Outcasts/Izgoi: The Last Queer Soviet Generation

• In Event: Perestroika and Its Queer Discontents: Mobilizing Social Advocacy in the Late Soviet Union

Abstract

This paper analyzes the documentary film Outcasts (Изгои), directed by Olga Zhuk, Julie Dorf, and Natalia Sharandak. Shot in 1989-1990 and released in 1991, the film features an astonishing array of queer experience in Leningrad right before the Soviet Union’s collapse: from activists fighting to repeal Article 121—criminalizing same-sex relations among men—to private individuals sharing their struggles living in the gender they reject. The film presents an archive of self-definitions, historical ephemera, and organizing tactics. Perhaps most importantly, it offers a backward glance at a time when the future for queer Russians seemed full of possibilities. As such, Outcasts might help us understand the logics of late Soviet identity politics and the vagaries of queer liberation in the post-Soviet period.

Author

• Roman Utkin, Wesleyan U