Healey, Dan

Chapter 2. Our Circle

Healey, Dan, (2001) "Chapter 2. Our Circle" from Healey, Dan, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary
Russia: the Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent pp.50-72, Chicago: University of Chicago Press ©

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 SE X BET WEEN W O ~! E N 1 :'-';
~I 0 DER xIZ IxG RUSSIA
;
For my pan. my love for an individual of my own sex is just as great. pure and sa-
cred , as the love of a normal woman for the opposite sex; I am capable of self -
sacrifice . I would be ready to die for that beloved person who would understand me.
How sad that .....e are conside red dep raved and diseased .
-From " transvestite" and "homosexual" Evge niia Fed orovn a :\f.. " History of
my illness (th e brief confession of a person of the intermediate sex, a ma le
psycho -hermaphrodite)? '

nlike their male counterparts, Russian wom en who had erotic

U relations with members of their own sex had less access to th e

public sphere and so were less able to construct for themselves
a coherent subculture with th e attributes of th e male homosexual
world. This is not to suggest that no female homosexual subculture
existed in revolutionary Russia. Traces in the historical record of th e
nature and extent of the semiotics of a sub culture are slight. Scraps of
evidence suggest that among certain urban wom en , dr ess, mannerisms
and deportment served as signals to other women that sam e-sex erotic
a pproaches were welcom e. Psychiatrists, both before th e revolution and
in their burst of interest in female homosexuality during the 1920s,
fa iled to display any concern about the social con nections between indi-
vidu al " patients," treating th em instead in their discourse as isola ted
" m isfits" without linkages to similar women . There was little or no
poli cing of female mutual sexual relations during th ese decades, so data
on the custom s and geography of a subculture such as th at available
from prosecutions of homosexual men, do not exist. Yet th is does not
necessarily me an that wom en did not form circle s or networks in th e
pr ivat e sph ere th at facili tated m utual recogn ition by indiv idua ls who
felt same-sex desire. The record is episodic. brie fly illuminat in g the
varied sites of wom en 's m utu al relations and leaving th e historian to
specu late on conti n uities in the evoluti on of th ese h idd en worl ds.
 ~ O V R crR CLF, ~ 51

Despite the fragmented sources, it is possibl e to propose at least some

social locations for fem ale homosexuality in lat e tsari st and early Soviet
Russia. Psychi atric, crim inological, and biographical records can be ex ·
amined for indi cators of th ese social con te xts. The m edi cal sour ces,
whi ch offer some of th e ea rliest biographical accoun ts of male and
fem ale same-sex desir e pr odu ced by Russians, only be gin in th e 1880s to
descri be wom en wh o loved othe r women in any detail. Erotic relations
between women of earlier eras cannot be rul ed out, but the character
of t hese affini ties is seldom inte lligible in nonmedica l gen res."
Class position seems to have been a signi ficant det erminan t of th e
ra nge of opportunities ava ila ble for the expression of sam e-sex desire
between women . In Iat e-tsarist and early.Soviet sources, lower -class
women having mu tual relat ions were normall y featured in th is lit era-
ture when they were prostitutes or in prisons." In t he epilog ue , st udies
by cri mi nologists of pr ison life and Gulag m emoir lit eratur e, are exam-
ined as sources on same -sex 100"e betw een wom en. This cha pte r consid-
ers th e single -sex en vironment of the tsarist licens ed broth el, which
created a rath er different culture of self-preservation in conditi ons of
relative autonomy . The med ical literature also reveals th at mor e fortu -
nate wom en could find aven ues within and beyond the conve n ti onal
famil y to expre ss same-sex desire. Economic ind ep end en ce, wh ether
gained through education or entrepreneu rship, greatly enabled these
women to achi eve a measure of self -determination, including the ex-
pression of sam e-sex love. The widely observed phenomenon of th e
"passing woman " in Russian society offers a furth er perspectiv e on
love between wom en and the gender dissent that frequently accompa·
nied it .

Women A part: The Culture of Brothels and Prostitution

Prior to 1905, Ru ssian medi cin e had seldom linked "lesbianism" to
female prostitution, in con trast to Western ftrensi c med icin e and crimi -
nal anth ropology wh ere th e association was well esta blishe d as a moral -
isti c trope in med ico-legal Iiterature. After the 1905 revolution, experts
in Russi a began to discard th eir view of the prostitute as th e innocent,
often pea sant, victim of urban male depravity, and gr adually ado pte d
th e bourgeois discourse of th e marg inalized and m asculinized sexuall y
deviant wom an," Fragm en tary evide nce from medi cal case histories
and records of crimina l tri als before and after the 1905 wat ershed
suggest t hat wh atever the ideological transformation s of th e cate gory
"prostitute -as-lesbian ," at th e level of actual experien ce some wom en
52 C UA P TE R TWO

exploited the homosocial spa ce prov ided by licensed brothels of the

ancien regime to foster same-sex re lations.'
Wealthy women could eve n consti tu te clients of fema le prosti tutes.
In th e ear ly 1880s one affluent gent ry wom a n, Iuliia Ostrovleva (re-
ferred to as " M iss 1\." by her psychiatrist) was introduced to "unnatural
sexual d irections " with other '...·ome n after meeting a prosti tu te on th e
streets of 51. Pet ersbur g. Ostrovleva clai med that in th e hidden space
of the public brothel a wor ld of women who loved wom en flourished.
H er psych iatrist V. F. Chizh recorded:

Among he r m any acquaintajtces with pe rverted sexual feeling, she lived

the most varied life of love and sexual feeling; he re there was platonic
love, and courtship, and jealous)', and satiety, betrayals, a connection
[sviaz ') with two women simultaneously; the jO)"S of victo r)" and the
bitterness of failure, in a word, the whole life of M iss N. was absorbed
by this pe rve rted love. She loved to get dressed in men's clothing and
dri ve out in a troika wi th the objects of her love; dressing in men's suits
she went to pu blic houses and spent a great deal of mane}' on women.
Accord ing to her assurances, there are b)' far more women with perver-
sion of the sexual feeling than we usua lly th ink, and in fact they occupy
the most varie d social posit ion s.'

This case history, Russi a's first psych iatric st udy of "contrary sexual
feeling" in eith er sex, thus exp licitly indicated that a nascent cult ure
of women who recognized th eir sexual affili ation across th e barriers of
class already existed in the Pet ersburg of th e ea rly 18805. T h e brothel
was on e institution th at could discreetly pr ovide a m eetin g point for
th ese women.
A cr im ina l case caugh t th e attenti on of experts in the capita l about
ten years afte r th e st udy of Ostrovleva or " Miss N." was published . A
Pet ersburg tobaccon ist wh o had m arri ed a prostitute, Krasavina, was
cha rged with her murder. In 1893 he had d iscovered his wife in bed
with a prostit ute, one of h er former colleagues; he stabbed his wife to
death on th e spot. T he story of Pelageia Krasavina's relat ionsh ip wi th
her female lover was heard in cou rt and later recounted by gynecologist
I. M. Tarnovskii in 1895.7 Krasavina's life as a "tribade-prostitute," like
that of Ostrovleva and he r circle, had been sheltered in the official
broth el an d tolerated by he r colleagues if not by the owner of the vari -
ou s houses she worked in. Anna Ivanova, a twenty -four-yea r -old sex
wo rke r fro m one of these establishments, testified in court that Krasa -
vina and he r lover had been inseparable, that they had h ad sexual
 KO U R C IR CLE M
53

