was widespread among common criminals and distancing themselves from it.28
Out of four suggestions offered by Velikanov to tackle lesbianism, two recommended punitive measures. He suggested imposing administrative penalties on lesbians who violated the camp order: ‘Sexual perversions are to be considered a breach of the camp regime and the perpetrators are to be punished administratively as in cases of other breaches of camp discipline.’29 Most importantly, he advocated criminalising female homosexual acts by going as far as to petition the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR ‘for imposition of a penalty for individuals engaging in sexual perversions’.30 As I will show further, other GULAG directors also called for criminalisation of female homosexuality, arguing that no other measures against lesbians were as effective, yet their proposals never became law.
Among other proposals in Velikanov’s report were the enforcement of nocturnal surveillance over prisoners’ barracks and ‘conducting of regular competent conversations (kvalifitsirovannykh besed) on the harm of sexual perversions’ among them. As Yegorov’s decree dictated, Velikanov consulted with the doctors on the issue too. In their opinion, the root of the problem was women’s isolation from men: ‘The medical personnel believe that the main reasons for sexual perversions among women are physiological needs, arising as a result of their long isolation from men.’31 As I will show further, other GULAG doctors held similar opinions on the origins of homosexuality – they argued that female homosexuality would disappear on its own once women engaging in lesbianism had access to men.
Homosexuality in the reports of GULAG officials
Fresh scholarship reveals that in the late 1950s the GULAG leadership was deeply concerned about the rise in criminal activity in the camps, and particularly criminal gangs that undermined the camp order. As early as 5 April 1956 the MVD leadership observed that more than 25 per cent of all camp prisoners were recidivists, who committed robberies, murders and other grave crimes, adversely influencing the camp life.32 The guard department of the GULAG was so worried about these problems that it wrote more than a thousand pages on the issue between October 1957 and July 1958.33 It was precisely in the context of anxiety about the growing criminal activity in the GULAG that its directors started to problematise the phenomenon of homosexuality.
Party officials frequently released decrees in which they urged GULAG officials to tackle crime in the camps more effectively, and these decrees apparently mentioned homosexuality too. On 25 October 1956 the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee of the Communist Party issued one such decree. The text is not available, but the responding reports by camp directors on its enforcement suggest that sodomy and lesbianism were listed among crimes to be tackled. On 1 July 1958 the head of the Corrective Labour Colonies of Belarus, Soblov, summarised the tasks set out by the decree in his report:
The Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of 25 October 1956 that focused on the struggle with crime in camps and colonies demanded that the leadership of the UITK [Upravlenie ispravitel’no-trudovykh kolonii, Directorate of Corrective Labour Camps] and corrective labour colonies undertake the most energetic measures to prevent sodomy and other sexual perversions among prisoners.34
Soblov reported that the colony’s administration had increased surveillance over prisoners’ behaviour to identify those ‘inclined to sodomy and other sexual perversions’, enforced nocturnal surveillance over bunk beds (spal’nye mesta) and conducted systematic ‘educational’ (vospitatel’naya) and ‘sanitary-educational’ (sanitarno-prosvetitel’skaya) work among prisoners.35 Soblov also suggested that the prisoners’ collective was an important means of struggling with sodomy – ‘to fight this evil, the societal forces of the collective have been engaged to create an environment of intolerance and condemnation of these instances [of sexual perversions]’.36
Other GULAG directors stressed the importance of repressive measures. The head of the corrective labour colonies of Udmurtskaya ASSR, Lieutenant Colonel Kuznetsov, revealed in his report of 2 July 1958 that male prisoners caught in homosexual acts were prosecuted under the Soviet Criminal Code, while women engaging in lesbianism were punished administratively.37 Kuznetsov noted that ‘all services of the camp have been mobilised for the struggle with “lesbian love” and primarily operational personnel (operativnyi sostav)’.38 As a result, the camp administration identified and punished forty lesbians: ‘Due to a variety of agent-operative (agenturno-operativnykh) and investigative measures, forty individuals were revealed to have committed sexual acts in perverse forms and strictly punished administratively. Some of them were transferred to the strict regimen (perevedeny na strogii rezhim).’39 Kuznetsov observed that ‘lesbian love’ spawned quarrels and fights between women, undermining the camp regime and discipline.40
In response to the increasing demands from the top to address the problem of homosexuality, some GULAG directors sought to demonstrate that they had bolstered the enforcement of the sodomy law in their colonies. In his report to the GULAG directorate on 24 July 1958 the head of the Usol’skii labour camp, Colonel Varakin, presented a table of convictions for various crimes in the colony from 1956 to 1958, which demonstrated an increase in sodomy convictions.41 Varakin noted that this increase was due to the camp authorities’ crackdown on this type of crime, rather than by its growth.42
Varakin’s report also reveals how inmates’ homosexual sex came to the attention of the GULAG administration. The sentinels and camp workers of the Usol’skii labour camp made an effort to detect inmates engaging in sodomy: they conducted nocturnal surveillance over prisoners in penalty cells and inspected secluded spots amenable for sex at night. As a result, several inmates were caught in the act of committing sodomy. Suspicious lingering of two or more inmates in the male toilets also caught the camp guard’s eye: they immediately investigated to sometimes find a man being coerced into sex by other inmates. Some prisoners got caught because of their indiscretion: for instance, Varakin reported that inmates Kravtsov and Fedorenko attempted to commit consensual sodomy on the doorsteps (na kryl’tse) of the camp canteen but were quickly apprehended.43
Varakin revealed that when spotting male same-sex activity, the GULAG administration acted promptly: inmates were taken to the medical units of the camp for forensic examinations, normally conducted by GULAG doctors. In the 1950s, forensic expertise on the crime of sodomy was slowly reviving, with more elaborate instructions on how to deal with such crimes appearing in books on forensic medicine. Even so, forensic experts argued that the traces of homosexual intercourse found on perpetrator’s bodies should be construed as evidence of sodomy only in conjunction with other pieces of evidence. Forensic examination results alone did not provide sufficient grounds to establish that sodomy had taken place.44 Catching prisoners in flagrante delicto together with prompt medical examinations during the first hours after the prisoners’ intercourse enabled GULAG doctors to find fresh signs of sodomy on their bodies and apparently streamlined the handling of such cases.
