Anna Efimova1; 1 Central European University, Austria
Discussion
The recent historical literature about the sexual management of native bodies at the eastern borders of the Russian Empire in Central Asia has focused on uncovering how the moral, cultural, and sexual parameters of the European Russian nation defined those of their externalised Others. While existing historical scholarship suggests a particular role of the Caucasus in the Russian imperial imaginary, the research on the history of sexuality in the late Russian Empire has not yet explored local archives from the Caucasus, as my research does.
Concretely, I have analysed previously unknown criminal cases on the prosecution of male sodomy and public morals crimes filed in Georgia between 1906 and 1915. These cases uncover a symbolic, triggering potential of crimes associated with an improper bodily conduct of the locals in then-existing local and regional juridical system. They also represent different patterns of law enforcement in relation to various Caucasian nationalities, which were guided by ideas about “race” as well as by Russian and local nation-building efforts. My paper will demonstrate that the sources about these criminal cases enable us to see a more nuanced picture of the treatment and instrumentalization of male sodomy in the late imperial Russian Caucasus. This valuable material will also complement our understanding of how differently imperial practitioners performed and justified their right to pardon and punish while responding to the challenges the empire was facing in its last peaceful decade before the Great War.
