4. 'The war to end all wars'

By Leslie Feinberg The outbreak of World War I derailed the thrust of the movements for sexual and gender emancipation and for women's rights in Germany- -and created a profound political split in the international workingclass struggle. It was no accident that the war began precisely at a time of a worldwide upsurge of the working class in Europe and in the United States, as well as stirrings in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The workers' movements were gaining strength and momentum. They were increasingly taking a stand against imperialist war. There were no socialist countries or liberation movements to blame for World War I. It was a plain, unvarnished racist war for colonial empire. The principal capitalist countries, each hungry to gobble up a bigger share of the markets and profits, tried to redivide the colonial world. In each of the capitalist countries the bosses appealed to the workers to unite behind them in battle. The German ruling class was able to rally its working class for the war on a patriotic basis. Even the majority in the socialist movement of that day, and the Homosexual Emancipation Movement, got swept up into the chauvinist appeal. Going along with this right-wing, murderous patriotism put the brake on every social movement--gay, trans and lesbian, women's rights, workers' and socialist struggles--because it gave the ruling class the upper hand, strengthened the right wing and set back the progressive movement. Those in Germany who didn't fight against the war, instead supporting their own ruling class with patriotic fervor, were pulled in a rightward direction. But not everyone gave in to frenzied national chauvinism. In the German socia list movement, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Leibknecht took a principled stand against the German ruling class. They were arrested and later assassinated as a result of their opposition to the war. World War I took the lives of 20 million workers. A new revolutionary front Home Books Subscribe Donate Noticias en Español Workers World June 24, 2004: Pride & struggle a century ago http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries0624.php[2/3/2011 3:47:00 PM] The inter-imperialist war interrupted the progress of the working class movement in Europe and Russia. But as the war dragged on for years, the intolerable conditions of life, carnage and suffering sparked revolutionary workers' uprisings. The very same processes that had been either submerged or driven underground by the outbreak of the war began to resurface and speed up. Imperialist war accelerates all the social, political and economic processes that exist during peacetime. War is the most violent expression of the constant clash of capitalist competition for profits. World War I generated a huge area of struggle in Asia. It laid the ground-work for the development of national liberation movements around the world. And the war sparked a revolutionary situation in almost every leading capitalist country in the world. World War I contributed to making the monumental Russian Revolution a necessity. It was not military defeat on the battlefield, but revolutions in Russia and Germany, that brought World War I to an end. Just eight weeks after the October 1917 Russian Revolution, which brought the workers', peasants' and soldiers' Soviets to power, the new government led by Lenin abolished the czarist anti-gay laws, which were similar to the German Paragraph 175. This action went hand in hand with guaranteeing the rights of workers, land for the peasants and equal rights for women. Abolishing the anti-gay laws in Russia was a historic step forward from the Napoleonic Code, established in 1804, that had given legal expression to the French bourgeoisie's revolutionary victory over feudalism in 1789. The left wing of the Russian revolutionary movement did more than just strip the anti-gay laws from the Russian penal code. The Bolsheviks argued that the walls that separated same-sex love from the rest of human sexuality should be torn down. The new Soviet legislation stressed that all forms of sexual gratification should be treated the same way--as "natural"--and that sex was a private matter. Only the use of force or duress, injury or encroachment on the rights of another person, was a matter for criminal prosecution. The fresh winds of the Russian Revolution also filled the sails of struggle in other parts of the world, including Germany. 