While violent sex between male prisoners certainly predominated, some of them did engage in homosexual sex by mutual consent. This was the case in at least four out of six sodomy cases from 1957 to 1958 reported by Varakin.45 Prisoners Dobrovol’skii and Fedorov, who committed consensual sodomy in a boiling chamber of the colony on 23 April 1957, received three years, while prisoners Zarubin, Yakobuk and Sorokin, prosecuted for the same type of crime, were sentenced to five years. Indeed, the Stalinist anti-sodomy law punished consensual sodomy by deprivation of liberty for a term of three to five years and apparently the severity of the sentence was determined by factors that authorities perceived as aggravating. In the case of Zarubin, Yakobuk and Sorokin, a higher penalty could have been warranted because Zarubin infected his partners with syphilis and Yakobuk consented to sodomy with Zarubin for a reward of five rubles.46 These actions were perceived as threats to both the physical and moral health of other prisoners.
Between 1956 and 1958 the GULAG leadership constantly urged camp directors to step up measures against homosexuality and prodded them to provide updates on the issue. On 31 May 1958 a new GULAG director, Mikhail Nikolaevich Kholodkov, who had been in office for one month, signed a decree code-named ‘128-c’, which reaffirmed the ‘dangerousness’ of homosexual acts between men and women and the urgency of dealing with them.47 Reporting to Kholodkov on 8 July 1958, Colonel Ivanov, the deputy head of Vladimir corrective labour colonies, reiterated that the 128-c decree concentrated on three major tasks: the fight with ‘organised distribution of narcotic substances’ among prisoners; sodomy; and the struggle with ‘organised warring groups’.48 Ivanov reported that two prisoners, Koryagin and Ganabin, who attempted to commit sodomy with other inmates on 11 June 1958 were prevented from doing so and eventually removed from the colony, and that the camp administration conducted ‘explanatory work’ (razyasnitel’naya rabota) with other male prisoners.49 As far as lesbianism was concerned, Ivanov reported the use of police and ‘explanatory work’:
Among the women prisoners held at Golovinskii ITK there were instances of ‘lesbian love’, that is, cohabitation of a woman with a woman. In order to reveal the fact of such a liaison between prisoners, the entire net of agents (agentura) was mobilised. On receiving the information from agents, individual explanatory work is conducted, social organisations of the colony (obshchestvennye organisatsii kolonii) condemn worst offenders of the regime (zlostnye narushiteli rezhima) and those cohabiting are confined to a strict regimen and prosecuted. Thus, five individuals were transferred to a strict regimen in 1957–8 and prisoners Karpova and Berezovskaya were prosecuted. Out of jealousy (na pochve revnosti) towards other prisoners, they were engaging in hooliganism (sovershali khuliganskie deistviya).50
Other camp directors were worried that female homosexual relations not only undermined camp discipline but led some lesbians to suicide. Reporting to Kholodkov, Colonel Kisilev from Saratov wrote: ‘these acts of sexual perversions exert a rather harmful influence on most women prisoners. Because of homosexuality, so-called lesbian love emerges among women, and the accompanying jealousy leads to fights, scandals and in some cases the suicide of cohabiting women (sozhitel’nits).’51 Kisilev produced a familiar spiel on the effectiveness of ‘explanatory work’ in the struggle with lesbianism: ‘the struggle with homosexuality in subdivisions of the OITK [Otdel ispravitel’no-trudovykh kolonii, Department of Corrective Labour Camps] is conducted by means of explanatory talks on the harm of this act of sexual perversion, constant surveillance over cohabiting women, and measures of a political and educational character and disciplinary action’.52 Yet, Kisilev deplored the inefficacy of these measures, arguing that they did not ‘produce a positive effect to the full extent’ and that it was impossible to prosecute lesbians in the absence of relevant criminal penalties.53 Kisilev was determined to punish them anyhow, by removing the most trouble-making women from the colony altogether: ‘On 25 June 1958 in GUITK MVD RSFSR we raised a petition 2/I-328 to convoy a group of prisoners, Bystrova, Bubnova, Tikhonova, Tsiligina, Chertoeva, Chernyshova, Kartushina and Gorshkova, engaging in homosexuality to the camps of strict regimen outside Saratov oblast’. We ask that this petition not be declined.’54
Apparently, GULAG directors attached little importance to explanatory work with prisoners, preferring a hard-line approach. Many only briefly discussed the effectiveness of educative measures towards homosexuality, affording much more attention to the descriptions of the punitive measures they had taken. Some of them went as far as to openly suggest criminalising lesbianism. It is likely that by their allusions to the efficacy of educative measures, GULAG directors merely paid lip service to the educational efforts promoted from above, while trying to punish lesbians with the available legal tools. Hardy tells us that the GULAG leadership was struggling to promote the importance of education among GULAG directors. While some GULAG directors demonstrated promising results in this area, still others neglected the importance of educational work with prisoners.55 To all intents and purposes, despite the GULAG directors’ preference to treat lesbianism as a crime, it was never criminalised.