relations togeth er, a nd t hat " in a word, they became w hat we ca ll in

publ ic houses koshki [fe m a le catsj't-e-an argot te rm for fema le pr ost i-
t u tes who shared sexual favors." Fe male same-sex relat ionsh ips were
apparently common enough in the b rothels of St . Petersbu r g to have
a specific label in the vocabu lary of sex w or kers . Love letters between
the two women were heard as evidence in court. I n one note, Krasa vi-
n a's gi rlfrie nd had w ritten "you are my Polly, my sweet and dear a nd
m y own [rodnaia], I lo ve you." Si milar exp ressions of romantic endear -
m e n t were exchanged by prostitutes in ven ereal wards, w here "touch -
ingl y affectionate pairs " of public women were observed conducting
rel at ionsh ips of a passionate character."
The tsarist public house p rovid ed a potential m a teri al basis for the
" menages de tribades" observed in sim ilar licensed es ta blish ments in
turn -o f-t h e -ce n tu ry France, where som e owners d el ibera tel y favo red
same -sex re lations be tween their sex workers as a stabilizing influence
as w ell as a co mmercia l anracrion." T h e d egr ee to wh ich R uss ia 's
broth el operators consciously mirrored this policy rema in s obscure. The
owner of the va rious b rothels on Vas il'evskii Island and Chubaro v All ey
where Pelag eia Kr asavin a worked a pp aren tly p u t up wi t h the disrup -
ti on caused by her attempts to establis h in timate rel at ions wit h fe llo w
prost itu tes, as lon g as she w as generati ng income. She w as eventually
dismissed for evadi ng rel ations with pa yin g cu sto mers." Cla ims of " les-
bi an ism " (leshiianstvo) in Russian brothels co me fr om 51. Pet ersburg
physician Bori s Bentov in , who wrote that m anagers regard ed mutual
" ad or at ion " (ohoz hanie) between sex workers with app rova l, as a guar -
an tee agai nst stro ng ti es to m al e clients. Likewise , Bentovin pointed
to th e ex iste nce of m entorin g rel ationships between "ve ry yo u ng prosti-
tutes only st arting out in t he ir profession " and "more solid and experi-
enc ed g ir lfr ie nds (po dn.J.gi)." 12 Older prostitutes offered ad vice and su p -
port dur in g "crit ica l m ome n ts " to you nger girlfriends and taug h t the m
necessary sk ills. Bentovin m ad e no m ention in h is 1909 study of prost i-
tution of t he lesbia n tableaux vivants, pop ulaf a tt ractions in Pari s m ai-
sons de tolerance at this time, but he noted that femal e couples bonded
by mentorship appeared together in P etersb u r g's brothel d ra wing
roo ms. In this peculiar space blending the se xual market with trappings
of domestic respectability, the younger partner se rved as a "attracti ng
magnet " drawing in the wealthiest clients. M ean w h ile, her older m en -
tor "who could hardly count on success on her own," was able to attract
" a less demanding suitor" in the wake of her younger girlfriend. "That
is how the adoring and the adored live, complementing each other, as
it were, and bringing ea ch other a degree of pr o fit . . ." n Ben tov in 's
54 C H A P T E R TWO

ind ulg ent dep iction of mentoring sam e-sex relations insi de th e bro thel
must be balan ced against th e harsh realities faced by most licensed
prostitutes. Condit ions in Russia's brot hels were usually squalid , with
deleterious psychological and physical effects on prostitutes . Med ical
surveillance was brutal and invasive, th reatening publ ic \·vomen v·..ith
ph ysical harm and fina ncia l ruin. \Vhile brot he ls constituted a social
sphere th at undoubtedly sheltered som e sam e -sex relati onsh ips, this
harsh en vironment offe red sex work er s rath er limited prospects for
agency and self-exp ression."
The Soviet abolition of the med ico-legal regulation of brothels and
th e subsequent rise in the infofmal and covert sex trade m ade prostitu-
tion a less pred ictable socia l sphere for women who turned to this pro-
fession . The housing sho rtage and th e decline in pri vat e cont rol over
sheltered ur ban spaces appeared to dri ve illicit heterosexual sex into
th e streets, railway sta tions and carriages, resta uran ts, bathhouses, and
taxicabs. The revolutionary regime repeatedly decla red that women
who sold th eir bodi es were vict ims of econo mic exploitation, not to be
cri mi na lized, an d cam paigns to discour age them from taking up sex
work were launched . The abolition ofl icensed brothels turned prostitu -
tion into a very unstable and dangerous livelih ood for fem ale sex work-
ers." Ru ssian historians have argued th at more ur ban women and more
decl assed women from the former elite supposedly turned to casual or
occasional heterosexual prostitution in the 1920s as urban unemploy-
m ent hit th em hard est." \Vhet her in fact these pr actices can be mea-
sured by h istor ians usin g existing sources may be disputed , but the end
of regulation an d the regim e's eagerness to rescue the female prostitute
undoubtedly changed the environment for same-sex relations within
the sex trade."
A 1926 case history of "Sh.," a so-called " fem ale homosexual" (go-
m oseksualistka) wh o murdered her partner, " L.", a prostitute, ill us-
trated th ese social conditions. It also suggested that Soviet doctors would
pursue the link m ade in the Western medica l im agin ation between
prostitution and female homosexuality." Before meeting L. in a Mos-
cow cafeteria where they both worked, Sh . had been married twice,
once apparently for love before th e world war, and a second time for
" m aterial reasons" du ri ng the civil war. By 1919, however, Sh . had
been widowed, and she dr ifted to Moscow in search of a living. Sh.
and L. shared a flat , an d later a room, wh ile L. alternated between
earning a living at a succession of unstable menial jobs and bringing
home m en for paid sex . Sh . also found employment in short-term and
un reliable jobs as a mai d and in a canteen. Later sh e took in mending
 MOUR CIRCLE " 55

and laundry and cooked meals fOT L. Sh . reported to Moscow penal

psychiatrists Krasnushkin and Kholzakova that L. had made sexual ad-
vances to her and that eventually she had been provoked to murder
L. with an axe . The psychiatrists doubted Sh.'s evasive and vague claims
that the sexual relationship with L. had been brief and episodic, and
they suggested that the "bisexual» Sh. not only had regular physical
relations with L. but had also engaged in prostitution periodically. "
The actual role of commercial heterosexual sex in the partnership
of L. and Sh. was not explained by the psychiatrists. Unlike Bentovin,
they hesitated to draw a direct connection between "lesbian" relations
and initiation into prostitution through mentorship, preferring instead
to see in Sh.'s "masculinized" body a biological explanation for her
deviance. Other observers of the heterosexual prostitution market in
early Soviet Russia had remarked upon the financial partnership of
younger women (to sell sex) and older women (with rooms to rent),
but no suggestion that same-sex relations lay behind this symbiosis was
mooted." Between L. and Sh ., a same-sex relationship appeared to sup-
ply the glue that cemented the household formed by these two women.
\Vhatever the elements of domestic and economic cooperation here
might have been (and psychiatrists had little to say about the nongeni-
tal aspects of this couple's relationship), experts viewed their engage-
ment in the sex tra de and their "female homosexuality" as masculiniz-
ing and degenerate.
Three years later, the psychiatrist Krasn ush kin pub lishe d a series of
lectures on "c riminal psychopathy" featuring the case of a "poetess"
whose verse "sang the praises of lesbian love [lesbosskaia liubov']" and
whose forays into heterosexual prostitution brought her in contact with
the police and psychiatry." Krasnushkin's colorful description painted
this "patient" in the stereotypes of the "prostitute-as-lesbian." The "po-
etess" had been arrested for "keeping a den [of vice]":

She recruited some kind of actress from aIlabor registry, luring her into
a homosexual { gomQseksual ~iaJ liaison, and finally committed a homo-
sexual act in the presence of two men, who had treated them {the two
women ] to food and drink and paid ten rubles for this sexual spectacle."

