Authors
Georgina Barker1; 1 UCL, UK Discussion
The lesbian journals that started up in Russia in the 1990s – Arabeski (1993), Adelfe (1995-96), Labris (1998-99), Sofa Safo (1998-99), Organicheskaia Ledi (1998-2000), and Ostrov (1999-2014) – all use Ancient Greece in their titles and/or presentation. The journals’ references are to Sappho in particular, but also to the Amazons. In my paper, I ask why the lesbian journal editors wished to associate themselves with Greek antiquity during this formative period for Russian gay culture, when lesbian journals started in the 2000s – VolgaVolga (2000-06?), Pinx (2006-11), and Agens (2013) – did not. I look for the answer in the poetry of Sofiia Parnok, who constructed a lesbian identity through identification with Sappho in Rozy Pierii; in Western second-wave feminist lesbianism, which heavily associated itself with Sappho; in the works of the journals’ contributors, contemporary lesbian writers such as Elena Tsertlikh, Nadezhda Grigor’eva, Elena Novozhilova, and Elena Troianovskaia, who reference various lesbian figures from Greek antiquity (primarily Sappho); in contemporary Russian politics, which was working to construe homosexuality as ‘Westernised’ and ‘anti-Russian’; and, finally, in Russia’s long history of self-identification via classical reception. I formulate the concept of the ‘queer aesthetic’, which meant different things for different generations of Russian lesbians, but which consistently entailed a search outside of Russia for a Russian queer identity.