GULAG doctors and ‘lesbian love’
Unlike GULAG commandants, who mostly advocated for the use of legal sanctions, GULAG doctors called for a more differentiated approach to the problem of ‘sexual perversions’. From their discussions it appears that their attitude to sodomy was as hostile as that of the GULAG directors, yet when it came to lesbianism, doctors espoused different views. In order to better understand how doctors handled the question of homosexuality we need to consider the broader history of medical service in the GULAG, which, as scholars of the GULAG note, has not been given proper scholarly attention.56
Few existing examinations of the GULAG medical service emphasise its inconsistency with the harsh treatment of prisoners in the camps. For example, Anne Applebaum characterises the GULAG medical service as one ‘of the many absurdities found in camp life’.57 Dan Healey has recently challenged Applebaum’s understanding of the GULAG medical service as an ‘absurdity’, arguing that its existence had a purpose.58 Drawing on a Foucauldian framework, Healey argues that GULAG medicine constituted a form of ‘biopower’, geared at exercising tighter surveillance mechanisms over the GULAG prisoners’ bodies and thus increasing their productivity.59 Healey also notes that after Stalin’s death, the GULAG medical service ‘adumbrated an ostensibly more humane view of the prisoner as meriting medical rather than “sanitary” attention’.60 This shift to a more ‘humane’ approach to prisoners after Stalin’s death is discernible in the camp doctors’ discussions of sodomy and its detrimental effect on young newcomers, which will be examined further.
Scholars have also elucidated the power relationships between GULAG doctors and directors and the extent to which the GULAG’s medical-sanitation department could influence the decisions of the latter. Golfo Alexopoulos suggests that, despite a range of functions that GULAG doctors had to perform, they had little power compared to the camp’s production-managers before and following World War II.61 The relationships between camp directors and doctors were fraught with tensions, and doctors complained that their work was often neglected and undervalued.62 Instead of acknowledging the existing problems and difficulties that doctors faced in regional camps and colonies, the Central GULAG leadership in charge of medical services scolded them for the high rates of illness and mortality and criticised them for not being resourceful enough to find solutions to the problems themselves.63 Directors of medical services across camps and colonies resented such pressure and expressed frustration with their bosses.64 Later in 1944–45, however, the GULAG leadership began issuing decrees which emphasised the importance of improving the physical condition of prisoners. Health officials working for GULAG medical services welcomed these decrees, arguing that they enhanced their authority and rendered their work easier.65 The 1956 decree by Sergei Yegorov on the importance of involving doctors in the efforts to combat homosexuality, along with the leaders’ desire to re-educate prisoners and prepare them for release, also enhanced GULAG doctors’ authority and influence. The Central GULAG leadership now held medical expertise in higher regard and expected doctors to provide extensive contributions on the problem of homosexuality, with concrete solutions to the problem as well as scientific opinions on the origin of sexual perversions in camps. Male homosexuality in the GULAG was framed by doctors as the main cause of STIs. At a conference for directors of medical departments of corrective labour camps held between 6 and 11 March 1956, one camp health official noted that ‘the number of those infected with syphilis in some camps is significant’ and that the problem was urgent ‘especially against the backdrop of the decrease in syphilis rates among civilian populations’.66 Attributing the rise of syphilis to sodomy, the official deplored the prevalence of both phenomena in various labour camps:
According to numerous oral and written reports by medical workers of the camps and colonies, the spread of syphilis among prisoners is largely due to sodomy. It is transmitted by recidivist criminals who, because of their long stint in camps and prisons, without families, indulging in casual sex, acquired the vice in the form of sodomy … as well as syphilis. Their partners, or rather victims, are young inmates whom recidivist criminals under the threat of punishment (pod ugrozoi raspravy) rape and [whom they] convert into passive pederasts and infect with syphilis. In some camps like Ust’vymlag, USVITL, Yuzhkuzbasslag and Sevkuzbasslag sodomy among recidivist criminals and the ensuing infection of the youth with syphilis have become widespread.67
GULAG medical departments’ shift to a ‘humane approach’ is palpable here: doctors appear to be genuinely concerned about the younger inmates, whom older criminals abused, drawing them into homosexuality.68 As I will show in Chapter 2, Khrushchev-era educators and physicians were worried about the vulnerability of the younger generation to homosexual influences and sought to inculcate in them correct ‘sexual morality’.69 Apart from issues of sexuality, party officials were also troubled by the increasing juvenile delinquency and its apparent appeal to young people.70 The concern that ‘criminal recidivists’ were drawing young inmates into sodomy can be interpreted as a reflection of these broader anxieties. Perhaps doctors perceived the homosexual acts between a hardened criminal and a young newcomer as an act of initiation of the latter into the prison world. Moreover, the act of rape, making someone a ‘passive pederast’, signified their firm incorporation in the lowest caste of the prison hierarchy with all corresponding consequences. Other prisoners would ostracise such a ‘pederast’ and in order to survive he would have to come to terms with his new role as a sexually accessible object, further losing his dignity and stepping deeper into the criminal underworld.71
In a conference report for the chief GULAG doctors in Kiev on 11 September 1956, Colonel of the Medical Service Ustinchenko expressed similar anxiety about the harmful influence of hardened criminals on newcomers.72 He underscored the link between sodomy, STIs and moral corruption:
the proliferation of syphilis occurs mainly through sodomy, and active pederasts are usually criminals from the cohorts of physically strong criminal-recidivists. As a rule, they don’t work, they take drugs and finally they rape young inmates who don’t belong to the criminal underworld, infect them with syphilis and corrupt them morally and physically.73
Although Yegorov’s 1956 decree emphasised the importance of tackling both sodomy and lesbianism, GULAG doctors showed little interest in the former. What really fascinated them was homosexual sex between women prisoners. Dan Healey has suggested that the interest in lesbianism could be explained by the existing criminal statute for sodomy, which criminalised male same-sex relations and thereby rendered studies of same-sex relations between men ‘rare and subordinate to police requirements’.74 Lesbianism, which was not technically a crime, was to be dealt with medically.75 Furthermore, lesbianism was a promising domain which GULAG doctors could claim and utilise to prove their usefulness to the GULAG leadership and reinforce their positions within the GULAG system.
