Academic CentreBETWEEN SURVEILLANCE AND NON-INTERFERENCE OF STATE AUTHORITIES: THE PRACTICES OF SAME-SEX SEXUAL SUBCULTURES IN SOVIET LATVIA, 1954–1991
Project No.: lzp-2021/1-0167
Implementation period: 3 January 2022 – 30 December 2024
Project costs: EUR 299 999.70
Principal investigator: Dr. hist. Ineta Lipša
The goal of the project is to create new knowledge about the history of sexuality and social control by bringing into focus same-sex sexual subcultures and examining practices elaborated by same-sex loving people responding to surveillance activities of state authorities in Soviet Latvia from post-Stalinism through the late Soviet socialism (1954–1991).
The study will be based on a comparative study of several groups of historical sources:
- on the documents of the National Archives of Latvia – the judgments and criminal files of the people’s courts,
- on Ego documents – a diary written by a homosexual Latvian man from 1927 to 1996,
- on oral history sources – in-depth interviews with same-sex loving people and non-homosexual individuals created by the project team with the oral history methodology.
The objectives of the research project are
- researching the interaction between the practices of state authorities in the monitoring of same-sex loving men and the subcultures juxtaposing the data obtained from court judgments and a diary and interviews;
- examining the practices of female same-sex subcultures;
- analysing the knowledge and perceptions of non-homosexual contemporaries on the practices of state authorities and same-sex sexual subcultures.
We expect:
- to (re)construct the experiences of the insiders,
- to create the first collection of oral history sources in Latvia with a focus on homosexual experiences,
- to contribute to a more balanced and inclusive Latvian history and to the global narrative of history of Soviet same-sex subcultures adding the Latvian case to the debates.
Project team: Dr. hist. Ineta Lipša, Dr. hist. Kaspars Zellis, Dr. phil. Kārlis Vērdiņš, Doctoral student Elizabete Vizgunova-Vikmane and Master’s student Signe Šēnfelde.
On June 30, 2023, the first of two phases of the project, which lasted from January 2022 to June 30, 2023, ended. The project participants have prepared 15 conference papers and informed scientists at nine international seminars and conferences in Lithuania, Germany, USA, Sweden, Great Britain, Latvia and Austria about the research results. One of them – the international seminar "Researching, reworking and representing Soviet LGBT histories – Queer Between Surveillance and Non-Interference of State Authorities under Soviet System: The Practices and the Discourses", which took place on June 2, 2023 at the University of Latvia, was organized by the project a team. The workshop was attended by sixteen researchers who study various issues of queer history during the Cold War period in academic institutions such as the University of Edinburgh, the University of Vienna, Art Academy of Latvia/Institute of Literature, Folklore, and Art, the University of Latvia, Sorbonne University, European Humanitarian University, European University Institute and Leibniz Institute of European History, Vytautas Magnus University, the University of Vilnius, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, the University of Tartu, Tallinn University and the University of Latvia. The participants of the Riga seminar shared their latest research on aspects of the queer past of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia during the Soviet occupation. Riga Seminar program pdf
Conference Papers
- Lipša I. “Criminal Cases on Hooliganism: An Overlooked Source for Research of Male Same-sex Subcultures in the Latvian SSR”
- Vērdiņš K. ““Two Peters”: A Gay Couple in Soviet Latvia under Stalinism and the Thaw”
- Lipša I. “Criminal Cases on Hooliganism: How a Diary by a Homosexual Man Kaspars Aleksandrs Irbe (1906–1996) Reveals an Overlooked Source for Research of Male Same-Sex Subcultures in the Latvian SSR”
- Lipša I. “Kaspars Aleksandrs Irbe (1906–1996): The life of an ordinary homosexual in Soviet Latvia according to his diary”. Sankelmark Conference Program pdf
- Vērdiņš K. “Queer Domestic Space in Soviet Latvia: Director Pēteris Lūcis as the Symbol of the Past”
- Lipša I. “Responding to surveillance of state authorities in Soviet Latvia: male same-sex practices through the diary of a homosexual Kaspars Aleksandrs Irbe (1906–1996)”
- Lipša I. “Criminal File on Hooliganism as an Insight into the Practices of Male Same-Sex Sexual Subculture: the 1966 Case of Sauna at Ziedoņdārzs (Spring-time Park) in Riga”
- Vērdiņš K. “Latvian Queers after the fall of the Iron curtain: between fictionality and documentality”
- Vērdiņš K. “Ugly feelings of the Soviet Latvian underground queer poet”
International seminar “Researching, reworking and representing Soviet LGBT histories – Queer Between Surveillance and Non-Interference of State Authorities under Soviet System: The Practices and the Discourses”, organized by the project team at the University of Latvia, June 2, 2023 (Riga, Latvia)
- Lipša I. “Under Surveillance of State Authorities: Voluntary Sodomy Convictions and Queer Agency in Soviet Latvia, 1946–1991”
- Vērdiņš K. “Spaces of Queer Domesticity in Soviet Latvia”
- Vizgunova-Vikmane E. “Narratives of the Perception and Practice of Non-heterosexual Women’s Sexuality in Soviet Latvia, 1954–1991”
- Zellis K. “The Presence of Queer Sexuality in Memories of Latvian Non-Homosexuals on the Soviet Era”
- Lipša I. “Queer Agency Responding to Surveillance of State Authorities in Soviet Latvia, 1945–1991”
- Vizgunova-Vikmane E. “Non-normative Sexuality of Women in Soviet Latvia between 1954–1991: The Narratives”
On November 15, 2024 at 4 pm the book launch celebration of the collective monograph “In Silence. Queers, the Soviet Power and Society in Latvia, 1954–1991” will take place at the University of Latvia, Kalpaka bulv. 4, room “Sapere aude” (2nd floor). 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.
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.