Filed Under: Print > Journalism > “Dear Reader” by Valery Klimov
“Dear Reader” by Valery Klimov
To the Reader
Dear reader! You are holding the first issue of the newspaper "Gay-Dialogue." For the uninitiated, average reader, this might not evoke any particular emotions, but... this newspaper is not quite ordinary in the conventional understanding of the general population. To this day, a certain segment of our society feels, to put it mildly, disgust toward such people. But this usually stems from ignorance and lack of knowledge, a misunderstanding of the subject which such people attempt to discuss and judge us by. I believe our newspaper will not interest them and is unlikely to fall into their hands unless they make an effort and show interest, which is hardly possible... We do not intend to persuade anyone, and certainly not to promote our lifestyle. God forbid.
For several years now, Muscovites and Siberians have been delighting Ural residents with their publications. "Impulse," "One Tenth," "Siberian Variant," and magazines like "Risk" and "You" find their way to our area. Some appreciate them, while others among our community react with fits of inexplicable hysteria, which does them no credit—we are few, and we must be tolerant of those who are trying in some way to change public opinion about us, who aim to improve the culture of relationships between gays and lesbians. We will learn this together with you. We don't claim to know everything, but we have you, our readers. Distinguished scientists, doctors, even clergy, and lawyers who are willing to openly defend and protect our rights have also offered to help us. And it must be emphasized that for any readers who, God forbid, might face the unjust hand of justice and against whom criminal cases might be fabricated, whether in prison or free, under Articles 120 and 121 of the Russian Criminal Code, we will resolutely stand in defense of such people and, together with our international human rights commissions for gay and lesbian rights, will fight for each person. And be assured, as long as you have not committed violence, we will stand in your defense.
We plan to regularly provide a review of readers' letters, which will be compiled by our correspondent Yuri Kruglov, who will also cover the lives of gays and lesbians abroad. Others have taken on the most difficult and responsible burden—the "Dating Service" section "He seeks him, she seeks her." The service principle is free. We want to warn you right away that we will not place or print advertisements addressed to minors, and until the age of majority is lowered to 16, it is pointless to ask us for this type of introduction.
We are also convinced that eventually, a helpline will operate through our editorial office, which you can call during difficult hours and days.
"Great Homosexuals of the World"—this is the title of a book released about a year ago by the American publisher "TEMPLE." The book describes the lives of famous people such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, German Emperor Frederick the Great, ancient Greek thinkers Plato and Socrates, artists Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, writers Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, Gogol, and composer P.I. Tchaikovsky. This book costs 15 dollars and is among the top ten bestsellers. Our translators are working on its translation, and we will publish chapters from it in our newspaper, especially about our contemporaries. The sexual orientation of some of the book's future heroes is well known, while information about others will be sensational.
The editorial team has many ideas and plans, including some good novellas, stories, and poems by our fellow countrymen, which, we are confident, you will also enjoy.
Valery KLIMOV, Editor.
Pictured: Valery Klimov.
Pictured: Valery Klimov.
This document is an editor’s letter addressed to readers of a local LGBTQ newspaper in Russia’s Ural region. The author, the newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief Valery Klimov, was convicted and sentenced in 1983 on violations of RSFSR Criminal Code Article 120 prohibiting the “corruption of minors” for sexual relationships with adolescent males when he himself was twenty years of age. While serving his sentence, Klimov witnessed heinous abuse of Article 121 of the Soviet Criminal Code, which was used to persecute inmates who were victims of sexual violence. Article 121 prohibited “sodomy” among men and remained in force until 1993, the year before this issue of Gay Dialogue appeared.
According to Klimov, the Soviet penal system defined homosexuality arbitrarily and assigned homosexual status selectively in an environment where the vast majority engaged in homosexual activity. Inmates who were perpetrators of sexual violence were regarded as dominant and “masculine.” Victims, on the contrary, lost status. Article 121 was often deployed against the victims—a perversion of the law, which required especially severe penalties for acts involving violence, coercion, or abuse of power. Inmate victims of sexual violence witnessed by camp or prison administrators often received additional convictions under Article 121. The resulting extended sentences prolonged the time these prisoners, already consigned to the lowest rung in the inmate hierarchy, remained vulnerable to sexual and other violence.
Once free, Klimov became an advocate for victims of Article 121 and dedicated himself to supporting LGBTQ people in Russia more generally. In this letter, he announces to his readership that he and the Gay Dialogue team are prepared to defend LGBTQ people against abuse in the penal system by mobilizing support from the academic, medical, and legal professions, and even from among the clergy. This expression of support would have been especially meaningful to regional readers distant from the metropolitan centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. As isolated as many LGBTQ people in Moscow or St. Petersburg might have felt, they enjoyed greater access to communities and legal and medical services than their counterparts in smaller Russian cities.
Published at the beginning of the twenty-year period that saw the Russian government jettison anti-LGBTQ legislation, Klimov’s letter addresses the legal strategy, well-known from Article 121 itself, of associating homosexual relations with legitimately abhorrent and destructive sexual behaviors—like those involving minors or elements of violence or coercion. It also unwittingly anticipates the associative strategies and pretexts, and even the language, of the anti-gay laws enacted under Putin in 2013. Nominally put in place to protect minors from “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships,” the law effectively prohibited the social expression of LGBTQ identity.
Klimov explicitly declares that the conversion of people who do not self-identify as gay or lesbian and/or “propaganda” of the gay “way of life” are not part of Gay Dialogue’s agenda. He also unequivocally excludes perpetrators of sexual violence from the population the publication has been established to serve. Finally, having himself, at the age of twenty, been convicted for sexual relationships with adolescents, the now thirty-one-year-old Klimov expressly distances the newspaper and its target audience from sexual relations with minors. In Russia, as elsewhere, male homosexuality had historically been associated with pedophilia, with many Russian homophobic slurs (such as pederast, pedik, and pidor) deriving from the word “pederast.” The 2013 law against “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships in the presence of minors” seems designed to reinvigorate these associations. Here, almost 20 years before, Klimov addresses an audience of LGBTQ people living in the Russian provinces, which tended to be more conservative than the capitals, and carves out an identity for them unassociated with violence or abuse.