Голубой/-ая Literature 
and Russian Holiness¹
Голубая literatura  
in ruska svetost
❦ mihA JAvornik ▶ miha.javornik@ff.uni-lj.si
DOI ▶ 10.13137/2283-5482/28127
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1 
Голубой is a col-
loquial expression 
for the same sex 
oriented person.
LGBT IN RUSKA KULTURA, 
GEJEVSKA LITERATURA, RUSKI 
MESIJANIZEM, RUSKA SVETOST
LGBT AND RUSSIAN CULTURE, 
GAy LITERATURE, RUSSIAN 
MESSIANISM, RUSSIAN HOLINESS
V kratkem razmišljanju se ukvarjamo 
z vprašanjem ruske LGBT kulture. 
Ob razumevanju književnost in LGBT 
kultura v Rusiji izhajamo iz ambiva-
lentnega odnosa Rusov do Zakona. 
Že od začetkov ruske države je bila 
namreč homoseksualnost z zakonom 
oz. kanonskim pravom strogo prepove-
dana. Dejansko pa je bilo homoseksual-
nosti veliko in so jo tolerirali. Izhajamo 
iz predpostavke: če je Božja beseda 
sveta, je sveto tudi vse, kar je zapisano 
v leposlovju – knjiga je nosilka resnice 
in lepote. V njej ni prostora za govor 
o homoseksualnosti. Razen manj-
ših, zamaskiranih homoseksualnih 
odstopov pri Lermontovu, Gogolju, 
Tolstoju, Dostojevskem ali Čehovu, 
je že pisati o homoseksualnosti greh. 
Zakaj je temu tako?
In a short reflection, we are dealing 
with the issue of Russian LGBT culture. 
In understanding literature and LGBT 
culture in Russia, we come from the 
ambivalent attitude of the Russians 
to the Law. From the beginnings of the 
Russian state, homosexuality was, 
by law or canon law strictly forbid-
den. But in reality there was a lost 
of homosexuality and it was tolerated. 
We proceed from the assumption: 
if God’s Word is holy, everything writ-
ten in fiction is also sacred – the book 
is the bearer of truth and beauty. There 
is no room for talk about homosexual-
ity. Apart from smaller, masked homo-
sexual deviations in Lermontov, Gogol, 
Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky or Chekhov, even 
writting about homosexuality is con-
sidered a sin. Why is this so?
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MIHA JAVORNIK ▶ Голубой/-ая Literature and Russian Holiness
It is interesting that even until today there are no studies of homosexual 
culture and literature in Russia, although in the western world there 
are now many research centers dealing with the issue of LGBT culture. 
Unlike the special study courses in Western universities, in Russia, this 
topic is still a taboo. A step back was made with law adopted in 2013 for 
the ban of the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations in the 
midst of minors (закон запрещающий пропаганду нетрадиционных 
сексуальных отношений среди несовершеннолетних). It has 
launched numerous condemnations of liberl-thinking people both 
outside and in Russia itself. Consequently, the ban imposed fears 
on members of the LGBT community and put Russia back to the time 
when darkness ruled. The question poses itself: why is this so?
This reflection on the situation of the LGBT community and its 
literature will be an overview but at the same time also a polemic one. 
I will be questioning the causes for the formation or in fact the ab-
sence of erotic and consequently homoerotic / homosexual discourse. 
I will continue with a consideration of the meaning of LGBT literature 
in Russian culture in general. I will be using the term homo erotic and 
homosexual discourse as synonyms.
In Russia, there is actually little discussion about homosexual lit-
erature; in principle, at the universities there is no possibility of stud-
ying LGBT culture as a special discipline, i.e. queer studies. The only 
reliable source about LGBT in Russia are activists around the internet 
portal gay.ru.