Krasnushkin supplied no details of the nature of his "patient's" liaison

with the out-of-work actress. Yet he took pains to present her poetic
efforts "dedicated to lesbos [sic]" in a comparatively positive light, sug -
gesting that her "indisputable giftedness" mitigated her "advent urist
history." In his lecture he included one of her love -poems, judging it
56 C H .... P TER T WO

"socially degraded" as a result of her addictions to alcohol and cocaine,

but nonetheless attesting to her talent:
Sanctified love] have not known,
Nor have] known maiden's tears,
I have not sought offspring through marriage,
And I have never woven wreathes of roses . ..

From afar, encounters have always lured me,

Brilliant sin beckoned wickedly,
The passion of girlfriends, the tears
And their heavy, hi/lden laughter ...

To their circle I was devoted,

Drank their caresses-with caresses, their bodies,
Brunettes captivated me more than once,
And often my sin with blondes was bold .

I loved them day and night,

And in the weaving of our bodies,
I loved their eyes filled with languor
And on their breasts] loved sleep.

But all is past, all irretrievable,

I now know, it's all deceit
I cannot go back by this same path,
For life is but an intoxicantl 2!l

Krasnushkin, a vigorous and successful figure in Soviet psychiatry, evi -

dently felt there was pedagogic value in the "sexu al spectacle" fur -
nished by this " pa tient- poetess" and her verses. Here was a memorable
example of the "gifted psychopath," an exceptional case with which
to instruct psychiatry students at Moscow State University. Yet the pas·
sian of the woman behind these verses and the circumstances of her
case history were also perhaps evidence of the survival of same-sex
relations and of mentorship among female prostitutes.

Domesticity, the Salon Lesbian, and Masculinization

If female same-sex eros between prostitutes sometimes bore the stamp
of a brutalized lower-class culture, there were also women whose privi-
leged economic position allowed them to express their desires, if more
discreetly. Tsarist psychiatric literature yields a handful of biographies
of gentry or bourgeois women like Dr. Chizh's Iuliia Ostrovleva, whose
 ~ O U R C I RC l.E. ~ 57

strong will and access to education and resources permitted them to

explore same-sex self-expression." The lives chronicled in this medical
sources paralleled in their material aspects those of literary " lesbians"
of Iat e-tsarist sal ons ." In the early Soviet era, women with cult ura l
capita l were also someti m es able to invest this resource to construct
a domesti c environment sh eltering same-sex desire. The political a nd
economic stability requisite for a cult ure of the literary salon declined
during the 1920s, event ua lly becom ing submerged in th e social trans-
formations of the first Five Year Plans. The historical roots of Russ ia's
" lesbian subculture," always fragile and tentative in th e first three de-
cades of this cent ury, wer e greatly undermined by these cha nges, wh ich
are di scussed in pan 2.
On e source of domesti c sh elter for same-sex relations was th e hetero-
sexual family. The convent ional Russian family was not totally inimical
to the gender nonconformity and same-sex relations in its m idst. Fami -
lies strove to contai n , cont rol, or accommodate these phenomena, ofte n
employing conside rable ada ptivity. Tsarist and early-Soviet psychiatric
case histories suggest that parents reacted with equanimity wh en fe-
male ch ildre n displayed interest in boy's clothing and games. T om -
boyishness and e ven failure to learn housekeeping skills was tolerat ed
in ch ildh ood, but th e same girl was expected to adapt at sixteen or
so and agree to rnarriege." Som e families went to unusual lengths to
accommodate gender and sexual dissent. Ostrovleva's mother claimed
she had "lost control " of her daughter as early as age tw elve; yet this
widowed matriarch and her family expressed only respect for her
daughter's " love of work " a nd " energy " in her extraordinary chosen
profession as manager of a horse-drawn cab service. Ostrovleva, who
supposedly had an annu al allowance of " th ree to four thousand [ru -
blesJ," kept her business finances separate from her mother's household
accounts. Theirs was not a relationship of economic dependency. "V hen
the psychiatrist Chizh conside red this young woman's development, he
concluded that " with more discipline in I*r upbringing and life, the
matter would not h ave gone as far as it had." 27 Perhaps Ch izh implied
that the lack of a firm paternal presence in the family had allo wed
Ostrovleva's " many peculi arities" to arise.
Families ada pted to th e personal characteristics of gender dissidents
in their m idst, a nd despite Ch izh 's implied faith in paternal grav itas ,
fathers 100 could be indulge nt when it came to daughters' refusals to
be socia lized into feminine rol es." In the first decade of the tw entieth
century , Evg en iia Fed orovna ~1. (a " passing woman" in ad ult life) was
expelled from scho ol for refusing to wear a skirt; h er re bell ion was
58 C H A PT E R T WO

accommodated by her father, who educated her at home and later ar -

ranged for her to write exte rn al gymnasium exa m ina tio nsr" In 1919,
a tea cher, Ol'ga Shch., lived in a household in Ozery, near Moscow that
included her brother Boris and an adult sister. That year Ol'ga invited
sixteen-year-old Valentina P., with whom she had been h aving a sexual
relationship for over a ye ar, into her home after th e teenager was or -
phaned. They shared a bed and continued a love affair until 1922, when
quarrels over Valentina's membership in the Komsomol destabilized
the liaison. During this time Ol'ga's siblings adapted to the lesbian
relationship under the family roof, referring ironically to Valentina as
"your [Ol'ga's] husband" a,rid noting that they kissed "not the way
women kiss, but another way ." Yet the teenager's growing dishonesty
and violenc e led Boris to cut short the family's experiment in adapta-
tion. H e forbade further contact between Ol'ga and her lover, even
summoning his sister home from a posting in a factory as a teacher in
Saratov (where Valentina had follow ed), and h e appare ntly persuaded
Ol'ga to consider offers of m arriage from local men ." Standing in for
th e absent patriarch , Boris reasserted masculine a uth ority in h is family
and attempted to reimpose he terosexual n orms of beh avior on his sister.
A little later, another fam ily accommodated a gender and sexual
dissident in its midst for fin an cial reasons, since th e " fem ale homosex -
ual " it h arbored was a capable market trader. \Vhen in 1925 after being
arrested and eventually given a course of hypnoth erapy to "cure" her,
authorities returned her to a different, better-off bran ch of her family
for surveillance. The police apparently did not trust her closest relatives
to restrain her from donning a Nepman's garb and returning to the
marketplace; these siblings had grown dependent on her earnings.~I
This use by authorities of the heterosexual family as a site for the
rehabilitation of a social "misfit " was unusual in Soviet psychiatric
lit er ature about the homosexual. \Vhat was more com mon in this dis -
course was the degree of ad aptability families displ ayed. Families did
not simply expel so-called " hom osexuals" from th eir midst, but often
exerted some effort to accommodate or adapt to th e sexual or gender
dissident member.
Beyond the ties of th e biological family, Rus sian women who ex -
perienced same-sex desire and who possessed sufficient resources es-
tablished their own households and, in urban cen ters , even circles of
like-minded friends. These circles formed the beginnings of a lesbian
subculture among women of the tsarist intelligentsia. As Diana Lewis
Burgin has established, th e word "lesbian" was little used, and these
women only sporadically expressed a sense of selfhood defined by a
 ~ O U J\ CIJ\CLE ~ 59

specific sexuality. Neverth eless, the case of Ost rovleva from the Peter s-
burg of the early 1880s in dicates th at t he re wer e prosperous wom en -
loving wom en wh o crossed class bound aries to ex press their desire wit h
prostitutes open to the same se xual tastes. Another Petersburg psych iat-
ric case (of 1898) described t he less afflue nt, but equa lly adve n turous,
"'Z., a virgin, tw enty years old , from a n extre mely degener at ed family "
of pro vin cial ge n try origins. Sh e had begun an erotic affa ir at th e age
of eigh tee n with an other woman, who was a ppa re ntly kept as a ge nt le -
m an 's m istress. Z.'s interviews with her doctor em pha sized th e cohesion
of what sh e referred to as "our circle" (nash knJ.g), a group of women
who had mutual sexual relat ion s:

