TIL the USSR re-criminalised homosexuality

Authorities claimed that homosexuality was the result of bourgeois Western and German fascist influence, and the official Soviet newspaper Pravda published an article which ended with the slogan: “Destroy homosexuality and fascism will disappear!”

From the beginning of 1934, gay men began to be arrested in large numbers in major Russian cities and sent to the gulags. One prisoner, Valery Klimov, wrote about the treatment gay detainees received:

"there were about 10 occasions when gays were murdered before my eyes. One was beaten to death in a prison in Sverdlovsk. There were 100 men in our cell; three or four raped him every day and then chucked him under the bunks. It was bestial, a nightmare. Once 10 of them raped him and then jumped on his head. I nearly went mad there; my hair turned grey. That's how people lose their sanity; many never recover even after they leave."

While lesbianism was never prohibited, and some masculine lesbians were valued in the military, many lesbians did still suffer persecution such as termination of studies or jobs, bullying, threats to remove custody of their children or being committed to psychiatric facilities.