Information on homosexual literature (especially contemporary) 
can thus be obtained only from direct contacts with the representatives 
of LGBT community or from western studies dedicated to Russian LGBT 
culture. Once very popular amongst homosexual population, Kvir mag-
azine (since 2003), can today only be found on the internet. Some queer 
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data are still available on other websites (usually work of enthusiasts), 
but by far the most scientifically competent are western sources that 
have had direct contact with Russian LGBT culture and systematically 
researched it. In the following, I will therefore point out three impor-
tant authors that I find relevant to highlighting LGBT culture: Kevin 
Moss, who edited the work entitled Out of the Blue: Russia’s Hidden Gay 
Literature from 1997. Within this collection, attention should be paid 
to the contribution of Simon Karlinsky Russia’s Gay Literature and His-
tory. There is also Denis LeBlanc with his work Slavic sins of the flesh: 
food sex and carnal appetite in the 19th century Russian fiction from 2009.
Today, Russian and Western sources state that Russian LGBT culture 
is under threat, its representatives are exposed to ridicule, some are 
rightfully afraid for their lives. This fact is also confirmed by one of the 
most prominent LGBT activists Dmitry Kuzmin.
The current situation is not only the present-days fault of mostly 
homophobic Russian society, but also the general expression of the 
Russian cultural model. I will try to highlight this specificity. An in-
teresting starting point for this research is offered by Ronald Denis 
LeBlanc in his work Slavic Sins of the Flesh. LeBlanc mentions the Rus-
sian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, a representative of met-
aphysical idealism. By focusing on Berdjaev, LeBlanc speaks of the 
innate spirituality of the Russian man, and this reflection is important 
for the understanding of Russian mentality: the absence of “physical” 
means abstinence from the temptations of the material, and thus of all 
the physical, related to sexuality.
In Russian culture the notions of the values of spiritual are con-
nected to the word of God, in the name of whom Russian soil is being 
christianised since the 11th century. Cultural histories foreground 
that the Russian man is accustomed to follow the Word of God as the 
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MIHA JAVORNIK ▶ Голубой/-ая Literature and Russian Holiness
only wright truth: hence the difference between the words of justice 
(правда) – the logical truth, and the truth (истина) – God given truth. 
It is logical then to infer that the word in Russian culture has the value 
of Truth. After the fall of Rome and Byzantium, the idea of Moscow 
as the third Rome, which preserves the wright word, creates the orig-
inal doctrine and true faith in God – that is Orthodoxy (Православие).
Based on faith in the Word, a double perception is formed, which 
is a characteristic of the Russian mentality: on the one hand, there 
is faith in the pure and the true Word, on the other, lust (плоть), which 
is according to the biblical representation sin: a Russian man suppress-
es the carnal lust, is still being sinful, but cannot even write about it. 
Infront of him there is only heaven for saints or hell for the sinners, the 
Orthodox Bible does not know the place where a man can be cleansed 
(чистилище) – the Russian mentality does not know the purgatory. 
The Russian man is thus torn between extremes: on the one hand the 
sin, the work of the Antichrist, on the other, the Word as the carrier 
of truth and beauty, God’s extasy. The word about carnal lust, sexuality, 
let alone homosexuality, is forbidden.
It is understandable that the dominant authority (consequently, the 
tzar, who is the embodiement of God on earth) feels a calling to preserve 
the value of the Word and spiritual morality. Regardless of the social 
order, this mentality applies to the present days: Soviet leadership 
or the putinism of today’s time are similar to the religious doctrine 
in the preservation of purity.
Art plays an important role all periods, as it represents the continu-
ity of the word of God, which is also the word of authority. Therefore, 
there is no place for bodily activity in the times when religious or state 
art (classicism) is being born: physicality leads to sin. The perceptual 
notions of flesh, eroticism and sex remain and exist only in the lower 
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genre, in folk literature or in folklore. The duality between high and 
profane can thus be manifested only in the rich erotic-sexual lexicon 
of folk literature.
If the boundary between high and low is strictly set – and in a strict 
biblical opposition, which does not know the purgatory (cleansing 
place), the erotic discourse cannot even be developed in sacred, beau-
tiful literature (belletres).