T he pa tient affi rms that women suc h as he r, that is, w ho love wo men,
are found not at all infrequently; they among themselves form a kind
of particular wor ld. Such women reco gn ize each other by manners, ex -
p ressions of the eyes, mimicry, and so on . She herself learned to discern
such women virtually from her very first experience. " w e," the patient
says, " in no way become jealous when the object of ou r love be longs
to a man: we know that th at woman (on ly of course if she belongs to
our circle) cannot love her husband and only fulfils he r role passively.
But it is a different matter if a beloved wom an gives herself or pays
attention to another woman: then we feel a strong jealousy and we are
p repared to set off a great scandal or dispute.t' Y

In this case, Z.'s family h ad com pelled her to refer to the psychiatrist
for advice about her sexua l difference. It appeared t hat her fina ncia lly
straitened par ents ha d counted on her to acce pt one of the m an y pro pos-
als of marriage she ha d rejected. Yet Z . was keener to re mai n in the
compa ny of her "circle" of fem ale frie nds. Other conte mporary m ed ical
case hi stories of sam e-sex relations bet ween R ussia n wom en of upper-
class families evaded any mention of a social world formed by these
wom e n themselves.P :\Ied ical discourse "las not alone in depriving love
between wom en of contextualization. In R ussia's literary salons of the
late Im peri al era, the discourse of lesbianism in a ll its French "vocabu-
Iary a nd ste reotypes" re mained an exot ic spectacle for the ma le gaze ,
and " lesbia ns" were a decad e nt species confi ne d to a n indoo r, a rt ificia l
world an d isolated from a ny socia l roots. This construct ion was sup -
ported both by t hose wh o ex plored this aesthetic a nd by th ose wh o
conde m ned it. Virtuall y all " lesbian" authors of this e ra, according to
Burgin , consciously suppressed information a bout th eir sexua lity in
their public writing and uttera nce s. Go S. Novopol in , scourge of t he
60 CHAP TER TWO

" porno graphic element in Ru ssian liter atu re," dismi ssed the pr oposi-
tion th at " lesbian love," now m ak ing an ap pearance on the literary
stage, was also enjoying a para lle l preva lence in Russia's comparatively
"primit ive" society." On ce the possibility of lesbian love had been ac-
knowledged in imitation of the French aesthetic cano n with the publi -
cation of Lidiia Zinov'e va-An n ibal's Tridtsat ' In uroda (Thiny-lhree
Monsters [St. Petersbur g, 1907]), salon culture embraced sexual ambi-
guity within the confi nes of this aesthetic discourse, an d certain salons
became stages where these ambiguities might be paraded.ss
Conditions for the survival of tsarist bourgeois salon culture, which
might have harbored conti,uing explorations of sexual dissidence,
"eroded and finally collapsed" in the two decades following the 1917
revolution, in the wor ds of Beth H olmgren.~ Significant figures who
had contributed to the elabo ration of aesthericized sexual ambiguity
(Zinaida Gippius, M ar ina Tsvetaeva) emigrated during the revolution,
and those who remain ed, especially Sofiia Parnok (1885- 19')'» , en -
dured an increasingly u nstable m ater ial an d political sit uation. An un-
abashed celebra nt of mutual female relations in her verse, Parn ok led
a bohemian exi stence, mi gr at in g from one set of lodgings to the next
and ne ver establishi ng a perm anent home, sup porting he rself on the
margin s of inte llectua l work with a succession of poorly paid pub lis hi ng
and tr an slat ion commissions in the 1920s an d early 1930s.
Translator and photographer Lev Gornung was an intimate friend
of Parnok an d of on e of h er partners, the mathematician 01' ga Ts ub er -
bill er. Gornun g's description of th eir dr ess and intell ectual circle fleet-
ingly opens a window on wh at Burgin has described as "the totall y
close ted lesbian subculture, wh ich was well -rep resented in th e theatri -
cal, artistic, and univer sity communities" of R ussi a':~7 Of Parnok and
T suberbiller, Gornung observed,

[tj hey dressed very simply, and almost alike, always wearmg seve re,
almost masculine attire consisting of jackets and skirts with hems below
the knees. Both of them wore shirts and ties . Their shoes were invariably
the same style of brown, low -heeled oxford.

Parnok's biographer Bur gin posits that such " alm ost masculine" dress
was a signal of their sexual preference, an urban code that could be
read by other women who loved women. Photographs of the poet and
the mathematician from the m id- 1920s suggest that they consciously
manipulated this code, wearing sh irts and ties only in the city, and
donning skirts and dresses to avoid "unwanted attention" when visiting
the countryside," Another fragment (again, the product of a man's ob-
 MOU R C I RC L EM 61

serv at ion ] from Parnok's biography record ed a n a wa rene ss of this na-

scent subcultur e an d perha ps link ed it with ge ntle teasing to th e street -
walker s of Moscow 's T vers ka ia-Iam skaia St reet. In a friendly par ody on
one of Parnok's m ost ove rt ly homosexual ve rses (inclu de d in the cycle,
" W ise Venus, " in R oses of Pien'a), a m em ber of her litera ry circle wrot e.

"Som e in t ractable girls find a girlfriend mo re dea r than a boy -

frie nd."
Not for m ascul ine hearts have my arrows bee n sharpene d by Love.
So she sang in Pieria (on th e Fourth , on T verska ia Iam skaia)
Th e siste r of Sa ppho, a da ugh ter of Lesbos tr ue -blue .
Well , one can't argue tastes. Blest she who em bodies th e feat
Of the girlfriend of girlfriends he re on T verska ia Iamska ia
Streets.V

If there was any sign of a lesbian subculture moving into the public
realm of urban streetscapes, the workplace, or halls of study , it was in
the " alm ost masculine" styles cult ivated by some women entering pub-
lic life. Med ica l and lay sources con finn that, at least in towns, the
woman regarded as "masculine" was a fixture of early-Soviet society,
adopting styles of dress and behavior that at least metaphorically facil -
itated the occupation of masculine socia l te rrain ..o To a great degree,
percept ions of masculinization in wom e n, especially women perfo rmi ng
public roles, must h ave been fue led by the anxieties abo ut app ropria te
dress a nd com port ment th at consu me d so much ene rgy in deb at es a bout
everyday life (byl):~l Nev ertheless, female Bolsh evik s assiduously cult i-
vat ed hardness (tve rdost') as a key feature of t heir politica l person alities,
and the image of t he ruthless, efficient, e motionally controlled, and
coldly rational Com munist wom a n was supported by thousands of ex -
ernplars." The image evidently deteriorated into a ste reotype. People's
Commissar of H ea lt h Nikolai Semashko admitted and regretted that
" m asculin ized" women were a "type ... frequently encoun tere d: tou -
sled (often dirty) hair, papiroska [a cru deslt ussian cigarette ] clenched
in the teeth (like a man), deliberately awkward manners (like a man's);
a deliberately coarse voice (like a man's)." The "masculinized" wom an
ha d "co mpletely lost femi nine tr a its an d had tu rned into a m an -
for the m om en t, still in a skirt (or m ore accura te ly, in h alf -tr ous er s)."
Semashko deplore d the t re nd as "vulgar 'equa lity of the sex es,' " but
he stopp ed short of qu est ion ing the political crede ntials of wom en wh o
embodied it.H This was a discussion about a ppropriate va lues am ong
fri end s of th e regime; Scmashko did not su ggest th at such wom en be
removed from th e offices th ey held . Enou gh wom en had serve d loyally
62 C HA P T E R T\\' O

