Authors

Discussion

While male same-sex contact was criminalised in Soviet Russia from 1933 onward, female homosexuality remained formally outside the scope of criminal legislation. Similar to male homosexual relations, it was not socially accepted; however, instead of legal prosecution, female same-sex desire was subjected to silence and marginalisation, discussed only within narrow circles of medical and criminological researchers, who often pathologised it as “a consequence of deep moral decay or psychopathy” (Danielbek 1972). Post-Stalin liberalisation brought little improvement to the lives of Soviet lesbians. In this context, it is unsurprising that awareness of lesbian identity remained vague throughout the Soviet period, including within the literary field, as indicated by numerous testimonies and scholarly accounts. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, when male homosexuality was decriminalised and attitudes toward same-sex relationships in Russia began to shift, representations of lesbians gradually started to emerge through Russophone media, pop culture, and experimental art. This paper will examine the prose of three Russian authors — Eugenia Debrianskaia, Margarita Meklina, and Margarita Shaapova — who each engaged with this subject matter in the 1990s. The paper will focus on the new ways these authors sought to articulate female same-sex desire and lesbian subjectivity in literature.