CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2007
| Author | Nemtsev, Mikhail Yurjevich |
|---|---|
| Title | The emergence of a sexual minorities movement in post-Soviet Russia |
| Summary | After a long period of oppression of individuals and the absence of organizations, a movement of sexual minorities in Russia began in 1989. I analyze the initial period of the movement, arguing that the public organizations and groups of the initial period realized agenda and interests of the previously existed nation-wide community. On the basis of interviews with activists along with analysis of the early gay and lesbian press I show manners of their public self-presentation, agenda and specificity of the leaders’ attitude to the organizational activity in that period. I describe the three main perspectives that structured the movement and show differences between the first and the second (current) period in the movement’s post-soviet history. Besides better known organizations in Moscow and Leningrad/St.Petersburg, similar groups appeared in other parts of the country simultaneously, that I explain as an effect of the deep social and political transformation of the period. I demonstrate also that attempts to politicize the movement in the early 1990s were unsuccessful, and that they resulted in a deep de-politization of the movement in the second period. In the last part, I offer a case study of an activist’s attitudes and ways of organizational activity in early 1990s, which illustrates how these organizations have been established and how one activist perceived the urgent aims of the community. I also show that the Russian movement, in general, hardly came close to appropriating a collective identity as part of the “global LGBT movement.” |
| Supervisor | Helms, Elissa |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2007/nemtsev_mikhail.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University