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The Soviet Union, 1975 - Dmitry Simchenko

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Memorabilia tour: A Szovjet Költészet Antológiája.

(EN: The Soviet Poetry Anthology)

Published in 1955 in Budapest, it originally sold for 40ft (I bought it at 700ft). The poetry is separated by republics. They're all translated into Hungarian. The end contains a small section with a short biography for every author.

The book itself is in good condition, I really like the coat of arms drawings inside! I don't know anything about poetry, my parents say it's not really good.

Outside:

View inside:

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Memorabilia tour.

Gonna post one of these everyday for the few upcoming days to show off my wares!

Stay tuned :3

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Recent post escaped containment so I want to clarify some things. And before I do, to be clear, I really do not mind if you don't agree with me on these but reblogged the post, it was a general statement that we can agree on regardless of disagreement in other fields. I'm making this post because I realised I might've not made my stances clear and I saw some people with "don't interact if" in their bios.

I tried to phrase these as clearly as possible, but if you don't agree with these and feel the need to fight me, please just block me. I don't want to argue on these, nor will I EVER go harass or pick a fight with someone for having an opinion that differs on this. As always, I'm open for respectful conversations on it though! I am not a authority on this, I'm not an expert. My opinion holds zero weight. If you want any clarification on any of these or any other topics, feel free to comment or send me an ask and I will elaborate the best I can.

I'm not a zionist because I don't think Israel has a right to exist as a state. Not because of Israel specifically, but because I don't believe ANY state has a right to exist. The people in it do. The state doesn't. I don't believe either people, Israeli or Palestinian, have a 'claim' or 'right' to the land. Additionally, I'm fundamentally against the idea of any religious ethnostate, especially because I'm against the idea of religion being part of any state matter. But there is nuance to it.

I am for a two state solution not because (again) I think Israel particularly should or has a right to exist, but because it is the most realistic solution to the conflict. It is beyond important not to spur on the cycle of hate, and erasing Israel would do exactly that. Additionally, given the rampant issue of antisemitism in other countries, I completely understand the want for a Jewish state, even if I don't think it should exist. Even if you think Israel shouldn't exist, the first step would STILL be to tackle the issue of antisemitism in other countries, since it was a driving factor for the creation of Israel.

I do think the current Israeli government should be held responsible for the violations of the regulations of war in the conditions in Gaza. I fully believe they were committed. Nothing more to say on that, they were committed, they should be held responsible. As said in a previous post, I don't think any civilian areas should be bombed like Gaza has been. (I also think it was a terrible tactical decision because you are now guaranteed to have a new radicalized generation of Palestinians but that's neither here nor there).

That being said, I fundamentally disagree with the idea that Israel is somehow a 'lost cause' and should be erased from the map for their current actions. First, that is a terrible idea and it'll only fuel the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Second, I am from Hungary, a country with an incredibly corrupt government and a brainwashed population. Even though this is true, I don't think my country is a lost cause. Well, same with Israel. Political reform is always possible.

Thanks for reading, TLDR is extremism leads to more extremism and I don't like people getting bombed. Also I don't think states or governments are natural and thus have no right to exist.

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Yall can't act right so here is a reminder:

If you are happy in any way about the war between Israel and Iran, you are not anti war. You do not hate war. You do not think war is hell. You like war when it benefits your interests.

If you think you're still anti war, do some introspection and ask yourself why you're happy a war has been started and if you actually understand what that means.

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Actually, yeah you're right.

I made this post because I was particularly frustrated with the wordings of "I'm anti-war but seeing the missiles hit [Israel/Iran] makes me so happy" because a lot of the times the videos they were showing were hitting civilian areas or near them, which is highlighting specifically a terrible aspect of war. I should've made that clearer. Regardless, I should've taken the time to examine the nuances. I'm going to reblog this without my whole rant because it's important to highlight these nuances and the differences in thinking you might have with other people.

To be absolutely clear, I think war is absolutely necessary sometimes. And this post isn't about people who are, rightfully, excited or happy at the prospect of freedom for Iran as a consequence of this war (which is not clear in the post because of the use of "any way"). This was specifically aimed at people, especially people who aren't from the regions affected, who are celebrating the whole war itself in a "this is karma" or "I love seeing my enemy hurt" manner, ways of thinking which personally I do believe go against some of the founding ideas of anti-war thinking.

Anyways, you said this really well, thank you for the addition!!

Yall can't act right so here is a reminder:

If you are happy in any way about the war between Israel and Iran, you are not anti war. You do not hate war. You do not think war is hell. You like war when it benefits your interests.

If you think you're still anti war, do some introspection and ask yourself why you're happy a war has been started and if you actually understand what that means.

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Yall can't act right so here is a reminder:

If you are happy in any way about the war between Israel and Iran, you are not anti war. You do not hate war. You do not think war is hell. You like war when it benefits your interests.

If you think you're still anti war, do some introspection and ask yourself why you're happy a war has been started and if you actually understand what that means.

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one of my dad's best qualities is that russia is his japan. he lived there for 6 years and just never moved on and he STILL knows russian. his college friends told me that once when they went to lenin's mausoleum he started dramatically fake crying. completely different story from the time he almost tripped over a dead body while on a morning run in moscow

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fuckkkkk i need this flag for pride too omg

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Yall I need to focus so hard on the BAC but I promise there will be more Soviet posting!!

