Homophobia: Soviet and Post-Soviet

CBEES Advanced Seminar with Tatiana Klepikova, Freigeist Fellow of the Volkswagen Foundation at the University of Regensburg, Germany

Speaker: Tatiana Klepikova, Freigeist Fellow of the Volkswagen Foundation at the University of Regensburg, Germany

Discussant: Dmitrii Dorogov, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES), Södertörn University

Chair: Yulia Gradskova, Associate Professor in History, Senior Researcher at the Department of Gender Studies, Södertörn University, and Research Leader at CBEES

Abstract: What do we know about homophobia in the post-Soviet world? What are its histories? In what ways have the post-Soviet states nurtured cultures of homophobia? And what are historical and contemporary spaces of celebrating LGBTQ+ identities? Where does the post-Soviet hope of gender and sexual equality lie? In this talk, I present my current book project for the Cambridge Elements In Soviet and Post-Soviet History. My upcoming monograph offers the first concise overview of legal, political, and cultural frameworks of homophobia across the fifteen states of the former Soviet Union, focusing predominantly on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It is a journey into the past of homophobia as a political idea that has been integral to Russia’s imperial ambition for over a century. It is also a Pride march across past and present endeavors of artists, political activists, and ordinary citizens who have, often successfully, challenged this idea to shape better, queerer futures.

Tatiana Klepikova is a Freigeist Fellow of the Volkswagen Foundation at the University of Regensburg, where she leads the research group on queer literary cultures under socialism. She is editor and translator of Contemporary Queer Plays by Russian Playwrights (Bloomsbury, 2021) and co-editor of Outside the “Comfort Zone”: Private and Public Spheres in Late Socialist Europe (De Gruyter, 2020, with Lukas Raabe). Her work focuses on queer drama and performance and cultures of non-normative genders and sexualities in Eastern Europe.