Irina Roldugina
Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh. DPhil (Oxon).
In addition to my scholarly work, I run a Telegram channel dedicated to pre-revolutionary and Soviet queer history, designed for a general audience: https://t.me/spyinthearchives
I am currently focused on a book manuscript "Vernacular Queer: Gender and Sexual Emancipation in the Early Soviet State".
"Vernacular Queer in the Early Soviet State" is the first study of early Soviet queer emancipation and its forced demise under Stalin in the 1930s. Based on previously unknown archival sources, this book reveals the unintended consequences of the first socialist revolution in the world. The promise of justice for the oppressed and a scientific approach to human sexuality inspired gender and sexual nonconformists in the early years of the Soviet Union and triggered the process of their self-liberation. Their history of self-acceptance and calls for recognition of their rights is told in their own words, offering a window into the everyday life of queer people and their aspirations in the early Soviet state. The decriminalization of homosexuality in 1917 and its affirmation in the first Soviet criminal code of 1922 were taken by the queers as evidence of acceptance by the new regime. In the 1920s, they would engage in same-sex marriages, organize parties and events, and explore opportunities for medical intervention to transform their bodies in a desired way. By the end of the 1920s, the visibility of queers in major Soviet cities, especially homosexual men, would puzzle and alarm the secret police. In 1933, the security service launched a secret anti-homosexual campaign that would culminate in the recriminalization of homosexuality in 1934. For the most part, the generation of self-emancipated queers would vanish in the Gulag, and the rest would never again publicly declare their queerness.
This book uses the history of early Soviet queers as a window into larger questions of the power of Marxist ideology to produce new subjectivities, the Soviet gender order, and the nature of Stalinist terror. My book also contributes to the debate about the emergence of modern homosexual identity by offering a history of queer emancipation in an illiberal state.
My expertise includes early modern Russia, social history, sovetization of sexuality, modernity and psychiatry, history of homosexuality in Russia, medical humanities, intimacy in GULAG, HIV during perestroika, archives.
Supervisors: Dan Healey
In addition to my scholarly work, I run a Telegram channel dedicated to pre-revolutionary and Soviet queer history, designed for a general audience: https://t.me/spyinthearchives
I am currently focused on a book manuscript "Vernacular Queer: Gender and Sexual Emancipation in the Early Soviet State".
"Vernacular Queer in the Early Soviet State" is the first study of early Soviet queer emancipation and its forced demise under Stalin in the 1930s. Based on previously unknown archival sources, this book reveals the unintended consequences of the first socialist revolution in the world. The promise of justice for the oppressed and a scientific approach to human sexuality inspired gender and sexual nonconformists in the early years of the Soviet Union and triggered the process of their self-liberation. Their history of self-acceptance and calls for recognition of their rights is told in their own words, offering a window into the everyday life of queer people and their aspirations in the early Soviet state. The decriminalization of homosexuality in 1917 and its affirmation in the first Soviet criminal code of 1922 were taken by the queers as evidence of acceptance by the new regime. In the 1920s, they would engage in same-sex marriages, organize parties and events, and explore opportunities for medical intervention to transform their bodies in a desired way. By the end of the 1920s, the visibility of queers in major Soviet cities, especially homosexual men, would puzzle and alarm the secret police. In 1933, the security service launched a secret anti-homosexual campaign that would culminate in the recriminalization of homosexuality in 1934. For the most part, the generation of self-emancipated queers would vanish in the Gulag, and the rest would never again publicly declare their queerness.
This book uses the history of early Soviet queers as a window into larger questions of the power of Marxist ideology to produce new subjectivities, the Soviet gender order, and the nature of Stalinist terror. My book also contributes to the debate about the emergence of modern homosexual identity by offering a history of queer emancipation in an illiberal state.
My expertise includes early modern Russia, social history, sovetization of sexuality, modernity and psychiatry, history of homosexuality in Russia, medical humanities, intimacy in GULAG, HIV during perestroika, archives.
Supervisors: Dan Healey
less
InterestsView All (31)
Uploads
Book chapters by Irina Roldugina
Articles by Irina Roldugina
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.
For the first time, these sources depict the everyday life and sexual practices of gays in Odessa, Rostov, and the Russian countryside in the 1910s and 1920s. The authors of the letters creatively use elements of expert knowledge available to them to elaborate and express their personal and group experiences and self-perceptions. Interrogations of one of the authors several years later, in 1933, within the context of a large-scale trial of homosexual men of Leningrad, put these instances of free speech from the mid-1920s into historical perspective. The OGPU documents published alongside the earlier letters capture the beginning of a radical shift in the rhetoric and even vocabulary of the public discourse on homosexuality in the Soviet Union and the rise of homophobic hegemonic discourse.
This article has been published in The New Times magazine and focuses on the early Soviet queer people and the unnoticed emancipation they experienced in the 20s.
I argue this case captures the precise moment of the discovery of modern sexuality as a public discourse and a distinctive practice in Russia. Further developing the concept of “transgression” as elaborated first by Michel Foucault, I interpret the story of the Kalinkin Commission as a case of transgression that puzzled the authorities and prompted them to take extraordinary steps such as creating the Kalinkin House facility. What was initially perceived as a crime bore a remarkable similarity to the mores and even aesthetics of the most refined (“enlightened”) social circles in both Russia and Western Europe. This was a transgression in more than one sense (elite practices were reproduced by commoners, erotic sexuality was exchanged for money as in crude fornication, etc.), but not an outright felony. The situation of transgression helps to capture the moment of a new meaning being forged, and normative restrictions being challenged and nuanced.
Book Reviews by Irina Roldugina
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.
For the first time, these sources depict the everyday life and sexual practices of gays in Odessa, Rostov, and the Russian countryside in the 1910s and 1920s. The authors of the letters creatively use elements of expert knowledge available to them to elaborate and express their personal and group experiences and self-perceptions. Interrogations of one of the authors several years later, in 1933, within the context of a large-scale trial of homosexual men of Leningrad, put these instances of free speech from the mid-1920s into historical perspective. The OGPU documents published alongside the earlier letters capture the beginning of a radical shift in the rhetoric and even vocabulary of the public discourse on homosexuality in the Soviet Union and the rise of homophobic hegemonic discourse.
This article has been published in The New Times magazine and focuses on the early Soviet queer people and the unnoticed emancipation they experienced in the 20s.
I argue this case captures the precise moment of the discovery of modern sexuality as a public discourse and a distinctive practice in Russia. Further developing the concept of “transgression” as elaborated first by Michel Foucault, I interpret the story of the Kalinkin Commission as a case of transgression that puzzled the authorities and prompted them to take extraordinary steps such as creating the Kalinkin House facility. What was initially perceived as a crime bore a remarkable similarity to the mores and even aesthetics of the most refined (“enlightened”) social circles in both Russia and Western Europe. This was a transgression in more than one sense (elite practices were reproduced by commoners, erotic sexuality was exchanged for money as in crude fornication, etc.), but not an outright felony. The situation of transgression helps to capture the moment of a new meaning being forged, and normative restrictions being challenged and nuanced.
И хотя основную часть моего доклада я планирую посвятить анализу информации в упомянутом деле, я бы хотела поделиться другими архивными находками, касающимися криминализации мужской гомосексуальности в сталинское время (30-ые), и новыми данными, которые мне удалось обнаружить. В частности, я подвергну сомнению априорный тезис о том, что после 1934 года, когда была введена отдельная уголовная статья за добровольный однополый мужской секс, советские власти закрыли для себя этот вопрос.