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From my dissertation: Trans Men in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

The prison slang for masculine inverted women was kobelki, meaning stud. In Zhuk’s account, the kobelki played the role of benevolent patriarch for their prison wives. As husbands, the kobelki exercised a degree of dominance and control but did not treat their passive partners with violence. They were extremely popular among female inmates because of the sexual services they offered; in bed, kobelki would play the masculine role, penetrating their partners. This is the source of another nickname for kobelki, kovyrialki, which means lockpicks. Kobelki risked losing their status, however, if they ever betrayed the male-female roleplay. Kobelki who asked their partners to touch their sexual organs lost their status and authority regarding other women, slipping into the passive role from which there was no return. Zhuk depicts the kobelki as popularizing female same sex relationships, but not all lesbian-identified Russian women shared this positive view. In the 1993 Russian documentary film To My Women Friends, a collection of filmed interviews with same sex attracted females, one subject recounted her time in prison and spoke in negative terms about the masculine women she encountered there. She described them as leeches, mooching off the labor and kindness of feminine partners in exchange for false promises of genuine love and loyalty. She ridiculed them for pretending to be men, for hiding their bodies and packing their underwear with matchboxes to pretend they possess male genitalia.

Prison psychiatrists also took note of this pattern of sexual role play among incarcerated women. They approved of the formation of these “homosexual families” on the grounds that women were more emotionally fragile than men and could not endure prison life without the structure that the family unit provided. A 1965 study of “female homosexuals” drawn primarily from the Karaganda women’s corrective labor camp classified its subjects as either active or passive homosexuals. Most active homosexual women (forty-one out of the fifty-seven in the sample) imitated the behavior of a man as head of the family. They took all major decisions and decided how money, including that earned by their partners, was to be spent. Active women in these households scorned work considered feminine, but they gladly performed men’s work such as chopping wood or fixing a fence. Twenty-one of the twenty-nine active women with jobs worked in men's professions, including cobbling, driving, and operating a lathe. Almost half of the active women in the study displayed transvestic behavior.

Prison culture became a major influence on the whole of Russian cultural life during the 1990s, including the reputation of queers within its hierarchies. Similarly, memories of mass incarceration from the Soviet era lingered in the nascent queer subculture. In addition to the memories of trauma discussed above, I argue that the primary legacy of Soviet mass incarceration on Russian understandings of sexuality took the form of gender anxiety. Prison hierarchies were exceptionally gendered, with masculine individuals enjoying privilege over other prisoners who inhabited a passive, feminized sexual and social role. This produced both weak, sexually victimized men and mannish, dominant women, both threats to the cisheteronormative patriarchal status quo. In the 1990s straight Russian men feared the possibility of becoming like the degraded ones they had seen or heard of in prison, and same sex attracted Russian women found their self-understanding disrupting by the presence of transmasculine transgender and transsexual individuals who previously were only visible in the zone.

At the same time as this crisis of cisheteronormative masculinity, however, Russia in the 1990s was becoming one of the only nations on earth where female to male transsexualism was far more common than male to female transition. Records from surgeons in Moscow offering transsexual operations indicated that the number of masculinizing surgeries performed greatly outnumbered feminizing ones. Healthcare providers were at a loss to explain this phenomenon, but rumors emerged among Russian lesbians that Soviet psychiatrists had been sending their most difficult same sex attracted female patients to receive mandatory sex change operations, thus curing their homosexuality by transforming them into heterosexual men. Laurie Essig reported this rumor in Queer in Russia, and it has gone on to have wide currency in discussions of the treatment of queers in the Soviet Union. Igor Kon, however, immediately disputed Essig’s claim. As one of the few practicing sexologists in the USSR, Kon would have known if standard practices for the treatment of same-sex attraction included sexual reassignment surgery, and furthermore such operations are extremely complex and difficult and would have required specialist knowledge that was largely unavailable in the USSR.

But why did this rumor form and why did it persist? Female masculinity was a prevalent feature of lesbian life in 1990s Russia. In the film To My Women Friends, two of the six interviewees describe having a transmasculine identity, with one going as far as to totally distinguish himself from womanhood. Neither individual had pursued sexual reassignment, so it is worth noting that while the recipients of masculinizing mastectomy or phalloplasty numbered in the hundreds, the amount of transgender identified females was likely several times greater. Same sex attracted women often did not view them positively. Olga Krauze, in an interview with Argumenty i Fakty, decried mannish lesbians as “awful,” and said that attempting to change one’s sex had “disastrous” consequences, that these transsexuals endured lonely fates as their partners abandoned them. Her arguments included the assertion that sexual reassignment is just a cosmetic surgery, patients are incapable of orgasm afterward, and that they must then take artificial hormones for the rest of their lives. Despite her revulsion toward masculine women, Krauze pleads that if one’s “infantile complexes” force them to behave as a man, that they should simply dress the part but not “mutilate” themselves. She concludes that most transsexuals only pursue surgery to officially register their marriages to women. Given this extremely negative view by one of the leading cultural figures of 1990s Russian lesbianism, it can be concluded that many in the wider community shared Krauze’s view. As such, it makes sense to associate transsexualism with totalitarianism, an artificial imposition forced on same sex attracted females, especially in the context of the privileged and visible role inhabited by mannish women in Soviet prisons. While no historical examples exist of Soviet psychiatry forcing same sex attracted females to undergo sexual reassignment, similar scenarios could have caused confusion. Decades prior, in the Karaganda study, the author made note of one subject who passed as a man in society, using the name Andrei Ivanovich in his passport. Andrei managed to officially register his marriage to a female partner and “together they formed a homosexual family” with his wife’s children from a previous marriage, and the children knew Andrei as “papa.” In a broader sense, the sexual inverts described by Olga Zhuk were a product of the Soviet penal system, albeit an unintentional one. Prisons provided a space where female masculinity was celebrated, where successfully emulating male embodiment and sexuality provided status and material benefit. Meanwhile, there was no location in Soviet society where males emulating female embodiment could achieve similar benefits. Sexually passive, emasculated males suffered tremendously in prison, and the tightly controlled Soviet public sphere provided no space for male assigned persons to play with feminine presentation and roles. For Western observers, one of the distinguishing features of Russian gay club culture was the lack of a camp aesthetic; queer Russian men were far more eager to flaunt their wealth than to flaunt gender norms. In a sense then it is true that the Soviet system produced a flourishing of female to male transsexuality and transgenderism. The site of production, however, was in the prison system, not in punitive psychiatry.

