Alexandra: A Russian Trans Woman in Trump’s America

Alexandra in Times Square. Personal photo courtesy of Republic

Alexandra left Russia four years ago, fleeing oppression, propaganda, and ever harsher anti-LGBT laws. She applied for political asylum in the U.S., made a home in New York, and felt safe for the first time. But with Donald Trump’s return to power, her fears have returned. The new rules and laws, the rhetoric, and the swaying of public sentiment against trans people have been much too reminiscent of what she had escaped. Alexandra spoke to Republic about how America has been changing and what now lies in store for thousands of people like her.

I arrived in the U.S. exactly four years ago yesterday. A lot has changed in that time. I arrived right when the covid restrictions were still in force. Just a couple of days before I arrived in New York, an order to wear two masks each had been issued. The city was completely empty. I went straight to Times Square, and there were maybe one or two people walking down the street. Gradually, the restrictions were lifted, and more and more people were out in public. And then the border with Mexico was opened, and everything changed dramatically in terms of jobs, the economy, and real estate — rent went up about forty percent. Now there are new problems: Trump and Musk. But first things first.

“I always had a hard time in Russia”

I am thirty-four years old. I lived in Perm until I was twenty-five, then I moved to St. Petersburg and lived there until I moved to the U.S. I did a lot of jobs in Russia, mainly sales. In my final years in Perm, I worked at a real estate agency.

I had traveled a lot and at first I decided to just move to a big city in Russia, which didn’t make me safe in the end. I decided to leave Russia after the lockdown started. My ex-husband had gone to the U.S. in 2011 on the Work and Travel Program and he had really liked the country. Besides, when it was possible to fly anywhere again, the only valid visas we had were for the U.S.

When I was twenty-five years old, I officially changed my gender and got a woman’s passport. This was in 2016, back in Perm. It was quite difficult to do this. The problem was that at the real estate agency where I worked, no one knew about me, but I had to sign legal documents there. So I had to change my surname, first name, and patronymic to something feminine, but without specifying my gender. The civil registry office did not immediately know how to do this legally: they discussed it among themselves for several months. In the end, they changed my name and surname to the feminine versions of the original ones. I had been Alexander, and so I became Alexandra. They got rid of my patronymic because they didn’t know how to come up with a feminitive for it.

Later, after the updated information had been entered into my birth certificate, I went to the passport office. They remembered me there because a couple of years earlier they had refuse to issue me a passport on the grounds that the photo I had given them was of a young woman, but my papers indicated my gender as “M.” I had filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office, but it hadn’t led to anything at the time. Ultimately, though, the [passport office] staff decided to meet my needs and help me. I was issued a passport with an “F” in it. I have had several cosmetic surgeries, but have not had intimate plastic surgery, meaning I haven’t undergone a complete transition, but a social one. I don’t want to have surgery yet.

It was always hard for me in Russia. If you are lesbian or gay, you can hide it from society somehow. This is impossible for us transgender people.

You go to apply for a job and you are simply rejected, at best. At worst, you are threatened and humiliated.

I was also harassed at school. For example, I was subjected to a full body search with no clothes on at the checkpoint when I took my Unified State Exam. When it comes to medical institutions, even if you go to a private clinic for a paid operation, you still face discrimination. When I tried to get permission for a sex change, they suggested I go to the male ward because in the female ward they thought I would “rape all the female patients.”

I was an activist in Rainbow World, the Perm branch of the Russian LGBT Network: I constantly attended events and was actively involved in organizing them. When I needed supporting evidence [for my asylum claim] from the head of Rainbow World, she was afraid to communicate with my lawyers, since she seriously feared reprisals from the authorities. Now she doesn’t contact me at all.

We once took part in the May Day rally. We had got all the permissions beforehand, but the placards had not been discussed, and so we ended up having our own mini-gay pride parade. Things were still relatively calm at the time: we marched down the street and people heard us; we were written about and discussed. But then the pressure started. Public opinion shifted dramatically in the direction of aggression towards LGBT people. A few months later, the police came to the offices of our organization and searched them. They confiscated our laptops, and there, of course, they found all our info — addresses, contacts, and passwords. No one thought at the time that things would take such a turn for the worse.

At one point, when I was working at the real state agency in Perm, a local activist came into my life. I don’t know who he was, but he had sent me clip from an episode of the Malakhov show in which he had taken part. He was always stalking me outside the real estate office where I worked. When I would walk past him with my colleagues, right in front of them he would say, “You have to give me an interview.” I would say, “I don’t know you. What’s this about anyway?’ And he would say, “If you don’t, I’ll tell everyone who you are.” This would happen in public, right on the street.

After the first law banning so-called LGBT propaganda for minors was adopted in 2013, police officers started showing up at my house because I right then I was helping out transgender teenagers. The police would knock on our door and ring the doorbell. They would try to get into my flat under various pretexts. One time they stood outside the door for three hours. We just pretended nobody was home. Then, when it got quiet, we looked out the window. The police officers looked up too, realized we were looking at them, and came upstairs again. They stood outside our door again for a while.

Then some people assaulted me and my ex-husband. It turned into a brawl, and a police patrol turned up “by chance.” We were all taken to the police station and advised to “keep quiet and stay inconspicuous.” After that, in 2019, we decided to move to Peter. Everything was relatively calm in Petersburg. But then they found us there too. I do not know what kind of databases they have, but they found us, although I didn’t show my face anywhere at all in Petersburg, and I wasn’t involved in any organizations. The only thing I did was go to the Side by Side LGBT film festival.