'Socialism means solidarity' In 1918, mutiny broke out in the German Navy. Workers throughout the country went on strike in support of the rebellion. On Nov. 7, a council of workers, soldiers and peasants established the Republic of Bavaria. The revolutionary wave spread to Berlin where a socialist republic was proclaimed on Nov. 9. The kaiser abdicated the next day. Workers World June 24, 2004: Pride & struggle a century ago http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries0624.php[2/3/2011 3:47:00 PM] In this revolutionary wave, the lesbian and gay movement, largely middle-class in its leadership, took its stand with the working class. The revolution gave the Homosexual Emancipation Movement new energy. This insurrection lent inspiration to the lesbian and gay movement's hope that their liberation was on the horizon. The Scientific Humanitarian Com mittee had, like the Social Democrats, taken a social-patriotic position during the war. Yet it had published articles by and maintained solidarity with gays from all the countries involved in the war. Many of the early fighters for gay liberation had died on the imperialist battlefields. With the overthrow of the monarchy and militarism, the committee expressed "firm hope that our movement, too, will once again be able to move into the forefront and lead the struggle for homosexual liberation to its long-desired end." Magnus Hirschfeld, a leader of the Homosexual Emancipation Movement, and members of the Scientific Human itarian Committee supported the new republic. "We took the most active part in all the revolutionary events," reported the committee. Hirschfeld spoke at a mass rally in Berlin on Nov. 10. Held at the height of the revolution, it was in front of the Reichstag building. Between 3,000 to 4,000 people gathered near to where the revolutionary Red Guards were fighting pitched battles with reactionary officers who supported the kaiser. Recalling Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht and other revolutionaries, Hirschfeld said that not only in Germany, "but elsewhere too, nationalism attempted to destroy internationalism, and militarism attempted to destroy socialism." Hirschfeld stressed to the crowd why socialism was so important: "Socialism means: solidarity, community, mutuality, further development of society into a unified body of people. Each for all and all for each!" In addition, he said, "We want: the community of peoples, struggle against racism and national chauvinism, removal of limitations on economic and personal communication between peoples, the right of peoples to self-determination regarding their relationship to a state and their form of government." Historians John Lauritsen and David Thorstad explain that as soon as the revolution had broken out, "The Com mit tee immediately sent a delegation to the new government to press for a total amnesty that would include the release from jail of all inmates convicted of homosexual acts. The removal of censorship and the greater freedom of the press and speech that ensued following the revolution were a boon to the gay rights struggle for a time. But perhaps the most tangible benefit to the gay movement was the acquisition of a building that was to become an international center for gay liberation and sex research. "The institute was housed in a lovely building that had belonged to Workers World June 24, 2004: Pride & struggle a century ago http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries0624.php[2/3/2011 3:47:00 PM] Prince Hatzfeld prior to the revolution. It was one of the finest palaces in Berlin." The first of its kind, the institute compiled historical, biological, anthropological, statistical and ethnological data and documentation regarding human sexuality and gender. It also housed the Scien tific Humanitarian Committee. So it was an international lesbian and gay community center. At the opening of this Institute for Sexual Science, Hirschfeld spoke about this concrete gain: "In his speech to the scholars, doctors and politicians who attended the opening in July 1919, Hirschfeld called it 'a child of the revolution'--not only of the uprising that swept Berlin on November 9, 1918, but also of the 'great spiritual revolution' that had begun decades earlier with the first stirrings of the homosexual rights movement." ("The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935)," Times Change Press) Thousands came through its doors, including a number of socialist youth groups and parties that were struggling to inform themselves on homosexuality and other sexual questions. One such delegation consisted of Soviet doctors. The group was headed by the peoples' commissar of health, who proudly described how their revolutionary Soviet government had immediately removed the czarist anti-gay laws. In January 1923, the Soviet minister of health traveled to Germany. "He is reported to have expressed to members of the Institute for Sexual Science how pleased he was that the former penalty against homosexuals had been abolished in the Soviet Union. He also said that 'no unhappy consequences of any kind whatsoever have resulted from the elimination of the offending paragraph, nor has the wish that the penalty in question be re-introduced been raised in any quarter.'" Momentum accelerates In Germany the Social Democratic Party, which had swung to the right to support the war, helped curb the revolutionary uprising. Those who were for a revolutionary