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Women in the USSR.

An essay from my last year of highschool for my history class. ao3 link.

Sources: Women in Russia (Wikipedia) The Role of Women in Soviet Russia (Boston University Students) Women in the USSR (School History.org) Soviet Women in WWII (Wikipedia) Lyudmila Pavlichenko (Wikipedia) What Has Socialism Ever Done For Women? Lifting the Iron Curtain of Gender Policies in the Soviet Union (Geneva Graduate Institute)

Women had a key role in the Soviet Union. They were active citizens both by law and socially, unlike most women in western societies. Still, Soviet society retained the strange nuances of misogyny within it. In this essay I will deconstruct the role of women within the USSR and its history. I will first start by an account of women in the USSR through time and then present both the negatives and positives of being a woman in the Soviet Union, while focusing on various aspects of society that affected them such as social standings, healthcare, work, and education.

One of the main campaigns of the Russian Revolution was the promotion of equality between men and women. They were encouraged to participate in the communist revolt, the industrial workforce and to attain leadership roles. Once the government had been established, women were given the right to vote as well. The doctrine was aimed towards the economic liberation of women from men, claiming that the responsibility of housework and childcare crushes and degrades women and wastes their labor on unproductive and petty drudgery. This resulted in a sharp increase of women who joined the workforce, going from 423,200 in 1923 to 885,000 in 1930, which helped jumpstart the Soviet economy. To achieve this mass migration of women into the workforce, the USSR issued a series of law called the Family Codes. The first Family Code in 1918 brought into existence radically progressive laws for the time. These included secular marriage free from religious focus, the right to divorce and maternal rights within the workforce, such as an 8 week paid maternity leave. For the next few years, the Soviet Union continued down this path, with laws such as the legalization of abortion and the illegalization of marital rape, a crime of which the legitimacy is debated even today. Labor laws ensured women were given equal rights in the workforce, as well as insurance in case of illness, paid holiday leaves and a minimum wage. With the full establishment of a working nation and the reopening of educational institutions, women and girls were also given the right to participate in education from kindergarten to university or college in any field they wished to pursue. In 1919 the Bolsheviks set up a specialist women’s department, the Zhenotdel. It was tasked with overseeing the Family Codes and creating propaganda to encourage women joining the workforce and revolt. It was later dismantled in 1930, under the justification that their work was done. During these years, the government also worked to educate women on reproductive help and contraceptive methods. This was pushed by the sharp increase of abortions after its legalization. In 1925, the Soviet Union passed a law legalizing de facto marriages for women and men living together. This law led to inequalities as the man had no legal ties to the woman, and if she were to get pregnant, he could leave with no consequences or responsibilities. This was fixed in 1926, when a law was passed guaranteeing equal rights for men and women in de facto marriages. Most of the laws that guaranteed women equal rights as men overall stayed in effect throughout the eras I will be mentioning in the next paragraphs. As a result, I will not be mentioning them again individually.

Despite the beginning of the 1930s seeing an unprecedented number of women enter the workforce, their rights were once again limited during the Stalinist era. They fell victim to the purges ordered by Stalin, with the number of women imprisoned in Gulags rising from 30,108 to 108,898 between 1934 to 1940. While women were usually forced to work in factories rather than hard labor camps, they were instead subjected to vast amounts of violence and sexual assault. This era also saw the appearance of a new type of propaganda called ‘Thank you literature’ in which articles in women’s magazines would praise Stalin for all he had done for women and their rights. Additionally, due to the recent famine, the policies of the USSR started to push for women to become mothers and have more children. Sex became a heavy taboo and contraception was now regarded as an enemy instead of something to be educated about. In the mid 1930s, the USSR saw a return of conservative and traditional values in family policy and social norms. This included the recriminalization of abortion and homosexuality, and divorce became difficult to attain once again. The official rhetoric about women’s purpose and rights shifted from them being shackled by the sole responsibility of the household to being declared the ‘heroines of the home’ and how they should be making sacrifices for their husbands to creative a positive life at home that would increase productivity. They also began recentering on the responsibility of women to become mothers and provide the Motherland with more sons. However, the responsibility to participate in the workforce and contribute to the economy remained. To encourage having children, the Soviet government promised support for single and working mothers in the form of a monthly child support and guaranteed government provided childcare in the form of daycares. This promise was not kept as the monthly child support was well below what was necessary to even get to necessities for a child, and the daycares were rarely built, when they were, the demand exceeded supply and workers could rarely get a place.

In the 1940s, the traditional ideology continued. The nuclear family and the social responsibility of motherhood became the driving forces of the country. However, with the start of the second world war, women once again came into positions of power. As the men were called away to fight for the nation, women stepped up and took charge of some state farms and large collective farms. By 1942, women made up over half of the agricultural labor force. The Great Patriotic War also pushed women to join the Red Army and the Soviet Navy to help win. Such was Lyudmila Mykhailivna Pavlichenko, one of the top military snipers and the most successful female sniper in history with 309 confirmed kills. The Soviet Union came out from the war with one of the highest death tolls recorded. This resulted in a severe shortage of workers, which threatened the economy of the large country. The nation survived and pushed through with the renewed contribution of Soviet women to the economy, an advantage other destroyed nations did not have. The government also doubled down on pushing women to have more and more children, presenting it as the women’s duty to the Motherland. In 1955, after Stalin’s death, the Soviet Union rescinded the ban on abortions. A decade later, in 1963, that Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova would become the first woman and first civilian in space. Previously a textile factory worker, she was honorarily inducted into the Soviet Air Force. She performed various tests on herself which helped scientists observe the effects of null gravity on the female body. The 1977 Soviet Constitution once again liberalized women’s rights, supporting them both in public and family life. Women were expected to educate themselves, work for the benefit of society and raise the next generation of Soviet citizens. The last few decades of the Soviet Union thus saw a strange mix of propaganda ranging from emphasizing the importance of women in the household and in childcare while also pushing women to be more active in the workforce.