I was in no hurry to leave Russia because I have an elderly father, who is seventy-one. I didn’t want to leave him. And I never thought that I should leave the country where I was born, grew up, worked, and paid taxes. Plus, I had a flat and a car in Russia. I didn’t want to start all over again in another place. When covid started, my husband’s and my Schengen visas had expired. We only had our U.S. visas left, and they were still valid for about six months. We decided to give it a try, because we were afraid that, later, the authorities wouldn’t let us go anywhere at all, that the country was heading towards the Iron Curtain.

“Since Moving to the U.S., I Haven’t Been Hiding Anything from Anyone at All”

We arrived in New York on a visa, on a direct flight from Moscow. We started looking for human rights organizations who could provide free lawyers. We called various places: our English was nonexistent, so we used online translators and sometime just read the text into an answering machine. Several organizations reached out to us. Eventually, an organization which deals with domestic violence helped us out. We lived in a hotel at first. We were quarantined there for a fortnight, then we rented a place through Airbnb and looked for a permanent place. I started working three weeks later.

I am currently working as a cleaner and as a webcam model. Webcam modeling is not an easy gig. I started doing it back in Petersburg, because I was afraid of getting a on-the-books job. Initially, you think that it’s easy money and that it won’t affect you in any way, but then you realize you’re just a piece of meat. It’s quite tough psychologically. All this overlapped with my old traumas, and eventually led to big psychological problems. Before the New Year, I stopped taking the antidepressants I’d been taking since 2018.

You can make $100, $300, and $500 a day in the webcam industry. Here in the U.S., it’s a legitimate job, you pay taxes, it’s all above board. Since moving to the U.S., I haven’t been hiding anything from anyone at all. It’s my new principle in life.

I am horrified to read the news from Russia about LGBT people being labeled “extremists” and being murdered in prisons, about gay bars and clubs being raided. It’s wacky, it’s incomprehensible. After moving to the U.S., especially after Russia’s war with Ukraine began, I realized how effective propaganda was in Russia. All my friends and acquaintances in Russia suddenly changed their opinions about politics dramatically, even about LGBT people. Even my friends who are LGBT people themselves either try to avoid the topic or say, “Well, that’s right, but what can we do? It’s the way it has to be.” Some of them I’ve stopped talking to, some I haven’t. Maybe they are simply afraid to say too much.

The authorities inserted pedophilia into the law on “LGBT propaganda” and thus made a strong link in people’s heads between LGBT people and pedophiles. This propaganda has been effective even in my own family.

My dad’s new wife has a niece. The niece’s son was three years old at the time. Kids are drawn to me and I always play with them. But at one point I saw how afraid she was to leave her child alone with me. The propaganda has affected even those closest to me.

In the U.S., I saw a completely different world and attitude towards people like me. When I told someone at work for the first time that I was a transgender woman, I got a neutral reaction, as if I was talking about something quite ordinary. The first time I went to the New York Pride March, it was more like a carnival: it was beautiful, friendly, and flamboyant. There were a lot of children there, and there were separate events for them. For the first time in my life I felt I was no different from anyone else, that I had rights, that I could speak openly, that I could receive proper medical care. When I lived in Perm, I was even unable to find an endocrinologist who did hormone replacement therapy. [Living in New York] has changed my sensibility a lot.

Donald Trump’s policies have not affected me specifically yet. But knowing how it all kicked off in Russia, I am scared. In 2013, there was the ban on “gay propaganda,” and consequently, teenagers were left without the support that, for example, they had received from Lena Klimova and her project Children 404. I also helped kids out then, shared my know-how with them, and tried to support them. All transgender people have been dismissed from the [U.S.] army. It’s a nightmare. When the state starts cracking down on a single albeit tiny segment of the populace, and it succeeds, it keeps on going.

“Judging by the First Month of Trump’s Presidency, We Are in for Tough Times”

I believe that common sense should prevail in all things. Previously, the bias had gone in the other direction in the U.S.: people used to be afraid to say something against LGBT, and this was also wrong. Everyone should have freedom of speech. For example, my acquaintances from [the country of] Georgia had this thing happen to them. They were working on a commission for a moving company: a gay couple was moving. One of the workers looked askance, or they said something among themselves. They then got a call from the front office and a dressing-down. They were warned that they would be fired if it happened again. Or there was the case of the flower shop: the owners refused to sell flowers for a same-sex wedding, and the shop had to close because of the scandal that erupted. That’s over the top. I think that if you’re refused service somewhere, you can go to some other place. Let them lose their profits. It’s the same with clubs: if the bouncers don’t let you in, well, those are their views. Everybody has different views. But now it’s going too far in the other direction and it’s scary. I hope that one day we will reach a sensible balance.

Now I live with my fiancé, who is from Ukraine. We discuss politics, and we both want the war to end soon, for people to stop dying. I would like to make a trip to Russia.

I don’t think Russia belongs to Putin and his lackeys. It’s my country, just like it is yours, just like it is everyone else’s. I would like to believe that things will change and we can go back someday.