The first attempts of erotic motives and, consequently, erotic dis-
course in high literature developed from the transition from normative 
to descriptive poetics – that is, on the transition from classicism to ro-
manticism, in times when, regardless of the still dominant meaning 
of God’s Word, the focus of personal experience is on the forefront.
Of course, this does not in any way mean that it would now be pos-
sible to speak freely and without reservation of the sexuality of high, 
ruling classes in the elite literature – and, consequently, of their homo-
sexual experiences, such as, for example, Ivan Grozny or Peter the Great 
were having – about eroticism and sexual experiences is now spoken 
by the poet himself in low, usually comic genres. The unexpected car-
nality (in the motives of homosexuality) is being either masked (as with 
Gogol), or portrayed as humorous as in Lermont’s (Junker Poem).
The most explicit carnality was expressed by the greatest Russian 
poet Alexander Pushkin in Secret Notes, which are considered one of the 
best (male) manuals of women’s sexuality. In his Notes, it is especially 
interesting how Pushkin, as a declared heterosexual, liberally accepted 
homosexuality. He had a friend Philippe Vigel, an open homosexual, 
with whom he exchanged letters during his exile to the south. In one 
of the letters, he adds a witty song, how three nice boys are waiting for 
him in Chisinau, and at the same time inviting the addressee to visit 
him on the condition that he (Vigel) will not touch him:
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MIHA JAVORNIK ▶ Голубой/-ая Literature and Russian Holiness
Не знаю, придут ли к тебе  
Под вечер милых три красавца;  
Однако ж кое-как, мой друг,  
Лишь только будет мне досуг,  
Являются я перед тобою;  
Тебе служить я буду рад  
Стихами, прозой, всей душою,  
Но, Вигель, — пощади мой зад!
Given the strict commitment to the Word in Russian society, it is in-
teresting that literary history coined a term for this romantic period 
of individual sensation, called Golden era of Russian literature (Золотой 
век русской литературы). This would be then some kind of contradictio 
and adjecto.
The observer of Russian culture should therefore not be surprised 
that the second period, characterized by the liberation of moral and 
legal issues, was called with the related term: the Silver Age. Another 
kind of contradiction. This is a period of new romanticism, symbolism, 
for a time when European decadence spills into Russia at the begin-
ning of the 20th century. At that time literature with open homoerotic 
motivation appears. Let me mention some important representatives: 
Marina Cvetaeva, Mihail Kuzmin, Sofija Parnok, Sergey Jesenin and 
Fjodor Sologub with extremely obscene descriptions of sexuality …
Following the reflection on the development of (homo)erotic dis-
course, we must stop at the historical avant-garde, which coincides with 
the aforementioned modernist movements. Regardless of its declar-
ative denial of the past, and therefore also of the Silver Age, in the 
time of avant-garde-isms, life continues in search of various possibil-
ities that bring about the liberation. Their experiments were not only 
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technological, philosophical and artistic, but also searched for different 
coexistence: a special attention should be paid to the triangle: Vladimir 
Mayakovsky, as the central poet of the October Revolution, Osip Brik, 
as an important formalist, and his spouse Lili Brik.
In order to understand Russian mentality and Russian (homo)sexual 
discourse, it is most important to know, that after the October Revo-
lution in Russia, homosexuality was legalized and tolerated: the time 
of the early and late avant-garde, ending by the end of the 1920s, is con-
sidered one of the most ideally pluralistic periods in Russian culture.
But this freedom also has its other side, since this is also the time 
of social revolutions, which an academically educated intellectual elite 
expected with fear. In all this time, from the February Revolution of 1905 
to October 1917, one can speak of the already proverbial hesitancy of Rus-
sian intellectual elite, which is insightfully portrayed in the writings 
of modern Russian writer Viktor Yerofeyev: in fear of normative ties 
inteligentsia did not play a more important role in order to bring about 
the florishing society, but with the increasing Stalinist totalitarianism, 
new / old norms have been removed: the law, the authority and the 
word were now embodied by Joseph V. Stalin. The consequences are 
clear: erotic and homoerotic or sexual discourse is prohibited by decree. 
