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Anatoly Steiger
(1907 - 1944) Russia

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Poet

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There were many gay writers among Russian émigrés, and among them the poet Anatoly Steiger, due to the gay-repression that lasted from 1933 to 1993.

An event of signal importance in Russia was Stalin's criminalization of homosexuality in 1933 with article 121. Article 121, which was not repealed until 1993, made male homosexual contact punishable with a prison sentence and made all mention of homosexuality taboo for 70 years. This meant that many gay men spent time in prison.

Administration of this law was homophobic in the extreme. If, for example, a gay man were gang-raped in the army (all Soviet men served in the army at some point), it would often be the victim who went to prison. During this period in Russia, there was a poisonous conjunction between the model of homosexuality that designates only the passive partner as homosexual and a very unforgiving institutionalized homophobia.

The net effect of this conjunction was extremes of legal and sexual victimization. Relationships between men were rare and short-lived when they did manage to come into existence. Not surprisingly, there is very little gay literature produced within Russia during this period.

Instead, we have diaries from within the country and literary production from the émigré population. Anatoly Steiger, though he wrote the following poem in Paris, suggests how melancholy a time it must have been:

Where is he now, I wonder?
And what's his life like?
Don't let me sit by the door
Expecting a sudden knock:
He will never come back.

Was it to hurt me, or himself?
(Or maybe he was lucky.)

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