Red Closet

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A01=Rustam Alexander
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
AIDS in the USSR
American Psychiatric Association
Article 121.1
Author_Rustam Alexander
automatic-update
Bad Gays
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBTB
Category=JBSJ
Category=JFSK
Category=NHTB
COP=United Kingdom
criminalisation of homosexuality
decriminalisation of homosexuality
decriminalisation of sodomy
Delivery_Pre-order
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
gay bathhouse
gay conversion therapy
gay cruising
gay entrapment
gay history
gay marriage
gay Russia
gay sauna
gay stories
Gorbachev
GULAG
hate crime
HIV in the USSR
Khrushchev
Language_English
lesbian history
LGBTQ in USSR
LGBTQ Russia
PA=Not yet available
People's Book Prize
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Forthcoming
queer history
queer lives
sex under Stalin
sodomy laws
softlaunch
Soviet gay life
Soviet homophobia
Soviet homosexuality
Soviet sexopathology

Product details

  • ISBN 9781526181459
  • Weight: 499g
  • Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
  • Publication Date: 04 Feb 2025
  • Publisher: Manchester University Press
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
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A poignant and deeply researched history of gay oppression in the USSR.

In 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities.

Red closet recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were affected by those laws, including a naïve Scottish journalist who dared to write to Stalin in an attempt to save his lover from prosecution and a homosexual theatre student who came to Moscow in pursuit of a career amid Stalin’s harsh repressions and mass arrests. We also meet a fearless doctor in Siberia who provided medical treatment for gay men at his own peril and a much-loved Soviet singer who hid his homosexuality from the secret police.

Each story helps paint the hitherto unknown picture of how Soviet oppression of gay people originated and was perpetuated from Stalin’s rule until the demise of the USSR.

Rustam Alexander is a historian and independent scholar who obtained his PhD from the University of Melbourne. He is the author of Regulating homosexuality in Soviet Russia, 195691.

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