‘Gay Laboratory’: How Ukranian Marxist Pioneered Soviet LGBTQ Activism in 1983

In January 2024, Pyotr Voskresensky-Stekanov, an LGBT activist from St Petersburg, was surprised to read the text of the Russian Supreme Court’s decision to declare «the international LGBT social movement» extremist. According to the court, the movement came to Russia having originated «in the United States in the 1960s as part of its birth control policy.»

The year 1984, which is listed as the year when the «international movement» began its activities in Russia, was the first to cause surprise. Russian LGBTQ activists believed that the court took the date from a Wikipedia article.

This article was written by Voskresensky-Stekanov himself in 2010. In it, there is a small section devoted to the Leningrad project called «Blue Laboratory.» This was the first Soviet organisation created to protect the rights of gay people.

Pyotr learned about its existence in 2009 from the book «Sexual Culture in Russia. Strawberry on a Birch» by Soviet and Russian sexologist (as well as anthropologist, sociologist and philosopher) Igor Kon. «Then, I noticed his disparaging assessment of the fact that such a circle had been created. I decided that this was unfair, and started looking for information,» Voskresensky-Stekanov told OVD-Info.

In the chapter «Blue and Pink» Igor Kon wrote: «Until the late 1980s, Soviet 'blues' [goluboy] were victims; they could only complain about their fate and beg for leniency. However, it’s true that there were certain exceptions. In 1984, about 30 young people in Leningrad, led by Oleksandr Zaremba, united into a community of „gays and lesbians“.

«Unlike Kon, I believe that the creation of a classic LGBT rights-oriented dissident circle right before perestroika had a meaningful impact on the history of the LGBT movement in Russia,» remarked Pyotr Voskresensky-Stekanov. «It was in the Laboratory that the very idea of human rights activism emerged, many activists gained their first experience, and connections with the West were developed.»

In his article for Wikipedia, he initially cited 1984 — the same year as Igor Kon — for the creation of the «Gay Laboratory». But in 2017, after reading an article by Sergei Shcherbakov, one of the group’s members, Pyotr changed the date to the correct one: 1983.

Voskresensky-Stekanov says the Supreme Court could have borrowed the year of the emergence of the «international LGBT movement» in Russia from old documents from the Centre for Combatting Extremism, which actually took the year from the unedited article on Wikipedia around 2011. Also, he believes the court could have been provided the year 1984 directly from the «KGB case on the dispersal of the 'Gay Laboratory’».

«Or it’s a joke — an Orwell reference,» the activist added.

But the prosecution of Russians for organising an «international public LGBT movement» (part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code) has already begun in earnest: in March, the Central District Court of Orenburg sent the art director, administrator and owner of the club Pose to pre-trial detention for this very reason.