alternative looked to the gains of the Russian Revolution for inspiration, and organized communist parties through out the world. Within a few short years after the defeat of the November uprising in Germany, the revolutionary movement there had grown from representing only a vanguard of the working class to obtaining the adherence of millions of workers. In August 1920 the Scientific Human itarian Committee held its first post-war general membership meeting. The next year a new minister of justice who was himself a signer of the petition was appointed. The struggle opened up more social and political space for lesbians. In Berlin there were 60 spots where lesbians could meet, some geared for middle-class women, others for working-class lesbians. There was even a lesbian newspaper called The Girlfriend: Weekly Workers World June 24, 2004: Pride & struggle a century ago http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries0624.php[2/3/2011 3:47:00 PM] for the Ideal Friendship. It was sponsored by the Fed eration for Human Rights, a gay group whose membership had swelled to 48,000. This newspaper advertised lesbian night spots and ran personal columns to help women meet each other. In 1921 Hirschfeld helped organize the first congress of the World League for Sexual Reform, in Berlin. By 1922 the Committee had 25 branches throughout Germany and had spread to Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, England, Italy and Belgium. At the same time, however, the German counter-revolution--headed by Hitler and bank-rolled and backed by a segment of the industrial and banking class--had obtained a base in the middle class. And the Homosexual Emancipation Move ment would be one of its first targets. Next: Counter-revolution Reprinted from the June 24, 2004, issue of Workers World newspaper This article is copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011 Email: ww@workers.org Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net Donate to support pro-labor, anti-war news. HOME | NEWS | SEARCH | SUBSCRIBE | WWP | SUPPORT WW Workers World July 1, 2004: Sexual freedom vs. fascism in Germany http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries0701.php[2/3/2011 3:47:07 PM]

Lesbian, gay, bi, trans pride, part 5 Sexual freedom vs. fascism in Germany

By Leslie Feinberg Decades of left-wing political activism, agitation and education ushered in the short-lived era of the "Golden Twenties" in Germany. Berlin rivaled Paris for its flourishing gay and lesbian cultures-which included transgender expression. The movement had forced the police to issue certificates to trans people, allowing them to "crossdress" without threat of arrest. Turn-of-the-century independent strug gles for sexual reform, including the movement for women's right to vote-which had held its first large protest in Berlin in 1894-were coalescing into a broad political alliance between the women's emancipation movement and the gay, trans and lesbian movement. The most prominent organization in that political coalition was the League for the Protection of Maternity and Sexual Reform, founded in 1905. Its leader, Dr. Helene Stoecker, became a director of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee headed by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, a leader of the German Homosexual Emancipation Movement. The First Congress for Sexual Reform convened in Berlin Sept. 15- 20, 1921. The gathering met at the Institute of Sexual Science-the international center of the movement for sexual emancipation. Experts traveled to Germany from around the world for this groundbreaking discussion about sexology, genetics and the law. In his book "The Pink Triangle," Richard Plant--a later refugee from Nazi Germany-noted that "The congress was such a success that Hirschfeld was embold ened to create the World League for Sexual Reform, which at its height claimed a membership of 130,000." In 1923 there were at least 25 gay/ trans/lesbian organizations in Germany. And the movement was debating the formation of a national homosexual political party. Early targets of fascism German fascism targeted the gay/ trans /lesbian and the women's rights movements even before anti-Jewish and anti-gay laws, codified in 1934-35, officially marked the unleashing of the widespread campaign of terror. Magnus Hirschfeld was an easy target for the Nazis because he was Jewish and gay, as well as a movement leader and socialist. In 1920 Home Books Subscribe Donate Noticias en Español Workers World July 1, 2004: Sexual freedom vs. fascism in Germany http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries0701.php[2/3/2011 3:47:07 PM] Nazis beat him up as he spoke at a meeting in Munich. Again in Munich, in 1921, his skull was fractured and the fascists left him for dead. In Vienna two years later, Nazis hurled stink bombs and then opened fire on a meeting where he was speaking. On May 6, 1933, fascist youth were organized to march on the Institute for