It would be strange if I did not catch the attention of the Soviet
authorities. In the USSR, there was a criminal article for the sexual
intercourse of a man with a man in the ass, and, therefore, all my fucking was illegal.
However, I cannot say that there was any targeted persecution of homosexuals. A
couple of times I heard from some faggots that "there was a raid",
that "someone was taken away." But I myself have never seen anything
like it, gays walked freely around all the places of gathering. I will never
forget a warm summer evening in Moscow - I was there changing trains and popped
down into the city center. Everywhere, starting from the Bolshoi Theater, the
“Prospekt Marx” metro station and further along almost the entire main Gorky
Street, they walked or stood in defiant and pretentious poses, persons of
homosexual orientation. Later in life, even in the big cities of the West, I never
saw such a concentration of gays as I did that evening in Moscow.
Later, during Perestroika, I read somewhere that in the USSR, under Article
121, concerning fucking between men, one thousand people were imprisoned
annually. I don’t know if this is a lot or not, and what were the circumstances
under which these people were locked up in the nick. The fact is that in order
to prove sexual intercourse between men, it was necessary to find sperm in the
ass and take it for analysis. That is, in fact, it was necessary to catch the
"criminals" in flagrante and also prove that you didn’t stuff your
own sperm up your ass yourself.
Once I was invited to the police (“there is an important matter, we need
you to help us”) and they questioned me for a long time:
- Are you a homosexual? Your buddies wrote about you that you are, - said a
shitty operative.
- So what? I answered. - I am a homosexual, but I never practiced it, and
with my friends I did not ever have sexual intercourse, they slander me. All my
life I dream of stealing from someone because I need money, but I don’t do it,
because it’s against the law.
And then I got up and left the department. I was not detained or arrested,
I had been simply invited for a chat.
However, not everyone behaved this way. The police put pressure and intimidated
gays, and faggots (and they are weak creatures) immediately told everything -
with whom, when and under what circumstances they did it. And, nevertheless,
even such a "self-confessed" faggot was not imprisoned, because there
was no evidence. And they did this: they offered him to become an informer.
“You will meet someone (sometimes it was indicated whom), have sexual
intercourse with him and then you immediately call us (from a telephone booth,
or what?), We will immediately come and take this person” (a real person told
me about such a suggestion).
Despite this, I got the impression that they persecuted homosexuals in an
extremely sloppy way. Because, if desired, all of them could be caught without
much difficulty like chickens in a chicken coop. Apparently, homosexuals were
not a particular problem for the Soviet authorities. What do they care about
faggots who were minding their own business, if people here read and distribute
forbidden literature, tell anti-Soviet jokes or throw ink bubbles at a huge
portrait of some leader of the Communist party and government, exhibited on the
revolution anniversary holiday of November 7th (there was such a case in Leningrad,
after which policemen guarded the portraits).
All these law-enforcement people were cynical and immoral, they didn't give
a damn who fucked whom and in what way. They had to work, expand the network of
informers, report on the work done, and so on.
But in the USSR there was another organization, standing higher, at the instructions
of which the police often worked. This is the KGB. The KGB men were brought up
on blood, and ideally they would like to kill everyone. If not kill, then cause
maximum harm. If not the maximum, then at least some. This is their matrix. But
they worked sloppily, as all in the USSR. They messed up everything, they could
not distinguish namesakes and my relatives from each other, they got confused
with checking our mail, they found my classmates and asked them something about
me, and then these classmates and I got together and laughed out loud at these
detectives. And their work consisted of fabricating some dirty tricks, creating
a network of informers (“where who said what”) and lying. Lying was their main
thing, what they were taught.
I remember this: when I was about to go to socialist East Germany (GDR),
then one KGB officer, hinting at my sexual orientation, began to tell me the
following: “You should keep in mind that it is in our country that
law-enforcement agents turn a blind eye at your behavior (they are allegedly
"humanists"). The situation is completely different in the GDR, where
the police work well, and there ... ”Furthermore, it seems that in the GDR I
would be immediately arrested and put in jail (in fact, there was no law against
homosexuality in the GDR). By the way, they didn't let me go to the GDR.
