How lesbians lived in the USSR

Today, many claim that sexual minorities did not appear in Eastern Europe until after the fall of the Iron Curtain and came from the “disastrous” West.

But in fact there are gays and lesbians in the USSR, just for obvious reasons they are strictly forbidden to demonstrate their orientation.

The rejection by the state and society of same-sex love shatters destiny and destroys the psyche. However, lesbians live in the Union and even manage to love each other.

If at any time gays are categorically seen as criminals against nature and sinners, then the attitude towards lesbians is much more condescending.

In Russia, no one is particularly interested in what women do in those few free times when they are not busy with children, cooking, cleaning and husband. There is evidence that such love is punished by 40 days of strict fasting.

Mentally unhealthy person

In the 19th century, ladies who were in love with their peers were treated more severely, but were not yet facing severe punishment.

It usually ends with the lesbian being recognized as a mentally ill person and treated by a psychiatrist. That is, same-sex love in women is recognized not even as fornication, but as a disease.

At the end of the 19th century, among the prostitutes of St. Petersburg and Moscow there were lesbians, whose services were used by rich ladies who loved women. Such prostitutes are called “cats” and they earn more than ordinary girls. Of course, it never occurs to anyone to send such sex workers to a treatment clinic.

In the first post-revolutionary years, the Bolsheviks were not interested in the issue of same-sex relations between women. They only remembered lesbians in 1928 and began treating them … through surgery. Some of the luminaries of science offer to implant part of the ovary of an animal under the right breast of a woman and even performed the first such operation. However, the purpose is not clear.

Fortunately, the woman is lucky – although she is not cured of “vicious” love, she still remains alive. This method is no longer used. A little later, in 1933, a penal measure was introduced in the USSR, providing for mandatory three-month treatment in a psychiatric hospital. This can now be called full-fledged repressive measures against members of sexual minorities.

Fictitious marriages

For lesbians, difficult and dangerous times come, and some of them even marry fictitiously to divert suspicions from themselves.

In society, same-sex relationships are condemned in every possible way and it is very dangerous to demonstrate their personal sexual preferences – it can ruin their careers and lives in general. But if we talk about gays and lesbians in the USSR, then girls with a non-standard orientation have a much easier life.

If men are threatened with imprisonment under the sodomy measure, the woman can only be sent to prison if she categorically avoids treatment by a psychiatrist. It is also easy to take a girl to the hostel past the vigilant guard – two girlfriends do not arouse any suspicion.

In the villages, strange as it may seem, women feel even more comfortable not hiding their sexual preferences – no one suspects anything wrong, two collective farmers who run the same household and live in the same house. And if at least one of them has a child from a divorced marriage, then the bachelors treat such a couple with compassion.

Only the brave admit it

In general, the negative attitude towards lesbians continues until the perestroika, at the end of which there is some warming. Lesbians are treated negatively in society even in the early 1990s, but there is no longer state persecution.

Couples of women, as before, try to keep their relationship a secret and only the bravest openly demonstrate their orientation.

The First Vice-Miss of the USSR – 1990 Julia Lemigova was the first girl to come to light and admit her different sexual orientation.

Although the beauty openly states in her homeland that she prefers girls, she goes to live in the United States, where she finds her true love. Julia “marries” tennis star Martina Navratilova, who has never hidden her sexuality.

Source “Labor”

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