Sexual Science, accompanied by a brass band. They trashed the international archive, making a mountain of the many thousands of books and journals, photographs and charts-at that time the largest collection in world history. Storm troopers showed up and took over the ransacking. Four days later, the enormous heap of archive materials was publicly burned on Opera Square. The Nazis threw a bust of Hirschfeld on the pyre. Hirschfeld was abroad on a worldwide speaking tour that had taken him to the United States, China, Palestine, India, Indo nesia and Japan. He later died in exile. After 1933 the Nazis forcibly dismantled all independent youth organizations, even the Catholic ones, by denouncing their leaders as "homosexual degenerates." "By the summer of 1933," Plant wrote, "Ernst Roehm's SA [Sturm Abteilung] goons were raiding gay bars throughout Germany. Many were closed, but others didn't shutter their doors until 1935. That was the year when the campaign against homosexuals shifted into high gear and the new Nazi laws banning such gathering places and outlawing homosexuals as 'sexual vagrants' went into effect." Roehm was himself an openly gay leader of the fascist storm troopers--the "brown shirt" militias used as a weapon of violent repression against the progressive and revolutionary political movements. To some, it might seem a contradiction that a gay man led raids on gay bars. But there are gay and lesbian, bisexual and trans people in every economic class in capitalist society. When the class struggle is raging, the real question is, as the timeless U.S. labor union song demands, "Which side are you on?" Roehm's role in attempting to crush the liberation movements that sought to overturn capitalism is no more paradoxical than the reactionary J. Edgar Hoover-reportedly a gay cross-dresser--laying siege to the left-wing struggles, including gay liberation, in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s What is ironic is that Roehm drowned in his own ideological current. In 1934, Roehm was purged from the Nazi Party and shot. His homosexuality was the political flashpoint. But his violent removal resulted from internal rivalries and Roehm's struggle to supplant the standing army with his own fascist militia, which ran counter to Hitler's attempts to appease the military brass. Plant concludes, "'The Night of the Long Knives'--the popular phrase for the [internal] bloodbath that began on June 28 and lasted until July 3, 1934--saw Adolph Hitler wreck the SA militia and order the Workers World July 1, 2004: Sexual freedom vs. fascism in Germany http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries0701.php[2/3/2011 3:47:07 PM] shooting of its chief, Ernst Roehm, the man who, since 1919, had been Hitler's sponsor and faithful second-in-command." Roehm's purge was the harbinger of a storm of violence against leftwing movements for sexual, gender and sex liberation. A harsh new anti-gay edict was publicly issued one year to the day after the Night of the Long Knives began--June 28, 1935. Paragraph 175A criminalized kisses, embraces, even homosexual fantasies. The law gave the fascist state license to carry out arrests and internment in camps with impunity under the mantle of "criminally indecent activities between men." Plant estimated that between 50,000 and 63,000 males were convicted of homosexuality from 1933 to 1944, of which nearly 4,000 were juveniles. Although laws against lesbianism had not been codified, German women were snared in the state web, as well--rounded up in SS raids on lesbian bars, sentenced by the Gestapo and sent to concentration camps where they faced horrific brutality. Estimates of the total number of lesbian/gay/trans prisoners forced to wear the pink triangle on their uniforms in Nazi concentration camps range from 100,000 to 600,000. Learning from the mistakes Communists and socialists of all sexualities and genders fought the Nazi attacks on the gay/trans/lesbian and women's struggles. Yet was there backwardness about homosexuality on the part of socialists and communists in the German left? Yes. "The Left" was not politically monolithic. Frequently even activist historians lump together the German communists and social democrats as "the left," "the socialists." But like a fast-moving river, political movements are made up of many currents. Before World War I, the Social Demo cratic Party was the party of revolutionaries. But after its cowardly capitulation at the outbreak of World War I--the overwhelming majority supported their own capitalist class in that inter-imperialist rivalry for colonies--the party lost its revolutionary character. After the war and the Russian Revolution, those who had opposed the capitulation formed a new communist party. Revolutionaries must constantly be working to shed centuries of ruling class indoctrination that serves to divide and conquer the vast laboring class. Every form of bigotry and backwardness holds back unity and progress in a