TRAPPED AND TARGETED: THE REALITY FOR LGBTQ PEOPLE IN RUSSIA
Igor Kotler
Russia has a long history of institutionalized homophobia. Under the Soviet regime, homosexuality was criminalized and used as a tool to persecute both LGBTQ individuals and political opponents, removing them from society and placing them in prisons and labor camps under fabricated, "shameful" charges.
Historically, homosexuality was a criminal offense under the laws of the Russian Empire. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, although the Communists decriminalized homosexuality, they continued to classify it as a disease. However, this decriminalization was not uniform across the Soviet Union. In the Islamic republics of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as well as in the Christian-majority republic of Georgia, homosexuality remained a criminal offense.