At first, in my youth, when one KGB officer approached me, I did not know
how to react and what to do about it. Foolishly, I thought that they could also
be useful somehow - at least for obtaining permission to travel abroad. But
very soon I realized that they, by blackmailing and deceiving, just want to
make an informer out of me. “And what do people in the cafeteria talk about at
your work, do they oppose the general line of the party?” To all their stupid
questions, I answered that people only talk about art. So it was a reply all of
us gave - "we talked about art."
The KGB officers also wanted me to get acquainted with homosexual
foreigners in order to get supposedly “compromising evidence” on these
foreigners. Of course, I didn't do any of that.
I wrote that they are cynical and immoral, but there was once the following
case: I came to lectures at my university, and some KGB officer, a man of about
fifty years old, was waiting for me at the door, and it is clear that he is
very nervous (the KGB officer is nervous when he meets me!). He was so worried
that he could not start talking . Finally he began to explain:
- You know, there is one German, such a handsome German (blushes at the
same time), there is such a tall handsome German, blond, came for an
internship, lives in a hotel ... (voice trembles, blushes even more), he, this
German, he ... such ... he is also ... well, in general, a handsome guy, you
need to get to know him ...
And at these words, the “knight of the sword and dagger” (as they called
themselves) became really crimson with shame! A KGB officer blushed to the
roots of his hair! I even felt a bit of sympathy for him. Poor man, he probably
didn't have any experience with faggots and fag topics.
By the way, I met this German. It was enough to come to the gay meeting
place, and he was already visible there. This German spent all his time at the
meeting places of gays and other hot places, and finally was expelled from the
USSR for excessive debauchery.
I soon realized that this was a total rubbish. I stopped seeing these
"knights", didn't answer the office phone when they called, and so
on. About three months of such refusals and inaccessibility of mine were enough
for me to be blacklisted and ... they sent their instructions to the police.
Now the police were after me. Also carelessly, stupidly, sloppy, if one
took a detached view of the matter. One time they would get into the corridor
of our house, pull out Polish magazines officially received by subscription, take
them away supposedly as pornography (there were a lot of erotic photos in them),
or they would burst into the house after 11 p.m. and the guests who happen to
be at my place will be dragged to the police station. Indeed, in the USSR there
was a law that citizens who were not registered at a specific address could not
stay there from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. This law was never applied, no one even heard
about it, but they began to apply it to me. On other occasions they would come
at 7 in the morning, in the winter darkness, they searched the house with
flashlights, climbed into the attic. They leave with the words: “Oh, there’s no
one here! There really is no one here!” (Well, aren't they stupid?).
Nevertheless, all this was very unnerving, creating an unbearable
atmosphere of constant persecution. I could no longer invite anyone home, and
approaching my house I studied the traces of cars and footsteps in the snow.
The feeling of being at home is gone. I gave a start at every knock on the
door.
I left the USSR for permanent residence.
Were there people of unusual sexual orientation among law-enforcement
officers and the KGB? They were. Hidden, encrypted, but they were. From the
KGB, if it became obvious, they were expelled. And once in the City, in the
very center (it was around 1977), I met an Armenian, a man of about 35. “Where
are we going?”, the question immediately arose. He says: “To the KGB. I work
for the KGB. I am on a business trip now, I am from Yerevan.” Probably, in the
conditions of Yerevan, he would not dare to behave like this. And I went with
him - straight to the KGB residence, to their building. There was a hotel (or
something like a hostel) for KGB officers on a business trip. At the entrance,
he said to the watchman - "this one is with me." And we went to his
room. Everything there was clean, the chairs were upholstered in white covers,
flowers were placed everywhere ... We drank Armenian cognac and lay down in
bed. He fucked me well. And in the morning he took me out of the hotel, and we
said goodbye. By the way, he left me his phone number, correct, not false. And
three years later, when I was in Yerevan, I called him because I needed help.
It was necessary to get a plane ticket (then it was a big problem). And he
helped me.
Damn it, if there were more OF such KGB men!
