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MOSCOW, from p.84
ting in psychiatric clinics the journalists who are writing articles against the local power. So, you can guess that it is very difficult for gays to confront the local authorities there. You need to understand that Russia emerged as a free country only in 1991. Then, we had a big crisis in 1998. The first priority of people is to enjoy life, travelling, and eventually to have fun abroad and visit Prides in Paris, New York, Toronto. They don’t care much about their rights here. As long as they have a job and money, they are happy. Russian people — not only gays — are usually very fatalist. They take things as they come. Around us, there are 40 people in Moscow, 15 in St Petersburg, and approximately 30 in Minsk. That’s not much for such a large country, but it does not prevent us from making more noise in the media than any other Pride. IRELAND: Some of us remember how, in his first campaign, Vladimir Putin played the homophobia card by organizing a press conference with a phony group of very flamboyant and queeny gays to endorse his leading opponent. Is the gay community in Russia riddled with police agents, agents provocateurs, or stooges of the Putin apparatus who try to discredit and discourage real gay organizing? ALEXEYEV: The regime is mostly interested in discrediting the opposition, including using the services of prostitutes to put opponents in a sex scandal and sometimes mainstream human rights activists as well. For them, whatever is gay is not serious. They don’t feel that they should be interested in it. This is why I always kept our movement and our activities completely apolitical, separate from electoral politics, and to my mind, it has to stay like that, especially in Russia. You know, if tomorrow the Kremlin starts to put us in jail, do you think someone will care? Does someone care when human rights activists are arrested? Not anymore. They used to care. But you know, 9/11 changed many things at the international level. Russia used to be very much criticized on Chechnya pre-9/11 and surprisingly much less post-9/11. Look at what happened with the Russian invasion of Georgia last year. Russia got what it wanted and no one moved. Europeans have experienced the collateral damages of the fight between Russia and Ukraine on the issue of imported natural gas. When Russia switched off the gas to Ukraine, Western Europe started to be cold as well. The Europeans understand that they have limited margin of maneuver with Russia. The European Parliament gave the Sakharov Prize last year to several key Russian human rights activists. Well, in reality, that’s a terrible admission of
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impotence, because instead of giving prizes, the European Parliament could vote a motion to ban Russian officials who do not comply with the European Convention on Human Rights from entering the European Union! But it’s the gas issue once again. Human rights activists in Russia are the hostages of this geopolitics. And I am including us in that pot. Look at what happened in Lithuania, Romania, Latvia, Slovenia, Serbia: When a Gay Pride is banned or risks facing violence, all the EU countries and the US and Canada are immediately issuing statements of support. But in Russia, they can’t. Last week, the organizers of St Petersburg Pride asked the US Consulate in St. Petersburg to help in advance of St. Petersburg Pride by screening a documentary, “Beyond Gay, the Politics of Pride,” which features the differences between several Gay Prides around the world, like New York, Vancouver, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Warsaw. The Americans refused, and the excuse was: “We cannot show a Canadian documentary in the US consulate.” And what about Hillary Clinton, who come to Moscow in 2009 to unveil the statue of Walt Whitman, an American gay poet, hand in hand with the homophobic mayor of Moscow at the same place where we were arrested three weeks before for trying to stage Moscow Pride! She even had a press conference and did not mention anything about gay rights or the banning of our Pride! If this is the new pro-LGBT policy that Hillary Clinton said she wants to introduce in the foreign policy of the USA, well… But again, geopolitics plays a role here. It’s not about gas, but the US needs the support of Russia on issues like Iran and North Korea. IRELAND: Unlike their European counterparts, the US gay institutions and national organizations haven’t been very supportive of what you’re doing in Russia. Would you explain why gay international solidarity must be collective? ALEXEYEV: At least we’ve managed to have a strong partnership with Gay Liberation Network in Chicago. They once invited me for their Matthew Sheppard march and we decided to continue to work together. Andy Thayer, the cofounder, was with us in Moscow for Pride in 2009 and 2010. Last year he was beaten, arrested, and detained, but still he came back this year. He is fabulous. Full of energy and passion. When he was detained last year, he refused to be released before the Russians who’d been arrested were freed. And there’s the background of his trip as well: Because their organization is not well-financed, it is thanks to every member of Gay Liberation Network that Andy could fly to Moscow. That’s a lot of solidarity. How can you compare such sup-
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MOSCOW, continued on p.87
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