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Notes Chapter 1. Introduction 1. Although female homosexuality was never criminalized, it was nonetheless pathologized; as such, while lesbian women were not imprisoned, they were in many cases subject to forced psychiatric and medical treatment and institutionalization (cf. Healey 2001a: Chapters 2 and 9; see also Nartova 2007). 2. Healey (2012), echoing a sentiment held by many, suggests that Russia’s decriminalization of homosexuality was simply a move made in order to allow the country to eventually join the Council of Europe, not one based on moral or ethical principles regarding full and equal rights for all citizens. 3. See “Luzhkov zapretit gei-parad.” 4. See Myers (2006). 5. I contacted Alekseev via email approximately three weeks before the date of the parade, at which time he stated that it would be held as planned. 6. See “Moscow Says Banned Gays because ‘Cleaner’ than West.” 7. For example, protesters picketed (and attacked participants at) the presentation of a speech by Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde’s grandson, at the Renaissance Event Club, having earlier in the month prevented a party at the same venue that was to be held in conjunction with the month’s festivities (“Protesters Disrupt Lecture”; “Nochnaia vylazka mrakobesov”). Customers of one of the city’s most popular gay clubs, Three Monkeys (Tri obez’iany), were similarly attacked by the same sorts of groups within the same time frame (“Napadenie fashistov”). Although a large cultural festival entitled Raduga bez granits (Rainbow without Borders) was to have surrounded the parade, the group’s organizers, initially intent on holding the planned festivities despite threats of violence, later posted a notice on their website, http://fest.gayclub. ru/ (inactive as of 1 December 2012) that all of the events would be postponed; indeed, the Russkii obshchenatsional’nyi soiuz (Russian Social-National Union), a Fascist/ nationalist group, had posted the times and locations of several of the planned events 208 Notes to Chapter 1 on their website, found at http://www.rons.ru/net_pidoram.htm (inactive as of 24 June 2013), calling for supporters to picket all such events; note the use of the word “pidoram” [uninflected form, pidory] in the web address, which translates as “fags” or “faggots”). As such, some events to which the protesters were called were marked by a complete absence of participants (“Fashisty po-prezhnemu”). 8. See, for example, “Gei-pogromy v Moskve”; Silant’ev (2006). 9. A detailed account of the events, in English, may be found in the report prepared by ILGA Europe (Anmeghichean 2006). 10. Moscow was not the only city in which physical violence and juridical interdiction occurred hand in hand with gay parades. In Riga, Latvia, for example, permission to hold the country’s first gay pride parade in 2005 was initially denied by the capital’s city council. Although the ban was ultimately reversed, the small group of marchers (approximately 150 to 200) was set upon by large groups of protesters who, as in Moscow, assaulted the marches with both fists and hurled objects (including human excrement). Threats of similar violence accompanied the announcement of a similar march in 2006, although this time President Vaira Vike-Freiberga unequivocally voiced her belief that the Riga City Council’s refusal—again—to authorize the parade, was “unacceptable in a democratic country because Latvia’s priorities are those articles of the Constitution, which enable people to express their opinion and the state should make it possible for them” (“Vike-Freiberga Lashes Out”). Similar violence greeted marchers in Warsaw, Poland. 11. It is notable that the name of the establishment points toward a “gay history” of sorts, as a gay club by the same name was in existence in Moscow in the early 1990s. 12. The name of the group is a reference to Mikhail Kuzmin’s 1923 novella of the same name. Kuzmin’s work, one of several of the Silver Age that engages homosexuality in a positive light, is often considered the first Russian “gay novel.” I discuss the group, and Kukharskii, further in Chapter 6. 13. The charges involved accusations that one of the celebrants urinated on or near the church, and another accosted a nun. Both Severianin (2006) and Silant’ev (2006) note that most all public celebrations in St. Petersburg can count numerous intoxicated people among the participants, many of whom—regardless of sexuality—will often relieve themselves on the street. Silant’ev also suggests that the placement of the gay group in front of the Catholic church—a church...

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