Reporting that Russia has allegedly compiled lists of gay Ukrainians and LGBTQ organizations to imprison (or worse) made me curious what Ukrainian gay literature might look like. I didn't find much info online, but this article, "Ukrainian Queer Culture: A Difficult Birth," was helpful. It's an excerpt from a 2007 book by Vitaly Chernetsky titled Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization. For those interested in non-LGBTQ Ukrainian literature that has been translated into English, the New York Times has helpfully compiled two lists of six volumes each: history and fiction/memoirs.
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When I was growing up in Philadelphia, “Ukes” were disparaged, as the Irish and Italians (among others) had been when they first appeared as minorities in this country. Times have changed for us “queers” as well as for Ukrainians. Certain insights – accidental as well as intentional – in this article elucidate the conflict now broadly reported as war news. Who knew, “In 1991 Ukraine became the first ex-Soviet country to get rid of sodomy laws, a few weeks before the official dissolution of the USSR”? Or the broader context of the “Euromaidan” revolution that might be compared to our 1960’s?
The author searches for “grounds for building a community” as we did after Stonewall. Just as our histories differ, will those foundations and processes differ? By how much? E.g., does it matter homophobic attacks were made on literary gatherings rather than a gay bar? There are many similarities, e.g., involvement of publications, bookstores, political parties and legal battles. See p. 17f (“222”).
Though he eschews “rehears[ing] in detail the arguments Foucault makes in The History of Sexuality, or the views of pioneers of the gay rights movement, like Karl Heinrich Ulrichs or Magnus Hirschfeld,” I wonder what these might be, now that I have acquired a nostalgic, rather than forward-looking perspective. But regardless of my personal viewpoint, this evidence that gay liberation is part of the global democratic trend is heartening. Thank you, Steve, for posting the link.
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