As is often the case, everyday life for the Soviet woman was quite different than the legal image or the image projected by propaganda. The involvement of women in the public political sphere had started to increase even before the revolution. For example, in February 1917 40,000 women took to the streets of St. Petersburg to protest the increasing food prices and rationing. This protest has been considered by some as a catalyst to the start of the revolt. During the Russian revolution, women were seen as an untapped force of labor, which was needed for the success of the revolution. They were not wrong as the boost in participants in the revolution gave them an advantage over the opposing side, and later gave them the same advantage in WW2. However, the political campaign from the Bolsheviks did not immediately shift the public opinion and traditional views on women. Misogyny was still rampant within most fields such as the military, government, and healthcare. Rape and sexual assault, as is today, was a significant risk for any women choosing to join the revolutionary forces. This risk only increased during WW2, as the abhorrent actions and reputation of brutal rape from the red army was not reserved for foreign women. While the Bolsheviks liked to perpetuate the idea that the USSR was a place of liberation for women, this was not the full truth. It is important to acknowledge that a lot of the previously listed laws were respected and applied, bringing radical change for women. The first few years of the Leninist era were most likely made of actual progress, as much as possible given the social and economic context, and hope for a better and free future. However, the attempt to break the social norms quickly fell back during the Stalinist era. While legally women retained their rights in politics and the workplace, the decade old social responsibilities returned. As a result, their rights remained progressive, but they were less than equal to their male counterparts. Women were still included and pushed into the work centered ideology of the USSR. Instead of being liberated from their roles as household leaders, women were now forced to play a large part both in the workforce and the household. Expectations changed from simply managing childcare and chores to doing all of those while also working and contributing to the motherland. The Stalinist era and onwards also saw a decrease in the quality of healthcare for women. The state employed repressive tactics to try and increase the birthrate such as banning abortion and running anti-abortion campaigns even when it was decriminalized again. This limited the amount of information and care that doctors and nurses could provide. The government made many empty promises, stating that they would build state funded free daycares and give families monthly allowances per child to help sustain the household. However, most of the daycares were never built and the existing ones had truly little capacity, leading most children to be left out. Additionally, the monthly allowances were often way below the threshold of what was required to even buy the necessities for a child. Thus, while the USSR brought on major change for women, it was not all as ideal and hopeful as the Bolsheviks believed it to be.

Despite all these negative facets, if asked, a lot of women who lived through the era will claim that it was good. The reasons for this are complicated and should include an in-depth discussion on the effects of propaganda, quality of life in the modern age and Soviet nostalgia. However, for the purposes of this essay, we will keep the topic on the positive aspects of being a woman in the USSR. Compared to most of their western counterparts, Soviet women still seemed to benefit from the socialist system. Most women had the right and access to healthcare, were encouraged and allowed to pursue education, were allowed to vote, have a bank account and were independent from men. Focusing on healthcare, while mostly restrictively, women were still allowed to have abortions, especially if the pregnancy was a result of rape or was life threatening. In the early years of the USSR, their society underwent a sexual liberation phase. Many studies were conducted on sexuality and gender, leading to a greater than average understanding of the female body. Legally, Soviet women were leagues ahead of their western counterparts. They could vote, wear gender neutral clothing, work including in power positions, be financially independent and divorce. Within the workplace, women also benefited from equal pay, a problem still relevant today. While encouraged by society, women did not necessarily have to marry to survive and advance in the workplace. The state also guaranteed paid maternal leave and supported single mothers greatly. These legal factors infiltrated into social life as well. By the end of the USSR, the cultural norms around women were significantly more relaxed than at the start of it. While they were not at the stage that the Bolsheviks had promised and thought they would be, it was still an improvement. Additionally, the Soviet Union has many examples of women in high power positions. A few of these examples have been listed in the previous paragraphs, however there are more such as Maria Kovrigina, minister of health, Alexandra Kollontai, minister of welfare or even Elena Stasova, who was Central Committee Secretary and so influential and powerful in the Politburo she was nicknamed Catherin the Third. Women were even encouraged to hold positions of power, as the government believed in the equality of the sexes. In education, many girls were pushed towards and encouraged to participate in scientific fields, especially during the cold war. The influx of women in the scientific field was so threatening to the USA, it is regarded to be the catalyst for the launch of multiple programs encouraging young girls to go into STEM fields. The effects of the Soviet progressive mentality rippled throughout the world. The experience of a woman in the USSR, especially compared to her western peers, was thus largely positive.

In conclusion, women have had a tumultuous history in the Soviet Union. The outlook on their role in society, both legally and socially, constantly bounced around from conservative to liberal and was often thus a mix of the two overall. While gender-based discrimination was not eliminated in the USSR, it was greatly diminished and despite all the drawbacks, it remained one of the countries with the most progressive outlook on gender issues. The government very often failed to deliver on its promises of equality, however still managed to succeed in some rare but important and influential cases. The contrast of the progressive Soviet legislature with the focus on women's reproductive function reveals a Soviet paradox around gender policies, rather than a classification on them. It would be wrong to claim that women were equal in the USSR and only had positive experiences, however it would be equal wrong to say nothing positive came out of the USSR’s views on women and that the negatives outweighed the positives.

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Race in the USSR.

An essay from my last year of highschool for my history class. ao3 link.

Sources: Racism in the Soviet Union (Wikipedia) The racist treatment of africans and african americans in the USSR (Newlines magazine) African Americans in the 'raceless' Soviet Union (Penn Today) Dividing Lines: the Construction of Four Races in Soviet Russia Race, Ethnicity, and Cultural Racism in Soviet and Post-Soviet Ideology, Communication, and Practice An African-American Worker in Stalin's Soviet Union: Race and the Soviet Experiment in International Perspective Histories of Color: Blackness and Africanness in the Soviet Union Russification (Wikipedia) Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (Wikipedia) Africa-Soviet Union relations (Wikipedia)

Notes: Keep in mind I'm a white person, so this is coming from a white perspective.