In 1958 a doctor from a psychiatric hospital of the Yaroslavl’ corrective labour colony, V. S. Krasuskii, presented his treatise ‘On the issue of the study of perverse forms of sexual relations among women prisoners’ to the MVD leadership. The treatise spanned sixty-eight pages and examined ‘lesbian love’ in the camps, providing lengthy recommendations on how to tackle the issue.76 Krasuskii underscored the GULAG doctors’ skills and abilities to engage lesbians during individual appointments in frank conversations about their sexual lives, thereby highlighting the utility of the medical profession for the leadership’s plans. During these appointments, doctors sought to dissuade women prisoners from engaging in sexual perversions. Elaborating on these prisoner–doctor interactions, Krasuskii wrote:
Doctors of female units (podrazdelenii) can do particularly significant work and usually do it during medical check-ups and when administering treatment, by individually influencing women prisoners who engage in unnatural forms of sexual relations and often turn to them for help. In the private and intimate setting of the consultation room of the ambulatory, infirmary and especially of the gynaecologist, honest confessions about perverse forms of sexual relation may lay the groundwork for conducting conversations with prisoners with detailed descriptions of the amorality of such behaviour and its negative impact on one’s health. We had the opportunity to verify the significant effect of these type of conversations in a number of cases.77
The infirmary consultation room was an important site, where new understandings of homosexuality were negotiated and Foucualdian controls over sexuality were forged through confession and medico-educational discourse. There, GULAG doctors examined and listened to their same-sex-desiring patients, giving them an inducement to speak and integrating their confessions into the nascent scientific discourse about homosexuality. From these doctor–patient interactions homosexuality derived new meanings – it was not a simple act of perversion, but a complex and multifaceted phenomenon.
Apart from underscoring the doctors’ potential to assist the GULAG authorities in combating homosexuality, Krasuskii criticised some camp officials for their indulgent attitude towards lesbianism:
We know about a case when a newly appointed head of the women’s camp unit energetically took on the task of eradicating the perverted forms of sexual relations between women prisoners … He combined strict administrative measures with political and educational work. However, his promotion changed everything, since the new chief who replaced him was quite tolerant and indifferent towards the issue.78
Indeed, not all camp directors believed that female homosexual relations were problematic. Dan Healey has argued that their indulgence of queer relations between women could be explained by the fact that, ‘in theory, queer relations did not disrupt the GULAG economic model as drastically as heterosexual relations did’ because they did not lead to pregnancy.79 It is possible that GULAG directors adhered to the same line of reasoning, but doctors like Krasuskii saw it differently, arguing that lesbian relationships significantly disrupted the GULAG’s productivity in many important ways.
To begin with, Krasuskii argued that lesbianism had adverse effects on women prisoners’ physical and mental health: such prisoners were ‘lethargic (vyalye)’ and ‘considerably lose their appetite and weight’.80 Other camp doctors observed that lesbians suffered from genital illnesses (zabolevaniya polovoi sfery) which were resistant to treatment.81 These diseases prompted women prisoners to request medical internment in prison hospitals and exemption (osvobozhdenie) from work.82 The widespread disdain for homosexuality among women prisoners, and the necessity to hide lesbian relationships from fellow inmates, worsened the psychological well-being of lesbian prisoners and by extension their capacity to perform labour:
Apart from the direct impact of perverted forms of sexual relations on the health of women prisoners, the socio-psychological aspect also plays a role in this regard. This group of people constantly has to experience the condemnation of a certain element of the prisoners surrounding them. Moreover, these individuals are constantly forced to reconcile the desire to be together, to eat together, to wear each other’s clothes, to share the received money and products, with the continuous denial that there is cohabitation between them. Naturally, this kind of continuous need to hide, to deceive everyone, and also the constant threat of being separated and punished, has an impact on the health of cohabiting women. As a rule, in these persons there is a decrease, and in some cases a loss, of working capacity.83
Another problem with lesbians was their propensity to disrupt camp discipline because of the quarrels and fights which accompanied their relationships. It is no wonder that Krasuskii, as well as the camp directors, used the language of emotion to describe women’s same-sex activity, calling it ‘lesbian love’. It appears that such a designation reflected the nature of homosexual relations between women in prisons and the deep ties that lesbian women cultivated. Krasuskii noted that lesbian relationships often resembled marriage with all the accompanying attributes: ‘Observing perverse forms of sexual relations between women prisoners sometimes it is striking how … their relationships bear all the characteristics of conjugal life (supruzheskaya zhizn’).’84 Lesbians courted their partners and wrote poems to their lovers.85 Krasuskii was also struck by the loyalty that some lesbians displayed towards their partners by waiting for their release outside their penalty cells.86 In some cases love between women was so enduring that it continued after their release from the GULAG: ‘Some women prisoners get accustomed to same-sex forms of cohabitation to such an extent that they seek to retain them after their release from the camp – in some cases, this leads to family dissolution and perverse forms of same-sex cohabitation go beyond places of confinement.’87 Yet, apart from loyalty and affection, lesbian relationships displayed severe intensity at times and fights arose: ‘Quarrels, fights, scenes of jealousy alone between these persons lead to a number of violations of the camp regime and discipline. To this we must add that it is not uncommon for these individuals to refuse to work, drink cologne, enter into conflicts and disobey orders of supervisory service.’88
Soviet psychiatrists’ engagement with the prison lesbian in the second half of the 1950s coincided with the mass anti-homosexual crackdown in the United States, launched by the American government shortly after World War II.89 Amidst the anti-homosexual policies of the McCarthy era, prison lesbianism was placed under increased surveillance and condemnation too.90 Just like Soviet gaolers, American legislators deplored the fact that some parolees were spreading homosexuality beyond the barbed wire.91 In the Soviet case, however, fears about homosexual contagion were especially intense and were worsened by the profound anxieties and dilemmas characteristic of the de-Stalinisation campaign launched by Khrushchev.92 The declining birth rates were still a significant concern and the Khrushchev leadership sought to settle this problem by strengthening the family institution.93 Former prisoners who carried their apparent perversions into society threatened to undermine these plans.