in uniform during the civil war and continued to receive praise (if no
encouragement to enlist) for their contributions in military and police
work to produce the impression that " m ascu lin ized " women were
somehow politically conscious and valued citizens." The mannish Bol-
shevik female also became the subj ect of considerable foreign scrutiny
in the early Soviet era." Of course, women who donned collars and
ties, trimmed their hair like a m an 's. and walked with a businesslike
gait, were neither always drawn to th e ir own sex , nor unique to Sovi et
Russia in the 1920s an d 1950s. But th e outward symbols of masculinity ,
whi ch were associated (proba bly more from long-standing perceptions
of fashion and politics than from Bolsh evik intentions) with women 's
e m anc ipat ion, were replete with positive value. ~Iasculine styles con-
ferred revolutionary cred ibility wh ile disguising other motives . Some
women who loved women used these styles as a semaphore code to
like-minded women. They adopted a masculine style not merely be -
ca use they wished to resemble m en , but because th ey wished to attract
other women"
Until Stalinist initiatives to reconstruct femininity of th e mid -1930s,
women choosing to occupy mascu line social roles who happened to be
" ha ppy , well -adjusted Lesbians,,47 were tolerated as part of the revo -
lutionary social landscape. Their image as energetic and enterprising
participants in the new society's political, economic, and military life
earned the so-ca lled "active" (that is, imitative of " m asculine " traits)
female h om osexual ad miration from some sexological authorities."
Some wo men evidently exploited this stereotype to realize their own
sexual desi res and personal objectives. Women -loving women who ma -
nipu lated the symbols of masculinity in this era successfully, attracted
little attention from the authorities for this very reason. \Ve conse-
quently have only occasional references to them such as the passage
from Gornung's diary cited by Burgin. These su ccessful individuals
were probably able, as the widow and intellectual Tsuberbiller was, to
disguise their same-sex desire behind a series of clai m s to respectability:
an education, perhaps a previous m arri ag e, a " q u iet" way of life. Soviet
Russia 's apparitional " lesbian subculture " literally spoke "half-voiced ,"
eva porating as soon as it might be broached."

"1 want to be a man ": Transformations of Bodies, Clothing,

and Society
A twenty-three-year-old female respondent to Izra il G el'man 's 1923 sex
survey of students at Moscow's Sverdlov U n iversity en ded a " con fes-
 MOU R C I RC LE M
63

sion ' of her career as a "homosexual" with the words, '4 1 want to be
a man, I impatiently await scientific discoveries of castrat ion and graft.
ing of male organs (glands)." so Her faith that one day science would
be a ble to give her the biological attributes of masculinity (a nd that a
surgical intervention would be suffi cient to confer " man hood" upon
her) was not exceptional, nor was her desire to "change sex" unusual
among so-called "homosexuals" of th e 1920s. The medi cal techniques
of gender reassignment in Soviet Russia in the 1920s were as rudimen -
tary and broadly unsuccessful as those then available in the \Vest . De -
spite such lim its, clin ical psych iatrists and biologists engaged in th e
emergent study of th e m ech an isms of sex differentiation were sought
out by " hom osexuals," who believed these experts could transform
th em int o beings of th e opposite sex." As n oted, within Russia's em bry-
oni c urban lesbian subculture, a limited masculinization of th e ind ivid-
ual left her still recognizably female (recall Health Commissar Sem-
ash ko's referen ce to th ese mannish women dr essed " for th e moment,
still in a skirt"). Expressions ofliterary lesbianism sometimes em ployed
masculine grammatical gender or ambiguously gendered devi ces, but
readers and audien ces knew that they confronted a fem ale voice, albeit
in a decad ent or exotic key. In this milieu it was a woman-centered
sexuality, rather than gender, that formed the basis of identity. By con -
trast, a demand for a surgical change of sex like th at put to Gel'man
in t 923 may be interpreted as evidence of transgenderism. It was argu M
abl y a precocious expression of a transgendered individual's desire that
science make physical sex correspond to a gender identity viewed as
paramount by the respondent.52 Other women diagnosed as "female
homosexuals" may have " wanted to be a man" without necessarily
expecting medicine to intervene. Outside of Russia 's great cities, some
" fem ale homosexuals" turned to more traditional methods of appropri -
ating th e privileges of masculinity, effecting self-transformations with
clothing and gesture that allowed them to "pass" as men. Some used
th eir acquired masculinity as a pathw~' to sexual relations with other
women. These total transformations typified the survival of th e " pass-
ing wom an " in Russian cu lture.
The existence of women who successfully lived as men has been
well documented for traditional European and non-European socie-
tiee." (Men, too, have been observed performing th e fem ale gender. )S4
Late-tw entieth -century sexological interpret ations of th ese perfor-
man ces m ay be anach ronistic lenses through whi ch to consider th ese
dur able and vari ed patterns of identity appropria tion as th ey fun ctioned
in different times and cultures. Homosexuality, transvestism, and trans -
64 C U APTE RT W O

sexu ality are recent U.S. and European constr ucts imposed on the infi -
nite vari eties of human sexual and gender div ersity. In certain cultu res,
t he performance of a gender tr ansformati on has been more significant
to both actors and observers th an any accom panying same-sex erotic
activity. Our sexology-focused perception of th ese ph enomena can blind
us to important social , economic, and symbolic motivations for the ac-
tivity. In seventeenth- and eighteen th-ce nt ury Netherlands, for exam-
ple, man y " passing women " were motivated by poverty or by a des ire
for adven ture in military servi ce, and m any women who adopted male
iden tities in this context found it easy to do so beca use of their marginal
or foreign status in a relat ively jfluid society ." Moreover, th e disguise
of a polar gender as inte lligi bly m asculine or feminine was (an d fre -
qu ently, remains) a socially necessary performan ce for intersexual per-
sons (he rmaphroditesj ." In exam ining case histories of women who
passed as men, accepting m edi cal labels of " homosexuality" at face
value can thus obscure aspects of gender and identity in unfamiliar
contexts.
Gender ambiguity in itself was not a mod ern or imported phenome-
non in Russ ia. Masculine wom en (a nd feminine men) were already
suffi ciently comm on in the everyday experience of nineteenth-century
Russians of far -flung regions that a number of words had been coined,
apparently by peasants, to name and describe them. The lexicographer
Vladimir Dal' who gathered his material between the 1830s and 1850s
in central Russia found that the manly woman was known as muz-
hlanka, muzhlatka, borodulia, suparen , and razmuzhich 'e. Dal ' reported
that his informants defined these women as "resembling a man in their
appearance, movements, voice , et cete ra," or " by structure, by body for-
mation"; they might even approach the condition of a "herm aphrodite-
woman" (ge rmajrodit-zhena) .S7 The lexi cogr apher found an analogous
vocabulary describing the feminine m al e." In add ition, Dal ' reported
t hat th e verb devulit 'sia was used of men wh o "luxu riate, take wom en 's
habits, manners .V" None of th e word s describing mannish wom en was
reportedl y used as a deliberate insult, but som e terms for an effeminate
m an (babatia, babulia) could "in t his sense som etimes be abusive, like
'baba.' "60 The elaboration of a verb to describe m ale effem inacy sug-
gests th at peas ants exercised more judgmental scrutin y of this behavior
th an of an alogous activities on th e part of masculin e wom en (for whom
no verbs were coined) . The closest Dal ' came to recording a critical
esti mate of the mannish wom an was found in th e entry for "borodul ia."
From Novgorod province he record ed th e phrase "B orodulia ne mu-
zhik" [A bearded lad y is no m an ]" The saying reminded its aud ience
 - OU R C I RCL E - 65

