Homosexual Subjectivities in the Multinational USSR

This article analyses interviews conducted in contemporary Russia with individuals who lived their homosexual desire during the late Soviet period. Without speaking of a “homosexual community”, the paper endeavours to show common elements in these individuals’ experiences, as well as the paths they followed in order to assert their subjectivity. These discourses are expressed in deeply Soviet terms, still perceptible today, notably through references to forms of sociability, the national diversity of the Soviet population, and the diverse circulations within this space. They therefore outline the forms of a shared Soviet homosexual experience that persists in contemporary Russia.