Race in the USSR was a complicated issue. As usual, this topic is plagued by the Soviet Union’s usual duplicity, but also because of its unique stature as a state unaffected directly by imperial colonialism. This essay will only be a surface level examination of the concept of race and racism in the USSR. I will first tackle a general overview of the four main ethnic groups in the USSR, before setting up the view of race in the nation and finally a deeper explanation of the treatment of one of the ethnic groups as a case study.

The USSR had a complicated view on the multicultural aspect of the nation. Within the government, propaganda pushed the image of complete equality. Many propaganda posters focused on the internationality of communism and depicted white, black, and east Asian individuals standing together for communism. This can be explained by the very nature of communism, an ideology aiming to create a perfect and equal utopia. Ideologically, Marxists believed that racism was a result of the class struggle and as a result, a truly communist country can never tolerate racism. Within the USSR, there are four distinct and main groups of the population that were qualified to be different races. These were black people, Southeast Asians, Arabs, and Jews. However, the four groups were all treated in drastically different ways in this supposedly ‘raceless’ society. Jewish people were greatly discriminated against, even being targeted by the purges during the Stalinist era. As a religion, the Soviets were intrinsically opposed to Judaism. When Stalin came into power, he brought with him and spread his antisemitic ideas on the ‘Jewish race’ and subscribed to conspiracy theories such as a secret ‘Jewish world conspiracy’ aiming to help the spread of capitalism. Southeast Asians were treated with more respect, being frequently included in propaganda posters, and favored due to the Sino-Soviet alliance. In addition, a majority of the USSR was made up of east Asians, including a few of the individuals high up in the Soviet Government. Between these two ends of the spectrum are Arabs. The USSR had a lot of stakes in Arab states, especially during the cold war. This allyship meant that overt racism towards Arabs was not common, however it was still present. Additionally, as is now in modern day Russia, racism towards smaller ethnic groups like Chechens, Romani and generally populations within the Caucasus with many slurs present in the Russian language towards them. The USSR was known for its repression of traditional culture. The combination of the effort to create an equal society and the ingrained racism and bigotry of the time resulted in the government viewing any cultural difference as a resistance to communism. They oppressed ethnic groups, stripped them of their traditions, native language, and history to try and somehow force a homogonous society into existence. This was done through the process of Russification, defined as a form of cultural assimilation in which non-Russians, whether involuntarily or voluntarily, give up their culture in favor of the Russian culture and Russian language. An example of this process is forcing schools to only teach Russian or banning important cultural festivities. As one might expect, this resulted in great levels of resentment from those minorities. This resentment was only increased with the genocides committed by the USSR such as the Holodomor in Ukraine. These genocides dealt a great deal of damage to the smaller ethnic groups in the USSR who were already suffering from being targeted in WW2. This background creates an interesting landscape for our essay as it gives the image of a nation who cherry picks races that they deem acceptable. In this process, they created a living hell for some and a utopia for others.

Race is defined as a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups viewed as distinct within a given society. Despite this official definition, it is important to acknowledge that race is a social construct, and its definition can thus change to mold to the current cultural climate. While there were many other ethnic minorities and races within the multicultural melting pot of the USSR, these four are the ones I could find the most sources about. In this essay we will be focusing on black people as a case study. The reason for this decision is that the remaining three groups were a lot more prevalent in the USSR and thus have a lot more information to discuss than can fit in this essay. At its founding, the Soviet Union found itself in a unique position compared to most other white countries. Due to the lack of African colonies belonging to the Russian Empire, Russians were never directly exposed to imperial colonialism or the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, two events often blamed for the racist views on black people in Europe. This is not to say that these ideals did not affect the population at all, Russians were exposed to racism and the idea of the black and white divide through western literature and science. We can also prove that this divide engrained itself into Russian society, although in different ways then their western counterparts. For most Russians, racism was represented by the American Slavery System, which was comparable to the Russian serfdom of the era that the revolution stemmed from. This resulted in the emergence of the term ‘white Negro,’ which shows that while serfs did recognize the similarities between the two groups, they also made the distinction between their skin colors and abided by black/white dualism. Thus, despite the overtly anti-racist rhetoric, Russian society was not free of implicit racism. The Bolsheviks were not blind to this. Once it became apparent that the general populus had ingrained racism, they doubled down on condemning American racism and rejecting its foundations to follow the international and all equal aspect of communism. Additionally, racism was seen as one of the core values of Russian aristocracy and was thus further rejected once the Bolsheviks came into power and started their campaign of cleansing the system of any remnants of the bourgeoisies' ways. The combination of all the want to counter old racist believes, and the Soviet rhetoric of all superimposing equality led to the creation of the official stance on race being that there was none. A 1968 report by the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences, while attempting to solve the issue of which terminology was appropriate to be used for black folk, advised against all categorization by skin color and instead recommended referring to black people by their ethnicity. For many, this stance is indicative of the larger problem of cultural erasure within the USSR. However, others argue it is indicative of a complete lack of racial hierarchy in the USSR. The truth, as often is, is a mix of both theories.

