Authors
Charlotte Dowling1; 1 University of Oxford, UK Discussion
Queer themes in Russian literature have garnered increasing academic interest since the “gay propaganda” law of 2013. A proposed expansion of the law is currently being debated in the Duma, while anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has been utilised in state justifications for Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. This paper presents the timely case study of Faina Grimberg’s Mavka (2001), set in Ukraine during the Soviet era. In the novella, an unnamed Russian narrator recounts her romantic and sexual affair with Tata Kolisnichenko, a beautiful Ukrainian-Russian-Romany woman. The couple grows into a throuple, on Tata’s initiative, with her Ukrainian childhood friend Andrei – and the three live and love (seemingly) harmoniously until Tata suddenly overdoses, leaving the narrator to marry Andrei. Drawing on bisexuality theory, I argue that Tata’s bisexuality serves as a metaphor to work through Russia’s identity crisis following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The novella’s primary interest, I demonstrate, is in drawing out and questioning distinctions between Ukrainian and Russian national identities, given the shared language, history, and culture of the Soviet years. I highlight how the narrative voice fetishizes Tata, exoticizing her Ukrainian background and Romany heritage and treating her as an object for (Russian) consumption. Finally, I suggest the ending’s erasure of queerness and assertion of heterosexual marriage personifies a ‘reunification’ of the countries. 