Krasuskii argued that homosexual relations between women prisoners were not of a biological nature and were merely due to the absence of sexual outlets:
We may consider it an established fact that women prisoners involved in perverted forms of sexual relations do not possess any pathology of a biological nature and have normal physical development. Their perversity in sexual relations is the result of unfavourable social and living conditions, and in some cases, under normal conditions, they switch to normal sexual relations with men.94
He argued that occasional meetings with spouses could alleviate the lack of sexual fulfilment which women prisoners experienced in the camps.95 Yet, he lamented that only a limited number of inmates enjoyed such a privilege and prisoners usually ‘settled the sex question themselves, doing it exceptionally poorly, resorting to unnatural forms of sex life’.96 Most who were inclined to homosexual relations were ‘morally degraded recidivists with a record of multiple convictions’ who enticed and seduced other prisoners. This perspective on lesbianism overlapped with that of GULAG directors who, as I have shown, linked sexual perversions with criminality.
What were Krasuskii’s proposals in regard to the issue of lesbianism? He observed that women upon becoming mothers tended to forgo their homosexual proclivities: ‘It is interesting that pregnancy and child-bearing, evoking the woman’s biologically inherent aspiration to become a mother, even after lasting perverted forms of cohabitation with women before pregnancy, decisively eliminate these abnormal forms of sexual relations’.97 As an example, Krasuskii related a case of one female prisoner who maintained sexual relations with many fellow prisoners, until she entered a sexual relationship with a man and got pregnant. Krasuskii wrote: ‘It is interesting that after her release, the prisoner Mirovaya wrote a letter to the head of the camp subdivision, in which she expressed condemnation of her behaviour during her stint, writing that now she was leading a normal way of life and would continue to do so from now on.’ Krasuskii’s certainty that maternal instinct would overshadow lesbian proclivities in women was not unique – other GULAG doctors emphasised the necessity of heterosexual relationships for women and their potential to eradicate perversions.98 Such views were in line with the official pronouncements of the Khrushchev leadership. As Susan E. Reid has argued, despite the Party’s commitment to engage more deeply with the problem of women’s equality, gender stereotypes continued to prevail and Khrushchev’s speeches and policies from 1958 only emphasised the woman’s biological role as a mother and a housekeeper.99 Another important measure in the struggle with lesbianism was involving prisoners in labour, rechannelling their sex drive into a more productive activity: ‘The first and foremost task in the struggle with the emergence of unnatural relations among women prisoners is to create conditions for rechannelling of the sexual drive (polovoe vlechenie) to productive labour activity.’100 Such a strategy was also nothing new – the Stalin-era Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (1940) mentioned the efficacy of labour in distracting people from sex and sublimating their sexual energy into work.101
Unlike GULAG operatives who believed that female homosexuality could be disciplined most effectively by means of punitive measures, Krasuskii was more inclined to believe in the efficacy of the educational approach and collective intervention. He wrote: ‘It is beyond doubt that all forms of administrative measures, particularly various forms of punishment, are inferior in their influence to societal condemnation exerted by the prisoners themselves.’102 Krasuskii argued that public shaming and exposure of lesbians to the gaze of the collective of fellow prisoners would help eradicate sexual perversions. He recommended ‘issuing leaflets with caricatures, depicting different sides of life between cohabiting women prisoners such as “the partition of property” (razdelenie imushchestva) between quarrelling women, scuffles and fights (draka i ssora) between them’. Krasuskii went so far as to suggest that prison radio should broadcast talks by prisoners who formerly engaged in sexual perversions, encouraging other similar inmates to follow suit.103 Wall newspapers with articles highlighting the negative influence of lesbianism on the colony regime were also suggested.104
One of the most effective ways to shame lesbian prisoners into stopping the practice of homosexuality was the use of activist councils (sovety aktiva). These were one of the various ‘self-governing’ institutions established by the GULAG leadership in 1954 in order to facilitate the management of the corrective labour camps. Activist councils were elected by inmates themselves.105 Krasuskii pointed out that the influence of the activist council on the struggle with homosexuality was most effective when the chairman of the council summoned a ‘cohabiting couple’ (sozhitel’stvuyushchaya para) for a reprimand at the council’s meeting. Krasuskii explained: ‘It is precisely the fact that they have to confront not just the camp administration, but their own comrades, where all things are called as they are and merely denying the guilt bears no results, that in some cases makes them promise to stop maintaining perverse forms of sexual relations’.106 The educative effect of such meetings, he argued, was significant.