Before we begin the section on the actual treatment of black people, it is important to remember that there were few of them in the USSR. There is a key difference between being surrounded by a racially diverse population and not being racist by choice, and never encountering anyone of a different skin color and thus never having the opportunity to be. It is most likely that if black people were more common in the Soviet Union, they would have had a more nuanced and racist view towards the group. We will first examine racism within the USSR as an institution and then socially. Many argue that institutionalized racism was completely absent from the USSR. This is partly true; however, it is more related to the lack of black people mentioned previously. The Soviet Government did not discriminate against black individuals in a systematic fashion as was common in western countries, however they did do so to other ethnic minorities, even officially classifying them as second-class citizens. Despite this, it is important to acknowledge that the Soviet government was, for the time, anti-racist. In the beginning of the USSR, Lenin had declared that imperialism was another stage of capitalism and the government declared solidarity with the colonial slaves of Africa and Asia. Many of these attitudes changed during the Stalinist era, where the conservatism Stalin brought with him changed how propaganda viewed black individuals. Black, especially African individuals were often depicted as wild and animalistic figures. While this may stand from the need to oppose absolutely everything the USA did, they openly denounced the Jim Crow laws, the American Slavery system and segregation. The nation was also seemingly absent from segregation. Any immigrated black individuals were allowed and even encouraged to participate in Russian society and attend Russian higher education. It is possible to argue that this push was simply performative for the sake of appealing to marginalized and vulnerable communities, the results are all the same. This attitude led to the foundation of the Patrice Lumumba People’s Friendship University of Russia; a public research university established in 1960 and named after a Congolese politician. The goal of the university was twofold. Officially, the university aimed to help countries that had recently achieved independence from colonial powers by training personnel from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Unofficially, this was a clever way of attempting to turn these new unaligned nations into communist ones by appealing to the vulnerable and previously oppressed populations with economic support and acceptance. This leads us to our final motivation, the spread of communism and the defeat of capitalism. The USSR had spotted that communism appealed easily to marginalized communities such as black people. They spotted an opportunity in the newly formed African nations and made multiple efforts to try and gain power in the African sphere. These efforts ultimately failed due to the Soviet System failing to appeal to the deeply nationalistic movements emerging in Africa. Additionally, this failure can be attributed to the surface level understanding of the Soviet government of anti-racism, being complicit in acts of implicit racism such as the only representants of Africa in the comintern were white. Similar course events took place with the support of the USSR in the USA. The Soviet Union supported and published black authors, as well as promoting African Americans to high placing positions within the foreign party and created several subsidiaries organizations for ‘Negro problems’ such as the rights of black people. For all accounts, these were at least nominally under black leadership. These efforts failed to attract black people, mainly due to the failure of eradication of racism from the mainly white leadership.

Now that we have established the view of the Soviet government on black people as a tool and opportunity, we can discuss the social repercussions of this ideal. In the early years of the Soviet Union, many African Americans moved to the USSR to escape the oppression from the USA and for better economic opportunities. Writer and poet Langston Hughes’s early writings describe a hope that the Soviet society would be one that actively struggled against racism and welcomed African American visitors. In this era, the combination of being a representative of both America and black culture worked in favor of the immigrants, granting them higher levels of acceptance both from society and the government. However, the situation shifted considerably during the Stalinist era. There were considerably fewer black individuals in the USSR. The ones that stayed noticed the dramatic shift of conservatism that Stalin brought with him. Many black students took issue with the depiction of the African people in propaganda. The impact of the depictions of black people during the Stalinist era were displayed quite clearly during the 1957 International Youth Festival, attended by many African youth. A tension seemed to linger between Soviet citizens and the immigrants. This can partly be attributed to the privileges they enjoyed as a motivation to stay in the USSR. These included stipends from the governments and more freedom to move around the nation. However, the other reason is simply the rampant racism in the Russian population. In accounts from the 1960’s, many black students describe carrying knives with them for safety, being called racial slurs by Soviet classmates and childhood ostracization in schools, resulting in feelings of isolation. Stereotypes pertaining to black men stealing white Soviet women were also quite engrained within the people. This was accentuated by the view on interracial relationships, which were heavily condemned throughout the Soviet era. Soviet women who had romantic engagements with African men were called prostitutes and shunned from their communities. Women pregnant with mixed raced children were pressured to end their pregnancies and barred from returning home with their partners to the African continent. The treatment of mixed children was not any less brutal. It is however important to note that there was a difference between the treatment of African Americans and Africans. African Americans were treated considerably and respected as representants of the USA. They rarely experienced all the brutal anti-blackness mentioned above. In contrast, Africans were considered to be there simply to advance their skills and were often depicted as backwards and wild. They were the group most often targeted by the events mentioned above. All these racist ideologies and feelings can be perfectly exemplified in the controversial death of Edmund Assare-Addo. He was a 29-year-old Ghanaian medical student studying at the Kalinin Medical Institute. In 1963, he was found dead in a stretch of deserted country road leading up to the Moscow Ring Road. African students claimed he was murdered by a Soviet man for courting a Soviet woman. The Soviet authorities rejected the claim, declaring that he froze to death in the snow, drunk. Despite the official autopsy, performed by a Soviet doctor with the oversee of two Ghanaian medical students, showing no signs of trauma and evidence of alcohol, African students organized a protest on the 18th of December. This was one of the largest protests in the history of the USSR, having 500 to 700 participants, mainly African students who travelled in from cities such as St. Petersburg. They carried signs such as “Stop Killing Africans” and “Moscow, a second Alabama.” Soviet news remained quiet on the protest.

In conclusion, the history of race in the USSR is a tumultuous one. It is filled, as is usual for the USSR, with halfhearted and surface level attempts from the government to do away with racism and create an egalitarian society. The mere concept of race had a unique definition in the nation. The government, for selfish and political reasons, did support foreign black organizations and even the immigration of black people into the USSR. However, Russian society was not so kind. The Russian people were fiercely anti-black, influenced by the racist propaganda put out during the Stalinist era, yet only did so towards Africans, leaving African Americans to profit from the admittedly equal legal system. In the end, the USSR was far from the international haven the Bolsheviks claimed it to be.

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Queer and trans lives in the USSR.

An essay from my last year of highschool for my history class. ao3 link.

Sources: LGBTQ history in Russia (Wikipedia) Queer life in the Soviet Union (Worker's liberty) The Trans Man Whose Pioneering Surgery Was A State Secret For Decades (Buzzfeed news) Strategies of resistance among queer people in the USSR (Left East)

Notes: I don't think I used enough sources in this one, so treat with a pinch of salt.

