The Recriminalization of Homosexuality under Stalin: New Sources, New Answers

Abstract Drawing on newly uncovered archival and printed sources, this article offers a fresh perspective on the recriminalization of homosexuality under Stalin by challenging key assumptions in existing historiography. It demonstrates that the OGPU did not actively advocate for new anti‐sodomy legislation. Although Leningrad homosexuals had been under surveillance and selectively prosecuted by the secret service since the early 1930s, their consistent prosecution in the summer and autumn of 1933 was not only a result of growing and organized homophobia on the part of the Soviet state, but also connected to a little known campaign to establish a link between homosexuality and fascism. This article also argues that the recriminalization of homosexuality cannot be fully understood without extending the chronology and giving greater attention to the experiences of Soviet homosexuals themselves. Following the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1917 and its reaffirmation in the 1922 Criminal Code of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (the first Soviet penal code), the visibility of homosexuals increased—intensified by the growing self‐acceptance among gay men—and eventually attracted the attention of the secret police.