I am in the U.S. legally, but I am waiting for political asylum. There are numerous such cases, and they take a very long time to process. The approximate wait time for a green card in the past was ten years . I was involved in a class action lawsuit against the U.S. Immigration Service, and I was told that as long as I had a short wait time, the case would not be considered. I appealed that decision and have been scheduled for an interview for late 2026. I would like to go to Turkey, for example, to meet my relatives. I would really like to see my dad. But even if everything goes well at the interview, I will probably not get a green card until 2028.

My father loves me, but over the last three years, since the war started, we have come to disagree about Russian politics, and over time we stopped discussing it. He watches [Russian] television and relays to me what is said there. He constantly accuses me of being under the influence of “American propaganda” and “brainwashed.” But I just reply, “Fine.”

They usually say that the first one hundred days of a presidency set the course for the next four years. Judging by the first month of Trump’s presidency, we are in for tough times, although maybe these measures are like Margaret Thatcher’s — first shock therapy, then stabilization. I hope to get citizenship in the future. I would finally feel safe: there is still a risk of deportation for now. I try not to give up, to hope for the best. Let’s see if positive thinking does the trick.

Source: Maria Litvinova, “‘Trump’s rhetoric has become similar to Putin’s, and it’s scary’: How does a Russian trans woman who emigrated to America under the Democrats feel?” Republic, 27 February 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader

Coming Out

The Justice Ministry has filed a lawsuit with [Russia’s] Supreme Court asking it to declare LGBT an “extremist organization.” The first hearing should take place on November 30. Officials have detected in the activities of the “movement”—even though LGBT is not a community—the “incitement of social and religious discord.”

At the same time, NTV broadcast a story claiming that LGBT individuals are easily recruited by Ukrainian security forces. The program even showed arrested “LGBT activists” who, according to the propagandists, wanted to simultaneously burn down military recruitment offices, send money to the Ukrainian army, and join the Free Russia Legion. There are obvious holes in the story’s veracity, but viewers will be left with a clear conclusion: those who support LGBT individuals are ready to fight against Russia.

Meanwhile Vladimir Putin unexpectedly made a statement in defense of LGBT people. He said that they are also “part of society.” But journalist Farida Rustamova noted that the fight against LGBT might be part of Putin’s re-election campaign.

“Extremist” status provides the state with tons of possibilities for censorship and new court cases. This can be seen through the example of other “extremist organizations” that were essentially invented by the authorities.

For instance, in 2020 the Justice Ministry declared AUE an “extremist organization.” AUE is a teenage subculture; the acronym stands for “Arestantskii uklad edin” [“Prison order universal”]. No actual organization exists—there’s a bunch of adolescents across the country who are in various ways aesthetically and ethically excited about the life of people adjacent to the criminal world. The name first got wide publicity thanks to an article in Novaya Gazeta.

In any event, now the security forces can launch criminal cases on extremist grounds against people who are already in prison. They say they are establishing “AUE cells” in prison colonies. There are no actual cells—but there is a new way of putting pressure on incarcerated people who have already been disenfranchised.

The Justice Ministry also invented the so-called Columbine terrorist movement. Columbine is the name of an American school where two teenagers killed thirteen people in 1999. Subsequently, “columbine” became the term for all mass shootings in schools. No actual subculture exists. But now you can get sent to prison for twenty years for involvement in the “terrorist organization.” And a journalist can be fined if, when writing about the latest school shooting, they fail to mention that the shooters belong to the “terrorist organization”—even though this must, of course, be proven.

So belonging to an “extremist LGBT movement” that doesn’t actually exist is an excellent lever for putting the squeeze on anyone you like—from LGBT individuals to someone who draws a a picture of a rainbow.

Ksenia Mikhailova, a lawyer for the LGBT group Coming Out, told Agentstvo News that the new lawsuit completely criminalizes working in organizations that support gay people. For instance, directing a LGBT organization could get you ten years in prison, while working there could get you eight years. Ksenia Prosvirkina, a lawyer at OVD Info, thinks that even old social media posts expressing support for the LGBT community will end up counting as a “continuing violation.”

Prosvirkina notes that symbols like the rainbow could lead to getting fined up to a million rubles or four years of prison. Valeria Vetoshkina, a lawyer for First Department, thinks that in the worst possible scenario, belonging to LGBT might be interpreted by the authorities as involvement in the activities of an extremist organization.

The Justice Ministry lawsuit is far from the first move against LGBT individuals on the Russian government’s part. Over the past year and a half alone, both “LGBT propaganda” of any kind and transgender transitioning have been prohibited.

At a recent report to the UN, Deputy Justice Minister Andrei Loginov said that there is no discrimination against LGBT people in Russia. “The rights of LGBT citizens in Russia are protected by the appropriate statutes.” How this jibes with the lawsuit brought by the ministry where Loginov works is unclear (evidently, not at all).

Source: “It looks like Russia is finally prohibiting absolutely everything connected with LGBT,” I Don’t Get It newsletter (Mediazona), 17 November 2023. Translated by the Fabulous AM

On This Day, or, Cyka Blyat

Don’t turn off your TV set. Keep watching the “most exciting World Cup ever.” While you do that, actual Russians and some non-Russians (i.e., Oleg Sentsov) are suffering horribly for the near-absolute power Russia’s Emperor of Ice Cream and his retinue have acquired over the last twenty years.

