In Queer in Russia Laurie Essig examines the formation of gay identity and community in the former Soviet Union. As a sociological field-worker, she began her research during the late 1980s, before any kind of public queer identity existed in that country. After a decade of conducting interviews, as well as observing and analyzing plays, books, pop music, and graffiti, Essig presents the first sustained study of how and why there was no Soviet gay community or even gay identity before perestroika and assesses the degree to which this situation has-or has not-changed.

While male homosexual acts were criminalized in Russia before 1993, women attracted to women were policed by the medical community, which defined them not as criminals but as diseased persons potentially cured by drug therapy or transsexual surgery. After describing accounts of pre-perestroika persecution, Essig examines the more recent state of sexual identities in Russia. Although the fall of communism brought new freedom to Russian queers, there are still no signs of a mass movement forming around the issue, and few identify themselves as lesbians or gay men, even when they are involved in same-sex relations. Essig does reveal, however, vibrant manifestations of gay life found at the local level-in restaurants, discos, clubs, and cruising strips, in newspapers, journals, literature, and the theater. Concluding with a powerful exploration of the surprising affinities between some of Russia's most prominent nationalists and its queers, Queer in Russia fills a gap in both Russian and cultural studies.

"Laurie Essig's book is significant both for Russianists and for queer theorists. Essig demonstrates that 'queerness' in Russia is not defined as a matter of identity politics, and, in so doing, she raises important theoretical questions about the nature(s) of queerness as it crosses cultural borders."-Jehanne M Gheith, Duke University

Laurie Essig has taught sociology at Columbia University and Trinity College in Connecticut. She is a columnist for New York Blade and Chicago's Outline.

Duke University Press. 1999, 244 стр., ISBN 978-0822323464.