Dan Healey: 'Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi' (2016) Book Review

Abstract

Investigative, lucid, and fiercely self-aware, Dan Healey’s 2016 book Russian Homophobia: From Stalin to Sochi represents a much-needed and comprehensive queer history of how Russian state homophobia has shaped queer men’s subjectivies in the soviet and post-soviet period. Healey’s primary contention is that Russian homophobia is not some predisposition inherent in Russian society, but has its historically-specific origins embedded within the politics of the 1930s. This serves as an urgent rebuke to the Kremlin’s contemporary ‘politics of homophobia’ that falsely render LGBTQ+ lives un-Russian, and same-sex relations as an ideology implanted forcefully and artificially onto ‘traditional’ Christian Russia from the West.

Keywords: Homophobia, Sexuality, History, Queer, Queer History, Russia, Russian Homophobia, Soviet

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