The relationship between the Soviet system and queer citizens was a complicated one. It is full of contradictions from the state itself and requires us to navigate the weird balance the USSR often achieved by being oppressive but leagues less conservative than its western counterparts. In this essay, I will present this multifaceted relationship as best I can from the limited sources available on this niche topic. I will first go through an official history of queer and trans people in the Soviet Union. Then, I will address some more specific aspects of queer culture within the massive nation.

Following the October Revolution, the new government was fixated on replacing the entirety of the old tsarist system and ideals with the new, often more progressive, Soviet ones. One such change was the decriminalization of homosexuality in December 1917. The Soviet government confirmed the legalization of homosexuality in 1922 and 1926 with the redrafting of the penal code, although this only applied to the Russian SFSR and Ukrainian SSR. The Great Soviet encyclopedia wrote as such under homosexuality, “Soviet legislation does not recognize so-called crimes against morality. Our laws proceed from the principle of protection of society and therefore countenance punishment only in those instances when juveniles and minors are the objects of homosexual interest.” Despite the official legalization, Soviet social policy pertaining to homosexuals was often mixed in the 1920’s, ranging from active attempts to attain legal equality and social rights to attempts to classify homosexuality as a disease to be cured. This swing in opinions represented well the opinions within the party and between medical professionals on the subject. In the scientific community, opinions seemed to lean strongly towards supportive ideals. With the liberalization of the scientific sphere, many innovative studies came out on sexuality and gender, often stating that homosexuality was a natural state and advocating for improved medical rights.

However, during the 1930s, opinions started to change drastically. A wider societal backlash towards homosexuality appeared, the scientific community dialed down their support, and homosexuality was officially classified as a disorder. Under Stalin, oppression had doubled for the general populace, and this reflected in queer rights as well. In 1933, after a strong push from the deputy secret police chief, Stalin personally demanded the recriminalization of sex between men with a punishment of up to 5 years of hard labor. However, since the wording of the law specifically prohibited sex between men, many lesbians escaped conviction by utilizing the loophole and claiming that since there were no men involved, the law did not pertain to them. The law was mainly enforced by secret police officials who often infiltrated groups of queer individuals. Stalin himself was known to often equate homosexuality with pedophilia. Additionally, propaganda began equaling homosexuality to fascism and Nazism, claiming that all homosexuals were traitors of the state and Nazis. In 1936, the Justice Commissar also declared that the anti-homosexuality law was aimed at the old ruling class, further strengthening the link between homosexuality and the right wing in citizens' minds. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia’s article on homosexuality was rewritten to claim homosexuality was shameful and criminal, erasing most proof that the government had ever been supportive towards homosexual ideals. While the post-Stalin USSR modernized, the view on homosexuality stayed the same. The law prohibiting homosexual activities remained in place until the collapse of the USSR and broader society only started to consider decriminalizing homosexuality again towards the end of the Soviet Union. Propaganda and opinions on homosexuality eventually shifted to include the idea that queerness was pedophilia. This belief was especially perpetuated under Kruschev, who pushed this idea into legislation, propaganda and even sex education.

While laws and official policies may have prohibited queerness for most of the lifetime of the USSR, it did not cease to exist in the country. As always, the oppressed group found ways to recognize each other, form communities and resist. As opposed to their western counterparts, queer people in the USSR formed smaller, more localized communities in practice. However, they still abided by the idea of an untold comradery that connected all gay people regardless of borders. In the closer localized communities, individuals communicated openly by letter without any sort of code and did so regularly to stay connected. Despite how dangerous this might seem many say it felt completely safe specifically due to the localized nature of the community. The broader imaginary community did come together occasionally, mainly to help other queer people avoid convictions. The threat of the violent and efficient secret police was too big and risky to form gay institutions such as bars or newspapers. This, and the secret police keeping homosexuality a taboo subject, led to a great lack of information about queer lives in the USSR. While the oppression from the state was harsh, it was not impossible to escape it. Many celebrities in the USSR, such as Sergei Eisenstein and Rudolf Nureyev, and were homosexuals who simply married members of the opposite sex while having affairs with men and produced content that appealed to the Party to avoid prosecution. Popularity offered such great protection, that occasionally celebrities were even allowed to be relatively open about their homosexuality, such as Vadim Kozin who was known for inviting young men up to his room after his concerts. Due to this culture of uncertainty and secrecy, cruising was the main method for gay people to date. Pleshki were location where queer people, mainly gay men, could cruise to scout out other potentially queer people. This method relied heavily on one’s ability to recognize when another person around the area was also gay and not just a tourist. To be effective, pleshki had to fulfill two main goals, being a well-known spot within the queer community but also being a well-known and frequently frequented spot. As such, some famous pleshki include the fountains in Moscow, the Bolshoi theatre, and the statue of Karl Marx.

A few subtle forms of resistance also started to develop within the community. For example, due to the lack of knowledge about their own history, the group quickly named icons based on gut feelings or subtle imagery. This included people like Tchaikovsky, who is rumored to have been gay, or more contemporary artists such as Andre Gide, a French communist novelist. This doubled as an act of resistance towards the oppression from the USSR, by claiming that popular communist figures were gay. There were also a few pieces of gay media that circulated on the black market, mostly important from the west, or written by Soviet homosexual authors, such as Yevgeny Kharitonov and Gennady Trifonov. Yevgeny circulated gay fiction until his death in 1981 and Gennady circulated romantic poems and was sentenced to 4 years of hard labour for it. Additionally, the mere existence of homosexual communities and individuals can be counted as resistance, as they defy the rhetoric of the USSR claiming that homosexuality was not present, or at least should not be allowed to be, within the country. Towards the end of the country, more outright forms of resistance surfaced. The first LGBT publication, Tema, appeared in 1980 and was published and edited by the first group of Russian queer activists. This sparked a wave of queer activism. By 1984, the first LGBT organization was established. Gay Laboratory, an informal collective who tried to build connections with queer organizations in Scandinavia, ceased its activities due to pressure from the KGB but many followed it, such as Siberian Association of Sexual minorities and many other groups in Moscow. The first human rights organization was established in 1989 and struggled for equality regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.

