Presentations by Streams

While the Baltic states have flourishing queer subcultures, the legal equality of LGBTQ people in the region remains meagre and unstable. The contemporary situation is often attributed to the legacy of the Soviet era as well as the hegemony of conservative gender politics in post-socialism. With the tension between social and legal reality rising, there is a growing need for research which would analyze both the history of homophobia and of queerness, and its contemporary post-Soviet manifestations.
The papers in this panel focus on the transition period from the last years of glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the way it affected the attitudes, (self-)perceptions, behaviors, cultural norms, and political strategies of LGBTQ people in the aftermath of socialism in the Baltics. So far the historical research into the Soviet Union has demonstrated that medicalization and criminalization of homosexuality as well as nearly total silence about transgender people was an inseparable part of socialist modernity (Alexander 2020; Healey 2018; Essig 1999). Through close work with archival materials and cultural objects, scholars have challenged the assumption of “silence” about same-sex desire and gender transition in the Soviet Union and aimed to historicize contemporary trans- and homophobia. Combining archival sources with oral history researchers have provided invaluable insights into the biopolitical control and regulation of sexuality and gender, and the effect it had on the subject formation of queer individuals throughout the Soviet period. The historiography of the state-socialist contexts has shown a variety of tools of modern disciplining of same-sex sexuality and eroticism, especially through pathologising discourses and censorship. The historiography of non-heteronormative sexuality in (post-)socialism yet remains mostly limited to Soviet Russia and the Central European countries, with little research done on the (former) Western borderlands of the Soviet Union.
The papers in this panel offer a glimpse into the topic of non-heteronormative sexuality in (post-)socialist Lithuania and Estonia, countering the false impression of absence of queer subjectivities, behaviors and discourses in Soviet Baltic societies. It highlights the dynamics of queerness, understood both as an identity and as a socio-cultural category, in arts and cinema, LGBTQ activism, and the narratives of the self.
The historiography of the state-socialist contexts has shown a variety of tools of modern disciplining of same-sex sexuality and eroticism, especially through pathologising discourses and censorship. The historiography of non-heteronormative sexuality in (post-)socialism yet remains mostly limited to Soviet Russia and the Central European countries, with little research done on the (former) Western borderlands of the Soviet Union. The collection of papers in this panel offers a glimpse into the topic of non-heteronormative sexuality in (post-)socialist Lithuania and Estonia, countering the false impression of absence of queer subjectivities, behaviors and discourses in Soviet Baltic societies. It highlights the dynamics of queerness, understood both as an identity and as a socio-cultural category, in arts and cinema, LGBTQ activism, and the narratives of the self.