In the conception of a state machine, there is no room for any sensual 
pleasures. The national norm intervenes in the field of private and there 
are open pressures on the same-sex population: important homosexual 
artists (including world-renowned director Sergei Eisenstein) must 
consent to marriage with the opposite sex; if not they are threatened 
to be imprisoned in concentration camp (GULAG).
While at the end of the 19th century Berdjaev talked about the 
spirituality of the Russian man, any spirituality that did not conform 
to the partys vision was forbidden in the Soviet Union. Even the thought 
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MIHA JAVORNIK ▶ Голубой/-ая Literature and Russian Holiness
of individual freedom from the times of the Golden and the Silver Age 
of man could lead to a violent party re-education. The repressive appa-
ratus did not extend to the spiritual field alone, but also developed the 
old normative idea of the physicality linked up with sinful sexuality. 
Communist doctrine of oppression transferred (Homo)erotic discourse 
to the margins of culture. The body as the object of desire is replaced, 
in the Stalinist propaganda, by a physically enduring, muscular body 
that, if I paraphrase Stalin, is merely a screw in the body of the state / 
machinery: from here arises – similar to a Nazi propaganda machine – 
also in the Stalinist cult of the chiselled like body, which is clearly vis-
ible on posters – a man as a woman’s body becomes a public good and 
is in no way linked to sexuality. This understanding changes into a par-
adigm that exists as an unwritten law until the times of glasnost and 
Gorbachev’s perestroika in the 1980s.
In this regard, today there is proverbial statement, which in the first 
steps of the opening of the Soviet Union to the world in 1986 a Russian 
woman given to the question of an American journalist: in the USSR 
there is no sex at all (в СССР секса нет). This answer is symptomatic. 
If the basis for an average American advertising posters is an erotic-sex-
ual hint, in the Soviet propaganda, the uncovered male and female body 
is connected only with the idea of a steel worker with a featureless face, 
a heroic look, shining in a bright future. Sexuality is hidden in the pub-
lic, of course, but this does not mean that it doesn’t exist. This became 
clearly evident after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Hence, in the development of society the period of the glasnost 
and the pluralism of the nineties, the Soviet iconography is replaced, 
and (homo) erotic or, (homo) sexual discourse is reborn. It appears 
in so called the подпольная / underground literature (named so after 
F. Dostoevsky), this now receiving the name the other literature or the 
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so called new wave. It is full of obscene sexual scenes related to juicy 
curses, which until then were known only to folk literature. We are wit-
nessing a cultural explosion (for which the Russian semiotician Mikhail 
Lotman used the term взрыв). Once forbidden erotic themes move from 
the periphery of culture to the center. Homosexual motives also pene-
trate to literature. But this is not a literature that would shed light to life, 
relationships and mentality of the members of the LGBT community. 
In principle this is just a procedure for shock therapy of a Soviet man. 
The effect is understandable: used to established artistic and literary 
norms the post-Soviet man distanced himself from the shocking de-
scriptions of sexuality as something that has a traditional connection 
with the antichrist and is related to sin. Many cases of this kind of shock 
therapy that were only harmful the LGBT community are found today 
in the works of important contemporary writers: Eduard Limonov, 
Vladimir Sorokin, Viktor Yerofeyev. We must accept this shock therapy 
as an occurrence of schizoanalytic postmodernism, which brings to the 
surface the suppressed part of the cultural unconscious, and as a result 
arouses the feeling of disgust in the readers. This is a carnivalisation 
process, when the suppressed now becomes visible in canonised liter-
ature, but it still does not mean a qualitative stage in the development 
of (homo) erotic discourse. Postmodernist Russian literature does not 
deal in depth with the questions of the body, and therefore also not 
with sexuality and homosexuality as an integral part of Russian cul-
ture and society. It is clear that (homo) erotic and brutal motives are 
merely a procedure by which literature is unmasking something that 
is prohibited, but in fact it only strenghtens its prohibition. Therefore 
it becomes understandable that the (homo) erotic discourse in Russia 
cannot become the subject of scientific treatment, since such discourse 
is too foreign to the academic study of Beaufitul.
