Russian and East European Studies: Books

Red Closet: the hidden history of gay oppression in the USSR

Based on unique and previously undiscovered sources, this is the first book to tell the story of the oppression of LGBTQ people in the USSR. In 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities. Rustam Alexander recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were directly affected by those laws, including a naive Scottish journalist based in Moscow who dared to write to Stalin in an attempt to save his lover from prosecution, and a homosexual theatre student who pursued a career amid Stalin’s harsh repressions and mass arrests. We also meet a fearless doctor in Siberia who provided medical treatment for gay men at his own peril, and a much-loved Soviet singer who hid his homosexuality from the secret police. Alexander also introduces a KGB officer who had sex with men, but was willing to betray them in order to resurrect his career, and a young Soviet diplomat with an unknown immune disease, and his journey to discover the truth. These intimate true stories portray the lives of real people and provide a needed historical background to the oppression we see today under Vladimir Putin (Provided by Publisher).

Dziga Vertov: Life and Work (1896-1921)

Largely forgotten during the last 20 years of his life, the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov (1896-1954) has occupied a singular and often controversial position over the past sixty years as a founding figure of documentary, avant-garde, and political-propaganda film practice. Creator of Man with a Movie Camera" (1929), perhaps the most celebrated non-fiction film ever made, Vertov is equally renowned as the most militant opponent of the canons of mainstream filmmaking in the history of cinema. This book, the first in a three-volume study, addresses Vertov's youth in the largely Jewish city of Bialystok, his education in Petrograd, his formative years of involvement in filmmaking, his experiences during the Russian Civil War, and his interests in music, poetry and technology (Provided by Publisher).

This title was acquired through the Library's Order a Book service.

Projecting Russia in a Mediatized World

This book presents a new perspective on how Russia projects itself to the world. Distancing itself from familiar, agency-driven International Relations accounts that focus on what 'the Kremlin' is up to and why, it argues for the need to pay attention to deeper, trans-state processes over which the Kremlin exerts much less control. Especially important in this context is mediatization, defined as the process by which contemporary social and political practices adopt a media form and follow media-driven logics. In particular, the book emphasizes the logic of the feedback loop or 'recursion', showing how it drives multiple Russian performances of national belonging and nation projection in the digital era. It applies this theory to recent issues, events and scandals that have played out in international arenas ranging from television, through theatre, film, and performance art, to warfare (Provided by Publisher).

Stephen Hutchings is a Professor of Russian Studies at The University of Manchester.

This title was selected as one of the winning entries in The University of Manchester Library's 2022/23 Open Access Monograph Competition.

Red Closet: the hidden history of gay oppression in the USSR

Based on unique and previously undiscovered sources, this is the first book to tell the story of the oppression of LGBTQ people in the USSR. In 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities. Rustam Alexander recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were directly affected by those laws, including a naive Scottish journalist based in Moscow who dared to write to Stalin in an attempt to save his lover from prosecution, and a homosexual theatre student who pursued a career amid Stalin’s harsh repressions and mass arrests. We also meet a fearless doctor in Siberia who provided medical treatment for gay men at his own peril, and a much-loved Soviet singer who hid his homosexuality from the secret police. Alexander also introduces a KGB officer who had sex with men, but was willing to betray them in order to resurrect his career, and a young Soviet diplomat with an unknown immune disease, and his journey to discover the truth. These intimate true stories portray the lives of real people and provide a needed historical background to the oppression we see today under Vladimir Putin (Provided by Publisher).