Academic Centre
The aim of the collective monograph is to (re)construct queer experiences in the soviet social control system. The book is dedicated to the White Sister (also known as the Baroness or Jānis Grīnbergs (1912–1992)). Despite of the surveillance of queers, executed by the soviet power through mostly the employees of the party, instituions of internal and judicial affairs, as well as health protection institutions, Grīnbergs lived life ignoring it. In 1960, a judge of a soviet people’s court sentenced Grīnbergs with a prison sentence, punishing cohabitation with a same-sex partner of four years. However, Baroness lived freely also after being discharged from prison, enjoying relations and experiencing various adventures until the end of life. During working hours, Grīnbergs was a worker. In all other times, he was an adventourous people’s choir singer and a passinonate attendee of the queer ‘safe’ meeting spaces. Grīnbergs was a person with an unquestionable agency.
The monograph is one of the results of the project “Between surveillance and non-interference of state authorities: the practices of same-sex sexual subcultures in soviet Latvia, 1954–1991” (lzp-2021/1-0167). The project team consisted of historians Ineta Lipša and Kaspars Zellis, literary scientists Kārlis Vērdiņš and Jānis Ozoliņš and poltitical researcher Elizabete Elīna Vizgunova-Vikmane. The project was funded by the Latvian Council of Science’s fundamental and applied research program, and executed by the Institue of Latvian Hisotory of the University of Latvia (2022–2024).
The two largest groups of sources, on which the monograph is based, are the documents of state institutions stored in the State Archives of Latvia of the Latvian National Archives and the oral history sources created during the project, namely interviews. The interviews allow us to look into individual experiences, uncover separate events, and reveal people’s attitudes and feelings about how the policies of the soviet occupation affected their lives. It is not possible to reconstruct such information from the documents of state administration institutions. Between 2022–2023, the project team recorded 34 interviews with the aim of documenting the soviet-era experience of representatives of three social groups. The researchers interviewed men and women who chose to base their lives in same-sex relationships, as well as non-homosexuals who were queer contemporaries during the soviet period.
The monograph consists of six chapters. In the first chapter of the mongraph, I. Lipša summarises and analyses the knowledge about the history of homosexuality in the former Soviet Union and the so-called Eastern Bloc countries, as far as it helps to understand the events in Latvia during the soviet occupation. The broader historical context was formed by the Cold War between two global superpowers – the US and USSR. The opposing ideologies of the countries upheld and directed homophobia in their internal politics.
The second chapter of the monograph is dedicated to the research of queer subjugation and the manifestation of queer agency in soviet Latvia. I. Lipša researches, how the state created and upheld a mechanism surveillance of homosexual men. The mechanism was ensured by the cooperaiton of the state instituions and collective organisations of internal affairs and health protection, as well as Voluntary People’s Guard of the Latvian SSR. In this chapter, queers are depicted as victims of the system, but also as active players with an agency that was even observed in public space.
In the third chapter of the monograph, K. Vērdiņš writes about the domestic life of representatives of the homosexual subculture during the soviet period. The chapter tells the story about stable relations in queer households through two case studies: the first one of the film director Pēteris Lūcis and typography employee Pēteris Kaktiņš. This queer household existed for about twenty years. The second case study is based on the life of the underground poet and philosopher Jānis Silinieks, who had various temporary residencies in Rīga during the 1970’s.
By analysing the self-reconstructed diary of the cinema director Gunārs Piesis, in the foruth chapter of this monograph J. Ozoliņš explores how the writing of diaries functioned in constructing homosexual subjectivity. The chapter explains how Gunārs Piesis experienced the state political system’s control both in his sexual life and inhis artistic practice.
The fifth chapter of this monograph is dedicated to women’s same-sex sexual practices in the soviet period. E. E. Vizgunova-Vikmane has based her analysis in observations of heterosexual women, responding to such questions as: could women, that chose to have same-sex relationships, created semi-public ‘safe’ spaces in Rīga? What did the contemporaries know about non-heterosexual women’s couples? What was the attitude of society towards women in non-heterosexual relationships?
Research object of the sixth chapter of the monograph is queer and heterosexual society’s interaction in the soviet period. K. Zellis analyses the memories of queers and memories of contemporaries (friends, relatives, colleagues and acquaintances). He merges the two memory spaces into (a non-existing, as they were separated in reality) one. By doing so, he explains how the perception of queer sexuality of the soviet past has imprinted the memory of these social groups. He explores if a common memory space of queer sexuality exists today.
This collective monograph gathers new knowledge about how the state institutions and individuals that worked in them, or that collaborated with them, maintained and spread homophobic ideas and practices during the soviet period. It uncovers queer lives in the circumstances of institutionalised homophobia and by so doing reveals the difficult circumstances of queer existance during the soviet occupation. Possibly, it has the potential to decrease the prejudice that exists towards queers in contemporary society. It could support the process of recognising a place for queers in the story of Latvia’s history.
The publication of the collective monograph was supported by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. The editors of the monograph are I. Lipša, K. Vērdiņš and K. Zellis. Literary editor – Sigita Kušnere. Translator – Marianna Zvaigzne. Publicaiton manager – Toms Zariņš. Designer – Aleksejs Muraško.
. The entry to the event is free. During the event, the attendants will have the chance to meet the editors and authors of the monograph, as well as hear fragments of the articles included in the book. ){kind=link}