Currents

As a Ukrainian refugee and LGBT activist who lived for years in Russia, people sometimes ask me what my favorite activism story is. The first time I encountered this question, living in the UK, it made me think. I realized that the answer wasn’t any of my more impressive résumé items. It wasn’t that I created the first Russian-language project to help LGBT autistic people. It wasn’t that I led the Autistic Initiative for Civil Rights, the first autism self-advocacy group in Ukraine and Russia, nor that I was one of the main coordinators of Queer Peace, the only Russian initiative for LGBT people with disabilities. No, the high point of my history as an activist was my bisexual cat Karim, who inspired so many LGBT Russians to accept themselves that he became a minor internet celebrity with his own social media page.

I remember the reaction Karim had on other activists when I first brought him to a meeting of the Saint Petersburg Alliance of LGBT and Heterosexuals for Equality in 2015. Everyone had been arguing, but when they saw Karim, the tension dissolved, scowls turned to smiles, and all of a sudden, finding common ground seemed a little easier. Karim soon became a kind of cheerleader for the local queer community and a mascot for the activist circles in which I moved. During those years, LGBT people in Saint Petersburg could still have their groups, organize their own film festivals, educate the public about inclusivity, and, yes, post photos of cute bi cats. Russia was never a great place to be queer, but it was at least liveable. In recent years, however, things have gotten dramatically worse.

In 2013, Vladimir Putin signed a law that prohibited so-called “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations.” Back then, Putin still couched his homophobia as opposition to “LGBT ideology”, but stopped short of promoting violence toward LGBT people, saying in a speech, for example, that “There is a rumor that Pyotr Tchaikovsky was a homosexual, but of course we love him for something different. He was a great musician and we all love his music.”

By 2022, official state channels actively promoted the idea that LGBT people are a threat to children. A level of ugly anti-LGBT hatred not seen since the days of the Soviet Union returned, with 60% of Russians favoring legal discrimination. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Christian Church, dubbed “Putin’s altar boy” by Pope Francis, justified the war in Ukraine by arguing that Ukraine was too tolerant of LGBT people. “We have this war,” Kirill said, “because people in the Donbas do not want to have gay Pride parades.” The biggest Russian Church justified outright conquest, bombings, and deaths of innocent children in the name of homophobia.

In 2023, Putin signed into law a total ban on transgender surgeries for people of all ages in Russia — a prohibition more harsh than the medical norms toward trans people in the USSR. And in 2024, the Russian government, at the direction of the courts, added the “international LGBT movement” to a list of “extremist and terrorist organizations.” Of course, there is no such organization, and being LGBT does not make one part of some international cabal. Nevertheless, the authorities pulled hundreds of books with LGBT characters from libraries and shops, detained people on the street for displaying anything rainbow-colored, and LGBT activism became completely illegal.

In today’s Russia, being openly LGBT, or even openly supportive of LGBT rights, is to be seen as a foreign agent, an extremist in the same vein as an ISIS supporter. Any mention of LGBT people in a positive light is considered an anti-state action.

I saw this backslide firsthand. My family moved to Saint Petersburg after my Ukrainian hometown, Donetsk, was occupied by pro-Russian forces in 2014. As a young trans autistic person, barely into adulthood, I fled my transphobic family to live with my then-friend and now-wife, Lina, an openly bi woman.

I took a keen interest in the rights of LGBT people on the spectrum. Despite the fact that there is a correlation between autism and queerness, when I started my activism there were just two articles about autistic queer experiences and almost zero information about autism among the largest Russian LGBT organizations. The level of general ignorance about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) was astounding. Some of the leading LGBT activists were surprised when I informed them that autistic people could have sex, or that autism and schizophrenia are different conditions. So I created my own resource, LGBT Autistic, later renamed Intersected, where I regularly published original articles as well as translations of English-language queer autistic stories.

I became involved with some of the top Russian organizations working to expand opportunities for people with ASD and worked with the Russian LGBT Network, a hub of LGBT groups in post-Soviet countries, as well as smaller initiatives. I also helped organize events for Queer-fest, a posh annual festival of queer culture, along with the annual Side by Side LGBT film festival, which was visited by prominent stars like Ian McKellen and Conchita Wurst. All the while, my bisexual cat Karim was by my side. Our own little totem, drawing attention, inspiring local LGBT people, and lightening the mood. He even once took part in a bi flash mob! Whenever I appeared at any event without him, the first question people asked was “Where is Karim?”