revolutionary struggle of all sexualities, genders and sexes to abolish capitalism and liberate humanity. However, some in the Social Demo cratic and Communist parties in Germany --and in the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, which by then had retreated from some of its earlier, more revolutionary positions--took easy political advantage, especially immediately after the purge of Roehm in the Nazi Party, by gay-baiting the fascists. That was a serious political error. It was like a striking worker Workers World July 1, 2004: Sexual freedom vs. fascism in Germany http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries0701.php[2/3/2011 3:47:07 PM] shouting an anti-gay epithet at scabs or police attacking the picket line. Anti-gay bigotry goes against the workers' own class interests. The U.S. and British imperialist bosses were gay-baiting the Nazis, too. But in that case it actually did serve the interests of their side of the class barricades. Error vs. ideology There is a profound difference, however, between political error and political ideology. In the heat of the struggle, the actual positions the German Communist Party and the Nazi Party took on homosexuality and on abortion demonstrate class objectives as different as night and day. In 1928 gay publisher Adolf Brand, a founding member of an elitist and male chauvinist German gay group called the Community of the Special, polled the political parties of Germany about their position on Paragraph 175. After the Second International collapsed following its surrender to the inter-imperialist chauvinism of World War I, German revolutionary elements joined the Communist Party. As the Communist Party became strong, it responded to the call by the gay/trans/lesbian movement for support against Paragraph 175. The Communist Party replied that it had "taken a stand for the repeal of Para graph 175 at every available opportunity. There is no need to emphasize that we will continue to wage the most resolute struggle for the repeal of these laws in the future." Communist lawyer Felix Halle, a co-worker in the Coalition for Reform of the Sexual Crimes Code, provided this formulation of the German Communist Party's stance: "The class-conscious proletariat, uninfluenced by the ideology of property and freed from the ideology of the churches, approaches the question of sex life and also the problem of homosexuality with a lack of prejudice afforded by an understanding of the overall social structure. ... In accordance with the scientific insights of modern times, the proletariat regards these relations as a special form of sexual gratification and demands the same freedom and restrictions for these forms of sex life as for intercourse between the sexes, i.e., protection of the sexually immature from attacks, ... control over one's own body, and finally respect for the rights of non-involved parties." The Nazis deliberately hid the fascist nature of their party by calling themselves "National Socialists." But their response to the poll shows that their program was just the opposite of a communist workers' party. The Nazi reply included this succinct sentence: "Anyone who even thinks of homosexual love is our enemy." Some theorists have explained this ferocious enmity as part of the Nazi effort to build a "Rambo" fighting machine. That's true. But the fact that the fascists despised and destroyed the movements for Workers World July 1, 2004: Sexual freedom vs. fascism in Germany http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries0701.php[2/3/2011 3:47:07 PM] sexuality, gender and sexual freedom was also rooted in their entire political ideology and the capitalist class objective it served. Imperialists laid groundwork for fascism Today understanding the class basis of German fascism and the strengths and weaknesses of the communist resistance to it are especially important because governing ideologues in the U.S.--the expand ing imperial empire of capital--have fashioned their own "bad-guys-good-guys" version of the rise and demise of German fascism. In that version, fascism and communism are evil twins. And the great democratic U.S. imperialism, with a few imperialist powers in its posse, rode in and saved the day. But in reality, the banking and industrial class of the United States and its imperialist allies had laid the basis for the growth and development of the Nazi regime with the Versailles Treaty that formally ended WWI. The U.S., England and France redrew the map of Europe and recarved Ger many in a way that was designed to arouse national hatreds and pit peoples against each other in order to preclude internationalist working-class solidarity. That gave the right wing parties in Ger many, especially the Nazis, the oppor tunity to fan the flames of national chauvinism. The victorious Allies also ordered defeated Germany to pay reparations for the war, with a provisional payment of 20,000,000,000 Marks. The bankers and politicians who had