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Of course, this does not mean that there was no other LGBT liter-
ature during the (post) Soviet period. But such literature is still only 
on the periphery, as an expression of marginality. When homosex-
ual writers at the time of the SU – for example, Gennady Trifonov 
or Yevgeny Kharitonov – tried to develop (homo) erotic and sexual 
discourse in literature, this was considered in public per definition 
as obscene. Censorship watched their work closely, and the authors 
had to remove or mask homosexual love testimonies. With the ex-
ception of Kharitonov, who was regarded as a promising homoerotic 
author (he is even nominated by some people as a Russian gay icon), 
in today’s Russia it was not possible to develop a homoerotic discourse 
in literature that would be worth mentioning as the subject of Russian 
scholarly research.
It is commendable that some modern creators (eg Dmitry Kuzmin, 
Jaroslav Mogutin) try to include in so called elite literature is a homo-
sexual motives and stylistic expression of the sensibility of the mar-
ginalized community at the level of established, publicly recognized 
literature. Unfortunately, these experiments remain on the margines 
and can not penetrate to the center.
Periods of relative freedom, paradoxically attributed to them by the 
names of the Golden and the Silver Era, often bind to periods of chaos 
and confusion (smut) in the historical performance when the future 
is not clear and plurality raises doubts about so called bright future, 
which again speaks of the flutter and fear of the elite or center. The 
reaction is foreseeable: after the periods of the Golden and the Silver 
Age, it seems a good to limit the freedom of all the different (and thus 
the LGBT community) that don’t subordinate to the center.
Obviously, the ruling elite in today’s Russia has become aware of the 
dangers of over-freedom in time: in 2013 it adopted the law on so called 
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prohibition of homosexual propaganda, and some later on the legal 
ban on the use of curses in public and in literature.
The period that awaits Russian society is exclusive and xenophobic 
to all marginal cultures and can not be in favor of LGBT literature, 
since rooted deep in Russian mentality, this is still deeply committed 
to the Word of God and to the Beauty of the Language: The Word is still 
sacred and there is no room for it sin. ❦
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MIHA JAVORNIK ▶ Голубой/-ая Literature and Russian Holiness
Literature
БЕРДЯЕВ, НИКОЛАЙ, 1991–2012: Собрание сочинений. АСТ, Азбука, 
Правда, Астрель /…/.
КУЗЬМИН, ДМИТРИЙ, 2008: Хорошо быть живым. Москва: НЛО.
MOSS, KEVIN, 1997: Out of the Blue: Russia’s Hidden Gay Literature. 
Gay Sunshine Press.
LEBLANC, DENIS RONALD, 2009: Slavic sins of the flesh: food sex  
and carnal appetite in the 19th century Russian fiction. UPNE.
ЛОТМАН, МИХАИЛ, 2000: Семиосфера. Искусство-СПБ.
МОГУТИН, ЯРОСЛАВ, 2001: Термоядерный мускул. Испражнения для 
языка. НЛО-Москва.
ПУшКИН, АЛЕКСАНДР: Тайные записки 1836–1837 годов.  
[https://libking.ru/books/home-/home-sex/44884-a-pushkin-
taynye-zapiski-1836–1837-godov.html (15.4.2019)].
ТРИфОНОВ, ГЕННАДИЙ, 2005: Сетка. Тюремный роман. Инапресс.
ХАРИТОНОВ, ЕВГЕНИЙ, 1993: Слезы на цветах: Сочинения 
в 2-х книгах. Журнал-Москва.
