I've never understood why the Soviet Union undid many of the liberal (with respect to sex and gender) reforms that had been undertaken while Lenin was in power. Was there any legitimate reason for these reforms to be undone or were Stalin and his allies within the bureaucracy just acting like some provincial bigots who wanted more tools with which they could turn the state apparatus against their political enemies?

Much of the anti-gay sentiment I've heard from the left is pseudo-scientific propaganda about bourgeois decadence that comes across as little more than preexisting bigotry wrapped around in a read flag.

Once you unwrap it, it still stinks like shit. It seems to be that Stalin's decision and the subsequent refusal to reliberalize laws and minds is responsible for much of the misogynist and homophobic sentiment that remains in Russia and Eastern Europe.

He lived in the 1930s. A huge coincidence, in the 1930s everyone else was living in the 1930s too. Shoooocking.

And that makes it right does it?

So Lenin, Kerensky et al could see what LGBT discrimmination was. And has a very basic conception of female bodily autonomy. But Stalin couldn't appreciate these two very basic things?

It makes it natural that these positions weren't at the time appreciated by the whole russian society. There was a period of legalization but basic opinions didn't evidently change.
This is like blaming Marx for using the word Negro or Marx and Engels for laughing at gay men in one of their letters. It was a different era, nothing like we know today. It's as simple as that.

No, no it isn't.

Denying women the basic right to control their own fertility - treating them as something akin to equal beings to men is a basic leftist instinct.

The same with treating LGBTQ individuals is, or at least should be, a given. There were homosexual reforms and reformers in and around Russia at the time, ignorance isn't an excuse. You know as well as I that moralism, blunt reactionary views and popularism were the foundation of Stalin's u-turns. Nothing else.

The short answer is that Stalinist policies undid these freedoms because they wanted to boost production and rebuild a labor force. I don't know the details, but I also believe the USSR leaders went all-out to promote childbirth at this same time and gave "patriotic" awards for women who produced a lot of kids.

In capitalism during industrialization, the ruling classes began to promote ideas about sexual and gender norms and "abnormalities". They began to promote the idea of women as weak and sensitive and only suited for the education and care of children. Women and children were gradually removed from the workforce and public schools began to be introduced: all with the aim of creating the next generation of workers who were conditioned to work and were generally healthy and not missing limbs from too much work in the mills.

The ideal man was hardworking and stoic; not complaining and showing little emotion (because it you're a Victorian era boss, the emotions that you would likely see from your workforce would range from rage to murderous rage). And certainty the victorian working class man was not allowed to show any compassion or tenderness or love for other men and so behaviors were divided up and categorized by Victorian scientists.

At any rate, when the USSR went down the path of "socialism in one country", the leadership needed to create a generation of workers and peasants capable of doing the work of working class people in the industrialized countries. If you have a state-capitalist view of the USSR, then outlawing homosexuality and promoting childbirth fit into the idea that the USSR's ruling class was trying to catch up with capitalism on the backs of the working class. Ideologically, attacking homosexuality or any other kind of way of being that was contrary to depictions in soviet-realist art goes hand in hand with attacking any minority views or behaviors or politics.

This part in particular is downright absurd. Women were for the first time ever during industrialization argued to be weak? They were removed from the workforce?

What, you don't believe me? Pick up a book sometime - this isn't some hidden fact only radicals know about - any history book covering Victorian England or Industrial America at the same time will probably talk about the bourgeois reformers and the end of child labor.

Just think for a minute - remember reading about those peasants who told female peasants they shouldn't work because they were too fragile? No, it never happened - peasants put everyone to work because they needed all the labor they could get. The concept that women are fragile in mind and body is a Victorian concept.

In early industrialization, most mills were filled with young female workers - children too. By the Victorian era, bourgeois reformers were trying to get children and women out of the workforce because on a moral level, they were just being destroyed by the work, Victorian society was also shocked by the conditions of street-kids and working women. On a ruling class level, the capitalists simply needed order among workers because a generation of street-kids missing fingers from mill-work eventually hurts production.