It was this same power (and the money that comes with it) that made it possible for the Emperor of Ice Cream and his pals to buy off FIFA’s bid committee and win the right to host the 2018 World Cup. They invoked this same power to spend more on preparations for the World Cup than any other host country has ever spent.

But instead of doing what enlightened despots have been known to do on such occasions — declaring amnesties, pardons, and ceasefires during Olympic Games and other such celebrations and great sporting events — the Emperor of Ice Cream’s repressive and imaginative secret services have seemingly notched up their civil war against their own people while you stay glued to your TV set, pretending it is possible to separate sports from politics.

Tell that to Yuri Dmitriev, rearrested and recharged for a crime for which he had recently been acquitted. Tell that to the Penza-Petersburg “terrorists,” all of them tortured by the FSB (KGB) into forcing them to give the testimony the FSB wanted to hear, never mind that it is total nonsense, the sick fantasies of the FSB itself, which sees or, rather, pretends to see a “terrorist” hiding under every rock. Tell that to Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker and resident of Crimea, sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security correctional facility in Russia’s Far North for the thought crime of opposing Russia’s occupation of Crimea.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2018

“The amount of pollution caused by idling cars is incredible.”

—Nigel Havers, “PM,” BBC Radio 4, 29.06.17

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2017. As a blogger quoted on Dictionary.com notes, ‘While there is no exact English translation, the Russian phrase cyka blyat (сука блять in the Russian alphabet) is roughly equivalent to the English “fucking shit” or “bitch whore.” Cyka means “bitch” while blyat is a multifunctional vulgarity along the lines of “shit” or “fuck.” Together, cyka blyat is used to express uncontrollable anger, similar to dropping a series of F-bombs in English.’

It’s frightening how “natural” absolutely neo-Nazi-like racialism has come to seem to so many folks in the Former East. It really beggars the imagination. What went wrong?

And it’s all reproduced and disseminated, whether in private conversation or more impersonal forums like Facebook, with such aplomb and confidence, as if literally no else in the world has thought or could think otherwise. Even broaching, in the most primitive way possible, the idea that races are a “construct” used to dominate some “races” while advantaging others, not something “natural,” will only expose you to instant derision.

What “race” is this bird? Is it white or black? In fact, it’s black, white, and several shades in between. Obviously, this is an absurd conversation, since we superior beings don’t attribute “race” to birds.

But we do attribute it to each other, missing somehow that the whole point, the only point, is power. Natural’s not in it.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2017

One of the keys to successfully translating contemporary Russian avant-garde poetry into English is having absolutely no sense of colloquial English. The translations should sound leaden, awkward, and dull, as if they had been written by a manager in the Flint, Michigan, water department trying to justify his criminal negligence in an impenetrable and evasive letter to the EPA, to wit:

I feel fear.

I am afraid of something, but I don’t know what.

Wherever you were, you must get

from wherever it was

to the place from which you left.

 

Why do you assume that your toothache corresponds to the fact

that you hold your cheek.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2016

A mace in the backseat of someone’s decked out ride.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2016

I’m totally wired.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2016

Russia’s cultural capital, where nice young men like this one are beat up in broad daylight by fascists, and the police protect the fascists.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2013

More fascists at today’s LGBT Pride event in Petersburg, as photographed by the intrepid Sergey Chernov. He reports that a few of the fascists brought small children with them so that it would be possible to charge the LGBT activists with violating Petersburg’s fascist-inspired law against “gay propaganda” amongst minors.

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2013

Fascists posing as “Cossacks” at today’s LGBT Pride event in downtown Petersburg, where all the gay activists were arrested by the police, unlike the 200 or 300 fascists, who apparently enjoy near or complete immunity for crimes that would get anyone else arrested. Photo by one of the few faithful friends of freedom left in Petersburg, Sergey Chernov.

Photo by Sergey Chernov: “St. Petersburg LGBT Pride event: fascists.”

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2013

Photo by Sergey Chernov: “St. Petersburg annual LGBT Pride event: stoned, beaten and arrested. Central St. Petersburg, today.”

Source: Thomas Campbell (Facebook), 29 June 2013

Don’t Press the Button

I read on social media yesterday that Russian ebook giant LitRes had added a button on its website for readers who want to file a complaint against any of the books it offers for violating Russian laws. To see whether this was true, I punched up the most popular recent Russian book among readers of this website, Katerina Silvanova and Elena Malisova’s runaway LGBTQ+ romance bestseller A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie.

Indeed, there is such a button, located below the book’s description and right next to a summary of its front matter. In the screenshot I took, above, I’ve drawn a black box around the button, which reads, “Does the book violate the law? Complain about the book.”

If you do the unthinkable and press the button, a window pops up:

“What do you want to complain about?” the prompt asks. The choices are “Promotion of narcotics,” “Promotion of suicide,” “Violence/extremism,” “Copyright violation,” and “Promotion of LGBT and/or Pedophilia.” You are then asked to “describe the violation” in 1,500 characters or less and dispatch your complaint to LitRes’s law-abiding overlords by hitting the big orange-red “Complain” button.