Krasuskii’s proposal to mobilise the collective against lesbians and encourage prisoners to police themselves was not a unique initiative and was a reflection of Soviet policies on deviance beyond the barbed wire. Indeed, in the 1950s, the Soviet authorities attempted to delegate the policing and prosecution of deviants to the public, by creating ‘a mass infrastructure of grassroots volunteer organisations’.107 One such organisation was the druzhina – the people’s auxiliary police.108 LaPierre tells us that one of the most important instruments for the druzhina’s fight with deviants was ‘the use of public shaming techniques, such as exposing offenders to the gaze of the assembled collective through satirical cartoons, wall newspapers, and public displays of offenders’ photographs’.109 These measures had a profound meaning, for ‘being publicly displayed as a hooligan, the deviant was stigmatised in the court of public opinion, exposed to the ridicule of his collective, and started on the long road to rehabilitation’.110 The Soviet authorities encouraged social self-policing and comprehensive mutual surveillance, by consolidating and strengthening so-called ‘people’s patrols’ and the ‘comrades’ courts’, which had existed since the early Soviet years.111 These bodies of societal surveillance were not meant to punish transgressors, but correct their behaviour and admonish them to live righteously.112 The effectiveness of ‘people’s patrols’ and ‘comrades’ courts’ was high, since they ‘were more meticulous and closer to the people: they were the people policing itself, and thus escape was hardly possible from their omniscient gaze and omnipresent power’.113
While arguing that punitive measures were ineffective for disciplining lesbians, Krasuskii acknowledged the existence of the view whereby lesbians should be punished with legal sanctions and lesbian couples forcefully separated:
The proposals of practitioners of the camps and corrective labour colonies addressed to the ministry aimed at a more efficient fight against this phenomenon deserve interest … These proposals especially emphasise the more severe measures of influence in relation to persons performing a male role, so-called kobly. Considering that they are usually the main distributors of this evil, it is proposed that they be decisively removed from the women’s units and then isolated in special camps or transferred to the prison regime.114
Krasuskii also acknowledged that several camp directors proposed to criminalise lesbianism: ‘The Directorate of the ITK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR and the Uzbek SSR, as well as the Directorate of the Siblag, raises the question of the necessity to introduce a criminal penalty for women conducting perverse forms of sexual relations among themselves, just as men are prosecuted for homosexual forms of sexual relations.’115 However, Krasuskii refrained from commenting on these proposals, neither refuting nor supporting them. From this text, it is difficult to establish whether he was in favour or against legal sanctions. Judging by the context of his manual and his arguments he indeed could have been against such initiatives. Yet apparently he could have been compelled to acknowledge the importance of punishment, paying lip service to the still-powerful camp managers, who were reluctant to invest resources in re-educating prisoners and allowing doctors to claim broader jurisdiction over the issue.
Indeed, GULAG bureaucrats did not readily accept all the proposals that doctors made regarding prison lesbianism. One point of divergence between them was whether or not doctors should lecture prisoners on the harm of sexual perversions, and Krasuskii mentioned that in his treatise: ‘The expediency of holding lectures by doctors in the female sections of the camp on the harm of perverse forms of sexual life between women prisoners is often a matter of debate between the camp administration and doctors of the female sections of the camp.’ He concluded that such lectures were harmful: ‘it is important to say that such form of struggle with perverse forms of sexual relations among women prisoners is not justified and cannot be recommended: such a lecture on the harm of these relations may turn into a lecture sparking interest in such forms of relations’.116 Krasuskii’s statement did not necessarily reflect his own views on this issue, but could have been a result of pressure from the GULAG leadership to state such a view in the brochure. Having their own views on the problem, the leadership may have been reluctant to allow doctors to take charge of the issue.
Conclusion
On 13 May 1959 a conference for the heads of the GULAG operative departments (operativnyi apparat) took place to share the experiences of dealing with crime in the GULAG.117 The head of the first directorate of the Karaganda ITL MVD, Lieutenant Colonel Chekin, prepared a conference report in which he announced that the year 1959 ‘had seen changes in the operative environment (operativnaya obstanovka) in the camp and colonies of the MVD’.118 These changes were due to the decisive crackdown (reshitel’noe nastuplenie) on the ‘criminal-bandit element’.119 Yet, despite these changes, Chekin noted that there were still some problems to solve. The first was the remaining issue of drug addiction (narkomaniya).120 Another was lesbianism:
The second problem on which I would like to dwell is the struggle with lesbianism that has become widespread in the camp. Because of jealousy, women create a scene, fight, knife one another and commit a range of crimes, drawing the youth into this and corrupting the latter. This also prevents other inmates from serving their sentences in peace.121
Chekin suggested taking the following measures:
We need to step up repressions. From the talks with women convicts, engaging in this activity – engaging very actively, talks with medical staff and other GULAG operatives, we have concluded that stable lesbians (ustoichivye lesbiyanki) need to be isolated and put in the facilities … which may be called ‘isolation wards’ (meditsinskii izolyator), whose harsh incarceration conditions (zhestkie usloviya soderzhaniya) would serve as a deterrent. We are contemplating creating such an organisation (takaya organizatsiya) in the whole republic, if financial considerations do not thwart our plans (esli opyat’ vopros ‘bezdotatsionnoi’ raboty ne zakroet etomu dorogu).122
Yet it appears that Chekin’s proposition was never announced at the conference, since the whole section on lesbianism was crossed out in his report – and apparently this happened before the meeting. The reasons are difficult to establish; they could include the reluctance of camp officials to admit that they were still unable to fight homosexuality, or their conviction that overall the problem was solved. Indeed, Jeffrey Hardy tells us that in 1958 camp authorities were very keen to report that criminal activity in the GULAG was no longer a problem; for example, this year the head of the GULAG, Kholodkov, reported to the Central Committee that ‘the criminal gangs are for the most part liquidated, they don’t exist as an organised force’.123
The elimination of this part may also signal ministry officials’ willingness to turn to medical solutions to the problem of homosexuality, triggered by the GULAG doctors’ contributions in response to Yegorov’s decree. We certainly do not have enough evidence to measure how much medical knowledge was produced in the GULAG in the 1950s and the extent to which it shaped the handling of same-sex desire there – access to new sources will enable us to shed more light on the issue. Yet, as I have shown in this chapter, some doctors made significant attempts to present the issue of lesbianism as a matter which should be dealt with by doctors and not criminal penalties. Krasuskii argued that doctors were the key when it came to dealing with lesbianism – they predisposed them to a frank conversation, listened to their confessions and directed their desires. They meticulously studied homosexual prisoners’ behaviour, and the MVD leadership was also willing to listen to doctors and their proposals. In fact, they set off a whole machinery of producing discourse on sex. A new image of the homosexual was being born. Even so, the MVD authorities were apparently unwilling to relegate the issue to the medical field and, most importantly, invest resources and time into re-educating prisoners. Although they did not openly challenge medical views in their reports, they made no mention of them either, signalling their reluctance to engage with them.