started the war were not the ones to be bled to death by these payments. The workers and middle class were saddled with the bill. However, the decision on reparation payments was postponed until 1921 in order to give the capitalist class of Germany the chance to destroy the rising revolutionary struggle of the workers. The economic dislocation that followed World War I was staggering. In the face of the reparations and penalties imposed on Germany, the government began printing money to meet expenses, resulting in runaway inflation. The financial system was in a tailspin. Only when the bankers and industrialists abroad realized that a ferocious class struggle in Germany was raging did they begin to relent somewhat on their economic bloodletting. But this was only a way of stifling the growing revolutionary working class movement in Germany. Capitalist counter-revolution By the late 1920s, the fascist movement--with its base in the economically devastated middle class--began to win the backing of a sector of German industrialists and bankers to carry out the dirty job of counter-revolution. State repression of sexuality, gender and sex to enforce the capitalist economic unit of the patriarchal nuclear family was a key plank in the fascist platform. Workers World July 1, 2004: Sexual freedom vs. fascism in Germany http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/prideseries0701.php[2/3/2011 3:47:07 PM] The progressive movements were battling the state to decriminalize variance in sexuality and gender. And they were trying to free the lives of women of all sexualities and genders that were tightly corseted by lack of basic social and economic rights. These modest but vital goals, raised during a period of working-class struggle and capitalist economic depression, made these movements enemies of the Nazis. Nazi campaigns focused on eradicating homosexuality and abortion, mandating procreation, and sharply restricting women's rights and role in society, in addition to vicious racism and national chauvinism. However, in 1931, a militant battle broke out against passage of the fascist Paragraph 128 of the Criminal Code that banned abortion. Feminist historian Atina Grossmann provided a valuable account of this struggle in her essay "Abortion and Economic Crisis: The 1931 Campaign Against Para graph 218": "The 1931 arrests of two physicians and Sex Reform activists on charges of having performed illegal abortions sparked a storm of protest from feminists, Com munists, and Socialists. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, they organized an extraordinary coalition campaign for the legalization of abortion." Next: The dual role of the Soviet bureaucracy; lesbian/trans/gay and women: political setbacks in the Soviet Union, gains in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Reprinted from the July 1, 2004, issue of Workers World newspaper This article is copyrighted under a Creative Commons License. Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011 Email: ww@workers.org Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net

Lesbian, gay, bi, and trans pride series, part 6 Gender & sexuality in czarist Russia

By Leslie Feinberg Lenin's Bolshevik Party abolished the czarist anti-gay law and legalized abortion less than eight weeks after the October 1917 Revolution. The Soviet leadership under Stalin retreated from those revolutionary positions by re-criminalizing homosexuality in 1933-34 and abortion in 1936. Neither of these actions reflects the policies or psychologies of individuals, but of deep economic changes going on in Soviet society and their impact on the family. The question of same-sex love and the role of women in what became the Soviet Union has a long and complex past that can't be examined in isolation from the class struggle as a whole. Much of the scrutiny of this particular aspect of history has been by researchers and academics who are hostile to the Russian Revolution and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics it forged. Anticommunism not only taints their work, in too many cases the discrediting of socialist revolution is the actual foundation of their analysis. Working-class communist intellectuals--particularly those from the former socialist-bloc countries--who examine the question of sexuality, gender and sex in this vast region within the context of the class struggle, without glossing over any of the weaknesses or mistakes of the revolution, will make a vital contribution to the socialist movement. As ancient as humanity As with every other inhabited land mass on the planet, the extended region that was to become the Soviet Union seems to have encompassed same-sex love and gender/sex variance during early times. Sexual variance is found not just in the history of one nationality or one class. British archeologist Timothy Taylor identified what he believed was evidence of what today is called transgender, as well as women warriors, in pre-class Iron