In this talk, Alex Kondakov will offer some explanations for the low rate of participation by lesbians and gay men in conventional political activity in Russia (such as rallies, petitioning, and LGBT-pride parades). Drawing on his previous work on (homo)sexual citizenship after the fall of the USSR, and using some insights from urban studies and queer theory, he analyzes how power was employed in the USSR from the very beginning in order to control citizens in every aspect of their lives. Prof. Kondakov emphasizes three formative steps in this process: making all spaces public, imposing censorship on the public sphere, and splitting the public sphere into an official zone and an unacknowledged, but tolerated, off-shoot. One result was to make available to Soviet queers an alternative, unrecognized public sphere in the USSR which they could inhabit, along with certain urban spaces which they could claim for their own use, despite the law against consensual sexual relations between men and despite the medicalization of female homosexuality. These urban spaces gave rise to a peculiar political culture that informs the current engagement of LGBT people in Russian grassroots politics. The Soviet past thus determines in many senses both the current government’s LGBT policy and Russian citizens’ LGBT politics.

Alexander Kondakov is Assistant Professor (European University at St. Petersburg, Russia), Researcher (Centre for Independent Social Research, St. Petersburg, Russia) and Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Social Policy Studies (Higher School of Economics, Moscow). He is the author of various international publications on homosexuality, human rights organizations, and citizenship in Russia. His research interests include the sociology of human rights, social citizenship, and social movements.

This talk is presented by IRWG's Lesbian-Gay-Queer Research Initiative (LGQRI).

Cosponsored by the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES) and Slavic Languages and Literatures.