Notes
1For a brief biography of Yegorov, see: Aleksandr Kokurin and Nikita Petrov, eds, GULAG: (Glavnoe Upravlenie Lagerei), 1917–1960 (Moscow: MFD, 2000), p. 815.
2GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2882, l. 78. The original typed text read ‘15 February’ but has been changed by hand to ‘15 March.’ Yegorov’s untitled decree.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
5Foucault, History of Sexuality, p. 18.
6Healey, Homosexual Desire, p. 230.
7Healey, Russian Homophobia, pp. 35–6.
8Ibid., p. 37.
9Denis Shkarevskii, ‘Spetsial’nye lagernye sudy v SSSR (vtoraya polovina 1940-kh gg.)’, Lex Russica, no. 4 (April 2017): 209–12.
10GARF, f. 9474, op. 18, delo 2415, l. 2.
11GARF, f. 9474, op. 18, delo 1748, l. 2.
12Ibid., l. 9.
13GARF, f. 9474, op. 18, delo 30, l. 1.
14Steven A. Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2011), pp. 202–3.
15Vladimir Kozlov, ed., Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa: Konets 1920-kh – pervaya polovina 1950-kh godov. Tom 6. Vosstaniya, bunty i zabastovki zaklyuchennykh (Moskva: ROSSPEN, 2004), p. 88.
16Barnes, Death and Redemption, p. 205.
17Kozlov, Istoriya stalinskogo GULAGa, p. 86.
18Dobson, Khrushchev’s Cold Summer, p. 39.
19Barnes, Death and Redemption, p. 207.
20Healey, Russian Homophobia, p. 44.
21Hardy, GULAG after Stalin, p. 33.
22Ibid., p. 73.
23Ibid., p. 33.
24Ibid.
25GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2882, l. 79. Among other corrective labour colonies where Yegorov’s decree was circulated were the following: Karagandinskii, Vorkutinskii, Kargopol’skii, Angarskii, Ivdel’skii, Severo-Kuzbasskii, Unzhen’skii, Usol’skii, Sibirskii, Vyatskii and North-Eastern corrective labour camps. The decree was also circulated to the Directorate of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies (UITLK) of Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Khabarovskii krai.
26GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, l. 144. The document is undated.
27Ibid. For a brief biography of Bakin, see: Kokurin and Petrov, GULAG, p. 800. Political crimes, that is, ‘counterrevolutionary crimes’, were prosecuted under Article 58. See: Oleg V. Khlevniuk, The History of the Gulag: From Collectivisation to the Great Terror (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 365–6.
28Adi Kuntsman, ‘“With a Shade of Disgust”: Affective Politics of Sexuality and Class in Memoirs of the Stalinist Gulag’, Slavic Review 68, no. 2 (Summer 2009).
29GARF, P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, l. 144.
30Ibid.
31Ibid.
32Barnes, Death and Redemption, p. 250.
33Hardy, GULAG after Stalin, p. 89.
34GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1a, delo 604, l. 78. The document did not mention Soblov’s name.
35Ibid., l. 79.
36Ibid.
37Ibid., l. 64.
38Ibid., l. 65.
39Ibid., l. 66.
40Ibid., l. 65.
41GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1 dop., delo 606, l. 153.
42Ibid., l. 158.
43Ibid., l. 162.
44Rustam Alexander, ‘New Light on the Prosecution of Soviet Homosexuals under Brezhnev’, Russian History 46 (2019): 16–18.
45GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1 dop., delo 606, ll. 159–62.
46Ibid., l. 160.
47For a brief biography of Kholodkov, see: Kokurin and Petrov, GULAG, p. 854.
48GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1 dop., delo 605, l. 106.
49Ibid.
50Ibid.
51GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1 dop., delo 606, l. 11.
52Ibid.
53Ibid., l. 12.
54Ibid.
55Hardy, GULAG after Stalin, p. 85.
56Dan Healey, ‘Lives in the Balance: Weak and Disabled Prisoners and the Biopolitics of the GULAG’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 16, no. 3 (2015): 528.