that such a woman remained subordinate to th e men around her, but

it was not as bluntly a busive as some of th e word s used against effemi -
nate m ales. In a patriarch al society, women who exploited th eir manly
traits might acquire respect and status, wh ereas males who forsook th eir
manhood caused more damage to their reputations." Peasants confron t-
ing hermaphroditic offspring m ay have pr eferred, where plausible, to
hav e them ch riste ned as boys, eviden tly for th e social and econo mic
advantages that would ensue." Rural and lower -class Russians possessed
an array of terms to describe individuals who app eared 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 indetermi -
nacy."
The case of th e peasants Mariia Pavlovna Sh ashnina and Ekat er in a
Ivanovna Demicheva, accu sed of poison ing Demicheva's husband a p-
par ently so that th e two might live tog eth er as lovers , suggests how
Russ ian peasants might int erpret same-sex rel ations between wom en
within a framework of hermaphroditism. In 1886 th e two wom en were
arrested after Demicheva adm itt ed poisoning h er husband's kvass at
th e urging of Shashnina. They came to trial in the Nizhnii Novgorod
circu it court; nine ye ars later, St . Petersburg ph ysician I. M. T arnovskii
exam ined the trial documents and wrote about th e case in his study
of " fem ale sexual perversion.v" Investigators discovered that Demi-
cheva had had a sexual relationship with Shashnina before th e mar-
riage and that Shashnina had previously had similar relations with
three other peasant wom en . According to Tarnovskii, Demicheva and
other peasants said Shashnina, as well as possessing female genitali a,
"a lso h ad something resembling a male member ": "Several of her
wom en lovers said th ey had felt a sexual org an entering th eir vag ina
and h ad tou ched and even see n this m em ber eme rgin g from Shash n i-
na's genital cleft." The wom en reported th at with her they expe rie nced
th e same sexual satisfacti on they got fJtm men. The peasants of this
vill age said they kn ew Sh ashnina to be "d ouble-sexed" (dvuk hpolaia)
or "double-h arnessed" (dvukhsbruinaia)." In addition to her reputed
ph ysical differen ce, sh e smoked tobacco, did not wear her hair in th e
cust om ary kerchief, and dominated her moth er and brother in hous e-
hold matters. Neverthel ess, various m edi cal expe rts examined Sh ash -
nina four times between June 1886 and June 1887, and all agreed no
signs of hermaphroditism and no enlargement of the clitoris were pres -
ent. Evidently, peasants interpreted Shashnina's sexual approach to
other women as th e result of having attributes of both sexes and ex-
66 CHAPT ER T WO

pected th at this included possession of a phallus or somethi ng like one."

Shashnina's repu ta tion as "double-harnessed" had paradoxically fixed.
her ge nder role as fem ale, makin g it less like ly that she might attempt
to " pass" as a man, at least within her 0\\'11 community. Russian exa m -
ples of the "passing woman" demonstrate that greater female mobility
facili ta ted th is ph enomen on.
Sovie t psych iatry of the 1920s took an interest in wome n who con-
vincingly occup ied a male gender identity and in accordance with the
evolving sexological catego ries of European scien ce, labeled th em " fe-
m ale homosexuals" or occasionally, " tran svestites." The reasons wh y
som e women decided to acqyi re manhood by cha ng ing their iden tity
documents, assum ing m ale varia n ts of th eir names, and alte ring th eir
dr ess, mann ers, an d hairstyle, are hard to reconstruct. In the cases dis-
cussed in Sovie t psychiatric literat ure of th is era, same-sex desire ap -
peared to be a prim e motive. Some of these women were undou btedly
not aware of the existe nce of any lesbi an subculture in th e capitals.
They would have had less access to the possibilities open to masculin -
ized women who courted respectability while wearing selected pieces
of ma le clothing (such as the colla rs an d ties sported by Parnok's circle).
" Passing" as a m an cou ld, for these isolated women, serve as a means
of gaining sexual access to other women. Yet others who adopted a
m an's ide nti ty were clearly attracted by the full range of male par tici-
pat ion in the revolutionary struggle, including the m ilita ry life. Sexual-
ity m ay have been less ur gent for th em. The assumpt ion of a male
identity could satisfy nu mer ous sexua l, social , and personal amb iti ons
for wom en engaged in th ese performances of gender.
One commo n feat u re in th e life his tories of wom en who lived as
m en in revolutionary Russia was the fact that many apparently lived
far from the capitals, th e sites of the embryo nic lesbian subculture,
where this alternative to full gender transformation was evolvi ng fit-
fully . The displacements of the era also produ ced opportunities for self-
transformation. The story of Aleksandr Pavlovich, a "female homo-
sexual" Nepman, illustrates these facto rs. This biological woman, de -
scribed in 1925 by psychiatrist A. P. Shtess of the Saratov Bur eau of
Criminal Anthropology, had been trained and raised "like a son" by
her fat he r. T he " patient's " ch ildhood m ore resem bled a boy's than a
girl's, according to Sh tess. When the family patriarch d ied in 1919, the
patient's olde r sister, conce rned th at the wider household not lose the
m ar ket inco me she gene ra ted, com pelled th e young tra der to marry a
"w eak-will ed groom ." The m arri age ended afte r just three weeks, as
th e patient, disgust ed with conj uga l relations, bega n to don mascul ine
 ~ O U R C I RC L F. ~ 67

apparel and then ran away to Astrakhan', formally assuming the name
" Aleksa ndr Pavlovich. " WI
For a period in Astrakhan' Aleksandr Pavlovich "continued to en -
gage in trade"; presenting herself as a man in the marketplace, "she
enjoyed a great success am ong the female traders." In 1920 she returned
to Saratov as " Aleksa ndr," resumed trade in small silver goods , and
compelled her extended family to address her as her masculine persona.
She began a series of romantic and sexual liaisons with women, includ -
ing one relationship lasting two years during which the partners "con -
sidered the question of marriage."69 Aleksandr's assumption of a mascu -
line social role was so complete that "he" even gave vent to "his"
jealousy by giving this partner beatings, once hospitalizing her for two
weeks.
This " Nepman's " prosperity was sufficiently persuasive to qu ell dis -
putes in the extended fam ily over her assumption of a masculine iden-
tity. "Aleksand r " lived for approximately four years in Saratov assisting
her sisters' households financially with the pro ceeds of her market ac-
tivities, whi ch eventua lly included a large volume of gaming at cards
(vorlia uka' and " kon ferka" ) as well as trade in silver. Her su ccess at
th ese forbidden activities led to administrative fines, brawls with rivals
and clients, and con flict with the authorities until she was arrested in
1924 a nd lat er tr ansferred to th e Bureau of Criminal Anthropology for
exam ination and com pulsory therapy."
Using a com bina tion of Freudian psychoanalysis, seventeen sessions
of hypnotherapy, and " persuasion" (ubezhdenie), Shtess claimed he was
able to "c ure" this patient completely of her "homosexuality." Her
willingness to relinquish her masculine identity (a point of resistance
early in th eir encounter) was th e ultimate proof of the doctor's success-
ful interve ntion. The patient gave up smoking after her last hypnosis
seSSIOn,

her m anners and behav ior are m ore fenA-nine and reserved ; to the ques ·
tion of having a ch ild, sh e t hinks for a bit a nd then expresses the wish
to have a baby at som e point; her mood is chee rfu l. On 13 October the
pa tient sig ned out of the clinic, dressed in wom en's clothing."