Age graves in southern Russia. "I think I have identified females who moved into a male sphere as well as men who cross-dressed," he wrote. ("She-Men," British Daily Telegraph, Feb. 13, 1995) Historian Dan Healy stated in his book "Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia" that: "The popular, everyday (bytovoe) sexual Home Books Subscribe Donate Noticias en Español Workers World July 8, 2004: Gender & sexuality in czarist Russia http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/lgbtseries0708.php[2/3/2011 3:47:15 PM] patterns and practices of the mass of Russians were marked by pagan survivals (orgies, nonreproductive sex acts), which Russian Orthodoxy, with its incomparably weak institutions and priesthood, had been incapable of eradicating." Healy explained, "Rural and lower-class Russians possessed an array of terms to describe individuals who appeared or behaved like members of the opposite sex. They associated this gender marginality with hermaphroditism observed in domesticated animals, linking social qualities with the familiar phenomenon of physical sexual indeterminacy." For example, Healy noted that "The lexicographer Vladimir Dal, who gathered his material between the 1830s and 1850s in central Russia, found that the manly woman was known as muzhlanka, muzhlatka, borodulia, suparen, and razmuzhiche. Dal reported that his informants defined these women as 'resembling a man in their appearance, movements, voice, et cetera,' or 'by structure, by body formation'; they might even approach the condition of a 'hermaphrodite-woman' (germafrodit-zhena). "The lexicographer found an analogous vocabulary describing the feminine male. In addition, Dal reported that the verb devulitsia was used of men who 'luxuriate, take women's habits, manners.'" None of the words used to describe "manly" females were insults; some of the terms for feminine males were. The stamp of feudalism on sexuality In an essay about Russia and same-sex love, Simon Karlinsky observed, "There is a considerable body of evidence that prior to the Westernizing reforms of Peter the Great (at the beginning of the 18th century) male homosexuality was widespread and tolerated in all strata of Russian society. This is attested by foreign travelers and also by the sermons and denunciations by Russian Orthodox churchmen of the 16th and 17th centuries who repeatedly complained about the prevalence of homosexuality." ("Hidden from History," NAL Books: 1989) Sexuality between men took place within every economic class in imperial Russia--even the tsar, Peter "the Great," was said to "dabble in bisexuality on occasion." (Karlinksy) Of course, men of all classes who had sex with other men might still have believed that what they were doing was "sinful." And the sex that took place between men in the owning classes and laborers, termed "gentlemen's mischief," cannot be characterized as consensual sex, even when physical violence was not directly involved as coercion. Some 52 million human beings, enslaved as serfs in czarist Russia, had no rights as far as the landowners were concerned. Serfdom was formally abolished in 1861 as part of the Great Reforms under Alexander II. But the peasantry, the preponderant class in czarist Russia, still lived under the boot heel of patriarchal Workers World July 8, 2004: Gender & sexuality in czarist Russia http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/lgbtseries0708.php[2/3/2011 3:47:15 PM] semi-feudalism. Codifying state repression Revolutionary ferment in Western Europe in the second half of the 18th century, which brought the bourgeoisie to power in France and elsewhere, also brought challenges to the absolute monarchy in Russia. Other Western influence, however, had brought repressive laws in its wake earlier in the century. German military advisers to Peter the Great had drafted a Military Legal Code in 1706, based on a Swedish military edict, that penalized consensual sex between males. The punishment was burning at the stake. This law was broadened in the Military Code of 1716. The legislation of 1706 and 1716 applied to soldiers on active duty. "Criminalization of male homosexual behavior for the whole of Russian society came with the promulgation of a new Legal Code drafted in 1832," Karlinsky wrote, "during the reign of the most brutal of the Romanovs, Nicholas I. This code did not retain the military legislation of Peter the Great, but was instead patterned on the criminal codes that existed at the time in various German principalities, especially that of Wurtemberg, which it copied." But industrialization in Russia in the 1880s and 1890s--and the urbanization it brought with it--set swift economic changes in motion. As large numbers of peasants--mostly men, but some women, too-- left their villages and farms to come to the cities in search of paying jobs, the old feudal social structure of the family, sexuality and gender/sex expression they brought with them was transformed, as well.