A quick scan of the 113 titles in my own “bookshelf” on LitRes and some of the book’s suggested to me by the service revealed, however, that readers cannot file a complaint against any book they wish. Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem, for example, is beyond suspicion, as you can see in the screenshot, below. ||| TRR

Love in a Young Pioneer’s Tie

The cover of “A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie,” as designed by Adams Carvalho

Katerina Silvanova was born and raised in Kharkiv, but moved to Russia at the age of twenty-two. She majored in forestry engineering, but never finished her studies. She has worked in sales all her life. Elena Malisova is a Muscovite and married, and works in IT. The girls [sic] had never been associated with literature, but both have had a passion for writing since childhood. One day, chatting on the internet after a hard day’s work, the friends agreed that they had to do something together. So, the idea of the novel A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie was born.

Musician Yuri Konev arrives at the abandoned Swallow Young Pioneer Camp in the Kharkiv region to encounter the ghosts of his past. Something happened there that turned his life upside down, changing it forever. There he met the camp counselor Volodya, who became more than a friend to the teenager.

Walking through streets of the camp, overgrown with grass, Yura recalls how rapidly and stormily his relationship with Volodya developed, how they had been afraid of what was happening between them. And yet, they had gravitated to each other. The trip to the camp is a new revelation for Yura. He was sure he had buried the past there, that its rebellious echo would never again disturb him . And yet, Konev will have to come face to face again with what already turned his life around once. Apparently, not all the ghosts of the past are willing to hide in memory’s back alleys forever.

Why should you read A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie?

It’s a new extraordinary look at the late Soviet period of history.
It’s a novel about sincere first feelings, cloaked in mystery and shame, condemnation and doubts.
It’s an absolute bestseller, one of the year’s most anticipated and controversial books.

Book Description
Yura returns to the Young Pioneer camp of his youth after twenty years. In the ruins of the past, he hopes to find a path back to the present, to the person he once loved. This story is about the fact that not everything in the USSR was smooth, straight-laced, and impersonal, that there were experiences, passions, drives, and feelings that did not fit into the moral framework leading to the “bright future,” and that this future was not so bright.

Source: LitRes. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Translated by the Russian Reader

Leto v pionerskom galstuke (LVPG) [A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie] is a novel co-written by Elena Malisova and Katerina Silvanova. The book deals with the relationship between two young men, the Young Pioneer [sic] Yura and Volodya, who meet at Young Pioneer camp in the summer of 1986.

[…]

Twenty years later, the musician Yuri Konev returns to the place where the Swallow Young Pioneer Camp was once located, recalling the summer of 1986, which spent there, and his love for the MGIMO student and camp counselor Vladimir Davydov. Yura and Volodya were jointly involved in staging a play, and a strong friendship arose between them, which gradually developed into teenage love. Throughout the book, Volodya refuses to accept his homosexual orientation, periodically insisting on ending the relationship and explaining that he is trying to “steer Yura off the right path” and that he is homophobic himself. At the end of the their stay at the camp, the young men bury a kind of time capsule under a willow tree, agreeing to dig it up in ten years. After parting, Yura and Volodya continue to communicate by correspondence for some time, but after a while they lose touch with each other. In 2006, after finding the time capsule, Yura learns in a letter that Volodya sends him that he had failed to “overcome” his orientation and still loves Yura.

The novel, which was originally posted on the website Ficbook.net, was published by Popcorn Books in 2021. By the end of May 2022, the book had sold more than 200,000 copies, not counting electronic sales. The novel took second place in the list of the most popular books among Russians in the first half of 2022, compiled by the Russian Book Union, and sales of the book amounted to about 50 million rubles. August 2022 saw the release of a sequel, What the Swallow Won’t Say, which takes place twenty years after the events described in A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie.

[…]

Critic Galina Yuzefovich gave a generally positive review of the novel, noting that “life in the Soviet Union differed little from life today, and emotions, relationships, and the desire to love and be loved do not depend on ideology.” Book blogger Anthony Yulai (Anton Ulyanov) rated the novel positively on the whole, noting that the authors keep the reader “in a state of emotional shock due to the alternation of sweet moments with sad ones and an abrupt change in the tone of the narrative towards the novel’s end.”

Zakhar Prilepin harshly condemned the book and its publishers on his Telegram channel: “Popcorn Books (which inevitably suggests “porn books”) is are celebrating their triumph and counting their profits. They will regard this post as good fortune, too. That’s what they were counting on. I won’t hide it: I’d burn down your whole office while you’re sleeping at home!” A video featuring a negative review of the book was released by Nikita Mikhalkov. He read aloud an excerpt from the novel and deems its publication a “violation of the Constitution.” He also noted that the abbreviation “LVPG,” as the novel is known among fans, is very similar to “LGBT.”

N.A. Ostanina, chair of the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, sent a request to Roskomnadzor to examine the contents of the book to determine whether a criminal case could be launched against it in the future. A similar request was sent by the news agency RIA Ivan-Chai, but received a negative response.

Source: Wikipedia. Translated by the Russian Reader

A map of the Zina Portnova Memorial Swallow Young Pioneer Camp in 1986, as featured in the novel’s front matter.

“Aren’t you exaggerating?”

Seeing Volodya’s slightly condescending smile, Yurka was embarrassed. He probably thought that Yurka remembered their dance too well and was still jealous, so he was ready to accuse Masha of anything. And if Volodya really thought so, then he was right. Yurka’s ardent desire to jump out of the bushes and catch the spy red-handed was caused precisely by jealousy. But Yurka also had arguments in defense of his theory.