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Povzetek
Zanimivo je, da se vse do današnjega časa v Rusiji ne pojavljajo raziska-
ve homoseksualne kulture in literature, čeprav je v zahodnem svetu 
danes že kar nekaj raziskovalnih centrov, ki se ukvarjajo z vprašanjem 
LGBT kulture. Za razliko od posebnih smeri študija na posameznih 
univerzah zahoda je v Rusiji omenjena tematika še vedno tabu. Korak 
nazaj je prinesel leta 2013 sprejet о prepovedi propagande netradicio-
nalnih seksualnih odnosov sredi mladoletnikov (закон запрещающий 
пропаганду нетрадиционных сексуальных отношений среди 
несовершеннолетних). Tako zunaj Rusije kot v sami Rusiji je med 
svobodomiselnimi ljudmi sprožil številne obsodbe. Posledično je pre-
poved vnesla strah me pripadnike LGBT skupnosti in Rusijo ponovno 
potisnila v čas, ko je vladalo mračnjaštvo. Vprašanje se postavlja samo 
po sebi: zakaj je temu tako?
Pri razmerju književnost in LGBT kultura v Rusiji, je treba izhaja-
ti iz ambivalentnega odnosa Rusov do Zakona. Že od začetkov ruske 
države je bila homoseksualnost z zakonom oz. kanonskim pravom 
strogo prepovedana. Dejansko pa je bilo homoseksualnosti veliko 
in so jo tolerirali.
A če je Božja beseda sveta, je sveto tudi vse, kar je zapisano v lepo-
slovju – knjiga je nosilka resnice in lepote. V njej ni prostora za govor 
o homoseksualnosti. Razen manjših, zamaskiranih homoseksualnih 
odstopov pri Lermontovu, Gogolju, Tolstoju, Dostojevskem ali Čehovu, 
je že pisati o homoseksualnosti greh. Prepoved traja do konca 19. stole-
tja, do obdobja dekadence in simbolizma. V tem času igra pomembno 
vlogo Vasilij Rozanov s prvimi teoretskimi razpravami o homoseksu-
alnosti v ruski kulturi. To je čas prvega coming-out ruskih pisateljev: 
najpomembnejšo sled v lezbični literaturi zapusti Marina Cvetajeva, 
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MIHA JAVORNIK ▶ Голубой/-ая Literature and Russian Holiness
v gejevski Mihail Kuzmin. Simbolistični pesnik Kuzmin se v svoji zad-
nji pesniški zbirki Postrv razbija led (1928) odmakne od vseh literarnih 
konvencij in njegovi nastopi v javnosti pomenijo prvo promocijo ge-
jevske kulture v Rusiji. Stalinistični totalitarizem v tridesetih letih, 
ki sledi še vedno dialogičnemu postoktobrskem obdobju, pokoplje 
vsakršen up: v sovjetski literaturi je (homo)seksualnost spet tabu. 
Ruski konceptualizem ob koncu sovjetskega imperija prične to idejo 
ponovno rušiti. V literaturi se spet pojavijo prizori homoseksualnosti 
(Eduard Limonov) in v devetdesetih letih se porodijo literarni poskusi 
razviti homoseksualne teme (Jevgenij Haritonov). Tudi to upanje zamre 
v obdobju vladanja Vladimirja Putina. Ob pritiskih pravoslavne cerkve 
vse bolj narašča homofobija in ponovno uzakonja ponavljajočo se idejo: 
Beseda je vendar sveta.
Miha Javornik
Miha Javornik is a full professor at the Department of Slavic Studies at the 
Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, where he lectures on modern and 
contemporary Russian literature, and literary theory. He is specialised in the 
history of contemporary Russian literature and cultures. His work is centred 
on the notions such as mythology in literary and socio-political history, and 
the contemporary phenomena of the information age, for instance the nature 
of identity in digital communication.