An “extremist” in my home country (part 2 of 2)
Read Part 1 here
A twisted historical wheel
“No, my brave fighters against Putin’s gulag. I’m not humiliating myself. I am coming to terms with what’s happening. There is something in each turn of the historical wheel that makes us come to terms with the inevitable. Something that might seem unfair to someone, but makes the wheel turn.”
- Anton Krasovsky, Russian propagandist and an openly gay man, embracing the new “LGBT extremist law”.
Around ten years ago, I came across the story of a young Russian man who was killed by his friends, allegedly for coming out. The group was drinking beer outside. It is possible that the man chose that moment of social bonding to tell his friends that he was gay. In response, they beat him up, raped him with beer bottles and smashed his head with a boulder until he was dead. The perpetrators were convicted of murder, but the link between the crime and homophobia was minimised, while the link to Russia’s increasingly hostile anti-LTBTQ+ legislation was denied altogether.
I keep thinking about that man. The tentative moment of queer joy — the moment I have experienced so many times in my life — became the worst and last moment of his. In the eyes of his pals, for just stating who he was, he suddenly shed his humanity, became merely a body, less than a body even, someone deserving only of torture and death. Under the twisted wheel of the Russian system, this case might still be an outlier — yet, it goes along in the same direction, towards the alleged “inevitable”.
It is difficult to estimate the amount of hate crime against LGBTQ+ people in Russia, because even if the crimes are reported and recorded at all, they are often not identifiable as hate crimes except through tracing individual circumstances. Even then, the known cases of anti-LGBTQ+ hate crime have spiked since the 2013 “gay propaganda law” — and the statistical link between the two is clearly present.
Another, more recent homophobic murder is by a man who knifed a gay man to death for holding hands with his partner in public, but received a mere 9-year prison sentence for it.
Against this so-called “wheel of inevitable” stands the frail figure of Sasha Skochilenko (3), a young queer woman who, after a kangaroo trial that lasted a year-and-a-half, was last month imprisoned for 7 years for putting up antiwar stickers in a supermarket. There was much talk that her stance of being openly lesbian was a factor in the harshness of her sentence.
There have been tales of many convicted criminals, including murderers, who have been recruited to fight in Ukraine, their sentence instantly waved so that the Russian army can be restocked with fresh cannon fodder. This trend has continued even after Prigozhin’s death and the dismantling of Wagner. So, those who have killed others for being queer, can walk free, as long as they choose to kill again.
Think about what this means.
- For killing another human out of the hatred for who they are and who they love — 9 years in prison (with an option to be freed instantly if you fight in Ukraine).
- For peacefully using art protest as a voice against the war — 7 years in prison.
(3) I have written about the court case of Sasha Skochilenko earlier this year. Her trial is now complete and for her “crimes” she will be held in a penal colony until 2030. Given her deteriorating health, the likelihood of her coming out alive is uncertain.
The moral emptiness
“The majority of people I know, like my friends and acquaintances, share a negative attitude towards homosexuality. That’s why it’s the right decision for our country.”
- A passer-by in Moscow, interviewed by Reuters about their view of the new “LGBT extremist law”.
Within this barren landscape, what’s yet another law? Some of my friends believe that the Russian queer community has already been so oppressed that it is practically non-existent, living only in the shadows, and that this new legislation may not cause much change in the real world.
But no. Just as with the “gay propaganda law”, a new wave of backlash has already begun. A mere day after the extremist law was passed, police raided gay clubs in Russia and landlords began to deny LGBTQ+ venues rent. It is hard to overestimate the aftermath of this new legislation, because it is purposefully worded to permit almost any reason for criminalising LGBTQ+ people.
Activist? Ten years in prison. Holding hands in public? Prison or fine. Club owner? Licence withdrawn and a prison sentence.
The future in which the Russian LGBTQ+ people become legally equivalent to the murderers of LGBTQ+ people, serving comparable length prison sentences side by side, is the next logical step for a society that does not value minorities and a government for whom minorities are useful only as political scapegoats or cannon fodder.
Could it now be that we are only permitted to exist if we do not just accept the new order, but embrace it? Anton Krasovsky, a propagandist with strong connections to the Russian establishment, certainly appears to be embracing something. Reading his sycophantic response to the “extremist law” (quoted at the start of this article), I out loud called him a “self-hating gay”, but perhaps my initial reaction was too judgmental. As an HIV+ openly gay man in Russia, who until recently was still running public services for LGBTQ+ people (when doing so was not just borderline illegal, but also subjected to continuing violence and homophobia), I cannot fathom what hoops he must have had to jump through. And yet, the sycophantic delight with which he is moulding himself into the shape of Putin’s “historical wheel” is astonishing. Perhaps he does believe that this is the only way for him to survive.
Let’s go back to the quote at the start of this chapter. “The majority of people I know… share a negative attitude towards homosexuality”. For this nameless bystander, moral choice is justified by the views of the majority. I won’t patronise my readers by comparing this statement to another, classic example of argumentum ad populum, “Most people I know approve of slavery”. Instead, how about, “The majority of Russians support the war in Ukraine”?
Yeah. The moral emptiness comes through nice and clear.
The majority wants to repress, erase and kill, so it’s the right thing to do.
It’s fine — they’re not after me, they’re after someone else this time.
Is it not like that famous poem by Martin Niemöller?..
If we fail to spot the road to hell, what is the point of history?
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.”
In response to the news, a Russian friend shared with me the famous photograph of Walter Degen, a gay man imprisoned in Auschwitz in 1941.
Comparing the situation in modern-day Russia with the persecution of gay people in Nazi Germany seems like a cheap trick — there aren’t any concentration camps or pink triangles in Russia yet and probably-possibly-maybe there won’t be.
But is it not a warning? After all, we thought that none of *this* would ever happen in Russia, yet it did. (*This* being: the imprisonment and murder of political dissidents, the FSB’s persecution of Russian scientists, the war in Ukraine, the mobilisation, the recruitment of criminals into the army, Prigozhin’s coup and death). If we fail to spot the road to hell, what is the point of history?
Prompted by that photograph, my friend and I commiserated with each other. Later that evening, they sent me a message:
“Listen, something really bizarre happened just now. I sat down in the lobby of a building, I felt someone stare at me, I looked up, and a man with exactly this [Walter Degen’s] face was sitting opposite, leaning against the wall. Not just similar, but the same face, the same look. He was staring at me intensely and not moving at all.”
“Maybe it’s a sign,” I offered.
“…That we are now a part of history for future generations?”
“Well, that depends,” I responded. “Only if these generations manage to get out of the quagmire. Otherwise history may end up being rewritten. We might be erased.”
***
In 2023, it seems ridiculous to have to state that LGBTQ+ people have the right to exist without fear of persecution. Yet, here I am. 67 countries in the world have legislation that prohibits and criminalises LGBTQ+ lives. Last month, Russia has finally and unequivocally crossed the line to become the 68th. If authoritarianism, anti-Westernism and argumentum ad populum have led it there, then perhaps the reversal of these things — democracy, respect for human rights, active and informed moral choices — could help lead us back.
Please consider donating to Equal PostOst, a LGBTQ+ organisation that helps queer Russian people escape persecution by helping them leave the country.