Shtess published photographs of this woman "before th erapy" in her

mas culine garb, th en naked (" Ha bitus") to reveal her body as typic ally
female, not hermaphroditic, and finally, "afte r therapy," docilely posed
in a skirt (figs . 10-12). She was dispatched to a branch of the family
that would not be tempted by her earning capacity as a "man" to allow
68 CH APT ER TWO

her to return to her old way of life. This patient's attempt to occupy
a masculine gender role was the exterior manifestation of her " homo-
sexuality," which the doctor said produced " in ternal conflicts with the
[social] environment." Shtess regarded as pathological the fact that for
four years, this " hom osexual" had successfully negotiated those sup-
posed conflicts-as a man.
Aleksandr Pavlovich was not an isolated, exceptional example of th e
"fem ale homosexual" who deployed a masculine social persona over a
sustained time period. Her interest in the turbulent world of the NEP
market was mirrored by an apparently widespread attraction on th e
part of women living as men.jio the even more dramatic arena of sol-
diery." The most widely discussed case of the female soldier as "ho-
mosexual " (and " t ransvestite ") was described by psychiatrist A. O.
Edel 'shtein in 1927.n Evgeniia Fedorovna ~1. had represented herself
as a man since being orphaned in 1915 at seventeen. During the revolu -
tion , she found work in the Cheka as a political instructor ( polilrok),
in "investigatory-penal organs," and took part in "requisitions and
searches of monasteries," later traveling to th e Southern front wh ere
"she took part in operations against banditry." During this time she
altered her identity documents to the mas culine Evgenii Fedorovich ;
she also began to have sexual relations with a series of women.
In 1922, while posted by the GPU in a provincial town, Evgeniia
met and courted '·5.," a woman postal employee, and they concluded
an officially registered marriage with Evgeniia presenting her altered
(male) identity documents. Edel'shtein, who appears to have been able
to interview S., reported that at first this woman did not suspect that
her " h usband" was not male. Evgeniia's ability or willingness to sustain
her performance as a man faltered not long after the marriage. Rumors
reached S. that Evgeniia was a woman, and Evgeniia finally admitted
as much to her. This did not end the partnership, however."
Evgeniia's indiscretion " brough t attention to herself and doubt about
her sex ," apparently inspiring local authorities to charge her with a
"crime against nature." The poorly const ructed case against Evgeniia
failed , and th e Commissariat of Justice was com pelled to recognize th e
two women's marriage as "legal, becaus e concluded by mutual con-
sent. " The pair remained together for another two or three years. After
S. had an affair with a male coworker, she had a child, which Evgeniia
legally adopted, and the two women and the infant formed a family
until Evgeniia's GPU regiment was tr ansferred to Moscow . Evgeniia
appea rs to have abandoned her wife and child to follow her soldi ering
career, only to be fired in 1925 soon aft er arr ival in the cap ital. "
 - O U R C I R C L E- 69

The loss of her life in a m an's uniform devasta ted Evgeniia, and
she was unable to make a successful tr ansition to civilian life . She began
to dr in k, causing disturba nces, and lead ing a pr omiscuous sex life with
wome n, eventually acq uiring a second (u nofficial) " wife." In 1926 com -
plaints began to accum ulate that she was impers onating bureau crats
and party m embers for profit, and her drinking led to disorderly con-
duct. She found herself repeatedly befo re police an d courts for hooli -
ganism an d extortion, until Dr. Edel'shtein examined her at the Mos.
cow Health Departmen t's Bur eau for the Study of t he Personal ity of
the Criminal an d Criminality. T h roughout thi s decline and duri ng the
psychiatric observation, Evgeniia m ain ta ined her sel f-prese ntation as a
m an. The doctor did not report any atte m pt to cure his patien t, re-
mark ing cry ptically th at " the social future of such a sub ject is very
diffi cult." 1ti
Evgeniia's performance of a m ale gender role last ed for more th an
ten yea rs. Others, like Dr. Shtess's Aleks andr Pavl ovich , sust ained simi-
lar performances for considerable lengths of time." Gi ven mo re favor-
able circumstances , these women might never have been detected in
their assumption of a masculine social position. These perfo rmances
were not solely staged for t he pursuit of material gain or for the oppor-
tunities of living as a man in a m an 's .....orld . Same-sex desi re .....as inte-
grally connected to these .....omen's desi re to redefine themse lves. They
chose not only to become m ilitary " men" or (in Aleksan dr Pavlo-
vich's case ) a ga udy Nepman, but to "chase afte r ladies" (uk haz hiva t '
za haryshniami) , to engage in " ma ny affairs with ..... om en . " 1~ They
found th e masculine gen de r role well suited to sati sfying th is desire,
and th ey eagerly exp loited its potential.
Neve rtheless, whi le explor ing their same-sex des ire these women
wanted to remain physically fem ale. T heir "failed copies" of m escul in-
ity (in Jud ith Butler's ph rase ) reveal to us an otherwise hidden tran -
script of gender.19 In an atmosphe re in which the tra nsformation of
the biological sex of animals was ~nsationally pu blicized and t he role
of hormones in the definition of biological sex was enteri ng popular
a wareness." th ese wom en did not seek out med ical inte rve ntions to
change th eir sex. Evgeniia and Dr . Skli ar's " P. A.," both scientifically
know ledgea ble, were almost certainly aware of recen t adva nces in her-
monal theories." Other in dividuals (as noted above) were already pre -
senting th emselves by the late 1920s to Soviet medical professionals
requesting surgical sex changes; Evgeniia, P. A., and Dr. Shtess's Alek -
sandr Pavlovich were not among this cohort of pre cocious transsexu-
als.81 In her " H istory of my illness" published by her psychiatrist,
70 G II A I' T E R TWO

Evgeniia Fedorovna M. did assert that women of her type "consider

their sex a misunderstanding and wish to transform themselves into
persons of the opposite sex," but she did not argue for surgery to trans-
form her body. Instead, she pleaded for acceptance of "same-sex love
. .. as a particular variation " in humanity. Sh e argued that once m em-
bers of the "intermediate sex " were " no longer oppressed and smoth-
er ed by th eir own lack of consciousness and by petty-bourgeois disre-
spect," their lives would become socially worthwhile."
Evg eniia pleaded, in effect, for th e social and political rights of the
" intermed ia te sex " using arguments consciously borrowed from the es-
sentializing, scientific just ificati ons of homosexual em a ncipation ism .
Her assumption of a male gender persona, one tr aditional way for the
sexually am biguous to order their position in th e world, was thus transi -
tional, for sh e envisioned a world in which gender and sexua l ambiguity
would be understood by medicine and respected in a knowledgeable
society. The revolutionary faith in scienc e to end archaic moral stric-
tures and to br ing rationality to human sexual relations, was a powerful
tool not onl y in the h ands of Bolsh evik legislators and m edi cal prac-
titioners, but in th e hands of ordinary indi vidual s who m anipulated it
to justify their own desires. Evg en iia Fedorovna ~1. wrote " History of
my illness" for h er psychiatrist, explaining h er personality in scientific
terms, a nd elite psy chiatrists ackn owledged that her reading of recent
international scientific literature was impressive." How much reading
Evgeniia had in fact done is diffi cult to establish from existing sources.
She dealt primarily with th eories of " pseudoherm ap hrod ites" and
"psycho-hermaphrodites," terms that by the 1920s had been propa-
gated by Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis for persons who experienced
varying degrees of desire for persons of eit he r sex (an ticipat ing modern
" bisexuals'Jj." Evg eniia spoke of " pseudohermapb rodite s" as purely in -
terested in same-sex relationships, ech oin g the conce pts of apologists
for same-sex love who used th e term " intermediate sex" (srednii pol) .
"Pseudohermaphrodites. both male a nd female, have a particular
predisposition to same-sex sexuality," sh e argued, and "the attraction
to a woman of a woman of th e intermediate sex is just the same in
nature as the normal man's attraction to a woman." The fact of a con -
genital predisposition was proved by erotic dreams about the same sex.