It wasn’t just that Karim eased the atmosphere with his cuteness, he brought an important message: if a cat could be bisexual (and trust me, I’ve seen him in action), as is common across mammals, how could same-sex attraction or queerness more broadly possibly be imported to Russia via Western propaganda, as the Russian media says? More than that, Russian nationalism had begun to seep its way even into LGBT activism, and a bi cat, as wild as it sounds, floated above the fray.

When Vladimir Putin decided to retreat into pro-Soviet nostalgia, everything that emerged from the fall of the Iron Curtain in the 1990s, such as sexual freedom, was suddenly labeled “immoral” and “Western.” The older generations took to this regressive backslide eagerly, but it wasn’t just them. After the 2014 annexation of Crimea, conspiracy theories about Anglo-Saxons took off. According to Russian propaganda, the world is ruled by Anglo-Saxons, a global Alliance of English-speaking countries whose primary goal is destroying Russian society in the name of global domination. Toward these dastardly ends, we are told, the Angloid menace uses queer people as pawns. Conspiracists looking to have their biases confirmed needed only to notice that LGBT activists, myself included, often used English words in their slang.

During my years in Russian activism, from 2015 to 2018, I began to notice that some LGBT initiatives started following the example of state propaganda. Russian supremacism started showing up in activist spaces, first with racist jokes about Westerners and black people “spoiling everything”, before evolving into an outward-looking focus that harshly criticized the problems in other countries while erasing the problems at home. Russian LGBT activists screamed about JK Rowling instead of the transphobia in their communities and spoke out against racism in the USA instead of addressing the rampant bigotry at home.

When LGBT people in Chechnya were targeted by the Russian-controlled Kadyrov regime, Russian LGBT activists tried to portray the problem in terms of ethnic inferiority — that the mistreatment of these LGBT people was due to “Chechen barbarism.” The overlooked fact is, that the Chechen people have never been more homophobic than Russians. All the torture and persecution of LGBT Chechens, or Chechens falsely accused of being LGBT, was carried out by a Kremlin-installed regime.

This is why I think so many people connected with Karim. Animals don’t have a nationality, culture, or ethnicity, but they could be same-sex attracted. Karim had diplomatic immunity to change hearts and minds. But there were limits even to his feline charms.

Russian supremacism became trendy even among the political opposition. Sadly, it was a predictable turn of events. Every Russian today — LGBT or not — was either raised in the Soviet Union, or by parents and teachers who were raised in the Soviet Union, and Soviet culture was always Russo-centric. Accepting one’s own sexual orientation or gender identity does not automatically rid them of cultural baggage, nor render them immune to propaganda. Some Russian activists even tried to persuade me that I, a Ukrainian citizen, should stay in Russia and apply for citizenship, instead of going abroad, when the Russian migration service was threatening to send me to occupied Donetsk.

The younger generation, especially transgender and neurodivergent activists, showed themselves to be more independent than their high-ranking colleagues. They were also, as it happens, among those who liked Karim the most. And many are still stuck in Russia because most prominent activists, in the name of “community building”, wouldn’t help them to flee persecution. Fortunately, I was able to escape.

In 2018, after increasing trouble with Russian authorities, including a bogus criminal case brought against me by a Russian member of Parliament, my wife and I left the country. We’d been invited to a disability rights conference in the US and left for Israel to get American visas. Our request for visas was denied, but it wasn’t safe to return to Russia. We remained in a state of limbo in Israel for four months, before finally being able to leave for the UK as refugees. One of the most heart-wrenching parts of this odyssey was that we had to leave Karim back in Russia with a friend. There was no way to bring him or get him to us, but we spent the next two years trying.

Our persistence eventually paid off when a Russian friend with a British visa was able to bring Karim to London where we were finally reunited.

This year, Karim has already been to Sheffield Radical Pride, and people loved him, even though he wasn’t the only cat activist. It has been wonderful to see Karim become friends with his new feline brothers and sisters in arms. It turns out, you can herd cats!

When I look back today on my time in Russia, what comes to mind isn’t the work that I did, but how it all turned out: with LGBT Russians being brutally persecuted. When I think about my experience as a Russian LGBT activist, I feel a lot of bitterness and regret. Could I have done more? Should I have stayed and fought no matter the consequences? I don’t know.

It sometimes feels to me like a story with no heroes except for a cat. For too many activists, their message either failed to break through or was tinged with Russian chauvinism. Others were forced back underground or out of the country. The only unalloyed good was Karim. Wherever he has gone, he’s made the world a little bit kinder and brighter. That much I do know.

Published Sep 23, 2024