If information on queer lives during the USSR is few, information on trans individuals is nonexistent. As a result, I could sadly not find any evidence about a broader trans community. Transgenderism seemed to be taboo even within the queer community, which was not unusual for the time. Trans people were not, both legally and medically, allowed to transition or express themselves under any circumstances. However, we can derive from contextual evidence that, especially during the later years of the USSR, trans individuals may have transitioned secretly and changed identities to pass unnoticed. However, this phenomenon was rare, due to the refusal of Soviet doctors to perform such risky and undocumented surgeries. In the 1960’s a doctor in Moscow encountered the first case of transgenderism in the USSR. Rakhim had approached the psychologist, expressing the clear wish to transition from male to female. She became the first ever patient to be issued the diagnosis of transsexualism. While surgery was not allowed, it is known that Rakhim eventually had vaginoplasty and a legal name change outside of Moscow. In 1968, another Soviet doctor performed the first ever successful, fully completed sex change from female to male. The Latvian doctor, Viktors Kalnbērzs, had operated on Innokenty whose identity to this day is confidential. Between 1970 and 1972, Innokenty underwent nine major operations. Once they were complete, he changed his name and moved away to a farther corner of the Russian SFSR. Based on letters from Innokenty, we know he lived until old age, even marrying twice. Kalnbērzs was threatened imprisonment in the Gulag but was spared due to the intervention of the Latvian health minister. Despite the government immediately declaring that such operations were illegal, mutilations and against soviet ideology, Kalnbērzs performed multiple other similar operations. In 1980, transgenderism was officially classified as a mental illness in the USSR.

In conclusion, the history of queerness and transgenderism in the USSR is one with many complicated details. The mechanisms of this oppression are more complex than its western counterparts. While occasionally more brutal, queer, and trans individuals still found a way to survive and establish communities despite the oppression they faced. Despite the secrecy, major steppingstones for LGBT rights in Russia were established by activists and doctors alike during this time period. When looking at the oppression from the Russian state today, it is important to remember the history of those individuals and that they have always, and always will, exist. Whether the state tries to suppress them or not.

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Laika alpha pattern

I noticed a distinct lack of alpha patterns for Laika stuff, so I'm here to serve the people! (my own attempt below the read more line)

I made it in slightly brighter colours for myself cause that's what I had. Hope all of you like it!

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my nationality.... and some russian history

i said before that i’m mari… and this is one of the extincting nationalities of Volga and Ural region in Russia and as far as i know mari are the last pagans (as their official religion) in Europe… i’m literally witch before quarantine started i talked with foreigners in my uni and i was naturally shocked when someone of them said something like “wait you are not russian??? you were born here and you speak russian whats the trick?”  surprise man i’m not russian hahah BECAUSE! there are more than 100 different nationalities in Russia, and citizenship of Russia and russian nationality have different meaning in russian. i can say that i’m from Russia, i have russian passport and i should follow the Russian Constitution (россиянин\россиянка) while my roots, language and appearence tell me “lol look at this innocent mari child listen well you are not russian you have your own native language and culture” (русский\русская). Sometimes the number of people naming themselves a part of certain ethnic group is extremely small, for example, the vol (воль [vol’]) people’s number is about only 70. fortunately, there are about 547000 of those who call themselves mari, and this nationality is on the 14th place in the rating of the most numerous ethnic groups of Russia. however i can’t say that my national culture is enriching and preserved, as OUR LOVELY RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT doesn’t give a /// about anyone but russians (lol russians too - just google the film called “Athlandita of Russian North” Атлантида русского севера) Furthermore, maris have their own state unit - republic of Mari El (from mari language - the land of mari) with the capital city Yoshkar Ola (from mari language - the Red Town). another interesting fact is that there are three main ethnogroups of mari: +mountain mari +meadow mari +eastern-meadow mari (this is me hahaha) Every group has its unique traditions and language - although we all are relatives, sometimes we can’t even understand each other :) for example, due to eastern-meadow mari’s neighbourhood with tatars, we have a lot of tatar words in our language. In ancient times mari was very militant people. There is a historical episode called Cheremis wars, when mari and some other Ural people make war with the russians, who was trying to conquer territories closer to the Ural and Volga and expand their influence on all Eurasia. It was certainly the 16th century - times when Ivan the Terrible was on the russian throne and he was literally moving heaven and earth to expand the borders of the country. There are three parts of these wars - the first, the second and the third (ok logically) that ended with the win of russians. This phenomenon is not typical for Russia at that time, as when the conquerors сame to new territories with some little barbarian tribes, they resolved the conflict with the money or just threat and only a few decided to start a war with them (even if they started it, the battle was not long due to the huge amount and better equipment and armour of russian army). Speaking of cheremises, the wars lasted from 1552 to almost end of the 16th century. In the early times of USSR the problem of indigenous people of some regions was being ignored and the priority was the ideological component, so the mari hadn’t even the official name of the nationality, not to mention their city’s name. Before the end of 1920s all nationalities spread on the banks of the Volga was called Cheremises (черемисы), and this name did not distinguish tatars, maris and even some udmurts and bashkirs, and from those times we bear a name of mari people with a proud! maybe later i’ll tell about my culture more :) and as this is my english hometask i could make maaaany mistakes hahaha but i did my best!

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Resource: Soviet Uniforms (1958)

I was doing research for my own things and stumbled upon THIS. A 103 page declassified document from the CIA, detailing Soviet Uniforms of all kind. Genuinely so much information, right down to things like underwear.

Might be useful for people researching this, historical ocs, or reenactors. There descriptions, the Russian names, and sketches of the clothing.

Personal excitement: I'M LITERALLY VIBRATING AT THIS; I LOVE FINDING STUFF LIKE THIS. Apparently they tested out orchid and pink underwear in 1952, which is just a hilarious image.