“It’s not the first time she’s been out at night. Do you remember when Ira came to the theater and attacked me, asking me what I’d been doing with Masha and where I’d been walking? And it’s true, no matter where we are, she’s always there. Volodya, we have to tell them about her walks!”

“Deal with Irina first.”

Yurka did go find her almost immediately. All the same, his mood was spoiled, and Volodya was paranoid again, and he constantly froze, listening and looking around and not even letting him touch his hand. And the evening was already coming to an end.

After hastily saying goodbye to Volodya, Yurka returned to his unit and found the counselor. He expected her to frown and scream at him as soon as he walked in. He was already ready to babble excuses, but Ira stared at him in surprise.

“Actually, no, I wasn’t looking for you,” she said. Yurka had already put his hands up to stop his jaw from dropping, when Ira yelled.

“Where have you been, by the way?”

“With Volodya.”

“Did you even notice what time it is?! Yura, who are they playing lights out for?! If you’re going to be late, you have to warn me!”

Yurka fell asleep, struggling with mixed feelings full of anxiety. Volodya was constantly surrounded by girls, but it seemed to Yurka that Masha popped up too often. It must be jealousy after all. And to top it all off, he apparently had been infected with Volodya’s paranoia.

Source: Elena Malisova and Katerina Silvanova, A Summer in a Young Pioneer’s Tie (Popcorn Books, 2021), p. 155, as chosen by the True Random Number Generator. Translated by the Russian Reader

In an industrial block in northeastern Moscow on a recent Friday night, organizers of an L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly art festival were assiduously checking IDs. No one under 18 allowed. They were trying to comply with a 2013 Russian law that bans exposing minors to anything that could be considered “gay propaganda.”

The organizers had good reason to be wary: Life has been challenging for gay Russians since the law passed, as the government has treated gay life as a Western import that is harmful to traditional Russian values and society.

Now Russia’s Parliament is set to pass a legislative package that would ban all “gay propaganda,” signaling an even more difficult period ahead for a stigmatized segment of society.

The laws would prohibit representation of L.G.B.T.Q. relationships in any media — streaming services, social platforms, books, music, posters, billboards and films — and, activists fear, in any public space as well. That’s a daunting prospect for queer people searching for community, validation or an audience.

“I’m afraid for my future, because with these kinds of developments, it won’t be as bright as I would like it to be,” said a drag artist who uses the stage name Taylor. Taylor’s performance on Friday before a small but enthusiastic crowd tackled themes of domestic violence, mental health and AIDS.

The proposed laws are part of an intensifying effort by President Vladimir V. Putin to cast Russia as fighting a civilizational struggle against the West, which he accuses of trying to export corrosive values.

The Kremlin is coupling the crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. expression with its rationale for the war in Ukraine, insisting that Russia is fighting not just Ukraine but all of NATO, a Western alliance that represents a threat to the motherland.

[…]

Source: Valerie Hopkins and Valeriya Safronova, “‘I’m Afraid for My Future’: Proposed Laws Threaten Gay Life in Russia,” New York Times, 4 November 2022

Kirill Kalugin: “My Freedom Defends Yours”

On August 2, 2013, Russian Paratroopers Day, Kirill Kalugin, a Petersburg university student, took to the city’s Palace Square alone to protest the country’s new anti-gay laws. He was immediately set upon by reveling paratroopers (or as he himself suggested, by national activists masquerading as paratroopers), an incident captured on video by Petersburg news web site Paper Paper.

Kalugin returned to Palace Square this year on August 2 to protest Russia’s increasing militarism and imperialist misadventures in Ukraine. He was roughly detained by police some fifteen seconds after attempting to unfurl a rainbow flag emblazoned with the slogan, “My freedom defends yours.” Despite the fact that Kalugin held his anniversary protest right next to Manifesta 10’s provocative metallic Xmas tree, his protest has so far gone unremarked by progressive humanity (i.e., the international contemporary arts community) and the foreign press.

The interview below was published in August 2013 on the local Petersburg news web site Rosbalt three weeks after Kalugin’s first protest on Palace Square. Unfortunately, it hasn’t lost any of its timeliness, especially given the total absence of an anti-war movement in Russia and the singularity of Kalugin’s bravery and insight.

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Saint Petersburg State University student Kirill Kalugin is half the age of his eminent opponent, Petersburg Legislative Assembly member Vitaly Milonov, although he is also a redhead. But hair color is not the only thing the outspoken homophobe and outspoken gay have in common. Both claim they love their motherland Russia and will never leave it.

Rosbalt’s Yevgeny Zubarev met with Kalugin in the city center, on Arts Square. It’s a safe place because it is always chockablock with police. There were also lots of police on Palace Square on August 2, [2013], when Kalugin came there alone and unfurled a rainbow flag, but even a platoon of riot police was not immediately able to wrest him away from an agitated crowd dressed in striped shirts for Russian Paratroopers Day.

— Why did you do it, Kirill? Weren’t you frightened?

— I was frightened. Actually, there were supposed to be four of us out there, but then I ended up going out alone. If there had been several people, the police could have charged us with holding an unauthorized rally, but this way it was a solo picket, which doesn’t require permission. As soon as I unfurled the rainbow flag, men in [traditional Russian paratrooper] striped shirts grabbed me. But I don’t think they were paratroopers: I had seen many of the assailants earlier at anti-LGBT protests. I think they were nationalist activists masquerading as paratroopers. The police pulled me from the crowd and put me in a car, but we couldn’t leave right away: the crowd blocked the car, demanding that the police give me up. The riot police intervened and cleared a path, and I was taken to the 78^thpolice precinct.