So Victorian society promoted the idea of the nuclear family where the man worked and the woman cared for the children and educated them. Labor became increasingly male-dominated aside from certain fields.

Which may be excusable* if the USSR's policies in the prior decade had not been amongst the most progressive in the world. The rolling back of these rights was an undoubted retrograde step for the leader of a supposedly revolutionary party

*The logical extension of your argument being that there was little wrong with eugenics programmes that were endorsed by the majority of the population

Its worth putting this into the context of pro-natal policies during the 1930s. With the heightened expectation of war, a number of other countries (including Nazi Germany and France) began to encourage mothers to raise larger families in order to bridge what would today be called the 'demographic gap'. The idea that the power of a nation was linked to its population was nothing new of course but it was the early 20th C when governments actively began to plan/police this

Now here I disagree with you because what may have been true for Victorian Britain is not necessarily so for Soviet Russia. On the contrary, women were heavily represented in the workforce of the USSR, comprising (from memory) over 40% of workers during the 1930s and roughly 50% during the post-war period. Certainly there was little drive to keep women out of the factories in Stalin's time

Which is not to say that women were free from discrimination. The renewed emphasis on family life during the 1930s considerably increased the burden on wives and mothers. In addition to a hard day's paid work they were then expected to return home and complete the many daily chores (including preparing meals) for their husbands/families

In the precapitalist societies I 'm familiar with women were staying at home. This did change with industrialization when previous relations of production were surpassed and one person working was insufficient to keep a family afloat. I am not aware of any big movement removing women from the workplace in Victorian England and I can be sure that this wasn't the deal in other countries. I know for example that when industrialization started taking place here in the first decades of 20th century, some women broke what was a century-old habit by leaving the house and working in factories and that this trend gradually went on to become the norm in 70s-80s.

I think that this course of events is what went on in most countries with women participating in greater numbers in production, making them economically independent from men, giving rise to the feminist movement and the demand for equal rights.



And it is the USSR's policies in the previous decade that should strike someone as surprising and ahead of their time. They are worthy of discussion, this one isn't.

LGBT liberation is not something appreicated by the whole of modern society. It doesn't make it any more right for so-called revolutionaries to take a stance outlawing this.

I think Stalin did it out of the fact that he wanted more control. More power meant restricting freedoms. Once restricted, it was only he who could release them. I believe the idea that he banned it was for labour reasons is absurd.

Any revolutionary who takes the stance of banning homosexuality has no right to call themselves a person of the people or someone fighting for workers. I won't say anything about banning gay marriage, because marriage really is a capitalist concept, which as it is known today, will not exist in the communist tomorrow.

I have a lot of beef with Stalin, and there are many reasons I am hard against him, the banning of homosexuality is one of those reasons, however, his much more authoritarian practices were the main reasons (socialism in one country, purging and deportation to name a few).

Times have changed, stereotypes have become less acceptable. Personally, I don't believe Marx would advocate anything negative against homosexuals no matter how strange he may have seen them, as they were of the proletariat as well.

I will rip off Lenin to end this. Among the gay are the proletariat, and they are the majority. Our brothers and sisters in the fight for socialism. Among the gay are the bourgeoisie -- albeit a minority of bourgeoisie -- who seek to keep exploiting workers be they gay or straight or bi or trans-gendered. They are a fraction of the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie for whom the gay worker alongside the straight worker struggle against.

I think you 'll find conditions for the acceptance of equality have matured quite a bit in the last few decades. Revolutionaries aren't magical all-knowing creatures.

Because Stalin was a sexist homophobe.

How I love saddos that attack Stalin, Cuba and Lenin for persecuting gays.

They did it because they thought it was a fault of Capitalism.

so that makes it okay?

That's called homophobia, dear.

By the way Lenin decriminalised homosexuality.

...but evidently it's not a fault of capitalism, I see no correlation whatsoever between capitalism and people's sexuality. What's your point?

That they were homophobic because they dident know it can be natural.

What is that got to do with accepting homosexual people and allowing them the freedom to live their life? Honestly what has it being natural got to do with it, should we not let people live a certain way if we think it is somehow 'unnatural'?