Queer As Art issue 2 April-May-June 2017 | Page 30

“Judged by the degree of danger
that it poses to society and the difficulties
which beset its investigation,
muzhelozhstvo (homosexuality, pederasty)
holds a specific place among sexual
offences. In capitalist countries this type of
sexual perversion is now widespread […].
The situation is different in the USSR. As a
result of the abolition of prostitution and
the ban on pornographic literature (both of
which encourage various sexual
perversions), the general improvements in
the healthy lifestyle of the Soviet people,
and our moral code, cases of homosexual
behaviour and other criminal sexual
offences in the Soviet Union are now rarely
encountered. Nevertheless, they pose a
certain threat to society” (I. Blyumin, official
of the Bureau of Forensic Medical
Expertise for Moscow and the Moscow
region, 1970)
This was probably why “punitive
p s y c h i at r y ” w a s u s e d o n p o l i t i c a l
dissidents and “sexual deviants” alike.
Engaging in same-sex relationships not
only meant risking one’s job (and
consequently, one’s exclusion from society
considering the place that work occupied
in a socialist state), and/or imprisonment
from 3 to 8 years, but also exposing one’s
self to the government’s dangerous
experimentations. These consisted in
using chemicals to suppress will, so that it
could be attempted to impose a certain
way of thinking or certain reflexes on
them. That kind of conversion therapy
mirrored what was done in the West with
sexopathology: both capitalist and
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socialist countries pathologized
homosexuality, which is to say they
considered it an illness to be cured.
But the most effective tactic in order to
enforce opinions in every individual in
society was censorship and propaganda.
Any idea of non-normative sexuality was
carefully erased, while a model of the
perfect soviet family was tirelessly
promoted.
Propaganda poster, for a strong, healthy, happy
soviet family