— What did police charge you with? How were you punished?

— I don’t understand it myself. At first they wouldn’t let me make a phone call. The sergeants behaved rudely, and I couldn’t figure out what my status was, whether I had been detained, arrested or was considered a suspect. Right there at the police station one of the detained paratroopers rushed me: he wanted to beat me up, but the police held him back. Then the brass arrived and everything immediately changed: the police started talking with me politely. It turned out I wasn’t being charged with anything. They even let me file an assault complaint. But how that case has turned out, I don’t know: it has been twenty days, but I have had no word from the police.

— After this incident, Russian Orthodox patriots wrote several petitions to Saint Petersburg State University demanding your expulsion.

— I’m a student in the physics department, specializing in medical physics and bioengineering. It’s a tough department, and there is a lot of studying to do. What matters to the deans is that students take all their exams and tests on time, but they are unconcerned about their private lives. Generally, it is not kosher in the scientific community to tell people how they should behave in the intimate realm. So I’m confident all these petitions are pointless.

— Your family must have seen how you were beaten on Palace Square on the Web or on TV. What was their reaction?

— I was born to an ordinary Russian family in the town of Krasnoturyinsk in the Urals. My father is an officer in the Russian armed forces, my mother, a philologist. After the 2008 crisis, life in our town got really bad and we moved to Petersburg, where I finished high school, enrolled at the university, and began to live separately from my family. It was only then I told my parents I was gay. My parents were upset, especially my father, but they recognized my right to live as I see fit. My brother also said it was my choice. When I went out on Palace Square, they heard about it in the media. They called me and were worried, of course. But I assured them I was not in danger.

— How many times have you been beaten up in Petersburg for being gay?

— Never, except for the incident at Palace Square. My classmates at university and my employers at the restaurant where I work part time as a bartender do not care what I do in bed. Of course, after this incident I could have been recognized on the street and beaten up, but that hasn’t happened yet.

— There are thousands of commentators on the Web who are sure you went out on Palace Square to secure the right to emigrate to the west as a discriminated person.

— I don’t intend to leave Russia. I am sure all these homophobic laws will be repealed sooner or later, and all Russian citizens will be able to live normally regardless of sexual orientation. There were similar laws in Sweden thirty years ago, and gays were persecuted throughout the world the way they now are in Russia. But then the situation changed. I am sure that Russia also has to follow this path, and so I’m not going to leave. But change doesn’t happen by itself—people have to take to the streets and speak out about this problem.

— Why do you act alone? There are lots of public organizations in Russia that support gays. Many of them receive foreign grants. You could get this money to fight for equality and all that, no?

— I don’t want to. I’ve had offers to join various organizations like that, but I don’t want to. I’m not a politician. I just don’t want there to be discrimination against people like me. Besides, it is easier for the state to punish organizations than lone individuals. Organizations are more vulnerable. What are they going to do with an ordinary guy like me?

— When you finish university you’ll find that jobs in your scientific specialty are poorly paid and dead ends. This is another reason, aside from sexual orientation, for going abroad.

— I still won’t leave. I know how things are going with financing for science in Russia, but I don’t want to leave. In the end, there are grants given to scientists for in-demand research. And in fact, Russia is changing for the better; the situation is improving in science, too.

— You have the opportunity to address Rosbalt’s thousands of readers. What would say to all these people?

— I would appeal to people like me. Don’t sit quiet as mice. At least come out. Let your loved ones know that you exist.

— Why can’t you sit quiet and keep a low profile? Why do you come up with these public protests during which you can be beaten or even killed? After all, there is no practical sense to them.

— Can I quote Goethe? “He alone deserves liberty and life who daily must win them anew.”

— How old are you?

— Twenty-one.

Originally published, in Russian, by Rosbalt on August 22, 2013. Photo courtesy of Rosbalt

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Explaining his protest [on August 2, 2014], Kalugin said it was directed against both the lack of civil freedoms and the growing militarism in Russia during the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

“The suppression of any civil freedoms and the growth of imperial chauvinism in Russia are interconnected, and the issue has one and the same root,” he said.

“As long as there remains at least one group that is seen as ‘second-rate people’ in the country, the rest cannot call themselves free. Even if they enjoy some preferences now, this system can hit them, too, sooner or later.

“All this has grown so much that it has already started spreading into the neighboring states. The same people, who cried ‘Death to gays’ and hailed the laws banning ‘gay propaganda’ and restricting public assemblies, ended up shouting ‘Crimea is ours’ and going to Donetsk and Luhansk.”

Airborne Troops Day in St. Petersburg is known for the large number of airborne veterans gathering in the city center, drinking, swimming in fountains and, at times, getting out of control, with the police usually ignoring any misconduct.

Kalugin said that he chose to stage his protest on that day because he sees the festivities as the “climax of militarism and chauvinism.” He said it was also his reaction to homophobic jokes, where LGBT people were mockingly invited to hold their protests on Airborne Troops Day—the underlying notion being that they would be immediately be beaten by homophobic airborne veterans.

