Masks of Desire
Homosexuality in Russian Literature
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In Russian cultural history, homosexuality is a precarious category that begs guarded expression. The tension between the known and the unutterable has yielded an entire spectrum of different types of rhetoric that have found their way into literary works and occasionally even influenced the style of an entire era. Homosexuality was initially stigmatized in the modern period, explicitly addressed in modernism, made taboo in Soviet culture, and employed in the present as a challenge to traditional lifestyles. Thus homosexuality also enjoys considerable potential as a form of political protest, something that is being increasingly articulated in Russia’s public space.
(Osteuropa 10/2013, pp. 17–48)