Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 30

A Review of FRANCESCA STELLA, LESBIAN LIVES IN SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET RUSSIA. POST/SOCIALISM AND GENDER SEXUALITIES. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 189 pp.

Irina Roldugina

National Research University Higher School of Economics, School of History
20 Myasnitskaya Str., Moscow, Russia
mozzgi()gmail.com

Abstract: This review considers the Glasgow-based sociologist Francesca Stella’s recently published book on Soviet and Post-Soviet lesbians in contemporary Russia. Stella’s research was based on 71 interviews she conducted with Russian non-heterosexual women from Moscow and the relatively small provincial city of Ulianovsk. The main questions the author posed are significant. What does it mean to socialise as a lesbian in late Soviet Russia and is a typical social life possible at all? What kinds of specific traits include “home” as a symbolically meaningful space for Russian lesbians? How should one to perceive the “coming out” practice within the Russian context, and does it have the same value and outcome as the Western phenomenon? Stella specifically notes that she would like to avoid direct comparison when discussing Western and non-Western homosexual paradigms in order to analyse Russian lesbian experience in a more nuanced way. She is not, however, completely successful in doing so. Being extremely considerate toward her sources and focusing mainly on the context (“home”, “work”, “street”), Stella fails to achieve a critical analysis of lesbians’ own experience and way of thinking, which leads to the very exoticisation that she sought to avoid at the beginning. Nonetheless, this book is a valuable study and one among very few works, specifically focusing on Russian lesbians.

Keywords: homosexuality, USSR, lesbians, LGBT, gender.

To cite: Roldugina I., 'A Review of Francesca Stella, Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia. Post/Socialism and Gender Sexualities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, 189 pp.', Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 30, pp. 257–269.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/030/roldugina.pdf