In sleep a person does not govern themselves, and if during involuntary

erotic ecstasy the image of a woman and not a man appears to a woman,
it means that such is her nature, which she is incapable of overcoming.
These women are unable to reverse this attraction in themselv es, which
 ~ O U R C I RCL E M
71

from their point of view is natural, even if they wanted to. Once we
com e to accept th at along with th e usual love th er e exists same-sex love
as .....ell , as a particul ar vari ati on, then we must mak e the logical conclu-
sion and permit persons of the intermediate sex access to their form of
sexual sati sfaction.

Evgeniia argued th at societ y must learn to distinguish between the

sign ifiers of sex (e xte rnal sex organs) and th e determinants of sexual
desire, whi ch were " menta l particularities ... esta blishe d by nature
itself in the gonads." She borrowed verbatim from a tsarist apol ogist
for the "in termed iate sex" the assertion that scien ce was well aware
of the distinction:

Pr of. [Sigm und] Freud justly points out that peo ple wh o ar e in a sexu al
sense perverted ought not to be considered. degenerates . . . . 1'\0 one can
conside r people of th e intermediate sex ph ysically or mentally ill .. . .
One may count among th e number of men with an a bnorm a l deviat ion
of sexual desire leading wr iters (Oscar wilde, whitman, Verl aine}, art -
ists (M iche la nge lo), and m usicians (Tc ha ikovsky), and this clea rly
proves th at it is impossible to dism iss people of the intermedi ate sex to
the category of th e mentally and psychically disturbed."

Evgeniia returned to her own words to argue that th e scientific evide nce
about sexual intermediacy obliged society to deal humanely and ratio -
nally with people like herself: "It would be preferable when judging
homosexual persons [gomoseksual'ny e liudi ] if their personality and
mental capabilities were taken into account before all else , and not
th eir actions, whi ch are a private matter [chas tnoe delo ] just as for nor-
mal people." In " H istory of my illness," Evgeniia com bined tr aditional
ways of thinking about sexual ambiguity (as a fonn of hermaphrodit-
ism ), with more recent scientific understandings (as a manifestation of
anomalous function of the sex glands). Tl:fe expression of the wish for
self-transformation into a person of the opposite sex-so that her desire
for women might make sense in a world overwhelmingly ord ered ac-
cording to a heterosexual norm-blended with th e vocal ization of a
new identity, th at of an " interm ed iate sex ," of " homosexual persons."
If the world could not reconfigure Evgeniia's "misunderstood" body
with male sex organs or recognize her adopted ma sculine gender (he r
persona as Evgenii). th en it ought to accept her sexu al des ire, her sexu-
alit)' directed toward women, as the misunderstood ele ment of her be-
ing . In this fashion Evgeniia appropriated scientific and ema ncipa tion-
72 CHAPTER TWO

ist lan guage to explain and to vindicate bot h he r same-sex desire and
her gender dissen t.

Conclusion
Same-sex relations between women in tsa rist and early Soviet R ussia
reflected the general transformation of women's roles and opportuni-
ties. For increasing numbers of women, the ties of the patriarchal vil -
lag e were loosening an d breaking, and as with migrant men in the
city, links to family, zemliachestoo, or artei' were not always sufficient
to maintain tra ditional formspf surveillance, including the monitoring
of sexual behavior.87 If opportunities for an independent existence were
hampered in the town by gendered legal disadvantages an d the th reat
of medico-legal supervision (un der the tsarist regim e of licensed prosti -
tution), there were still occasional avenues for the exp ressio n of same-
sex love . Adequate sources about this love between lower-class women
have yet to emerge, and its character must be judged th rough the distor -
tio ns of a single ub iqu itous occupation, prostitutio n. In this realm ,
same-sex relations cou ld be shelte red and even tolerated , particularly
in licensed brothels, and the freedom (or opportunity) to express same-
sex love in th is environment was evidently sought by some wome n as
prostitutes and as clien ts. As with men, however, the loss of cont rol
over this form of comm odified privat e space in the early Soviet era
bro ke up an aren a for women 's mutu al sexuality. Women wh o sold sex
durin g NEP did so in more pr ecar ious pu blic spaces; perhaps some
found a symbiosis in com bini ng mutua l protection in a dangerous en-
te rpri se with mutual emo tio na l and sexual relations.
"Le sbian love " bet ween women of the educated middle social strata
was even more indistinc t, for these women successfully (and dutifull y,
if t hey were Bolsheviks}" concealed their personal lives. It would be
unreasonable to look for a lesbian subculture where women were not
in a position to establish one . Moscow of the 1920s was no t Paris or
Berlin, capitals in which same-sex relations between women foun d ex -
pression in an elite salo n culture, in a commercial sector of sometimes
louche bars and cafes, as well as in the disreputable world of the sex
trade. The sites of a potential Russian lesbian subculture were con -
strained by material scarcity and, after 1917, by a political mistrust of
affluence and pleasure. The semipublic environment of the salon (m ak-
ing a public stage from dom estic space ) became constricted during the
19205 and died off in the fearful m iddle years of the 19305. Networks
and circles of like-minded women nevertheless exploited the regim e's
 MOU R C I RC L F. R
73

disregard for the home, and for them as homemakers, to preserve their
affinities.
A code of "masculinized" dress and manners enabled urban women
who sought mutual erotic relations to recognize each other. There were
pockets of tolerance for the mannish woman in military formations
and in academic or cultural institutions, which permitted some self-
conscious "female homosexuals" to earn a living and apply their tal -
ents. These women apparently exploited the valorization of social and
economic activity in the public sphere promoted for women by the
revolution. Education and paid labor provided claims to socialist re -
spectability that might deflect criticism for the failure to marry or pro -
duce children. It appears that few women in this embryonic lesbian
subculture came from the peasantry; nor did urban women who loved
women flaunt their sartorial "masculinization " while in the country -
side, reverting instead to a conformist femininity. Lesbian love sup-
posedly required the oxygen of sophisticated city life, and early rev -
olutionary Russia offered only a handful of cities with this degree of
modernity.
Russian women, in contrast to men, did not take control of public
spa ce to express same-sex desire through the definition of sexualized
territories. A few, nevertheless, found a site upon whi ch to inscribe their
desire: their own bodies . Through th e performance of a " masculinized"
womanhood, or , more traditionally, in the assumption of a complete ly
male identity, some women made their desire for their own sex intelli-
gib le within the confines of a culture which imagined the sex drive as
universally heterosexual. If desire flowed only through "active" and
" passive" channels, then a woman's passionate desire for another
woman might be constructed as "active" and therefore " masculine." By
combing and reworking known gender possibilities, such as the familiar
phenomenon of hermaphroditism, or th e utopian prospect of sex trans -
formation promised by experimental biology, they inhabited one gen-
der without abandoning another biortgical sex. If female masculinity
was an affirmation of self, and even a badge of emancipation and politi-
cal consciousness (in its "hardness," tverdost'), it was also potentially
alarming for those who would insist upon women 's maternal essence.