57Anne Applebaum, GULAG: A History (New York and London: Doubleday, 2003), p. 369.
58Healey, ‘Lives in the Balance’, p. 533.
59Ibid.
60Ibid., p. 535.
61Golfo Alexopoulos, Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin’s GULAG (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017), p. 160.
62Ibid., p. 162.
63Ibid., p. 164.
64Ibid., p. 168.
65Ibid., p. 175.
66GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2888, l. 91. The last name of the author at the end of the report is illegible.
67Ibid.
68Similar anxiety about the younger inmates being drawn into homosexuality was voiced by scholars studying American prisons in 1955: John Bartlow Martin, Break Down the Walls (New York: Ballantine, 1954), pp. 168–9.
69Deborah A. Field, ‘Communist Morality and Meanings of Private Life in Post-Stalinist Russia, 1953–1964’ (PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1996), p. 116.
70On the concern of the Khrushchev leadership about juvenile delinquency, see: Ann Livschiz, ‘De-Stalinizing Soviet Childhood: The Quest for Moral Rebirth, 1953–58’, in The Dilemmas of De-Stalinisation: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era, ed. Polly Jones (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 117. On hooliganism under Khrushchev, see: Brian LaPierre, Hooligans in Khrushchev’s Russia (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012).
71On Russian and Soviet prison subcultures, see: Healey, Homosexual Desire, pp. 230–7. On the fate of ‘degraded’ persons in Soviet prison, see: Essig, Queer in Russia, pp. 7–13. On homosexual relations in Russian and Soviet prisons, see: Vladimir Kozlovskii, Argo russkoi gomoseksual’noi subkul’tury: Materialy k izucheniyu (Benson: Chalidze Publications, 1986), pp. 88–118. On the ‘stigma of bottom-status’ in Russian gay culture, see: Dan Healey, ‘Active, Passive, and Russian: The National Idea in Gay Men’s Pornography’, Russian Review 69, no. 2 (April 2010): 210–30.
72GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2888, l. 186.
73Ibid., ll. 205–6.
74Healey, Homosexual Desire, p. 241.
75Dan Healey, ‘From Stalinist Pariahs to Subjects of “Managed Democracy”: Queers in Moscow, 1945 to the present’, in Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Europe Since 1945, ed. Matt Cook and Jennifer V. Evans (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), p. 99.
76GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, ll. 234–5.
77Ibid.
78GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, l. 216.
79Healey, Russian Homophobia, p. 34.
80Ibid., p. 214.
81Ibid.
82Ibid.
83Ibid., p. 215.
84Ibid., p. 194.
85Ibid., p. 207
86Ibis., p. 208.
87GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, ll. 234–5.
88Ibid., p. 215.
89On the crackdown during the McCarthy era, see: David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
90Estelle B. Freedman, ‘The Prison Lesbian, Race, Class and the Construction of the Aggressive Female Homosexual, 1915–1965’, in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, ed. Martha Hodes (New York and London: New York University Press, 1999), p. 428.
91Ibid., p. 430. Freedman tells us about a book on prison lesbianism by Katherine Sullivan in 1956, which argued that after engaging in homosexuality in prison, former women prisoners developed an addiction to lesbianism and built their life around such practices on the outside.
92On anxieties of de-Stalinisation, see: Polly Jones, ed., The Dilemmas of De-Stalinisation: Negotiating Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). Melanie Ilič argued that under Khrushchev ‘the Soviet government was keen to increase the overall birth rate’. See: Melanie Ilič, ‘Women in the Khrushchev Era: An Overview’, in Women in the Khrushchev Era, ed. Melanie Ilič, Susan Reid and Lynne Attwood (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 6.
93Deborah A. Field, ‘Irreconcilable Differences: Divorce and Conceptions of Private Life in the Khrushchev Era’, Russian Review 57, no. 4 (1998): 599–613.
94GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, ll. 233–4.
95American prison officers also framed the problem of lesbianism in prison as a ‘sexual problem’. Freedman tells us that, by the 1960s, psychologists and criminologists writing on lesbianism suggested that homosexuals ‘present the greatest sexual problem’ in women’s prisons. See: Freedman, ‘Prison Lesbian’, p. 423.
96GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, l. 172.
97Ibid., l. 193.
98See Velikanov’s report, where he stated the opinion of medical professionals working in Siblag under his leadership. GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, l. 144.
99Susan E. Reid, ‘Women in the Home’, in Women in the Khrushchev Era, edited by Melanie Ilič, Susan E. Reid and Lynne Attwood (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 160.
100GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, l. 218.
101Kon, Sexual Revolution in Russia, p. 101. The stress on the necessity to ‘rechannel’ sexual energy of Soviet people for the good of the collective work and life was a common trope in the Khrushchev-era sex education campaign, which will be examined in Chapter 2.
102GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, l. 222.
103Ibid., l. 227.
104Ibid., l. 228.
105Hardy, GULAG after Stalin, p. 82.
106GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, l. 228.
107LaPierre, Hooligans in Khrushchev’s Russia, p. 145.
108Ibid., p. 132.
109Ibid., p. 151.
110Ibid.
111Ibid., p. 282.
112Ibid.
113Ibid., p. 286.
114GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1, delo 2896, l. 231.
115Ibid., l. 232.
116Ibid., l. 225.
117GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1 dop., delo 608, l. 72.
118Ibid.
119Ibid.
120Ibid., l. 74.
121Ibid., ll. 75–6.
122GARF, f. P-9414, op. 1 dop., delo 608, l. 76.
123Hardy, GULAG after Stalin, p. 91.