“It’s an old joke from the times when LGBT pride events were held in Moscow, [Moscow’s anti-gay ex-mayor Yury] Luzhkov used to say that he would only agree if it was held on Aug. 2,” Kalugin said.

source: St. Petersburg Times

Having Received Applause

PACE-NARYSHKIN-RUSSIA-GAYS

Strasburg [sic], October 1 (Interfax) – Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin said he invited European MPs, concerned about the rights of sexual minorities in Russia, to come to Russia and to make sure that their rights were not violated.

“Unfortunately, I will not be able to visit [gay clubs] with you,” Naryshkin told deputies, members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) when answering question of the European parliamentarians in the framework of the autumn meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasburg [sic].

The rights of sexual minorities are same as the rights of other citizens “practicing traditional sexual relations,” Naryshkin said.

Sexual minorities work successfully in various spheres, including culture, they relax freely and go to their clubs, Naryshkin said. “I have never been but witnesses say that it is very nice there, people spend time there nicely,” Naryshkin said, having received applause.

Source: Interfax

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Here’s what Having Received Applause really said (yes, this is in translation, too, but we’ve tried to reinsert the audible sneer that Interfax or the PACE interpreters airbrushed out):

We have a lot of successful people with a non-traditional sexual orientation. They are successful in business, in art, in all creative fields. […] They have the right to rest and relax comfortably […] in Moscow and other Russian cities. There are a lot of so-called gay clubs. I haven’t been, but witnesses say it is quite nice and comfortable there; those people have a good time. If anyone wants to receive confirmation of this, please, I invite you to Moscow. Unfortunately, I myself will not be able to visit the club, but I will take care of you.

Source: RIA Novosti

Thanks to Alexis for the inspiration.

Enemy of the Russian State

They don’t know what they’re missing.

Let’s Boycott All Contemporary Art

Editor’s Note. I’ve had it with “contemporary art” in general, not just Russian contemporary art or international art events held in Russia, fabled land of officially enforced homophobia. We think all people everywhere, progressive humanity and regressive humanity, the indifferent and the enthusiastic, everyone from Maine to Moscow to Melbourne, should boycott contemporary art. Otherwise, mouth breathers like the eurocuratorial nightmares caught shilling for the Putin regime in the article, below, will keep getting away with this fraud, which sucks up tons of intellectual, physical, financial, and technical resources that could be put to much better and more imaginative use elsewhere.

haka-desktop — When threatened by contemporary art, do the haka!

www.theartnewspaper.com
Moscow biennial curator and artists explain why we shouldn’t boycott Russia
While critics cry out against the country’s draconian anti-gay laws, cultural exchange is still important
By Sophia Kishkovsky
9 September 2013

Despite recent controversy over the country’s restrictive anti-gay laws, the curator of the Fifth Moscow Biennale says this is not the time to reject Russia. Her comments follow similar responses from the organisers of the Manifesta biennial, as critics call for a cultural boycott.

“I feel I am responsible to keep the platform going,” the Belgian-born Catherine de Zegher tells The Art Newspaper. The latest edition of the contemporary art exhibition opens on 19 September at the Manege Exhibition Hall.

De Zegher says that the biennale’s organisers have not placed any restrictions on what she can show. She adds that “only one or two” artists, whom she refused to identify, said they would pull out of the biennial because of the situation in Russia, but she convinced them to reconsider.

Visitors, however, are unlikely to see much art that aggressively confronts the country’s conservative laws. “I’m not a big believer in provocation,” De Zegher says. “Art that is very provocative is like fast food almost. It flares up, then it’s finished. Of course I do believe in activist gestures, and movement and action, but I think art works in a different way.”

Her comments echo those of the veteran German curator Kasper Konig, who is organising the next edition of Manifesta, Europe’s roving contemporary art biennial. Speaking at a news conference at the State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg on 5 September, Konig said the 2014 biennial will avoid “cheap provocations”. A petition calling for the biennial’s organisers to choose another city, postpone or cancel the exhibition has drawn nearly 2,000 signatures. Manifesta has responded with a statement on its website, expressing concern about the anti-gay laws but stressing that the biennial is based on “dialogue with those with whom we may disagree”. The biennial’s founding director, Hedwig Fijen, says that isolating Russia is wrong “especially as it deprives younger people of access to a broader scope of voices and points of view”.

“I think the 20th century was very much about shock and awe,” De Zegher says. “We’re entering another age, where there is more about collaboration, collective thinking.” Artists at the biennale are addressing controversial issues, she said, “but they are in nobody’s face”.

In the Moscow Biennale for example, the Chechen artist Aslan Gaisumov’s work touches on the intersection of religion and secularity, Islam and its relationship with Western culture, but does so with a sense of the “ambiguity of the negotiation between cultures, between religions, between the sexes, between ethnicities”, she says.

The Polish-born artist Gosia Wlodarczak, who has been working in Australia since the 1990s, is coming to Russia for the first time for the biennial. She explains why foreign artists should come to Moscow now by recalling her days as a student in Poland, when Communist rulers tried to crush the opposition Solidarity movement with martial law.

“I remember how important it was when anybody actually came [to Poland] instead of avoiding us. Every visit from somewhere else meant that people cared instead of just abandoning you, leaving you to your own,” the artist told The Art Newspaper as she worked on her intricate glass drawing installation in Manege, where the Kremlin is always in sight next door, outside the windows. “Every visit was like a contribution, and every exchange of dialogue was valued, because that’s how things change.”